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Dictionary of Christ
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A
Dictionary of Christ
and the Gospels
EDITED BY
JAMES HASTINGS, D.D.
WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF
JOHN (Ac (SEE BPE. Dib:
ND (IN THE READING OF THE PROOFS) OF
JOHN C. DAMIR ERT, -):D:
ROE UV of 4
AARON—KNOWLEDGE 747
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
ἘΙ ΙΝΒΙΠΝΘΗ: Ὁ. ἃ ΟΥΑΙ Kk
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
The above copyright notice is for the protection of articles copyrighted in the United States.
Messrs. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, have the sole right of publication of this
DIcTIONARY OF CHRIST AND THE GOSPELS jn the United States and Canada.
P RE ACC
THE Purpose of this DicTionary is to give an account of everything that relates to
CHRIST—His Person, Life, Work, and Teaching.
It is in a sense complementary to the Dictionary of the Bible, in which, of
course, Christ has a great place. But a Dictionary of the Bible, being occupied
mainly with things biographical, historical, geographical, or antiquarian, does not give
attention to the things of Christ sufficient for the needs of the preacher, to whom
Christ is everything. This is, first of all, a preacher’s Dictionary. The Authors of
the articles have been carefully chosen from among those Scholars who are, or have
been, themselves preachers. And even when the articles have the same titles as
articles in the Dictionary of the Bible, they are written by new men, and from a new
standpoint. It is thus a work which is quite distinct from, and altogether independent
of, the Dictionary of the bible.
It is called a DicTIONARY OF CHRIST AND THE GOSPELS, because it includes
everything that the Gospels contain, whether directly related to CHRIST or not.
Its range, however, is far greater than that of the Gospels. It seeks to cover all that
relates to Christ throughout the Bible and in the life and literature of the world.
There will be articles on the Patristic estimate of Jesus, the Medieval estimate, the
Reformation and Modern estimates. There will be articles on Christ in the Jewish
writings and in the Muslim literature. Much attention has been given to modern
thought, whether Christian or anti-Christian. Every aspect of modern life, in so far
as it touches or is touched by Christ, is described under its proper title
Still, the Gospels are the main source of our knowledge of Christ, and it will be
found that the contents of the Gospels, especially their spiritual contents, have never
before been so thoroughly investigated and set forth.
4
vi PREFACE
It will be observed at once that a large number of the titles of the articles
are new. Thus—to take the first letter of the alphabet—there are no articles in
the Dictionary of the Bible (unless the word happens to be used in some obsolete
sense) on ABGAR, ABIDING, ABOVE AND BELOW, ABSOLUTION, ACCOMMODATION, ACTIVITY,
AFFLICTION, AGONY, AMAZEMENT, AMBASSAGE, AMBITION, ANNOUNCEMENTS OF DEATH,
ANNUNCIATION, ARBITRATION, ARISTEAS, ARISTION, ARREST, ASCETICISM, ATTRACTION OF
CHRIST, ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIS!, AUTHORITY OF CHRIST, AUTHORITY IN RELIGION, AWE.
These articles are enough to give the present work distinction
Again, there are certain topics which are treated more fully here than in the
Dictionary of the Bible, because they have specially to do with Christ. In the letter
A may be named ACCEPTANCE, ACCESS, ALPHA AND OMEGA, ANGER, ANOINTING,
ASCENSION, ASSURANCE, ATONEMENT.
All these articles, moreover, have a range which is greater than the corresponding
articles in the Dictionary of the Bible, if they occur there. They describe some aspect
of Christ’s Person or Work, not only as it is presented in the Bible, but also as it
has been brought out in the history of the Church, and in Christian experience.
And even when the articles are confined to the Gospels they have a character
of their own. The ground that has to be covered being less, the treatment can be
fuller. It has also been found possible to make it more expository. Take the
following examples—ABBA, AMEN, ANGELS, APOSTLES, ARCHELAUS, ART, AUGUSTUS.
Thus, in a word, there are three classes of topics, each of which contributes
something towards the distinction of this work. There are topics, like AUTHORITY
or ΟἬΒΙΒΤ, which are wholly new. There are topics which may or may not be
wholly new, like ATTRACTION (which is new) and ATONEMENT (which is not), but
which have a wider range than any topics in the Dictionary of the Bible. And
there are topics, like ANGELS, which have a narrower range, having no occasion to
go beyond the limits of the Gospels, but within that range are fuller, ard of more
practical value for the preacher.
The subject is inexhaustible. It has not been exhausted in this work. Perhaps
the most that has been done is to show how great Christ is.
Many scholars have rendered valuable assistance. In addition to the services of
Dr. Selbie and Dr. Lambert, the Editor desires especially to acknowledge those of
Professor Howard Osgood οἵ Rochester Theological Seminary, New York, who
examined the Gospels minutely to see that no topic had been omitted, and added
some useful titles to the list.
The Dictionary will be completed in two volumes, of which this is the first.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
I. GENERAL
Alex. = Alexandrian.
Apoc. = Apocalypse, Apocalyptic.
Apocr. = Apocrypha, Apocryphal.
Aq. =Aquila.
Arab. = Arabic.
Aram. = Aramaic.
Assyr. = Assyrian.
Bab. = Babylonian.
c.=cirea, about.
Can. = Canaanite.
οἵ. =compare.
ct. = contrast.
D= Deuteronomist.
E= Elohist.
edd. = editions or editors.
Egyp. = Egyptian.
Eng. = English.
Eth. = Ethiopic.
f.=and following verse or page: as Ac 10%.
ff. =and following verses or pages: as Mt 11°§*-,
Gr. =Greek.
H=Law of Holiness.
Heb. = Hebrew.
Hel. = Hellenistic.
Hex. = Hexateuch.
Isr. = Israelite.
J =Jahwist.
J” = Jehovah.
Jerus. = Jerusalem.
Jos. = Josephus.
LXX=Septuagint.
MSS = Manuscripts.
MT= Massoretic Text.
n. =note.
NT=New Testament.
Onk. = Onkelos.
OT=Old Testament.
P=Priestly Narrative.
Pal. = Palestine, Palestinian.
Pent. = Pentateuch.
Pers. = Persian.
Phil. = Philistine.
Phoen. = Phanician.
Pr. Bk. = Prayer Book.
R= Redactor.
Rom. = Roman.
Sam. =Samaritan.
Sem. = Semitic.
Sept. =Septuagint.
Sin. = Sinaitie.
Symm. =Symmachus.
Syr. =Syriac.
Talm. = Talmud.
Targ. = Targum.
Theod. = Theodotion.
TR=Textus Receptus.
tr. =translate or translation.
VSS= Versions.
Vulg. = Vulgate.
WH=Westcott and Hort’s text.
IJ. Booxs or tHE BIBLE
Old Testament.
Ca=Canticles.
Is= Isaiah.
Jer=Jeremiah.
La= Lamentations.
Ezk = Ezekiel.
Gn = Genesis.
Ex = Exodus.
Ly = Leviticus.
Nu= Numbers.
Dt= Deuteronomy.
Jos=Joshua. Dn= Daniel.
Jg=Judges. Hos= Hosea.
Ru= Ruth. Jl=Joel.
Am = Amos.
1S, 2S=1 and 2 Samuel.
Ob= Obadiah.
1 K, 2 K=1 and 2 Kings.
1 Ch, 2 Ch=1 and 2 Jon =Jonah.
Chronicles. Mic= Micah.
Ezr = Ezra. Nah= Nahum.
Hab= Habakkuk.
Zeph= Zephaniah.
Hag= Haggai.
Zee = Zechariah.
Mal= Malachi.
Neh = Nehemiah.
Est = Esther.
Job.
Ps= Psalms.
Pr= Proverbs.
Ec = Ecclesiastes.
Apocrypha.
1 Es, 2 Es=1 and 2 To=Tobit.
Esdras. Jth=Judith.
Ad. Est = Additions to Sus=Susanna.
Esther. Bel = Bel and _ the
Wis= Wisdom. Dragon.
Sir =Sirach or Ecclesi- Pr. Man = Prayer of
asticus. Manasses.
Bar = Baruch. 1 Mac, 2 Mac=1 and 2
Three = Song of the Maccabees.
Three Children.
New Testament.
Mt= Matthew. hain —el Sandee?
Mk= Mark. Thessalonians.
Lk= Luke. πο, ΠῚ ἀπο 9
Jn=John. Timothy.
Ac= Acts. Tit —AiGus:
Ro= Romans. Philem = Philemon.
1 Co, 2 Co=1 and 2 He=Hebrews.
Corinthians.
Gal=Galatians.
Eph = Ephesians.
Ph= Philippians.
Col= Colossians.
Ja=James.
1b oP ilrand 2 Peter:
I din 2 din, 8 dint, Ὁ
and 3 John.
Jude.
Rev = Revelation.
vii
Vill
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
111. Eneuish VERSIONS
Wyc.=Wyclif’s Bible (NT c. 1380, OT ὁ. 1382, |
Purvey’s Revision ὁ. 1388). |
Tind. = Tindale’s NT 1526 and 1534, Pent. 1530. !
Cov. = Coverdale’s Bible 1535. |
Matt. or Rog.=Matthew’s (i.e. prob. Rogers’) |
Bibie 1537.
Cran. or Great =Cranmer’s ‘ Great’ Bible 1539.
Tav. = Taverner’s Bible 1539.
Gen. =Geneva NT 1557, Bible 1560.
Bish. = Bishops’ Bible 1568.
Tom. =Tomson’s NT 1576.
Rhem. = Rhemish NT 1582.
Dou. = Douay OT 1609.
AV =Authorized Version 1611.
AVm= Authorized Version margin.
RV =Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885.
RVm= Revised Version margin.
EV =Auth. and Rev. Versions.
LV. For THE
AHT= Ancient Hebrew Tradition.
AJSL=American Journal of Sem. Lang. and |
Literature.
AJTh=American Journal of Theology.
AT= Altes Testament.
BL= Bampton Lecture. ]
BM= British Museum.
BRP = Biblical Researches in Palestine.
CIG =Corpus Inscriptionum Greecarum.
CIL=Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.
CIS=Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum.
COT =Cuneiform Inscriptions and the OT.
DB = Dictionary of the Bible.
DCA = Dictionary of Christian Antiquities.
DRE = Dictionary of Religion and Ethics.
EHH= Early History of the Hebrews.
KzpT= Expository Times.
GAP =Geographie des alten Palistina. |
GGA =Gottingische Gelehrte Anzeigen.
GGN=Nachrichten der kénigl. Gesellschaft der
Wissenschaften zu Gottingen.
GJ V =Geschichte des Jiidischen Volkes.
GVI=Geschichte des Volkes Israel.
HCM = Higher Criticism and the Monuments.
HE= Historia Ecclesiastica.
HGHL = Historical Geog. of Holy Land.
HI= History of Israel.
HJ P= History of the Jewish People.
MPM = History, Prophecy, and the Monuments.
. HPN=Hebrew Proper Names.
I JG =Israelitische und Jiidische Geschichte. ]
JBL=Journal of Biblical Literature. |
J DTh=Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche Theologie.
JQ =Jewish Quarterly Review.
JhAS=Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
JSL=Journal of Sacred Literature.
JThSt=Journal of Theological Studies
KAT = Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Test.
KGF= Keilinschriften u. Geschichtsforschung.
KIB = Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek.
IL EB=The Land and the Book.
LCBt= Literarisches Centralblatt.
LOT= Introd. to the Literature of the Old Test. |
LITERATURE
MNDPV=Mittheilungen u.
deutschen Pal.-Vereins.
NHW B=Neuhebriisches Wérterbuch.
NTZG = Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte.
ON = Otium Norvicense.
OP = Origin of the Psalter.
OTJC=The Old Test. in the Jewish Church.
PB=Polychrome Bible.
PEF= Palestine Expioration Fund.
PEFSt=Quarterly Statement of the same.
PSB A = Proceedings of Soc. of Bibl. Archeeology.
PRE = Real-Encyklopiidie fiir protest. Theologie
und Kirche.
QPB=Queen’s Printers’ Bible.
LEB = Revue Biblique.
LEJ = Revue des Etudes Juives.
RP= Records of the Past.
£S= Religion of the Semites.
SBE=Sacred Books of the East.
SBOT =Sacred Books of Old Test.
Si =Studien und Kritiken.
SP=Sinai and Palestine.
SIV P=Memoirs of the Survey of W. Palestine.
ThL or ThLZ=Theol. Literaturzeitung.
ThT=Theol. Tijdschrift.
TS=Texts and Studies.
TSBA =Transactions of Soc. of Bibl. Archeology.
TU =Texte und Untersuchungen.
WAI= Western Asiatic Inscriptions.
WZKM=Wiener Zeitschrift fiir
Morgenlandes.
ZA =“Zeitschrift fiir Assyriologie.
ZAW or ZATW=Zeitschrift fiir die Alttest.
Wissenschaft.
ZDMG=Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgen-
landischen Gesellschaft.
ZDPV=Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palistina-
Vereins.
ZKSF = Zeitschrift fiir Keilschriftforschung.
ZK W =Zeitschrift fiir kirchliche Wissenschaft.
ZNTW =Zeitschrift fiir die Neutest, Wissen-
schaft.
ZThK = “Zeitschrift f. Theologie u. Kirche.
Nachrichten d.
Kunde des
A small superior number designates the particular edition of the work referred to: as KAT”, LOT*.
AUTHORS OF ARTICLES IN VOL I
Rev. Ropert M. ApAmson, M.A., Ardrossan.
tev. WALTER Ε΄ ApDENEY, D.D., Professor of
Theology and Principal of the Lancashire
College, Manchester.
tev. P. HENDERSON
Glasgow.
Rey. Gross ALEXANDER, S.T.D., late Professor of
AITKEN, B.Se., B.D.,
New Testament Greek and Exegesis in Vander- |
bilt University, Nashville.
Rev. WILLoUGHBY ©. ALLEN, M.A., Chaplain,
Fellow, and Lecturer in Theology and Hebrew,
Exeter College, Oxford.
Rev. WILLIAM P. ARMSTRONG, D.D., Professor
of New Testament Literature and Exegesis in
Princeton Theological Seminary, N.J.
2evy. BENJAMIN WISNER Bacon, D.D., Professor
of New Testament Criticism and Interpreta-
tion in Yale University, New Haven.
Rev. P. MorDAUNT BARNARD, B.D., late Rector
of Headley, Epsom.
Rev. FRANCIS R. BEATTIE, Ph.D., D.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Apologetics and Systematic
Theology in the Presbyterian Theological
Seminary of Kentucky.
Very Rev. JoHN HENRY BERNARD, D.D., Dean of
St. Patrick’s, Fellow of Trinity College, and
Archbishop King’s Lecturer in Divinity in the
University of Dublin.
Rev. HARRY BIssEKER, M.A., The Leysian Mission,
London.
Rev. ARCHIBALD Bisset, Ratho.
tev. ANDREW N. BoG.Le, M.A., Leith.
Rev. ALBERT Bonus, M.A., Alphington, Exeter,
2ev. GEOPGE H. Box, M.A., late Hebrew Master,
Merchant Taylors’ School, London, Rector of
Linton, Ress.
Rev. E. P. Boys-Smitu, M.A., Vicar of Hordle,
Brockenhurst.
Rev. J. B. Bristow, B.D., Rector of Clondalkin,
Co. Dublin.
Rev. Morison Bryce, Baldernock, Milngavie.
Rev. A. E. Burn, D.D., Rector of Handsworth,
Birmingham, and Prebendary of Lichfield.
tev. DUGALD CLARK, B.D., Glassary,
gilphead.
Rey. Joun: ὃ. CLEMENS, M.A., Principal of Ran-
moor College, Sheffield.
Rev. ArTHUR W. CookE, M.A., Newcastle-on-
Tyne.
Loch-
Rev. JAMES Cooper, D.D., Professor of Ecclesi-
astical History in the University of Glasgow.
Rey. HucuH H. Curris£, B.D., Keig, Aberdeen-
shire.
Rev. EDGAR DAPLYN, London.
Right Rev. CHARLES FREDERICK D’ArRcy, D.D.,
Bishop of Clogher.
Rey. EDWIN CHARLES DARGAN, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Homiletics and Ecclesiology in the
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louis-
ville, Ky.
Rey. W. THEOPHILUS DAvison, D.D., Professor of
Theology in Richmond Theological College,
Surrey.
Rev. Percy DEARMER, M.A., Vicar of St. Mary’s
the Virgin, Primrose Hill, London.
Rey. FRANCIS BRIGHAM DEN1IO, D.D., Professor of
Old Testament Language and Literature in
Bangor Theological Seminary, Maine.
Rev. JAMES DENNEY, D.D., Professor of New
Testainent Language, Literature, and Theology
in the United Free Church College, Glasgow.
Rey. C. T. Dimont, M.A., Vicar of Holy Trinity,
Halifax.
Rey. Marcus Dons, D.D., Professor of Exegetical
Theology in the New College, Edinburgh.
Rev. Henry E. Dosker, D.D., Professor of
Church History in the Presbyterian Theo-
logical Seminary of Kentucky.
Rev. F. Homes DupDEN, B.D., Fellow of Lincoln
College, Oxford.
Rev. ALEXANDER A. DUNCAN, B.D., Auchterless,
Aberdeenshire.
Rev. Hucu DuncaAN, B.D., Garturk, Coatbridge.
Rev. W. H. DunpAs, B.D., Curate Assistant of
St. Thomas’s, Belfast.
Rev. WILLIAM HENRy Dyson, Edgerton, Hudders-
field.
Rev. GEORGE BOARDMAN EAGER, D.D., Professor
of Biblical Introduction and Pastoral Theology
in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
Louisville, Ky.
Rev. WILLIAM Ewinc, M.A., Edinburgh, for-
merly of Tiberias, Palestine.
Rev. J. W. FALCONER, B.D., Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Rey. R. A. FALCONER, D.Litt., D.D., Principal of
the Presbyterian Theological College, Halifax,
Nova Scotia.
ix
|
|
|
|
x AUTHORS OF ARTICLES IN VOL. I
Rev. GEORGE FARMER, formerly Vicar of Hartlip,
Kent.
Rev. J. H. FARMER, Professor in M‘Master Uni-
versity, Toronto.
tev. C. L. FEtror, D.D., Rector of Duxford,
Cambridge.
tev. ADAM FYFE FINDLAY, M.A., Arbroath.
Rev. J. Dick FLEMING, B.D., Tranent.
fev. FRANK HuGuH Foster, Ph.D., D.D., lately
Professor of Systematic Theology in the Pacitic
Seminary, Berkeley, Cal.
Rey. WILLIAM BARRETT FRANKLAND, M.A.,
late Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and
Assistant-Chaplain at Giggleswick School.
Rev. ROBERT SLEIGHTHOUSE FRANKS, M.A.,
B.Litt., Birmingham.
Rev. NORMAN FRASER, B.D., Edinburgh.
tev. HENRY WILLIAM FULFORD, M.A., Fellow of
Clare College, Cambridge.
Rey. C. E. GARRAD, M.A., Fellow of Clare College,
and Vice-Principal of the Clergy Training
School, Cambridge.
Rev. ALFRED ERNEST GARVIE, D.D., Professor
of Ethics, Theism, and Comparative Religion
in New and Hackney Colleges, London.
Rev. OWEN H. GATES, Ph.D., Professor in Andover |
if
Theological Seminary, Mass.
Rev. LucIEN GAUTIER, Ph.D., Honorary Pro-
fessor of Old Testament Exegesis and History,
Geneva.
Rev. ALFRED S. GEDEN, M.A., Professor of
Biblical Literature and Exegesis in Richmond
College, Surrey.
Rev. GEORGE HOLLEY GILBERT, Ph.D., D.D., late
Professor of New Testament Literature and
Interpretation in Chicago Theological Semi- |
nary.
Rev. RICHARD GLAISTER, B.D., Kirkcudbright.
TERROT REAVELEY GLOVER, M.A., Fellow and
Classical Lecturer, St. John’s College, Cam-
bridge.
Rev. CALVIN GOODSPEED, D.D., Professor of
Systematic Theology in Baylor University,
Waco, Texas.
tev. GEORGE PEARCE GOULD, M.A., Principal of
tegent’s Park College, London.
Rev. JAMES GORDON GRAY, D.D., Rome.
Rev. THOMAS GREGORY, M.A., Kilmalcolm.
Rev. Canon CHARLES T. P. GrirRsoN, B.D.,
Rector of Seapatrick, Banbridge, Co. Down.
Rev. JAMES O. HANNAY, M.A., Rector of Augh-
aval, Westport, Co. Mayo.
Rev. CHARLES HARRIS, D.D., Vicar of Claverley,
Wolverhampton, late Lecturer in Theology in
St. David’s College, Lampeter.
Rev. JOHN HERKLEsS, D.D., Professor of Church
History in the University of St. Andrews.
Rey. F. R. Montcomery Hitcucock, B.D.,
Rector of Kinnitty, King’s Co.
Rey. CASPAR WISTAR HopGE, D.D., Lecturer in
Systematic Theology in Princeton Theological
Seminary, N.J.
tev. A. MITCHELL HUNTER,
Dumbartonshire.
tev. WILLIAM RALPH INGE, D.D., Vicar of All
Saints’, Ennismore Gardens, London,
Fellow aud Tutor of Hertford College, Oxford.
M.A., Cardross,
late |
tev. JAMES IVERACH, D.D., Professor of Apolo-
getics and Dogmatics, Principal of the United
Free Church College, Aberdeen.
Rev. H. L. JAckson, M.A., Vicar of St. Mary’s,
Huntingdon.
Rev. ARTHUR JENKINSON, Innellan, Greenock.
A. J. JENKINSON, M.A., Fellow of Brasenose
College, Oxford.
Rev. E. GRIFFITH-JONES, B.A., London.
Rev. W. S. Kerr, B.D., Vicar of Ballywalter, Co.
Down.
Rev. THomAs B. KiLparrick, D.D., Professor
of Systematic Theology in Knox College,
Toronto.
Rev. RICHARD JOHN KNOWLING, D.D., Canon of
Durham, and Professor of Divinity in the
University of Durham.
Rev. DAvip M. W. Larrp, M.A., Edinburgh.
Rev. JoHN C. LAMBERT, DD., Fenwick,
marnock.
Rev. RoBERT LEGGAT, Berwick-on-T weed.
Rev. JOHN Rosert Lecce, M.A., Buckhurst Hill,
Essex.
Nev. WILLIAM F. Lorrnouse, M.A., Professor in
the Theological College, Handswerth, Bir-
mingham.
Rev. CHARLES ScoTT MACALPINE, B.D., Man-
chester.
Rev. A. B. MACAULAY, M.A., Dundee.
tev. GEORGE M‘HaArpy, D.D., Kirkealdy.
tev. GEORGE M. Mackie, D.D., Chaplain to
the Church of Scotland at Beyrout, Syria.
Kil-
i Rev. DUNCAN A. MACKINNON, M.A., Marykirk,
Kincardineshire.
Rey. RoBERT MACKINTOSH, D.D., Professor of
Christian Ethics, Apologetics, and Socislogy
in the Lancashire Independent College, Man-
chester.
Right Rev. ARTHUR JOHN MACLEAN, D.D., Bishop
of Moray.
tev. A. H. M‘NEILE, B.D, Fellow and Dean
of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
Rev. JAMES EDMOND M‘Ovat, B.D., Logiealmond,
Perthshire.
Rev. WILLIAM M. M‘PHEETERS, D.D., Professor
of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis,
Columbia Theological Seminary, S.C
Rev. RoBERT MACPHERSON, D.D., Elgin.
Rev. JosePH T. L. Maaas, D.D., Leeds.
tev. JOHN TURNER MARSHALL, D.D., Principal
of the Baptist College, Manchester.
| Rev. A. StUART MARTIN, B.D., Scone, Perth.
Rev. G. CURRIE MARTIN, D.D., Professor of New
Testament Theology and Patristics in the
United College, Bradford.
| E. W. GurNEY MASTERMAN, M.D., F.R.C.S.,
F.R.G.S., D.P.H., Jerusalem, Syria.
Rev. SHAILER MATHEWS, D.D., Professor of New
Testament History and Interpretation in the
University of Chicago.
Rev. J. H. Maupr, M.A., Rector of Hilgay,
Downham Market.
Late Rev. PREBENDARY F. MEYRICK,
Rector of Blickling, Aylesham.
M.A.,
AUTHORS OF ARTICLES IN VOL. I xi
Rev. ANDREW MILLER, M.A., Glasgow.
Rev. W. J. 5. MILLER, B.D., Houndwood, Reston.
Rev. GEORGE MILLIGAN, D.D., Caputh, Perth-
shire.
Rev. JAMES MOFFATT, D.D., Dundonald, Ayrshire.
Rev. W. 5. MontTGoMeErRy, B.D., Abbeyleix,
Queen’s County.
Rev. W. W. Moors, D.D., President of Union
Theological Seminary, Richmond, Va.
Rev. W. MorGan, M.A., Tarbolton, Ayrshire.
Rey. R. WApDDY Moss, D.D., Professor of Classics |
in the Didsbury College, Manchester.
Kev. JoHN Muir, B.D., Kirkcowan, Wigtownshire.
Rev. JosepH Muir, B.D., Edinburgh.
Rey. Lewis A. MUIRHEAD, D.D., Broughty Ferry.
Rey. GEORGE MuRRAY, B.D., Sauchie, Alloa.
Rev. JAMES Ross Murray, M.A., Manchester.
EBERHARD NESTLE, Ph.D., D.D., Professor at
Maulbronn.
Rev. M. R. NEWBOLT, ΒΑ. Vicar of Iffley,
Oxford.
Rev. ALBERT HENRY NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Church History in Baylor Uni- |
versity, Texas.
Rev. Tuomas Nicou, D.D., Professor of Biblical
Criticism in the University of Aberdeen.
Rev. W. O. E. OESTERLEY, B.D., Organizing
Secretary of the Parochial Missions to the
Jews at Home and Abroad.
Rev. J. W. OMAN, D.Phil., Alnwick.
Rey. JAMES PATRICK, B.D., B.Sc., Burntisland.
Rev. WILLIAM PATRICK, D.D., Principal of
Manitoba College, Winnipeg.
ARTHUR 5. PEAKE, B.D., Professor of Biblical
Exegesis and Dean of the Faculty of Theology,
Victoria University, Manchester.
Rev. JOHN ROBERT VAN PELT, Ph.D., Lewisburg,
Pa.
Rev. ALFRED PLUMMER, D.D., late Master of
University College, Durham.
Rev. E. B. POLLARD, Georgetown, Ky.
Rey. Cyrin HENRY PRICHARD, M.A., Rector of
Wiston, Steyning, Sussex.
Rev. F. S. RANKEN, M.A., Rector of South
Walsham, Norwich.
Rev. W. M. RANKIN, B.D., Glasgow.
Rev. JOHN Retp, M.A., Inverness.
Rev. J. S. Rices, D.D., Professor of Biblical
Criticism in the Theological Seminary of
Auburn, N.Y.
Rev. C. W. RIsHELL, D.D., Professor of Historical
Theology in Boston University, Mass.
Rev. JoHN EDWARD Roserts, B.D., Manchester.
Rev. ARCHIBALD THOMAS ROBERTSON, D.D., Pro-
fessor of Interpretation of the New Testament
in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
Louisville, Ky.
Rey. JAMES ROBERTSON, D.D., Whittingehame.
; Rev. F. E. Ropinson, B.D., Professor of Hebrew
in the Baptist College, Bristol.
Rev. GEORGE LivINGsTON RoBinson, Ph.D.,
Professor of Old Testament Literature and
Exegesis in the M‘Cormick Theological
Seminary, Chicago.
Rev. ANDREW E. Ross, B.D., Rector of Portrush,
Co. Antrim.
Rev. ALFRED NORMAN ROWLAND, M.A., London.
Rev. JOHN RICHARD SAMPEY, D.D., LL.D., Pro-
fessor of Interpretation of the Old Testament
in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
Louisville, Ky.
tev. WILLIAM SANDAY, D.D., LL.D., D.Se., Lady
Margaret Professor of Divinity, and Canon of
Christ Church, Oxford, Chaplain in Ordinary
to H.M. the King.
Rev. CHARLES ANDERSON Scott, M.A., London.
Rev. ErneEsT F. Scott, B.A., Prestwick.
tev. RoBERT Scott, M.A., Professor in Wilson
College, Bombay.
Rev. HENRY CLAY SHELDON, T.D., Professor of
Systematic Theology in Boston University.
tev. EDWARD SHILLITO, M.A., Brighton.
Rev. S. J. RAMSAY SIBBALD, B.D., Crathie,
Ballater.
Rey. J. G. Stupson, M.A., Principal of the Clergy
School, Leeds.
Rev. DAvip SmiTH, M.A., Tulliallan.
Rev. HAROLD SmirH, M.A., Rector of Grimley,
Worcester.
Rev. J. CROMARTY SMITH, B.D., Coatdyke, Coat-
bridge.
W. TAYLOR SMITH, M.A., Sevenoaks, Kent.
Rev. HARRY HERBERT SNELL, B.A., Reading.
| Late Rev. J. SourAr, M.A., Tiberias, Palestine.
ALEXANDER SoutTER, M.A., Litt.D., Yates Pro-
fessor of New Testament Exegesis in Mansfield
College, Oxford.
Rey. W. B. STEVENSON, B.D., Professor of Hebrew
and Old Testament Introduction in the Theo-
logical Coilege, Bala.
Rev. GEORGE WAUCHOPE STEWART, B.D., Aber-
deen.
| Rev. ROBERT LAIRD STEWART, D.D., Professor in
Lincoln University, Chester Co., Penn.
Rev. DARWELL STONE, M.A., Pusey Librarian,
Oxford.
Rey. ἃ. GORDON 5ΤΟΤΊ, B.D., London.
Rev. R. H. STRACHAN, M.A., Elie.
Rey. A. PoLLoK Sym, B.D., Lilliesleaf.
| Rev. JOHN G. TASKER, D.D., Professor of Biblical
Literature and Exegesis in Handsworth Col-
lege, Birmingham.
Rev. R. BrucE TAytor, M.A., Aberdeen.
Rey. MILTON SPENCER TERRY, D.D., LL.D., Pro-
fessor of Christian Doctrine in the Garrett
Biblical Institute, Northwestern University.
Rey. G. W. THATCHER, B.D., Professor of Hebrew
and Old Testament History in Mansfield Col-
lege, Oxford.
Rey. W. H. GRIFFITH THOMAS, D.D., Principal of
Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
| Rev. WILLIAM D. THomson, M.A., Edinburgh.
ΧΙ
AUTHORS OF ARTICLES IN VOL. I
Rev. EpDwarRD HARPER TITCHMARSH, M.A., |
Shetheld.
Rey. GEERHARDUS Vos, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of
Biblical Theology in Princeton Theological
Seminary, N.J.
Rev. G. H. 5. WALPOLE, D.D., Rector ef Lambeth.
Rev. BENJAMIN BRECKINRIDGE WARFIELD, D.D.,
LL.D., Professor of Theology in Princeton
Theological Seminary, N.J.
Rev. GEORGE C. WATT, B.D., Edinkillie.
Rev. THOMAS H. WeErr, B.D., M.R.A.S., Lecturer
in Hebrew and Arabic in the University of
Glasgow.
Professor Dr. JOHANNES WEISS of the University
of Marburg.
Rev. Newport J. ἢ. WHITE, D.D., Lecturer in
Hebrew and Divinity in the University of
Dublin, and Canon of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
tev. B. WHITEFOORD, D.D., Prebendary of Salis-
bury Cathedral and Principal of the Theological
College, Salisbury.
Rev. A. R. WHITHAM, M.A., Principal of the
Culham Training College, Abingdon.
Rev. J. R. WILLIS, B.D., Rector of Preban and
Moyne, Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow.
HERBERT G. Woop, M.A., Fellow of Jesus Col-
lege, Cambridge.
Rev. NATHAN E. Woop, President of the Theo-
logical Seminary, and Professor of Christian
Theology, Newton Centre, Mass.
Rev. ARTHUR W. WOTHERSPOON, M.A., Glasgow.
Rey. T. H. Wricat, Edinburgh.
Rev. ANDREW C. ZENOS, D.D., Professor of
Biblical Theology in the M‘Cormick Theo-
logical Seminary, Chicago.
PiCVVONAR Y. Of eR iS 'E
ΔΝ) ΤΠ Te
GOSPELS
ae ee
A
AARON.—The name occurs only 5 times in the
NT. Three of the passages contain historical
references only: Lk 1° where Elisabeth is de-
scribed as ‘ of the daughters of Aaron’; Ac 7%
which refers to the request of the Israelites that
Aaron would ‘make them gods’; and He 9:
‘Aaron’s rod that budded.’ The other two pas-
sages refer to Aaron’s office as high priest, and are
directly concerned with the Christian doctrine of
the priesthood of Christ. In He 54 we read, ‘ And
no man taketh the honour unto himself, but when
he is called of God, even as was Aaron’; and He 7}!
speaks of another priest after the order of Mel-
chizedek, who should ‘not be reckoned after the
order of Aaron.’ It is as the representative high
priest that Aaron has been regarded as a type of
Christ.
The two points on which the writer of Hebrews
insists are, one of comparison, and one of contrast.
On the one hand, Christ, like Aaron, did not take
His priestly office on Himself, but was directly
appointed by God (5°) ; on the other, the Aaronic
type of priesthood is sharply distinguished from
that of our Lord in certain fundamental respects.
Christ was indeed divinely appointed: He was
repared for service, in being made like His
rethren (217), and fitted by His aya pauhy, (435)
and fidelity to undertake priestly work on their
behalf ; through His death on the cross He offered
Himself as a sacrifice, apparently on earth and
certainly in heaven as a temple not made with
hands (9%); He is able to save to the uttermost
those who come to God through Him as priest,
seeing He ever lives to make priestly intercession
for them (7%). Thus far He was Aaron’s antitype.
But the analogy fails most seriously in certain
important features, as the writer of Hebrews
shows. Christ’s priesthood was not according to
the Law. If He were on earth, He would not be
a priest at all, springing as He did from Judah,
not from Levi (74). He did not hold His office in
virtue of earthly descent, nor was He limited to
an earthly sanctuary, nor did He present to God
a sin-offering which could be, or needed to be,
frequently repeated (9). None of the sacrifices
of the Law could ‘make perfect as pertaining to
the conscience’ (9°). At best they procured only
a limited access to God. Into the holiest place
the high priest. was permitted to enter only once
a year, and then in virtue of sacrifices offered for
VOL. I.—I
his own sins, as well as the people’s (9). Christ’s
priesthood was ‘after the order of Melchizedek’
(6°), eternal: His sacrifice was a spiritual one,
offered once for all; it is impossible to think of
the repetition on earth of that offering which
‘through (the) eternal Spirit’ (914) our glorified
High Priest presents continually in ‘a more per-
fect tabernacle’ (v.!) in heaven itself, for us. He
was made a priest, not according to any legal
enactment belonging to earth and finding its ex-
pression in the flesh ; but dynamically, according
to the enduring power of an indissoluble life (71°).
Thus Christ may well be spoken of as the second
Adam, but not as a second Aaron. The lines of
Bishop Wordsworth’s hymn, ‘Now our heavenly
Aaron enters, Through His blood within the veil,’
can be defended only in so far as the name Aaron
is synonymous with high priest. The personal
name suggests just those limitations which the
generic name avoids, and which the writer of
Hebrews expressly warns us must on no account
be attributed to our great High Priest who has
passed into the heavens. So far as the doctrine
of Christ is concerned, it is well to follow Scripture
usage and to speak of Him as our Eternal High
Priest, rather than to press an analogical or typical
relation to Aaron, which fails at many cardinal
points.
LITERATURE.—For the further discussion of the subject see
Westcott and A. B. Davidson on Hebrews, especially the
detached note of the latter on the Priesthood of Christ ; also
Milligan’s Baird Lectures on Vhe Ascension and Heavenly
Priesthood of our Lord, and the art. of Dr. Denney on ‘ Priest-
hood in NT’ in Hastings’ DB, vol. iv. W,'T. DAVISON.
ABBA.—An Aramaic word preserved by St.
Mark in our Lord’s prayer in Gethsemane (14°6
᾿Αββᾶ ὁ πατήρ, πάντα δυνατά σοι), and given twice
in the same association with ὁ πατήρ by St. Paul
(Ro 8:5 ἐλάβετε πνεῦμα υἱοθεσίας ἐν ᾧ κράζομεν, ABBA
ὁ πατήρ; and Gal 46 ἐξαπέστειλεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸ Πνεῦμα τοῦ
υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ εἰς τὰς καρδίας ἡμῶν κρᾶζον, ᾿Αββᾶ ὁ πατήρ).
A difficulty arises both as to the spelling and the
pronunciation of the word Abba, and also as to its
being found in all the above passages joined to
ὁ πατήρ.
1. Abba (ἀββᾶ) corresponds to the Aramaic x2x
abbd, which is the definite state of as dbh (con-
struct state 2x abh), and means ‘ Father,’ unless it
is used for ‘my Father’ (sax for 3 Ν) as in Gn 19548
(Targ. of Onkelos and pseudo-Jonathan ; see Dal-
mes
2 ABBA
ABBA
man, Aramdisch-Neuhebrdisches Worterbuch, s.v.,
Gramm. p. 162, and Words of Jesus, p. 192 [Dal-
man says that the suffix of 1 pers. sing. is ‘ deliber-
ately avoided with 2s and is supplied by the de-
terminative form’]). It is not, however, quite
certain that the word was pronounced abéd in
Palestine in our Lord’s time. As the points were
not invented till many centuries after, we cannot
be sure that 7464 was then the definite state rather
than abhd as in Syriac ; and we have no indication
except the Greek transliteration that the 6 was then
doubled. But the fact that, when points were first
used (A.D. 700 3), the daghesh was employed for the
definite state of this word in the Targumic litera-
ture, coupled with the doubling of the β in the
Greek, affords a presumption that the ὁ was hard
and doubled in this word at the beginning of our
era [Dalman gives for the definite state sax Gn
4419. or sa Nu 254, or in Palestinian Targum also
82x; with other pronominal suffixes we have ‘71%
ete., and the pl. definite state is snq3x). The
Syriac, on the other hand, has ὦ aspirated through-
i ῦ AY
out, 2| abh, 1o| abhad (pron. av, avd, or aw,
awd), ete., and the distinction between 15] aba,
a spiritual father, and to} ava, a natural father,
which the grammarians make, appears not to be
founded on any certain basis, nor to agree with
the manuscripts (Payne-Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus,
0 J
s.v.). The proper name 15] also in Syriac has
always aspirated 6, while Dalman (Worterbuch)
gives for Targumic zx, and says it is an ab-
breviation of 7:2x. In Mk 1456 (Peshitta) Pusey
0 a
and Gwilliam give 15] as in Massora 1 in the
British Museum (Codex Additionalis 12138, Nes-
torianus, A.D. 899); the American edition prints
12] (1.6. with .9) in all three NT places; but this
is rather a following of the grammarians than of
good manuscripts. It is very noteworthy, however,
that the Harkleian version in the Markan passage
Mf v
spells the word last, transliterating the Greek
directly back into Syriac, rather than using the
Syriac word itself.
John Lightfoot (Hore Hebraice on Mk 1458)
remarks that the Targum, in translating the OT,
never renders a ‘civil’ father, ὁ.6. a master, prince,
lord, etc., by 82x, but only a natural father, or a
father who adopts; in the former sense they use
some other word. But this throws no light on the
pronunciation of Abba.
It is to be noticed that it is not certain how
the Greeks of the Ist cent. themselves pronounced
ἀββᾶ, whether abba or, as the modern Greeks pro-
nounce it, a@vvd. The word is not found in the
LXX. It passed into ecclesiastical Latin with a
doubled 6, and gave us such words as ‘abbot,’
‘abbacy,’ etc.
But does it mean ‘ Father’ or ‘my Father’? If
it be a Jewish formula or fixed manner of begin-
ning prayer, it may well be the latter.. We must,
however, note that whatever be the way of ac-
counting for ᾿Αββᾶ 6 πατήρ (see below), the origina-
tors or originator of that phrase in Greek, whether
the Jews, or our Lord, or St. Paul, or the Second
Evangelist, seem to have taken ᾿Αββᾶ to mean
merely ‘Father.’ And the same is probably true
of the translators of the Peshitta. The Sinaitic
oO
Syriac, however, appears to read ol my Father
(see below). The Curetonian Syriac is wanting here.
2. We have next to account for the association
of A884 in its Greek dress with ὁ πατήρ in all the
three places where it occurs in NT. In Mk 14%
0 ῦ oY
the Peshitta reads a] 15] ‘Father, my
a?
Father,’ and the Sinaitie Syriac has simply Of
‘my Father.’ In Ro 8 and Gal 4° the Peshitta
rT 0 7
reads 15:3] 151]. All these appear to be mere
expedients adopted to avoid the awkwardness of
0
repeating 15], and they do not really throw light
on the origin of the Greek phrase.
We may first take as a supposition that our
Lord, praying in Gethsemane, used the Aramaic
language, and therefore said ‘Abba’ only, ard
that ὁ πατήρ is the Evangelist’s explanation, for
Greek readers, of the Aramaic word. St. Mark
undoubtedly reports several Aramaic words, and
except in the case of the well-known ‘ Rabbi,’
‘Rabboni’ (95 10 ete.), explains them. But then
he always uses a formula, 6 ἐστιν (317 711: *4) or ὅ ἐστι
μεθερμηνευόμενον (5% 15%). It is suggested that in
the case of Abba the familiarity of the word would
make the connecting formula unnecessary ; but
the same consideration would make it unnecessary
toexplainit at all. Another suggestion is that the
solemnity of the context would make the formula
incongruous. The strongest argument for ὁ πατήρ
being an addition of the Evangelist is that, what-
ever view we take of our Lord’s having made use
of Greek in ordinary speech, it is extremely un-
likely that His prayers were in that language ;
and if He prayed in Aramaic, He would only say
‘Abba.’ It is the common experience of bilingual
countries that though the acquired language may
be in constant use for commerce or the ordinary
purposes of life, the native tongue is tenaciously
retained for devotion and prayer. Sanday-Head-
lam’s supposition (Romans, in loc.), that our Lord
used both words spontaneously, with deep emotion,
might. be quite probable if He prayed in the foreign
tongue, Greek ; but scarcely so if He prayed in the
native Aramaic (see, however, below). :
If ὁ πατήρ be due to St Mark, it is probably not
a mere explanation for the benefit of Greek readers.
The suggestion that “A884 ὁ πατήρ had become a
quasi-liturgical formula, possibly even among the
ews, or more probably among the Christians, would
account for its introduction in a prayer, where
interpretations would be singularly out of place.
And this suggestion would account for St. Paul’s
using the phrase twice, in two Epistles written
about the same time, indeed, but to two widely
distant Churches. St. Paul is not in the habit of
introducing Aramaic words (‘ Maran atha’ in 1 Co
162 is an exception), and if he were not quoting
a well-known form, it is unlikely that he would
have introduced one in writing to the Romans and
Galatians. It is not probable, however, that he is
quoting or thinking of our Lord’s words in Geth-
semane, for there is nothing in the context to
suggest this.
If the phrase be a liturgical formula, we may
account for it in various ways. J. b. Lightfoot
(Galatians, in loc.) suggests that it may have
originated among Hellenistic Jews ; or else among
Palestinian Jews, after they had learned Greek,
as ‘an expression of importunate entreaty.’ He
prefers the latter view, thinking that perhaps our
Lord Himself used both words. He apparently
means that Jesus took the Greek word into His
Aramaic prayer; and he quotes from Schottgen a
similar case where a woman entreats a judge and
addresses him as 73 "> ‘ My lord, lord,’ the second
word being equivalent to the first, except for the
ABEL
possessive suffix, and being a transliteration of
κύριε. Chase (‘The Lord’s Prayer in the Early
Church,’ in the Cambridge Texts and Studies, vol.
i. p. 23) has suggested another origin for the phrase,
which would place its home, not among the Jews
(for which there is no evidence), but among the
Christians. He suggests that it is due to the
shorter or Lukan form of the Lord’s Prayer (Lk
112%), The Aramaic shorter form would begin
with Abba, for the Greek begins with Πάτερ ; and
the hypothesis is that the early Christians in the
intensity of their devotion repeated the first word
of the prayer in either language. A somewhat
similar phenomenon is seen in the repetitions for
emphasis in Rev 9!! 12% 205, where the names are
given in both languages. Such a repetition is
possible only in a bilingual country. That it is
the shorter form of the Lord’s Prayer that is used
(if Dr. Chase’s hypothesis be true), is seen from the
Aramaic xix Abba. If the longer form had been
in question, Πάτερ ἡμῶν, the initial word of the
Aramaic would have had the possessive pronominal
suffix of 1 pers. pl., and would be xnas abhind.
It is a confirmation of this theory that the words
which follow, ‘Not what I will but what thou
wilt,’ recall. ‘Thy will be done’ of the Lord’s
Prayer; compare especially Mt 26” γενηθήτω τὸ
θέλημά cov, the exact words of the longer form of
the Lord’s Prayer. This shows that both Evangel-
ists had that prayer in their minds when relating
the agony. The only consideration which militates
against the theory is that ὁ πατήρ is used for Πάτερ.
The nominative with the article is, however, often
used in NT, by a Hebrew analogy, for an emphatic
vocative, and the desire for sinphasis may account
for its use here. A. J. MACLEAN.
ABEL (527, "A8e\).—1. The name occurs in the
Gospels only in Mt 23% || Lk 11°, where Jesus
declares that the blood of the prophets will be
required of this generation. The passage is one
of a series of invectives against Pharisaism, col-
lected in Mt 23, parts of which are preserved in
Lk 11. 13. 14. 20, 21. Abel is named as the first of
the long line of martyrs whose blood had_ been
shed during the period covered by the OT, the
last being Zachariah (which see). ‘In both cases
the ἐκζήτησις is indicated: ‘‘the voice of thy
brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground”
(Gn 419): “the Lord look upon it, and require it”
(2 Ch 24”).? In St. Matthew the words are ad-
dressed to the Pharisees in the 2nd person : ‘ that
upon you may come every righteous blood [1.6.
the blood of each righteous person] shed upon the
earth, from the blood of Abel the righteous, until
the blood of Zachariah . . . ete.’ In St. Luke the
assage is thrown into the 3rd_ person: ‘ that the
lood of all the prophets which hath been shed
from the foundation of the world may be required
of this generation, from the blood of Abel until
the blood of Zachariah . . . ete.’
The description of Abel in St. Matthew as ‘ the
righteous’ is noteworthy, and should be compared
with He 114. In the story of Abel nothing what-
ever is said as to his moral character ; the contrast
between him and his brother lay in the fact that
‘Jehovah had respect unto Abel and to his offer-
ing ; but unto Cain and to his offering he had not
respect.’ The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews
says that it was faith which led Abel to offer the
more excellent sacrifice ; but wherein the excellence
consisted the narrative of Genesis does not explain.
But the expression τοῦ δικαίου seems to reflect the
Pharisaic conception of righteousness as that which
‘consisted primarily in the observance of all the
rites and ceremonies prescribed in the law’ (cf.
Lk 15). Abel’s offering must have been preferred
presumably because it was in some way more to
ABGAR 3
God’s liking—more correct. This, however, was
not consonant with Christ’s idea of righteousness —
‘except your righteousness shall abound beyond
that of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not
enter into the kingdom of heaven’ (Mt 53). It
may be concluded, therefore, that St. Luke has
preserved the more original form of Christ’s words,
and that ‘the righteous’ is an addition in Mt 23%
due to current Jewish conceptions.
2. It is possible that Christ had the story of
Abel in mind when He spoke of the devil as being
‘a murderer (dv@pwroxrivos) from the beginning,’
i.e. the instigator of murder as he is of lies (Jn 8*),
But the passage may be a reference to the intro-
duction of death into the world by the fall of
Adam.
3. In He 12% the ‘ blood of Abel’ is contrasted
with the ‘ blood of sprinkling’ under the new dis-
pensation. In Gn 4! God says: ‘ Hark ! (ΠΡ) thy
brother’s blood erieth unto me from the ground,’
i.e. it pleads for vengeance. But the blood of
sprinkling ‘speaketh something better’ (κρεῖττον
λαλοῦντι) : it is the blood shed in ratification of a
New Covenant, whose mediator is Jesus.
LIrERATURE.—The most recent commentaries on Matthew and
Luke (ad loce.); Wright, Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek, p. 232 ;
Sanday-Headlam, Rumans, pp. 28-31, on δίκαιος and its cognates ;
Driver, Genesis (in Westminster commentaries); Dillmann,
‘Genesis,’ in Kurzgef. exeget. Handb. z. AT [Eng. tr. by
Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1897]; Marcus Dods, ‘Genesis’ in Ha-
positor’s Bible. A. H. M‘NEILE.
ABGAR.— Between the years B.c. 99 and A.D. 217
eight (or ten) kings or toparchs of Edessa in
Osrhoéne bore this name. It is with the toparch
that ruled in the time of our Saviour, Abgar
Ukkéma (‘the Black,’ 6. B.c. 13 to A.D. 50 [Gut-
schmid], B.c. 9 to A.D. 46 [Dionysius of Telmahar]),
that we are here concerned, owing to the legendary
accounts of his correspondence with Jesus, accepted
as historical fact by Eusebius, and by him given
wide currency. Eusebius (H/ 1. 13) relates, with-
out any suggestion of scepticism, that ‘king Ab-
gar, who ruled with great glory the nations beyond
the Euphrates, being afflicted with a terrible disease
which it was beyond the power of human skill to
cure, when he heard of the name of Jesus and His
miracles, . . . sent a message to Him by a courier
and begged Him to heal the disease.’ Eusebius
proceeds to impart the letter of Abgar and the
answer of Jesus, which he claims to have derived
directly from the archives of Edessa, and to have
translated (or caused to be translated) literally
from Syriac into Greek. The letter of Abgar
reads as follows :—
‘ Abgar, ruler of Edessa, to Jesus the excellent Saviour who
has appeared in the country of Jerusalem, greeting. I have
heard the reports of thee and of thy cures as performed by
thee without medicines or herbs. For it is said that with a
word only thou makest the blind to see and the lame to walk,
that thou cleansest lepers and castest out impure spirits and
demons, and that thou healest those afflicted with lingering
diseases, and also that thou raisest the dead. And having heard
all these things concerning thee, I have concluded that one of
two things must be true: either thou art God and hast come
down from heaven to do these things, or else thou who doest
these things art the Son of God. Wherefore I have written to
thee to ask thee that thou wouldest take the trouble to come
even to me and heal the disease which I have. For I have been
informed that the Jews are murmuring against thee and are
plotting to injure thee. But I have a city, small indeed yet
honourable, which may suffice for us both.’
The answer of Jesus runs—
‘Blessed art thou who hast believed in me when thou thyself
hast not seen me. For it stands written concerning me, that
they who have seen me will not believe in me, and that they
who have not seen me will believe and be saved. But in regard
to what thou hast written me, that I should come to thee, it 1s
necessary for me to fulfil all things here for which I have been
sent, and after I have fulfilled them thus to be taken up again
to Him that sent me. But after I have been taken up I will
send to thee one of my disciples, that he may heal thy disease
and give life to thee and those who are with thee,’
4 ABGAR
ABIATHAR
From an accompanying narrative in the Syriac
language, giving an account of the fulfilment of
Christ’s promise, Eusebius quotes at considerable
length. A brief summary of the contents of this
document must here suffice. Judas, also called
Thomas, is said to have sent Thaddeus, one of the
Seventy, to Edessa, soon after the ascension of
Jesus. Arriving in Edessa he took lodgings, and
without reporting himself at the court engaged
extensively in works of healing. When the king
heard thereof he suspected that he was the disciple
promised by Jesus, and had him brought to court.
On the appearance of Thaddeus ‘a great vision
appeared to Abgar in the countenance of Thad-
deus,’ which led the former to prostrate himself
before the latter, to the astonishment of the
courtiers, who did not see the vision. Having
become assured that his guest is the promised
disciple of Jesus, and that he has come fully em-
powered to heal and to save on condition of his
exercise of faith, Abgar assures Thaddeus that his
faith is so strong that, had it not been for the
presence of the Romans, he would have sent an
army to destroy the Jews that crucified Jesus.
Thaddeus assures him that in fulfilment of the
Divine plan of redemption Jesus has been taken
up to His Father, and, on a further profession of
faith in Father and Son, Thaddeus lays his hands
upon the king and healshim. Many other healings
follow, accompanied by the preaching of the gospel.
At Thaddeus’ suggestion the king summons the
citizens as a body to hear the preaching of the
word, and afterwards offers him a rich reward,
which is magnanimously refused. According to
the Syriac document from which Eusebius quotes,
the visit of Thaddeus occurred in the year 340 of
the era of the Seleucid (corresponding, according
to K. Schmidt in PRE, sub voc., to A.D. 29;
according to others, A.D. 30, 31, or 32).
From the same Edessene materials Moses of
Chorene, the Armenian historian of the middle of
the 5th cent., prepared independently of Eusebius
an account of the intercourse between Abgar and
Christ and His disciples, which attests the general
correctness of Eusebius’ work. The fact that
Moses was for several years a student in Edessa
enhances the value of his account. He represents
the reply of Jesus as having been written on His
behalf by Thomas the Apostle. In Moses’ account
occurs the statement that after his conversion
Abgarus wrote letters to the emperor Tiberius, to
Narses, king of Assyria, to Ardaches, king of Persia,
and others, reeommending Christianity (Hist. Arm.
ii. 30-33). Here also appears the legend that
Christ sent by Ananias, the courier of Abgar, a
picture of Himself impressed upon a handkerchief.
This part of the story was still further elaborated
by Cedrenus (Hist. Comp. p. 176), who represents
Ananias, the courier of Abgar, as himself an
artist, and as so overcome by the splendour of the
countenance of Jesus when attempting to depict
it that he was obliged to desist ; whereupon Christ,
having washed His face, wiped it with a towel
which retained His likeness. This picture was
taken by Ananias to his master, and it became for
the city a sort of talisman. This miraculously
produced portrait, or what purported to be such, is
said to have been transferred to the church of St.
Sophia at Constantinople in the 10th cent., and
later to have passed thence to the church of St.
Sylvester in Rome, where it is still exhibited
for the edification of the faithful. A church in
Genoa makes a rival claim to the possession of the
original handkerchief portrait.
Any suspicion that Eusebius fabricated the docu-
ments that he professes to translate was set aside
by the discovery and publication of what have
been accepted as the original Syriac documents
(The Doct. of Addai the Apostic, with an English
Translation and Notes, by G. Phillips, London,
1876). The Syriac document contains the story of
the portrait, which was probably already current
in the time of Eusebius. The Syriac version of
the story given by Cureton in his Ancient Syriac
Documents seems to be an elaborate expansion of
that of Eusebius, and to have been composed con-
siderably later.
The letter of Christ to Abgar was declared by a
Roman Council in 494 or 495 to be spurious. Tille-
mont sought to prove the genuineness of the corre-
spondence (Memoirs, i. pp. 362, 615), and similar
attempts have keen made by Welte (Tvbingen
Quartalschr. 1842, p. 335 ff.), Rinck (Zeitschr. 7.
Hist. Theol. 1843, ii. pp. 3-26), Phillips (preface
to The Doct. of Addai), and Cureton (Ane. Syr.
oc.).
It may be assumed that the documents were
forged some time before Eusebius used them.
Christianity seems to have been introduced into
Osrhoéne during the 2nd cent. A.D. The first
king known to have favoured Christianity was
Abgar Vul. (bar-Manu), who reigned 176-213, and
is said to have been on very intimate terms with
Bardesanes, the scholarly Gnostic. A Christian
church building modelled after the temple in Jeru-
salem existed in Edessa some time before 202,
until, according to the Edessene Chronicle, it was
destroyed (middle of the 6th cent.) by flood. As
Edessa grew in importance as a Christian centre,
with its theological school, its ambition for dis-
tinction may have led some not over-scrupulous
ecclesiastic to fabricate these documents and_ to
palm them off on the too eredulous authorities.
The forgery may have occurred early in the 3rd
cent. (Zahn), but more probably early in the 4th.
The only piece of real information that has come
down to us regarding the Abgar of the time of
Christ is a very uncomplimentary reference in
Tacitus (Ann. xii. 12. 14).
LivErATURE.—In addition to the works already mentioned,
special reference should be made to Lipsius, Die edessenische
Abgarsage, 1880, where the available materials are brought
under review and critically tested ; cf. also Matthes, Die edes-
senische Abgarsage auf ihre Fortbildung untersucht, 1882 ;
Tixeron, Les origines de Uéglise d’Edesse et la légende d’ Abgar,
1888 ; Farrar, Christ in Art, p. 79f.
ALBERT HENRY NEWMAN,
ABIA (AV of Mt 1’, Lk 1°).—See ABIJAH.
ABIATHAR.—The son of Ahimelech, the son of
Ahitub, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eli. Heis
mentioned in Mk 2” 6 ‘Have ye never read what
David did, when he had need, and was an hungred,
he, and they that were with him? How he went
into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the
high priest, and did eat the shewbread?’ The RV,
however, translates, ‘when Abiathar was high
priest.’ The reference is evidently to 18S 2],
where, according to the Hebrew text, Ahimelech
gives David the sacred bread. There is thus a
discrepancy between the two passages. The facts
are these:—The AV, cited above, follows the
reading of A and Ὁ (ἐπὶ ᾿Αβιαθὰρ τοὺ ἀρχιερέω5), RV
follows that of B and δὲ (which omit the article)
and the Vulgate (‘sub Abiathar principe sacer-
dotum’). The clause is omitted altogether by D.
In the MT of 1S 21 and 22 and in Ps 52? (title)
the high priest is Ahimelech the son of Ahitub
and the father of David’s friend Abiathar. In
the Greek text of all these passages, however, the
name is Abimelech. In 28 8! and 1 Ch 24%
Ahimelech (in 1 Ch 18:6 Abimelech) the son of
Abiathar is priest along with Zadok, but it is
generally supposed that Abiathar the son of
Ahimelech is meant. Ahimelech is usually held
to be identical also with Ahijah the son of Ahitub
OP S428)
ABIDING
ABIDING 5
The discrepancy between Mk 2% and 1S 21f.
has been sought to be accounted for in several
ways. It may readily be due to a mere lapsus
memorie or calamt, Abiathar, David’s high priest,
being a much more familiar figure than his father,
just as in Jer 271 ‘Jehoiakim’ is a slip for Zede-
iah. It is not impossible that father and son
may each have borne both names, according to
Arab usage, Abiathar corresponding to the Arab
kunyah, and Ahimelech being the isin or lakab, or
name proper. It has been suggested that the
reference in St. Mark is not to 18S 21 at all, but
to some later unrecorded incident, such as might
have occurred during the flight from Absalom.
But this is very improbable.* Τ. Η. Witt:
ABIDING.—Of the three possible renderings of
the Greek μονή and μένω, ‘remaining, to remain,’
‘dwelling, to dwell,’ ‘abiding, to abide,’ the
last is the most satisfactory. The first has the
advantage of being akin to the Greek in deriva-
tion, but it is too passive in its sense, and in so
far as it includes the conception of expectation
it is misleading; the second is too local, and is
rather the fitting rendering of κατοικία, κατοικέω ;
the last is an adequate though not a perfect
rendering. ‘ Mansions’ (RVm ‘abiding-places’) is
the stately rendering (AV and RV), through the
Vulg. mansiones, of the noun in Jn 14°; but it be-
comes impossible in v.*? of the same chapter when
the translators fall back on ‘abode.’ Further, in
the English of to-day ‘mansion’ suggests merely a
building, and that of an ostentatious type. The
Scottish ‘manse,’ self-contained, modest, and
secure, would be a nearly exact equivalent if it
carried with it more than the idea of a dwelling-
house ; yet neither it nor ‘mansion’ has any corre-
spondent verb.
Students who desire to get at the full meaning
of verb or noun will find all that is needful in the
etymological paragraph sib voc. μένω in the larger
edition of Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon. They
will discover how rich in language product is the
root of this word. The inquiry cannot be pursued
further here. It is enough to say that locality
enters very slightly into its conception, and that
what is dominant is ethical. The leading idea is
that of steadfast continuance. This is apparent
the moment one turns to the derivative ὑπομονή
(cf. Ro 27), the term of Stoic virtue boldly incor-
porated and transmuted in Christian usage and
experience. The primitive noun, however (μονή),
reminds Christians more clearly of the sphere in
which it is contained, of a life in which it survives,
of a power not its own on which it depends, and
which in turn it exercises. If, as will be shown,
the ethical import of μένω and μονή is dominant in
the Gospels, the instances where the verb has a
purely local sense, the sense of stopping or staying,
may be dismissed. As a matter of fact, the
instances are almost entirely confined to the
Synoptists, and occur but in twelve passages; the
use of the noun is purely Johannine. Only twice
in the Synoptists does the verb occur in relation to
persons, viz. Lk 24% in the pathetic appeal of
Cleopas and his anonymous comrade, and the
gracious response of the risen Christ ; and even
here there is no ethical significance, for the pre-
positions which link the verb and the personal
pronouns imply only association (μεῖνον μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν),
or joint action (εἰσῆλθεν τοῦ μεῖναι σὺν αὐτοῖς). Ὁ
ΑΒ soon as the student turns from the Synoptists
to the Johannine literature, the idea of ‘mansion’
(one could wish it were a theological term) becomes
full, luminous, and suggestive. St. John uses the
verb μένω only thrice in its literal sense in the
* Swete (St. Mark, ad loc.) suggests that the clause ἐπὶ ᾿Αβιαθὰρ
ἀρχιερέως, which is peculiar to Mark, may be an editorial note.
Gospel (2132 4% 10%); he seems almost jealously to
reserve it for metaphorical, z.e. ethical, application.
We are not here concerned with St. John’s letters,
but it is pertinent to observe that μένω occurs 23
times therein, while it is used in the Gospel some
35 times. Moreover, as if the Evangelist and
letter-writer would not suffer the spiritual point to
be lost, he perpetually reminds his readers and
children of the sphere of ‘ mansion,’ and the source
of its power. With a singular and marked uni-
formity, he employs the preposition ἐν in connexion
with the verb. The Evangelist presses the idea not
only of intimate relationship, but also of resultant
power and blessing.
It is to be observed that, until we reach the
great ‘discourses in the chamber and on the way
(chs. 14 and 15), we have only passing hints of
the nature of the Abiding. The former chapter
unfolds its meaning. The difficulties besetting the
interpretation of these discourses are familiar to
all students of the Fourth Gospel, and need not be
dealt with here. They are not adequately met by
references to the subjectivity or mysticism of the
Evangelist. Our modes of thought, as Bishop
Westcott reminds us,* follow a logical sequence ;
Hebrew modes of thought follow a moral sequence.
The sermon to the Apostles in the chamber, especi-
ally, bears this moral impress throughout, and
is rightly interpreted as the complement to the
Sermon on the Mount. But while the connexion
is thus somewhat precarious to the reader, certain
great ideas or conceptions of the Abiding stand
luminously forth for the devout mind. Here is set
forth—(1) the Abiding of Christ in the Father ;
(2) the Abiding of Christ in the Church, as in
the individual believer; (3) the issues of the
Abiding.
1. The Abiding of Christ in the Father.—Here
the student is, indeed, on ground most holy. He
may not add to the Lord’s words, he trembles as
he ventures to interpret them. He feels with the
patriarch that this place in the Scriptures is dread-
ful—full of a holy awe. Thus much, however, may
be said, that the abiding of Christ in the Father
belongs wholly to the operation and energy of the
Holy Spirit. The keynote of this truth is struck
by the testimony of the Baptist in the preamble of
the Gospel (Jn 153). It is important to notice
that; that which was the object of sight to the
Baptist was not merely the descent of the Holy
Spirit, but the Abiding. And here the careful
student will observe that, though the preposition
used in these verses is not ἐν but ἐπί, yet the
employment of the latter is necessary as linking
the descent and the continuous indwelling of the
Spirit in the Son. But if any hesitation remains
as to the view that the character and sphere of
Christ’s abiding in the Father lies in and through
the indwelling Spirit, it must disappear on con-
sideration of our Lord’s words (Jn 14”), “At that
day [the day of realized life] ye shall come to know
[by the Spirit what is at present a matter of faith
only] that I am in my Father.’ The thought is
inevitably linked with the Spirit’s work both in
Him and for them. When, therefore, the Lord
invites His own to abide in His love (151°), He does
not merely imply that His love is the atmosphere
of their discipleship, but, as St. Augustine t+ sug-
gests, He invites them to abide in that Holy
Spirit whose love as fully permeates Him as it is
imperfectly exhibited in His disciples.
2. The Abiding of Christ in the Church, as in
the individual believer.—Our Lord’s teaching as to
the Abiding in Him refers even more closely to
the Church than to the individual. Jn 14 and 15
are penetrated through and through by Pente-
* Introd. to the Gospel of St. John, ii. 7.
+ Hom. in Joan. xiv. No. Ixxiv, ad jin.
6 ABILJAH
ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION
costal thought and Pentecostal expectations.
Christ looked eagerly forward to the birthday of
the Spirit-bearing body. He could and does,
indeed, fully abide in the heart of each individual
believer; but that believer is not a mere unit
standing solitary and unsupported. The indivi-
dual disciple will be a terrible loser unless he
realize his incorporation, his oneness with the
universal body, the body of Christ. But as if to
make sure that this great truth should never
escape His own down the ages, Christ introduces
the great figure of the Vine and the branches (15').
The vine was already the symbol of the ancient
Church ;* Christ speaks of Himself as the true,
the ideal Vine. But it is as a formula incomplete
without the complement of v.° “1 am the Vine, ye
are the branches.’ As a vine is inconceivable
without branches,+ so in all devoutness it may be
said He is inconceivable without His disciples.
Again, they draw their life from abiding in Him.
The life may be imperfectly realized, the fruitage
may be disappointing, it may be nothing but
leaves (Mt 21); the task of discipline, or of
cleansing (καθαίρειν, Jn 157) is in the hands of the
Great Husbandman. Thus as in ancient Israel
union with the Church nation was the condition of
life, so in the new dispensation the condition of
life was to be the abiding in Christ. As apart
from the vine the branches are useless since the
living sap is therein no longer, so separated from
Christ there can be no productiveness in Christian
lives. St. John bears record of one more thought
of the highest consolation to Christian hearts.
There is a true analogy and correspondence between
the abiding of Christ in the Father and the abiding
of believers in Him (1519). Our abidings in Christ,
oiten so sadly brief, uncertain, precarious, through
the consequences of sin, have still their sublime
counterpart in the abiding of Christ in the
Father.
3. The issues of the Abiding.--We have seen that
the Abiding finally depends upon the Spirit’s work,
whether in the Church or in the individual heart.
The first fruit of that Spirit is love. The Spirit
moves in this sphere, He manifests and expresses
Himself in love. Thus love furnishes the test of
the indwelling, as truly as it contains the pledge
of a fruitful issue. According, moreover, to
Johannine teaching, this love spread abroad in
the hearts of believers is not a stagnant or senti-
mental afiection. Of the basal or abiding virtues
(1 Co 1315) it is the greatest because of its fruitful
action. St. John presents another aspect of this
truth when he shows that obedience and love are
strictly correlated (Jn 1510). This love is seen in
action. It doeth the will, and the reward of such
loving obedience is final and complete. Those
who in this dutiful and affectionate temper keep
the commandments are raised by Christ Eon the
base of bond-service to the height of friendship. It
is enough—the fiat has gone forth—‘such ones I
have called friends.’ +
LITERATURE.—A. Maclaren, Holy of Holies, 190; A. Murray,
Abide in Christ; T. D. Bernard, Central Teaching of Jesus
Christ, 219; J. H. Jowett, Apostolic Optimism, 225; B. F.
Westcott, Peterborough Sermons, 49, 61; Sir A. Blackwood,
Christian Service, 46; G. B. Stevens, Johannine Theology, 258.
B. WHITEFOORD.
ABIJAH (a:38, ᾿Αβιά, ‘Jah is my father’; or more
probably without the particularizing pronoun, ‘Jah
is father ’).—4. Son of Rehoboam (Mt 117) by Maacah
(2 Ch 11°—see art. ‘Maacah’ No. 3 in Hastings’ DB
ili. 180). Abijah reigned over Judah from about
B.C. 920, and the impressions made by him are
given with some variety in 1 K 15° and by a later
tradition in 2 Ch 13***. His name is introduced
by St. Matthew simply as a link in the pedigree,
* Hos 101, Is 5'UF, Jer 221,
1 Westcott’s Commentary, in loco. t Jn 1515.
in which it is shown that Jesus was both of Jewish
and of royal stock.
2. A descendant of Eleazar, son of Aaron. The
name was attached to the eighth of the twenty-
four courses into which the priests were alleged
to have been divided by David (1 Ch 241). Mem-
bers of only four courses seem to have returned
from the Captivity (Neh 7%, Ezr 250:Ὁ9 10!%-2),
According to Jerus. Talm. Taanith, iv. 68, these
men were divided into twenty-four courses with a
view to restore the ancient arrangement. ‘The
authority for this statement is not of the best
kind; but the statement itself is substantially
confirmed by Neh 12'’, where twenty-two groups
are referred to (in Neh 12!***! the number has fallen
to twenty-one, and two of the courses are grouped
under a single representative), and by Ezr 8%, where
two other priestly families are mentioned. Slight
changes were probably made in the classification dur-
ing the process of the resettlement of the country ;
but by the time of the Chronicler the arrangement
seems to have become fixed. The course of Abijah
is not mentioned amongst those that returned from
the Exile; but in one of the later rearrangements
the name was attached to a course that afterwards
included Zacharias (Lk 15). Each course was on
duty for a week at a time, but all were expected
to officiate as needed at the three great annual
festivals. It is not possible with our present
materials to determine exactly how the various
services were divided amongst the members of a
course, or at what times in the year Zacharias
would be on duty. Nor does his inclusion in the
course of Abijah carry with it lineal descent
through that line from Aaron. Rh. W. Moss.
ABILENE.—Mentioned in Lk 3! as the district
of which Lysanias was tetrarch in the 15th year
of Tiberius It was called after its capital Abila,
situated on the Barada, about 18 miles from Damni-
ascus, and represented by the modern village of
Suk. The identity of Sué with Abila is confirmed
by a Roman rock-inscription to the west of the
town. According to popular tradition, the name
Abila is derived from Abel, who was buried by
Cain in a tomb which is still pointed out in the
neighbourhood. Little is known of the history of
Abilene at the time referred to by St. Luke; but
when Tiberius died in A.D. 37, some ten years
later, the tetrarchy of Lysanias was bestowed by
Caligula on Herod Agrippa 1. (Jos. Ané. XVII. v1.
10), and this grant was confirmed in A.D. 41 by
Claudius (ΧΙΧ. v. 1; BJ UU. xi. 5). On the death
of Agrippa I. (A.D. 44) his dominions passed into
the charge of Roman procurators (Ané. XIX. ix. 2;
BJ τ΄. xi. 6), but in A.D. 53 some parts of them,
including Abilene, were granted by Claudius to
Agrippa Il. (Ant, XX. vil. 1; BJ II. xii. 8), and
remained in his possession till his death in A.D.
100. See LYSANIAS.
LITERATURE.—Schirer, HJP τ. ii. 335ff. Robinson, Later
BRP 479 ff.; Porter, Giant Cities of Bashan, 352 f.; Conder,
Tent Work in Pal. 127; SWAP, Special Papers.
JAMES PATRICK.
ABIUD (Αβιούδ).---Α son of Zerubbabel, Mt 113,
The name appears in the OT in the form dAbihud
(max ‘Father is glory’), 1 Ch 8°.
ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION (τὸ βδέλυγμα
τῆς épnusoews).—This phrase is found in the NT
only in Mt 9415 and Mk 13%, in both cases forming
part of the passage in which Christ predicts the
woes to come on the Jews, culminating in the de-
struction of Jerusalem. St. Mark’s words, which
are probably more exact than those of St. Matthew,
are: ὅταν δὲ ἴδητε τὸ βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως ἑστηκότα
ὅπου οὐ δεῖ (ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω), τότε οἱ ἐν τῇ Ιουδαίᾳ
Three points in this
φευγέτωσαν εἰς τὰ ὄρη, K.T.X.
ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION
account are to be noticed : (1) the change of gender *
τὸ βδέλυγμα- ἑστηκότα (cf. 2 Th 26:1, Rev 2114); (2)
the ‘editorial note’ ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω, calling
special attention to the prophecy (cf. Dn 9%, Rev
2? 1318) ; (3) the command to flee to the mountains,
which seems to have been obeyed by the Christians
who escaped to Pella (Euseb. HZ iii. 5 ; Epiphan.
Heres. xxix. 7). St. Matthew characteristically
adds the words (absent from the best MSS [RBL] of
St. Mark) τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ Δανιὴλ τοῦ προφήτου ; substi-
tutes the neuter ἑστός for the mase. ἑστηκότα ; and
instead of the quite general phrase ὅπου οὐ de? has
the more definite ἐν τόπῳ ἁγίῳ,- —an expression which
may refer to the Temple (cf. Ac 6 2138). but (with-
out the article) may mean nothing more than ‘on
holy ground.’ To the Jews all Jerusalem (and,
indeed, all Palestine) was holy (2 Mae 17 31). St.
Luke, writing most probably after the destruction
of Jerusalem, omits the ‘editorial note’; and for
ὅταν ἴδητε TO βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως substitutes
ὅταν ἴδητε κυκλουμένην ὑπὸ στρατοπέδων ᾿᾽Ιερου-
σαλήμ (215).
The phrase we are considering occurs three times
in the LXX of Daniel : + 9% (86. τῶν ἐρημώσεων), 1151
(86. ἐρημώσεως) and 12" (ef. 815), and is quoted in
1 Mae 153, The original reference is clearly to the
desecration of the Temple by the soldiers ot Antio-
chus Epiphanes, the ceasing of the daily burnt-
ofiering, and the erection of an idol-altar upon the
ereat Altar of Sacrifice in B.c. 168 (1 Mae 13-59;
Jos. Ant. xu. v. 4, Βύ τ. 1. 1). Thus it is plain
that Christ, in quoting the words of Daniel,
intends to foretell a desecration of the Temple (or
perhaps of the Holy City) resembling that of
Antiochus, and resulting in the destruction of the
national life and religion. Josephus (Ant. X. xi. 7)
draws a similar parallel between the Jewish mis-
fortunes under Antiochus and the desolation caused
by the Romans (ὁ Aavindos καὶ περὶ τῆς Ῥωμαίων
ἡγεμονίας ἀνέγραψε, καὶ ὅτι ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἐρημωθήσεται).
But the precise reference is not so clear.
_ (1) Bleek, Alford, Mansel, and others explain it
of the desecration of the Temple by the Zeaiots
just before the investment of Jerusalem by Titus
(Jos. BJ Iv. ili. 6-8, vi. 3). Having seized the
Temple, they made it a stronghold, and ‘entered
the sanctuary with polluted feet’ (μεμιασμένοις τοῖς
ποσὶ παρήεσαν eis τὸ ἅγιον). In opposition to Ananus,
they set up as high priest one Phannias, ‘a man
not only unworthy of the high priesthood, but
ignorant of what the high priesthood was’ (ἀνὴρ οὐ
μόνον ἀνάξιος ἀρχιερεὺς GAN οὐδ᾽ ἐπιστάμενος σαφῶς τί
ποτ᾽ ἣν ἀρχιερωσύνη. The Temple precincts were
detiled with blood, and Ananus was murdered.
His murder, says Josephus, was the beginning of
the capture οἵ the city (οὐκ ἂν ἁμάρτοιμι δ᾽ εἰπὼν
ἁλώσεως ἄρξαι τῇ πόλει τὸν ᾿Ανάνου θάνατον). In sup-
port of this view it is urged (a) that the ‘little
Apocalypse’ (2 Th 2”, a passage closely resem-
bling this) clearly contemplates a Jewish apostasy ;
(6) that the eee used in Daniel (73~¥ = βδέλυγμα) is
properly used not of idolatry in the abstract, but of
idolatry or false worship adopted by Jews (1 K 11°,
2K 23%, Ezk 5"); (6) that there was among the
Jews a tradition to the effect that Jerusalem would
be destroyed if their own hands should pollute the
Temple of God (ἐὰν χεῖρες οἰκεῖαι προμιάνωσι τὸ τοῦ
θεοῦ τέμενος, Jos. BJ Iv. vi. 3).
* Dr. A. Wright (Synopsis2, 131) says that the masculine indi-
cates that St. Mark interprets τὸ βδέλυγμα to signify a man.
But this does not seem necessary. The masc. appears to denote
a personification rather than a person. Such personifications
are not uncommon in prophetic and apocalyptic literature
(Ezk 38, Rev 21 [ayyeacs] 220 [Isla Ber] 123 [δρά κων]). In 2 Th 29
ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἀνομίας (ΜΞ Ὁ) Βελίαρ) may denote not a
person, but a sin (ἀποστασία); see Nestle in Expos. Times, July
1905, p. 472f.
+ The Hebrew text and its meaning are doubtful (see A. A.
Bevan, Daniel, p. 192). Our Lord adopted the current view
with which the LXX had made the Jews familiar.
ABOVE AND BELOW 7
(2) Others (Bengel, Swete, Weiss) explain it
by reference to the investment of Jerusalem by
the Roman armies. A modification of this view
is that of H. A. W. Meyer, who explains it of the
‘doings of the heathen conquerors during and
after the capture of the Temple.’ When. the city
was taken, sacrifices were offered in the Temple
to the standards (BJ vi. vi. 1, οἵ. Tertullian,
Apol. 16). Between the first appearance of the
toman armies before Jerusalem (A.D. 66) and the
final investment by Titus (just before Passover
D. 70), there would be ample time for flight ‘to
the mountains.’ Even after the final investment
there would be opportunities for ‘those in Judia’
to escape. St. Luke’s words (2159) are quoted in
support of this view.
(3) Theodoret and other early Commentators ,
refer the prophecy to the attempt of Pilate to set
up effigies of the emperor in Jerusalem (BJ 11.
1x. -2).
(4) Spitta (Offenb. des Joh. 493) thinks it has to
do with the order of Caligula to erect in the
Temple a statue of himself, to which Divine
honours were to be paid (An. XVIII. viii. 8). This
order, though never executed, caused widespread
apprehension among the Jews.
(5) Jerome (Commentary on Mt 24) suggests
that the words may be understood of the eques-
trian statue of Hadrian, which in his time stood
on the site of the Holy of Holies. Similarly,
Chrysostom and others refer them to the statue of
Titus erected on the site of the Temple.
(6) Bousset treats the passage as strictly escha-
tological, and as referring to an Antichrist who
should appear in the ‘last days. *
Of these views (1) and (2) are the most probable.
Considerations of chronology make (3), (4), and (5)
more than doubtful, while the warnings that the
events predicted should come to pass soon (Mt
2433. 34 Mk 1378-89, Lk 219-83) and the command to
flee ‘to the mountains’ seem fatal to (0). Between
(1) and (2) the choice is not easy, though the
balance of evidence is on the whole in favour of (1).
St. Luke’s language (ὅταν ἴδητε κυκλουμένην ὑπὸ
στρατοπέδων ᾿Ιερουσαλήμ) is not decisive. He may
not have intended his words to be an exact repro-
ducticn of Christ’s words so much as an accommo-
dation of them which would be readily understood
by his Gentile readers.
LITERATURE.—R. W. Newton on Mt 24 (1879); Bousset, Der
Antichrist (1885), English tr. by A. H. Keane, 1896; J. H. Russell,
The Parousia (1887); articles in Hastings’ DB (by 5. R. Driver),
Encyc. Bibl. (by T. K. Cheyne), Smith’s DB? (by W. L. Bevan) ;
the Commentaries of Bengel, Cornelius a Lapide, H. A. W.
Meyer, Alford, Wordsworth, Mansel (in Speaker's Commentary
on NT, i. 139), H. B. Swete, St. Mark, ad loc.; A. A. Bevan,
The Book of Daniel, ad loc. H. W. FULFORD.
ABOVE AND BELOW.—_4. As cosmological terms.
Like all similar expressions (ascent, descent, etc.),
they presented to early ages a clear-cut image,
which has disappeared with the rise of modern
astronomy. But this is rather a gain than a loss.
Here, as in so many other cases, the later know-
ledge is an aid to faith. At the beginning of the
Christian era the earth was still regarded as a
fixed body placed at the centre of the Universe,
with the heavens surrounding it as vast spheres.
But we know now that it is only a small planet
revolving round the sun, which also has a ‘solar
way, so immense and obscure that it is not yet
determined: while the whole sidereal system—of
which our constellation forms a ‘mere speck “—is
‘alive with movements’ too complex to be under-
* Some (Keim, Holtzmann, Cheyne) hold the passage to be
part of an independent Jewish (or Jewish-Christian) Apocalypse
inserted subsequently in the Gospels. But it occurs in all the
Synoptists, and ‘it is difficult to think that even these words
. .. are without a substantial basis in the words of Christ’
(Driver).
8 ABOVE AND BELOW
stood. While, therefore, ‘above and below’ (like
‘east,’ ‘west,’ ‘north,’ ‘south’) would have for the
ancients an absolute and cosmic, they can have for
us only arelative and phenomenal, significance. We
stil) use the old terms, just as we still speak of the
rising sun, but we do so with a new interpretation.
They have no meaning in a boundless Universe
save in relation to our observation, and appearances
are misleading. But these wider views of the Uni-
verse should help us to realize that all language
involving conceptions of time and space is utterly
inadequate to express spiritual realities.
2. For the spiritual significance of these and
kindred terms we turn first of all to Jn 8°,
Manifestly, ‘I am from above’ (ἐκ τῶν dvw)=‘I1
came forth and am come from God’; and clearly
also, ‘ Ye are from beneath’ (ἐκ τῶν xatw)=‘ Ye are
of this world,’ ‘Ye are of your father, the devil.’
‘The source of My life is above, z.e. in My Father;
ye draw your inspiration from below, 7.e. from a
malign spirit of darkness.’ This is the spiritual
significance of ‘above and below.’ To be ‘born
again,’ or ‘born from above’ (ἄνωθεν) (Jn 3°), is to
be ‘born of God’ (Jn 115). To receive power ‘ from
above’ (ἄνωθεν), as in the case of Pilate (Jn 191),
is to receive it from God (Ro 131). The wisdom
which is from deneath is ‘ earthly, sensual, devilish’
(Ja 3"); while the wisdom which is ‘from above’
‘is of God’ (cf. 15 3%). The following passages
may also be consulted: Jn 33! 6 1678 201,
ROM Oss Cols:
3. But, as has been already suggested, in using
these and all similar terms, it is important to bear
in mind their inadequacy and limitations. Not
merely has theology suffered to an extent that is
little realized, but the spiritual life of thousands
has been impoverished through a tenacious clinging
to an order of ideas in a region where they no
longer apply. The difficulty, of course, is that
we must employ such categories of thought even
though we are compelled to recognize their inade-
quacy. ‘A danger besets us in the gravest shape
when we endeavour to give distinctness to the
unseen world. We transfer, and we must transfer,
the language of earth, the imagery of succession
in time and space, to an order of being to which,
as far as we know, it is wholly inapplicable. We
cannot properly employ such terms as ‘‘ before” and
“after,” ‘‘here” and ‘‘ there,” of God or of Spirit.
All is, is at once, is present, to Him; and the
revelations of the Risen Lord seem to be designed
in part to teach us that, though He resumed all
that belongs to the perfection of man’s nature, He
was not bound by the conditions which we are
forced to connect with it’ (Westcott, 7he Historic
Faith, p. 74). We invoke ‘our Father in heaven,’
not as One who is divided from us by immeasurable
tracts of space, but as far beyond our ignorance
and sin—infinitely above us, yet unspeakably near.
‘Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can
meet,—
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.’
So, when the Apostle bids us ‘seek those things
which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right
hand of God’ (Col 3'), we must shake off the in-
cumbent thought of immeasurable distances to be
crossed. And when we think of Christ’s Ascension
into heaven, we must not conceive of it as a flight
into some far-off region, but as His passing into a
state of existence (of which we gain hints during
the great forty days) which we can describe only
by employing words which, in the very act of using
them, we see to be utterly inadequate. He has
gone into a state which we cannot even imagina-
tively picture to ourselves without robbing it of
much of its truth.
LiTrRATURE.—Westcott, Gospel of St. John; F. Ὁ. Maurice,
The Gospel of St. John [especially valuable]. If the reader
es
ABRAHAM
wishes to pursue the -subject of the inadequacy of the cate-
gories of the understanding, and of the concepts of time
and space in relation to spiritual realities, he will find an
ample field of investigation by beginning with Kant’s Critique
of the Pure leason, and then, if he cares to, following
the discussion into more recent works of Philosophy. He
will find two valuable chapters (vi. and vii.) in Caird’s Intro-
duction to the Philosophy of Religion, dealing with the sub-
ject. ARTHUR JENKINSON.
ABRAHAM.—It is noteworthy that while in
the Synoptic Gospels references to the patriarch
Abraham are comparatively frequent, and his per-
sonality and relation to Israel form part of the
historical background which they presuppose, and
of the thoughts and conceptions which are their
national inheritance, in the Gospel of St. John his
name does not appear except in ch. 8. In the
Synoptists he is the great historical ancestor of
the Jews, holding a unique place in their reve-
rence and affections; he is their father, as they are
each of them his children (Mt 3° |j Lk 38, Lk 1316
1674-89 19°), To this the introductory title of St.
Matthew’s Gospel testifies ; it is ‘the book of the
generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the
son of Abraham.’ And in the genealogical record
that follows, his name stands at the head (Mt 1°),
and through equally graduated stages,—epochs
marked by the name of Israel’s most famous king,
and by the nation’s most bitter humiliation (ν.}7),
—the ascent of the Christ is traced to the great
fountain and source of all Jewish privilege and life.
It is otherwise in the genealogy of St. Luke; and
the difference indicates the different standpoints of
Jewish and Gentile theught. Here the historian
records no halting-places in his genealogy, but
carries it back in an uninterrupted chain, of which
the patriarch Abraham forms but one link (Lk 3%),
to its ultimate source in God. See art. GENE-
ALOGIES.
Other references in the Synoptists are on the
same plane of thought, and presuppose a prevalent
and accepted faith, which not only knew Abrahaim
as the forefather and founder of their national life
in the far-off ages of the past, but realized that in
some sort or other he was still alive; and it was
believed that to be with him, to be received into
his bosom (Lk 167"), was the highest felicity that
awaited the righteous man after death. Both St.
Matthew and St. Mark bear emphatic testimony
to this belief, in their narrative of the incident of
our Lord’s solution of the dilemma presented by
the Sadducees with their tale of the seven brothers.
Jesus quotes Ex 3° in proof of the fact of the
patriarchs’ resurrection and continued existence
(Mt 2282 || Mk 1276 Lk 20%7), inasmuch as the Divine
sovereignty here asserted over Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob necessarily implies the conscious life of those
who are its subjects. In the Songs of Mary and
Zacharias, again (Lk 14%. 6-79), Abraham is the
forefather of the race, the recipient of the Divine
promises (confirmed by an oath, Lk 1%) of mercy
and goodwill to himself and his descendants (cf.
Gal 3!6- 18, He 6, Ac 7!7, Ro 4%); and his name is
a pledge that the same mercy will not overlook or
cease to eare for his children (Lk 155). And, finally,
to be with Abraham and his great sons, to ‘sit
down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the
kingdom of heaven’ (Mt 81), is the desire and re-
ward of the faithful Israelite. This reward, how-
ever, Christ teaches, is not confined to the Jews,
the sons of Abraham according to the flesh, still
less is it one to which they have any right by
virtue of the mere fact of physical descent from
him ; it is one that will be enjoyed by ‘many’ faith-
ful ones from other lands, even to the exclusion of
the ‘sons of the kingdom,’ if they prove themselves,
like His present opponents, faithless and unworthy
(Lk 1555).
The expression ‘ Abraham’s bosom’ (Lk 16°) or
ABRAHAM
ABSOLUTION 9
‘bosoms’ (v.”) * is hardly to be understood as con-
veying the idea of an eminent or unusual degree of
happiness. It is practically equivalent to ‘ Para-
dise.” And the new condition of blessedness in
which’ Lazarus finds himself is pre-eminent only in
the sense that it is so striking a reversal of the
relations previousl existing between Dives and
himself. The ἐπεάν says nothing of any superior
piety or faith exhibited by Lazarus, which might
win for him a more exalted position than others.
As far as his present and past are concerned, it but
sets forth retributive justice redressing for him and
Dives alike the unequal balance of earth. ‘ Abra-
ham’s bosom,’ like the Hades in which the rich
man lifts up his eyes, is part of the figurative or
pictorial setting of the parable, and indicates no
more than a haven of repose and felicity, the home
and resting-place of the righteous with Abraham,
who is the typical example of righteousness. The
parable is on the plane of popular belief, and of set
purpose employs the imagery which would be most
familiar and intelligible to the hearers. +
In conformity with the general character of St.
Jolin’s Gospel, the references to Abraham there
would seem to imply a more mystical, less matter
of fact and as it were prosaic manner of regarding
the great patriarch. He is spoken of in the 8th
chapter alone, in the course of a discussion with Jews
who are said to be believers in Jesus (v.*!). Here
also Abraham is the father of the Jews, and they
are his children, his seed (vyv.*7- %- °) ; and this posi-
tion they claim with pride (vv.* 5), It is a
name and position, however, which Christ declares
is belied by their conduct, in that, though nomi-
nally Abraham’s seed, they do not Abraham’s works,
in particular when they conceive and plot the death
of an innocent man (vv.*: #). To the charge itself
they have no answer, except to reassert their son-
ship, in this instance of God Himself (v.“), and to
repeat the offensive imputation of demoniacal pos-
session (v.*). But with almost startling abruptness,
taking advantage of a phrase quietly introduced,
which they interpret to imply freedom from physi-
cal death for those who accept Christ's teaching,
they interrupt with the assertion that Abraham
died « and the prophets’ (ν.53), in apparent contra-
diction to the tenor and assumption of the language
which a moment before they had employed. Pro-
bably they meant no more than that he and they,
like all other men, had passed through the gate of
death which terminates life on earth; and were
more intent on gaining a dialectic advantage than
on weighing the implications of their own words.
But, in spite of them, for the few moments that are
left the discourse preserves the high level of other-
worldliness, to which Christ’s last words have
raised it; and gives occasion for one of the most
striking and emphatic assertions in which He is
recorded to have passed beyond the boundaries and
limitations of mere earthly experience. Abraham
has seen His day (v.®). And by silence He con-
cedes and affirms the half-indignant, half-con-
temptuous and protesting question of the Jews;
He has seen Abraham, and is greater even than
their father (vv.* °7). The climax is reached in
v.°8,—in a brief sentence, which, if it did not bear
so evidently the stamp of simplicity and truth,
would be said to have been constructed with the
most consummate skill and the finest touch of
artistic feeling and insight. ‘Before Abraham
came into being, —the speaker gathers up and
* The plural form is frequently used by the Greek Fathers,
e.g. Chrys. Hom. XL in Gen.: πάντες οἱ δίκαιοι... εὐχῆς ἔργον
ποιοῦνται εἰς TOUS κόλπους τοῦ πατριάρχου καταντῆσαι. ᾿
+ On the phrase ‘Abraham’s bosom,’ see Trench, Ῥαγαῤ[6513,
p. 461 ff., and the references there given ; Lightfoot, Hore Heb.
et Talm. iii. p. 167 ff.; Stevens, Theology of the New Testament,
p- 82; Meyer, and the commentators, in Joc.
in Hastings’ DB i. 17>f.
Cf. also Salmond
utilizes Jewish belief in its past and reverence for
its head,—‘I am.’ Abraham éyévero; Christ is.
Thus was conveyed the answer to their question,
‘ Art thou greater γ᾽ (ν. 58) ; and thus was reasserted
with emphasis the measureless distance between
Himself and the greatest of the Jews, and a
fortiori, as it would appear to the company around,
of the whole human race.
It is remarkable and suggestive that in the only notice of the
patriarch Jacob that is contained in the Fourth Gospel, ch.
451. 12, the same question is addressed by the woman of Samaria
to Christ: ‘Art thou greater than our father Jacob,’—the
Dispenser of the new water with its marvellous properties than
the actual giver of the well? It was natural and inevitable
that one of the questions that more particularly forced itself
upon the attention of His contemporaries should be the relation
of the Teacher, who had arisen in their midst and who claimed
so great things, not only to the earlier prophets, but to the
patriarchs and ancestors of the Jewish nation. See further
art. JACOB.
The figure of Abraham, therefore, in the Gospels
is idealized, and invested with a simple grandeur
as the head and founder of the race in the indis-
tinct ages of the past, to whom are owing its present
privileges, and around whom gather its future hopes.
There is, however, no indication of hero-worship, as
in the case of the more or less mythical ancestors
of other peoples. This conception, moreover, apart
from St. John’s Gospel, is purely patriarchal. The
characteristic Pauline presentation of Abraham as
the father of the faithful in a moral and spiritual
sense, as the type and pattern of all righteousness
and obedience, as it is developed in the Epistles to
the Romans and Galatians, is absent (cf. also He
1151. Ja 231-383. References to the details of his
history are not indeed wanting in the remaining
books of the New Testament, but they are all, as it
were, witha moral and didactic purpose: Gal 4’, the
two covenants; He 7!*-, Abraham and Melchizedek ;
Ro 4!8& and He 11% 17, faith exhibited in the aban-
donment of his fatherland, in the birth and offering
up of Isaae ; Ac 75 16, the same abandonment of his
country and the purchase of a tomb from the sons
of Emmor in Sychem; ef. 1 P 3°, with a possible
reference to Gn 18”.
Later Hebrew literature discussed especially this
aspect of his character, and the historical view was
superseded by the ethical or theological. Cf., for
example, Pirke Aboth v. 4, of the ten testings or
trials (msvo3) of Abraham, and Taylor, in loc.;
‘Testament of Abraham,’ ed. M. R. James, Texts
and Studies, li. 2.
LITERATURE.—THe authorities cited above, with articles on
‘ Abrahain’ in Bible Dictionaries, and the Commentaries.
A. 5. GEDEN.
ABSOLUTION.—1. Our Lord’s words on Absolu-
tion.—We find these in the following passages:
Mt 16!%-", especially this word spoken to Peter, ‘1
will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of
heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth
shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou
shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ ;
Mt 1818 (spoken to all the Apostles), ‘Verily I
say unto you, What things soever ye shall bind on
earth shall be bound in heaven: and what things
soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven’; Jn 207!" ‘Jesus therefore said to them
again, Peace be unto you: as the Father hath
sent me, even so send 1 you. And when he had
said this he breathed on them, and said unto
them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever
sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them:
whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.’
The first of the sayings—that about the keys
and the binding and loosing—we might have been
under some compulsion to take as for Peter alone,
if it had not been that the like saying is repeated
to all the Apostles afterwards. The words were
special to Peter, as the early history of the Acts
shows; but they were not limited to him. And |
10 ABSOLUTION
ABSOLUTION
following as they do on his great confession—being
a prize and reward of that confession—they belong
to him as aman who had attained by the revela-
tion of the Father to a true faith that Jesus was
the Christ the Son of God : they belonged to all the
Apostles as men of like faith: and they belong to
the whole Church of which these twelve were the
nucleus, in proportion as that faith is alive in it.
In regard to the saying (in Jn 20:9) about the for-
giveness and retaining of sins, it was spoken in ‘a
general gathering of the believers in Jerusalem’
(see Lk 2455), and ‘there is nothing in the context
to show that the gift was confined to any particu-
lar group (as the Apostles) among the whole com-
pany present. The commission, therefore, must be
regarded properly as the commission of the Chris-
tian society and not as that of the Christian
ministry ’ (Westcott, in loco).
The ‘keys’ may be understood as the keys of
the porter at the outer door of the house, and as
symbolic of authority to admit into the kingdom
of heaven or to exclude from it. Or they may be
taken as the keys of the steward for use inside the
house, and as symbolic of authority to open the
stores or treasuries of the household of God and to
give forth from these treasuries according to the
requirements of the household. It is rather in this
second sense that authority is given to bind and to
loose, which in Rabbinical usage meant to forbid
and allow in matters of conduct ; that is to say, to
interpret the will of God and to enjoin rules of
life in harmony with that will. This is the work
of the steward of the mysteries of God, and has to
do directly with things, not persons. But the first
sense, that of admitting and excluding, which has
to do with persons, is what is chiefly meant by the
power of the keys, and it is as an exercise of this
power and of the power given in the words, ‘Whose
soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them,’
that absolution must be considered.
Our Lord’s words seem at first reading to invest
the Church with absolute authority, and to promise
that Heaven will follow and ratify the action of
the Church on earth, whatever that action may
be, in forgiving or judging, in admitting into the
kingdom of heaven or excluding from it. But we
recoil from this as impossible. ‘Vhere is no Church,
how great soever its claims in regard to absolution,
which does not admit that God alone forgives sin.
We feel, however, that we must find a great sense
in which to understand so great words as those of
our Lord in these commissions. And we observe
that before the words in Jn 20% our Lord breathed
upon His disciples and said, ‘ Receive ye the Holy
Ghost.’ He imparted to them His own very Spirit,
so enabling them to be His representatives and
equipping them to continue His work. (The faith
which Peter had by revelation of the Father, that
is to say, by the same Spirit, was an equivalent
endowment before he received the promise of the
keys). It was evidently the purpose of the Lord
Jesus that His Church should continue the exercise
on earth of the power which He constantly exer-
cised and set in the forefront of His ministry, the
power of saying to the penitent, ‘Thy sins are for-
given thee’; and of saying this with such assured
knowledge of the truth of God and such sympa-
thetic discernment of the spirits of men, that what
was done by the Church on earth should be valid
in heaven, and the word of Christ by the Church
powerful to give comfort to truly penitent souls.
The Lord is concerned not only that men be for-
given, but that His disciples should know that
they are forgiven. The grace of forgiveness has
not its ΕΣ power in transforming their lives
unless they know that they have it. As long as
men are under fear and doubt they are not Christ’s
freemen: their religion is still only regulative. It
is when they have an assured sense of forgiveness
and reconciliation to God that a great impulse of
gratitude, with a new life in their souls, makes
them free indeed, and strong in their freedom to
serve God. Christ accordingly equips His Church
to convey this assurance of torgiveness, and if a
Church does not succeed in doing this, especially
if, as often, the current idea in the Chureh is that
to be assured of forgiveness is abnormal and
unusual, the Church is greatly failing in its
mission. If the form of our Lord’s promise in
Jn 20:9 ‘Whose soever sins ye forgive,’ ete., seem
too absolute, we must remember that the gift of
the Holy Spirit, which He then gave the sign of
imparting, is a gift of exceeding power, and that
no limit can be set to the degree in which God
through Christ is willing to give the Spirit. ‘He
giveth not the Spirit by measure’ (Jn 3%). Ard
our Lord is speaking, according to His wont, to the
ideal Church, to the Church which receives in the
fulness with which He is willing to bestow. Just as,
speaking at the high level of the ideal, He says
to His servants in another place (Lk 10), ‘He
that heareth you heareth me: and he that de-
spiseth you despiseth me’; so He says here, ‘ Whose
soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven,’ ete. But
all these and such like promises depend for their
fulfilment on the Spirit of Christ working, nay,
reigning, in the Church. This power and reign of
the Spirit ebbs and flows according to the faith
and receptivity of the Church; and while it is the
duty of the Church to believe in God being with it,
and while the Church ought to clothe itself with
the mighty assurance of heaven assenting to its
judgments, it can dare to do so, and will be able
to do so, only in proportion as it has sought and
obtained the indwelling of the Spirit.
The words of our Lord before us certainly do
not mean that forgiveness by the mouth and at
the will of man is always to be followed by a
ratification of God in heaven, even though that
man be an apostle. But they do imply that when
Christ’s servants do their work in the enlighten-
ment and guidance of the Spirit, they will be able ,
to convey messages of grace which will be accord-
ing to the truth of things, and therefore valid in
heaven: they will be able also to convey assur-
ances of forgiveness, which will be owned of God
as true, and will be made efiective by His Spirit in
yenitent souls. So then the great and chief means
iy which the Church has in all ages fulfilled
the work which is sustained by these startling
promises, is the preaching of the gospel of recon-
ciliation by Jesus Christ. By preaching in the
power of the Spirit, thousands of souls have been
in all ages receiving remission of sins and an
assurance of forgiveness. Although the preaching
is public, and the preacher has little or no separate
knowledge of individual hearts, there is a ‘ privacy
of publicity’ in which whatever message he has
from God is made an absolution Divine in power
and assurance to one and another of the hearers.
So effectual is preaching in the Spirit, that 1t may
perhaps be found that in the Churches in which
there is no ordinance with the title of ‘private
absolution,’ the sense of forgiveness of sins is truer,
deeper, and more widely spread than in those
which have such an ordinance, and count it neces-
sary. Obviously another means by which the
Church carries out the Lord’s purpose of conveying
absolution to the penitent is by the sacraments.
But there is great occasion also for the Church to
afford full opportunity for individual help to souls
in spiritual trouble, and such individual dealing as
may in its issue amount to private absolution. In
every revival of religion the need for this is felt.
There are souls in doubt whether their repentance
and faith are true, and whether they are them-
ABSOLUTION
selves accepted of God. Such souls seek the help
of the Church, and often greatly profit by it.
‘Inquiry-rooms’ have been of ἜΝ service in
modern ‘missions,’ and it is a common thine for
people in trouble of conscience about some special
sin to long to unbosom themselves about it to one
whom they feel to have spiritual authority. Evan-
gelical religious newspapers have found that they
supply a demand by setting apart a column, often
largely used, for the answers of some minister of
reputation to men who open their minds to him,
confess their chief sins, doubts, or temptations,
and seek comfort through him. ΑἸ] the Churches,
to a greater or less extent, supplement the preach-
ing of the word by ‘discipline,’ and their admis-
sion to communion and exclusion from it tell
powerfully on the individual conscience. The
effectiveness of all such dealing has a natural basis
in the fact of experience that a man’s judgment of
himself is greatly influenced by the judgment of
his fellow-men, It belongs to human nature that
the judgment of the community in which a man
lives so tells upon his spirit that it is hard for
him to bear up against it. This is earried to a
higher power in the Church, in the sphere wherein
the Spirit of Christ works. The testimony of men
who are spiritually minded and in communion
with God is felt to have an authority such that
great relief is given to souls by the Church’s
absolution, and great burden imposed by its re-
fusal. And justly, for the discernment of spirits
is one of the gifts of the Spirit of Christ to His
servants. They all have it in some measure, some
in a wonderful measure (1 Co 2’, 1 Jn 2” 4), and
it may be recalled that after our Lord promised to
Peter that on him He would build His Church, He
did not say, as we should have expected, ‘I will
give thee tlhe keys of the Church,’ but ‘the keys of
the kingdom of heaven’: from which we infer
that, while the Church and the kingdom are not
conterminous, the Church is meant to be a true
realization of the kingdom, and its judgments
valid for that kingdom. In an ideal Church this
would be fulfilled. In any actual Church the
power spoken of, at once gracious and awful, varies
in its effectiveness according to the fulness of the
Spirit in its office-bearers and members.
A 000.
2. History of Absolution in the Church.—In the NT age there
is no trace of the practice of private confession to ministers of
the Church for private absolution (Ja 516 cannot be so inter-
preted). But very early in the history of the Church it became
customary for those who, after baptism, had fallen into gross
sins, especially the sins of idolatry, adultery, or murder, to be
cut off from fellowship, and to be readmitted after repentance
manifested by public confession in the church. This readmis-
sion was an absolution, which came to be spoken of as the
Church’s power to forgive sins,—a power, however, declared by
Tertullian (de Pudic. xxi.) to belong to the Church only in so
far as she is composed of spiritual men. This power in the
2nd cent. was claimed as vested in the whole episcopate, and,
by and by, in every single bishop; still later, in every priest.
And from the time of Leo the Great (Bishop of Rome A.D. 440),
the custom grew of private confession and private absolution.
In the Middle Ages there were many discussions as to whether
the priest had power simply to declare the forgiveness of sins,
God alone having power to forgive, or whether the priest truly
himself exercises a power to forgive as representative of God.
The final doctrine of the Church of Rome, as fixed by the
Council of Trent, combines both these views. God alone
forgives sins, and He does this solely on account of the sinner’s
repentance. But the priest is the necessary instrument of God.
God has been pleased to make the priest’s absolution the means
by which the grace is conveyed, and the word of the priest 15 a
judicial act in which he passes sentence on the penitent. The
priest is entitled to use the wordsof the ritual, ‘I absolve thee
from thy sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost.’ It is admitted that ‘perfect sorrow for sin without
addition of external rite blots out the stains, and restores the
peace of God in the soul’; yet this perfect sorrow involves in a
well-instructed Catholic the intention of confessing and receiv-
ing the priest’s absolution when opportunity offers. Protestants
truly penitent may indeed receive the peace of God, because
this desire of confession may be regarded as implicit in them.
But confession to the priest is a necessary duty, and priestly
absolution may not be omitted without loss of salvation.
The Lutheran Church did not entirely abolish confession and
ABSOLUTION
ΠῚ
absolution ; but Luther made changes which very greatly altered
its character. Confession was not made compulsory: it was a
free opportunity that might be used in case of sins about which
the penitent could not otherwise attain to peace. Luther made
it unnecessary in confession to enumerate every individual sin ;
and so little was absolution sacerdotal that it might be given by
a Christian layman. In course of time, private confession to
the pastor mostly died out in the Lutheran Church. But it has
often been spontaneously resumed in times of religious revival,
of which interesting examples may be found in Dr. Biichsel’s
Erinnerungen. He testifies strongly to the benefit both to
pastor and people of the Privatbeichte, as he calls the Lutheran
method, in contradistinction to the Roman Catholic Ohrbeichte
(vol. ii. p. 113ff.). And he justifies the word of absolution
spoken by the minister, ‘I absolve thee,’ etc., defending it from
the objection that it is falsified and of no effect if the absolved
has not truth and faith, by saying that in that case it is still
effectual for judgment, as in the case of the misuse of the Lord’s
Supper, or, indeed, of the preached gospel.
In regard to the Anglican Church, in its ordinary service ‘ the
absolution or remission of sins to be pronounced by the priest
alone, the people still kneeling,’ is no more than a gospel pro-
clamation of God’s pardon to the penitent, ending in a prayer
for true repentance. The exhortation before the Communion
contains this invitation, to be pronounced by the curate: ‘If
there be any of you who . . . cannot quiet his own conscience,
let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned
minister of God’s word, and open his grief, that by the ministry
of God’s holy word he may receive the benefit of absolution,
together with ghostly counsel and advice to the quieting of his
conscience, and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness.’ From
this, the teaching of the Church of England appears to be simi-
lar to that of the Lutheran, making confession exceptional not
compulsory, and absolution not sacerdotal, but a part of the
ministry of the Word.
In the service for the visitation of the sick, the minister is
enjoined ‘to move the sick person to make a special confession
of his sins if be feel his conscience troubled with any weighty
matter. After which confession the priest shall absolve him (if
he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort: ‘‘Our Lord
Jesus Christ, who hath left power to His Church to absolve all
sinners who truly repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy
forgive thee thine offences : and by His authority committed to
me, I absolve thee from all thy sins in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghest.””’
In the Presbyterian Churches the words ‘absolve’ and
‘absolution’ are used only of the restoration to Communion by
the minister and elders—7.e. the Kirk-Session—of those members
of the Church who have fallen into any scandalous sin by which
Christ is publicly dishonoured. These are usually dealt with
first by the minister in private: then they appear before the
Session, or before a delegation of it, to make acknowledgment,
and profess repentance. Thereupon they may be addressed and
‘absolved,’ by which is meant restored to Communion. This
dealing has been undoubtedly, when used with spiritual tact and
tenderness, a great means of deepening both the sense of sin and
the trust of God’s forgiveness, and it has the effect of giving
many who had lost character a new spiritual start. The value,
however, of this discipline depends wholly on the measure in
which those who administer it are Christian, not legal, in their
spirit, and on the support which the discipline receives from
the spiritual level of the general body of the Church.
3. Conclusion.—Absolution, in the full meaning
of bringing men into the sense of Goi’s forgiveness
and keeping them in that sense, may be said to be
the primary work of the Church and its ministry.
This work is carried out mainly by preaching,
sacraments, and individual dealing with souls.
The short history given above indicates the more
or less fitting and successful methods by which
the Christian Church has endeavoured to fulfil
especially the duty of individual dealing. In order
that a Church may be truly successful in this
work of grace, it must be largely and widely per-
vaded by the Spirit of Christ in its whole mem-
bership. The gift of power in this work is not
confined to the ministry ; it is found wherever
there is a deeply spiritual mind and Christian
experience. Men in spiritual trouble do not betake
themselves to a priest or minister unless they feel
him to have the spiritual authority that belongs to
Christ-like character. A merely official spiritual
authority is not seriously believed in. What com-
forts and assures in time of soul-trouble is the
word or sign of acknowledgment from the Chris-
tian company speaking by those who truly repre-
sent it—those who are truly called of God to the
ministry, or who are shown by their goodness to
be in the fellowship of Ged. On the training-
ship Shaftesbury a bad boy met with an accident ;
he was taken to the little hospital. When he was
12 ABYSS
i Ὁ
ACCESS
awake at night he talked to the nurse. One night
he said, ‘Sister, I think I am dying, and it is so
hard; but I think if you kissed me as if I was a
good boy, I could bear it.’ This boy, conscious of
an evil past and struggling to escape from it, felt
as if the kiss of that good woman would give him
cheer, and hope of acceptance with God—would be,
in fact, an absolution. A Christian minister, in
converse with a dying man in whom he discerns a
true repentance, may be able to say with great
power, ‘ Brother, be assured thy sins are forgiven
thee,’ and great blessing of comfort to the man
may follow, may indeed be looked for. Only ina
high moment of spiritual impulse and assurance
could the minister venture to say, ‘In the name of
the Lord Jesus I absolve thee from thy sins.’
LITERATURE.—The Commentaries on the Gospels, especially
Westcott on St. John, Bruce on St. Matthew, Dods on St.
John; Bishop Harold Browne’s Eaposition of the Thirty-nine
Articles; A Catholic Dictionary by Addis and Arnold, art.
‘Penance’; Canon Carter’s The Doctrine of Confession in the
Church of england ; Dean Wace’s Confession and Absolution ;
Dr. Drury’s Confession and Absolution; Dr. Buchsel’s Evrin-
nerungen aus dem Leben eines Landgeistlichen ; F. ΝΥ. Robert-
son, of Brighton, Sermons, 3rd series, v. ; Selby, The Imperfect
Angel, etc., xii. J. ROBERTSON.
ABYSS (ἡ &8vccos).—The word ‘abyss,’ which we
find in several places in the RV of the NT, is not
found in the AV. There we find instead, in St.
Luke (8*!) and in Romans (107) ‘the deep,’ and in
the Apocalypse ‘the bottomless pit.’ In Rev 91?
we find (RV) ‘the pit of the abyss’ (τὸ φρέαρ τῆς
ἀβύσσου), a somewhat peculiar expression, but not
having, it would seem, a different signification from
the simple word ‘abyss.’
It is not easy to see that the word ‘abyss’ has
the same signification in Romans as it has in St.
Luke and the Apocalypse. In a general way, of
course, the word may be taken as meaning the
underworld, the world of departed spirits and of
things dim and mysterious,—a world conceived of
as deeply hidden away from that of things seen
and known, even as the interior of the earth and
the depths of the ocean are hidden. The abyss
is certainly the realm of the departed in Ro 10’,
where St. Paul himself interprets the word for us:
‘Who shall descend into the abyss (that is, to
bring up Christ from the dead)?’ But a more
specific meaning than that of simply the under-
world must be given to the word in Lk 851 and in
the various passages in the Apocalypse where it
occurs. The abyss is not even in ae 851, perhaps,
the ultimate place of punishment, but it is there
assuredly a place of restraint and of terror, as it is
also so far in the Apocalypse. The abyss in the
latter is the Satanic underworld, the dark and
mysterious region out of which evil comes, but
also the prison in which during the millennial period
Satan is confined. Of course much that is given
in the Apocalypse is given under poetic imagery.
The abyss is rather a condition of spiritual beings
than a region of space. But under the imagery
there is fact, the fact that there are spiritual
beings setting themselves in opposition to the
Kingdom of God, and yet in their very opposi-
tion conscious of His restraining power. Satan
is bound for a season in the abyss. He has no
absolute power, but must submit to such restraint
as is put upon him. Evil comes from the abyss,
but the very Spirit of evil has to submit to being
bound there.
LITERATURE.—The Commentaries on the passages above cited ;
the art. ‘ Abyss’ in Hastings’ DB and in the Encyc. Biblica.
GEORGE C. WATT.
ACCEPTANCE.—The state or relation of being
in favour, especially with God. It 15 ἃ common OT
conception that has been carried over into the NT.
In the former it has both a ceremonial significance,
involving the presence of an approved offering or
a state of ceremonial purity, and also an ethical
significance, involving divinely approved conduct.
The Hebrew expression 0°39 xvi ‘ to lift up or accept
the face or person of one,’ becomes in NT πρόσωπον
λαμβάνειν, ‘to accept the person o7 presence,’ which,
however, with its derivatives, προσωπολημπτεῖν and
προσωπολήμπτης, always implies the acceptance of
the outward presence, without regard to the in-
ward or moral qualities; hence, in a bad sense,
partiality, as in Lk 207) (cf. Mt 2216 and Mk 1214),
In a good sense the idea is expressed by εὐάρεστος,
‘well-pleasing’ (Mt 3” ‘This is my beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased’; cf. Mt 17°); cf. also
δεκτός, ‘acceptable’ (Lk 4533, Ph 48), used with
ἐνιαυτός, ‘acceptable year’ (Lk 41") and with καιρός,
‘acceptable time’ (2 Co 6”), of a period or time when
God’s favour is specially manifest. In numerous
passages in the Gospels and Epistles acceptance
with God comes only through and in Jesus Christ
(Jn 145, Eph 1° ‘accepted in the Beloved,’ Ro 14'8,
He 13"). So also the disciple’s conduct and ser-
vice are to be such as will find acceptance with
Christ (Eph 5”, 2 Co 5°; cf. He 12%). See, further,
art. ACCESS.
As applied to our Lord Himself, the idea of His
acceptance both with God and man is of frequent
occurrence in the Gospels. Of Jesus as a growing
boy this twofold acceptance on earth and in heaven
is expressly affirmed (Lk 2°). His perfect accept-
ance with the Father is testified to, not only by a
voice from heaven both at the beginning of His
ministry (Mt 37||) and towards its close (Mt 17°\i),
but by the constant affirmations of His own self-
consciousness (Mt 1127||, Mk 12°|, Jn 57° 8% 1017,
15° ete.). The favour with which He was regarded
by the people when He first came declaring ‘the
acceptable year of the Lord,’ is proved not only by
such notices as, ‘The common people heard him
gladly’ (Mk 127), but by the crowds which fol-
lowed Him constantly all through the period of
public favour. So far as acceptance with men is
concerned, there is, of course, another side to the
picture. ‘No prophet,’ He said, ‘is acceptable in
his own country’ (Lk 453). His own brethren did
not believe on Him (Jn 73°), His own townsmen
thrust Him out of their city (Lk 4° *%), His own
people were guilty at last of that great act of re-
jection which found utterance in the shouts, ‘ Not
this man, but Barabbas’ (Jn 18%), and ‘ Crucify
him, crucify him’ (Lk 23”), and was visibly set
forth to all coming time when He was nailed to a
cross in full sight of Jerusalem (see REJECTION).
He who had been accepted for a time was now ‘a
root out of a dry ground,’ the ‘despised and re-
jected of men’ (Is 53%). And yet it was from this
same root of rejection and sorrow that the accept-
ance of Christ was to grow into universal forms.
Being lifted up from the earth, He drew all men
unto Him (Jn 12%). And though as the well-
beloved Son He had never for a moment lost favour
in His Father’s sight, it was through enduring the
cross and despising the shame that He sat down at
the right hand of the throne of God (He 12°; cf.
PhigsaD) E. B. POLLARD.
ACCESS (rpocaywy7).—No word in the English
language expresses the double meaning of προσ-
αγωγή. While the AV translates it invariably
‘access,’ the RV more accurately renders ‘ our
access’ in Ro 5? and Eph 2”.
The προσαγωγεύς at Eastern courts acted as
official introducer in conducting strangers to a
king’s presence.* Whether there were any allusion
to this or not in the minds of our New Testament
writers, the custom tlustrates appropriately one use
of the word ‘access.’ Christ as our Introducer
obtains admission for us into the favour and
* Tholuck, Rom. l.c., and Usteri, Lehr. τι. i. 1, p. 101.
ἂν. οὐ
ACCESS
ACCESS 13
presence of God. προσαγωγή is ‘aditus ad rem vel
personam’ (Grotius). It means (1) ‘ introduction,’
‘admission’ (see references to classical Greek
authors, and to Chrysostom in Ellicott on Eph 9218) ;
(2) ‘liberty of approach.’
‘Access’ (προσαγωγή) occurs in three passages in
the New Testament, Ro 52, Eph 2'8,and3!2, An ex-
amination of these passages will best explain what
‘access’ meant in the thought of St. Paul. Then
it will be necessary to consider 1 P 318‘ For Christ
also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the
unjust, that he might bring us (προσαγάγῃ) to
God’; and afterwards, the idea of the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews regarding ‘access’ as the
act of drawing near to God through the great
High Priest must be stated.
1. Ro 5? ‘Through whom we have also [καί,
‘copulat et auget’ (Toletus), ‘answering almost to
our ‘‘as might be expected”? (Alf.)] got [ἐσχήκαμεν]
our [τήν] access (introduction) by our [τῇ] faith, into
this grace wherein we stand.’ The Perfect tense
is used in connexion with that justifying act re-
ferred to in v.!. Access is not here a second
privilege of the justified, but introduction to the
very grace of justification itself. We owe to Christ
not only peace as the primary blessing of justifi-
cation, but admission to that state which is the
atmosphere of peace.
This paragraph, beginning with v. and descrip-
tive of the life of the justified, is founded on the
doctrinal basis just laid down. The Apostle has
examined the world of men, as it appeared in the
prevalent antithesis of Jew and Gentile. His
spiritual diagnosis revealed the fact of universal
sin and universal condemnation. A guilty race,
a holy God, and a broken law, with its death
renalty, were factors in the problem for solution.
This problem, insoluble by man, is taken in hand
by Christ. Christ provided a solution as effectual
as the need for it is clamant. The summary of
that solution as contained in 4% is the Divine
certificate of its efficacy. It was written not for
the sake of Abraham alone (a typical case of its
application), but for us also, to whom it shall be
imputed, if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus
our Lord from the dead ; who was delivered for our
offences, and was raised again for our justification.
Based on this, ch. 5 begins: ‘Therefore being
justified by faith, we have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Before getting further,
the Apostle ‘harks back’ in v.? to the thonght of
justifying grace, access to which is by Christ.
Into the state of justifying grace we have access
through Christ’s Passion. His introduction in-
cludes, nay, is the starting-point of, liberty of ap-
proach. The need of an introduction implies that
we were outside the state into which we are
introduced. St. Paul himself had experienced
transition from the condition of a condemned, to
that of a justified, sinner. ‘Barnabas introduced
him to the apostles (Ac 957), and there were others
“that led him by the hand to Damascus” (v.8) ; but
it was Christ that introduced and led him by the
hand into this grace’ (M. Henry). Christ itro-
duces, ‘ Contigit nobis ut perduceremur’ (Erasmus).
He does not drag unwilling followers. Faith is
the following foot. If He draws us, we run after
Him.
2. Erh 218. ‘For through him we both have our |
access in one Spirit unto the Father.’ 8:3. ‘In
whom we have our boldness and our access with
confidence by the faith of him.’ The old contro-
versy as to whether access means in these verses
introduction or liberty of approach, still survives.
Among moderns, Alford and Ellicott take opposite
sides. Alford contends for the latter as ‘ better
representing the repetition, the present liberty of
approach which ἔχομεν implies, but which ‘‘introdue-
tion” does not give.’ While pressing the point that
as ‘ boldness’ (παρρησία) is subjective in 3%, ‘access’
there coupled with it must also be subjective, he
gives away his case by admitting that the second
term (προσαγωγή) is ‘less purely so than the first’
(παρρησία). Ellicott argues for ‘introduction’ on
grounds of lexical and classical usage, but also
makes the significant admission that the transitive
meaning of προσαγωγή is a little less certain in 313
than it is in 2'§, on account of its union with the
intransitive παρρησία.
Where equally competent critical authorities
thus differ, the context of the passages may be
allowed to decide between them. In the paragraph
2t1-22, where ‘access’ (v.18) appears, the Apostle
writes of a change in the Ephesians’ relations cor-
responding to the change already described as
having taken place in their moral and spiritual
condition. At one time they were afar off, aliens,
strangers, hopeless, godless. A change was effected
by the blood of Christ. Those for whom His death
procured peace are now declared to be fellow-
citizens of the saints, members of the household of
God, stones in that living temple in which God
dwells through the Spirit. There is surely some-
thing more implied by ‘access’ in such a setting
than mere liberty of approach to God. The
Church is Christ’s body, sharing the privileges of
its Head. The reconciliation etfected by His blood
isnot amere potential one. Very definite language
is used to express change of relationship: ν.}3
‘were brought nigh’ (historic). To become citizens
of a kingdom, members of a household, stones in a
building, implies a definite act performed on behalf
of the persons or things thus brought into these
new relations. Access in the sense of introduction
seems to express most fitly the alteration thus con-
textually described.
The argument for ‘introduction’ is not quite so
strong in 3". In the context preceding, St. Paul
has been speaking of his own office as Apostle of
the Gentiles. He was made a minister of the
gospel in order by its means to bring the Gentiles
into the fellowship of the saints, and instruct
men as to the eternal purpose of God in Redemp-
tion. That purpose, executed in Christ, mani-
fested to principalities and powers in heaven the
wisdom of God. Had the ‘access’ been used by
itself in v." after the above line of thought, that
would not point to introduction rather than to
liberty of approach. But standing as it does be-
tween ‘boldness’ (παρρησίαν) and ‘ with confidence’
(ἐν πεποιθήσει), ‘liberty of approach’ scarcely ex-
presses all the author’s thought. The multiplica-
tion of terms indicates an attempt to give utterance
to something besides this. And so, according to
the analogy of Ro 5? and Eph 218, we are warranted
here also in translating προσαγωγή, by ‘introdue-
tion.’ ‘While the former of the parallel terms
(boldness) describes the liberty with which the
newborn Church of the redeemed address them-
selves to God the Father and the unchecked
freedom of their petitions, the latter (admittance)
takes us back to the act of Christ by which He
introduced us to the Father’s presence and gave us
the place of sons in the house’ (Findlay in Expos.
Bible, ‘Ephesians’).
Confusion has been created by expositors in-
sisting that ‘access’ must, in the three passages
where the word occurs, always mean either intro-
duction, or liberty of approach exclusively. But
the larger concept, ‘introduction,’ includes the
lesser, ‘liberty of approach.’ To put it in another
way—the latter term follows from the former.
Presentation at the Court of Heaven gives one
the right to return there. It secures habitual
access to God at all times.
3. 1 P 8:8 ‘Because Christ also suffered for sins
14 ACCESS
ACCESS
once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he
might bring us (προσαγάγῃ) to God.’ The Apostle
does not set himself in this Epistle to expound the
theology of the Passion. His general purpose is to
comfort and sustain Christians who are suffering
persecutions. Some of them were slaves, enduring
wrongs from cruel masters because of their faith
in Christ. These were directed to the exemplary
character of Christ’s sufferings. In 3% St. Peter
assures them that it is better to suffer for well-
doing than for evil-doing. Then in ν. 8 he links
them in thought with the suffering Saviour. But
it isnot on the exemplary significance of Chbrist’s
sufferings that he enlarges. That is left behind.
The writer is spellbound by the very mention of
the Cross, and tor a moment he forgets his pur-
pose of directing some wronged slaves to Christ as
the supreme example of sutiering innocence, that
he may state again the wider and deeper meaning
of his Lord’s Passion. Christ suffered in connexion
with sin once for all (ἅπαξ). The unique sienifi-
eance of His death consisted in its leing the
death of a righteous person for the unrighteous
(δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων); and His action had this end
in view, that He might conduct us (προσαγάγῃ) to
God: ‘ut nos, qui abalienati fueramus, ipse abiens
ad Patrem, secum una, justificatos adduceret in
ceelum, ν. "5, per eosdem gradus quos ipse emensus
est, exinanitionis et exaltationis’ (Bengel). ‘And
if the soul bear back still through distrust, He
takes it by the hand and draws it forward; leads
it unto His Father; presents it to Him, and leaves
not the matter till it [the reconciliation between a
sinner and God] be made a full and sure agree-
ment’ (Leighton).
4. The word προσαγωγή is not found in the Epistle
to the Hebrews. Access is expressed there in
different language from that in the passages con-
sidered, because it is associated with somewhat
different ideas. The author of Hebrews, writing
as a pastor, not as an evangelist, aims at con-
serving rather than initiating faith. Instead
of the Pauline and Petrine idea of the Saviour
leading in a sinner, we have the sinner comine to
the Saviour. Introduction (προσαγωγή) becomes
access, liberty of approach, approximation. Sinners
are represented in the very act of approaching—
are exhorted to approach. The worshippers under
the law were τοὺς προσερχομένους, ‘the comers’
(He 10!) ; ‘not those that come to the worship, but
those who by the worship come to God’ (Owen).
Under the gospel (Judaism evolved) their attitude
and character remained the same: 7” 11° (singular)
or 416 10”, where believers are exhorted to draw
near (προσερχώμεθα).
As a Hebrew Christian addressing Hebrew
Christians, the writer of Hebrews makes large use
of Old Testament conceptions and Old Testament
rites familiar to himself and his correspondents.
Urging upon them the truth ‘that the faith of
Christ is the true and final religion’ (Davidson),
he presents a series of contrasts between what was
elementary in Judaism and the finished product of
Christianity. Modern readers are apt to lose
themselves amid unfamiliar details here. But it
is possible to set these details in the background,
and yet grasp the permanent truths, which are as
important for us as for the readers to whom such
details became the most effective illustrations.
We shall keep this in view when attempting now
to summarize the great facts associated with the
idea of access in the four Epistles already referred
to.
(1) The need of access to implies separation from
God—want of fellowship like that enjoyed by
those who walk in the hght. We are by nature
afar off (Eph 2%), aliens (v.!"). There is an en-
mity which must be slain before peace is effected.
The wrath of God is revealed against all ungodli-
ness and unrighteousness of men (Ro 118). The
Ephesians were by nature children of wrath (Eph
2°). That exhortation used in Hebrews to draw
near (416 10%) could be addressed only to those
who are at a distance from God. ‘Whereas it
is emphatically affirmed that He is able to save
unto the uttermost, it is supposed that great
oppositions and difficulties do lie in the way of
its accomplishment’ (Owen).
(2) The great separating barrier is sim. ΑἹ]
have sinned (Ro 3”): and the correlative of uni-
versal sin is universal condemnation. Sin and
death are so associated as to be completely one
(Ro 515: 4. 15.17.21), The Ephesians are represented
as dead in trespasses and sins (2').
(3) All three Persons of the Godhead conspired
to deal with the problem of sin, in a way corre-
sponding to its magnitude. Access is (@) to (πρός)
the Father (Eph 2'8)—representing the God to
whom we are to be reconciled and introduced, and
into whose family we are to be adopted ; (ὁ) through
(διά) the Son (Ro 5%, Eph 2"); (ὁ) by (ἐν) the
Spirit (Eph 218).
(4) This is the special work of Christ. He bridges
the gulf which sin has created between God and
man. We have access into the grace of justifica-
tion through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitia-
tion through faith in His blood (Ro 5: 92, The
double alienation from God and His Church dis-
cussed in Ephesians is removed through Christ—by
His blood (218), by His flesh (v.!°), by His Cross
(veld):
The steps whereby access was effected by Christ
are clearly laid down in 1 P 3%. His death has
a connexion with sin. He suffered once for all
(ἅπαξ), ‘so that to them who lay hold on Him this
holds sure, that sin isnever to be suffered for in the
way of strict Justice again, as not by Him, so not by
them who are in Him?’ (Leighton). The unique
significance of Christ’s suffering in connexion with
sins is expressed in the words ‘the just for the
unjust’ (δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων). In dying, the right-
eous One took on Himself the hability of the
unrighteous. Access to God was, in St. Peter’s
estimation, thus purchased at an unspeakable
price. ‘A righteous One has once for all faced,
and in death taken up and exhausted, the responsi-
bilities of the unrighteous, so that they no more
stand between them and God’ (Denney, The Death
of Christ, p. 102).
The author of Hebrews explains and illustrates
by a method sat generis, how Christ obtains access
for us. Christ is the great High Priest interceding
for men in the heavenly sanctuary, and the function
which He discharges in heaven is based on the
death which He died on earth. A priest’s duty is
to establish and represent fellowship between God
and man. Christ found that sin barred the way to
this fellowship, and accordinely dealt with sin.
He was appointed with a view to this end—to
make propitiation for the sins of the people (He
217), In contrast with the Levitical priests and
their duties, Christ’s Person and work are perfect
(τέλειος). He deals with sin by way of sacrifice.
This He did once when He offered up Himself
(727). ‘Once in the end of the world hath he
appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of him-
self’ (956), ‘Christ was onee offered to bear the
sins of many’ (ν.328). ‘ For by one offering he hath
perfected for ever [‘ to perfect,’ τελειοῦν, “15 to bring
into the true condition of those in covenant’]
them that are sanctified’ [‘to sanctify,’ ἁγιάζειν,
‘is to make to belong to God,’ Davidson].
Associated with the same conception of sacrifice
are the references in the Epistle to the blood of
He entered into the Holy Place by (διά)
Christ.
ee
e
ACCOMMODATION
ACCOMMODATION 15
His blood (93). The blood of Christ, who offered
Himself to God, purges the conscience from dead
works (v.14). We have boldness to enter into the
Holiest by the blood of Christ (10). Access is
therefore dependent on Christ’s Person and work.
In reliance on His sacrifice (1015), along a way con-
secrated by His death (v.?°), mindful of their High
Priest (v.*!) in heaven, believers are exhorted to
draw near to God. ‘The exhortation in 4'° to come
boldly unte the throne of grace is also founded on
Jesus having passed into the heavens as our great
High Priest: and it adds the thought of Christ’s
sympathy, as having experienced infirmities and
temptations Himself, in order to encourage sup-
pliants for merey and grace. The truth put hor-
tatively in these passages is also taught directly
in 7”, where access is linked with intercession.
This intercession, of which an example is preserved
in Jn 17, is continued in heaven, and derives its
power from the sacrifice which Christ offered on
earth.
(5) Faith is the subjective condition of those
who have access (Ro 3% 57, Eph 31). ‘He who
comes to God must believe that he is’ (He 11°).
The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is a record of
faith in action, faith as illustrated in the lives of
saints, who first came to God, and then acted and
endured, because sustained by the strength of God.
LITERATURE.—The Commentaries on the passages discussed,
especially Sanday-Headlam on Romans ; Ellicott, Meyer, H. ἃ.
Miller, and Armitage Robinson on Ephesians; Delitzsch,
Davidson, Westcott, and Bruce on Hebrews; also Calvin’s
Institutes, Wt. xiii. δ, xx. 12; Cremer’s Biblico-Theol. Lex. ;
Denney, The Death of Christ; Expositor, 4th series [1890],
li. 131; 2nd series [1882], iv. 321.
ACCOMMODATION. —
i. The Incarnation as the supreme example.
(a) The birth and childhood of Jesus.
(b) The temptations to which He was subjected.
(c) The mental and spiritual sufferings experienced by
Him.
ii. Incidents inferentially valuable.
(@) His education in a pious Jewish home.
(0) The deliberate acceptance and public avowal by
Him of the limitations conditioning human
life.
(c) Revelation of these limitations involved in the
spontaneity of His attitude towards (1) His
fellow-men, (2) His Father.
111, Jesus’ activity as Teacher.
(a) Repeated assertions as to nature of the authority
wielded by Him.
(b) Objective of His message defined by (1) the national
characteristics of His fellow countrymen ; (2)
their theological and traditional beliefs—
(z) Messianic kingdom.
(8) Doctrine of angel-mediation.
(y) Current conceptions of the power of Satan
and of evil spirits.
(c) Methods employed by Jesus in His teaching : (1)
parables purposely and economically utilized ;
(2) use of popular figurative expressions ; (3)
employment of aphorism, allegory, etc. ; (4) ac-
ceptance of current conceptions as to—
(χα) Natural phenomena.
(8) Anthropology.
iv. Attitude of Jesus towards the Messianic hopes of His day.
(a) Assumption of the title ‘Son of Man.’
(b) Attitude towards the Jewish Canon of Scripture
observable in His acceptance of (1) its general
historicity; (2) the traditional view of the author-
ship and interpretation of Ps 110.
y. Summary and practical conclusion.
Literature.
D. A. MACKINNON.
The term ‘accommodation’ may be defined as
the principle or law aceording to which God adapts
His Self-revelation to the capacities and limitations
of created intelligences. In every age, from the
earliest onwards, this Self-revelation of God has
been made, and has its own characteristic features.
Between the time when men conceived of God in
the rudimentary anthropomorphism of Gn 3° and
the time of the highest attainment by the human
mind of His Nature and Being (Jn 4°), every
conceivable gradation oceurs in the extent and
character of God’s revelation of Himself to men.
i. THE INCARNATION AS THE SUPREME EXAMPLE.
—This is not the place to enter into a detailed
inquiry as to the nature and extent of the self-
imposed limitations of Christ, or how far the
modern theories of the enosis (wh. see) are justified
by revelation, directly or by implication. It will be
sufficient here to indicate how far the Gospels, as
we have them, point to a real adoption by Him of
the conditions of that life which He assumed, and
involved Him ex necessitate in the limitations of a
real human life.
(a) So complete is the accommodation to the
capacities and requirements of infanthood, that
St. Luke scruples not to record, as part of the
angelic message, the finding by the shepherds of
... ‘a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and
lying in a manger’ (Lk 2,2); and St. Matthew
makes the safety of His childhood depend on the
vigilance and care of Joseph and His mother, their
return from enforced exile being conditioned by
the fact that ‘they are dead that sought the young
child’s life’ (Mt 27°). All this presupposes, of
course, His development along the lines of human
erowth, which is boldly outlined by St. Luke in
the much debated passage, ‘Jesus advanced in
wisdom and stature, and in favour with God
and men’ (Lk 253). If these words are to be in-
terpreted according to their obvious meaning, they
imply a moral and spiritual as well as a physical
advancement along lines as normal as, for ex-
ample, those which marked the growth of the
child Samuel. We may say, indeed, that there is
a marked reference to the words . . . καὶ ἀγαθὸν
καὶ μετὰ Κυρίου καὶ μετὰ ἀνθρώπων of 18 2°°[LXX).
‘Christ’s growth was from His birth ἃ holy growth’
(Martensen, Christian Deqmatics, Eng. tr. p. 282);
but the words ‘the child grew and waxed strong’
(Lk 9:0) point to the essentially human conditions
under which that growth was effected.
The sole incident in connexion with His boyhood
which has come down to us in our reliable authori-
ties is that of His visit to the temple (Lk 2"),
Short, however, as it is, it throws a clear light on
the nature and reality of the advance ‘in wisdom
and favour,’ and its uninterrupted continuity is
well expressed in ν. Ὁ, if we give the word πληρού-
μενον its proper significance. Day by day He was
being filled with wisdom. Even at this age, His
marvellous intellectual powers displayed them-
selves, and already He exhibited that keen insight
which in after life He so frequently showed. The
verb used to express the amazement of the learned
teachers (ἐξίσταντο) shows how much these men
wondered at the Boy’s knowledge and at the depth
of His understanding (ἐπὶ τῇ συνέσει. Notwith-
standing this feature of the narrative, the historian
is far from leading us to suppose that there was
anything supernatural in the matter. He rather
represents Jesus as a boy of a singularly inquiring
turn of mind, who deliberately determines to find
out for Himself the solution of many problems
which puzzled Him during the course of His home
education, and for which He could find no satis-
factory explanation from His teachers in Nazareth.
He sits down (καθιζόμενον) at the feet of these great
teachers (διδασκάλων) as a learner (cf. St. Paul’s
description of his own education in the Law, Ac
293), Nor are we to look upon the circumstance
in the temple as constituting an exhibition of
miraculous intellectual acquirements in the ordi-
nary sense of that word. All Jewish children
from their ‘earliest infancy’ (Jos. 6. Apion. ii. 18)
were made to acquire a knowledge of and to prac-
tise the precepts of the Law. We have only to
compare the Lukan narrative with that given in
the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy to see how com-
pletely natural and human is the whole incident,
and how entirely the boyhood of Jesus was subject
16
ACCOMMODATION
to boyhood’s conditions and limitations. In the
latter He is represented as cross-examining each
of the doctors, and instructing them not only in
matters appertaining to the Law and the Prophets,
but in astronomy, physics, metaphysics, and other
branches of current erudition (see chs. x]vili.-lii.).
Without entering into an examination of the words contained
in His answer to His mother’s gentle rebuke, or what relation
they bear to His subsequent complete and developed self-
consciousness, it may be said that they do not necessarily in-
volve all that is sometimes imported into them. Even the im-
plied antithesis ὁ πατήρ σου οὗ v.48 and ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός μου of v.49
probably means nothing more than a reminder that the claims
of His heavenly Father take precedence of all others, and bears
testimony to a profound appreciation of the transcendent
reality of His Divine Sonship (cf. B. Weiss, Leben Jesu, Eng. tr.
vol. i. p. 278 ff.). It is true, we have no right to assume that
the Boy Jesus had no knowledge of His unique relationship to
God (cf. Gore, Diss. p. 78, n. 1). The use of the possessive
particle μου points to the probability that His powers of realiza-
tion in this respect were as wonderful as the development of His
mental faculties in another. This is, however, far from saying
that Jesus at this early age possessed the consciousness of His
Messiahship, which only came to full maturity at the next
turning-point of His life (see Sanday’s art. ‘ JesusChrist’ in Hast-
ings’ DB, vol. ii. p. 609); and the short but graphic touch with
which St. Luke portrays for us His surprise at His parents’
method of search {τί ors ἐζητεῖτέ we;), and His sustained sub-
ordination (ἣν ὑποτασσόμενος αὐτοῖς gives the idea of a continuance
of His subjection to the conditions of His home life) to the
authority of Joseph and Mary shows how completely the Son of
God ‘emptied Himself,’ μορφὴν δούλου λαβών, Ph 27,
One incidental reference to this period of Jesus’
life in the Synoptic narrative further deepens the
nnpressiveness of this self-humiliation. St. Mark
relates that on the occasion of one of His visits to
Nazareth (Mk 61) His teaching was met by His
fellow-townsmen with the scornful question, ‘Is
not this the carpenter?’ (ὁ τέκτων). ἢ This single
question gives point to the more general remark of
St. Luke mentioned above, and interprets his use
of the analytical or periphrastic tense (ἣν ὑποτασ-
oduevos: for the use of this form of the verb the
reader is recommended to see Burton’s NT’ Moods
and Tenses, Ὁ. 11 f. and p. 16; see also Blass, Gram.
of NT Greek, p. 203).
His whole life, then, previous to the events which
led to His public ministry, was lived under the
simple conditions which obtained in a humble but
pious country home, and His answer to the Baptist’s
remonstrance, ‘it becometh us (πρέπον ἐστὶν ἡμῖν)
to fulfil all righteousness’ (Mt 815), is the result of
a training characteristic in its naiveté of a house
whose inmates ‘waited for the redemption :of
Israel’ (Lk 25), and were strict observers of the
laws governing the religious life of the Jews. See,
further, artt. BoyHoop and CHILDHOOD.
It may not be out of place to note a slight but significant
difference in the method of introducing the narrative of Jesus’
baptism between the Lukan and the other two Synoptic
versions. The latter speak of Jesus as coming from Galilee for
the special purpose of being baptized (see fragment of Gosp.
Heb. in Jerome’s adv. Pelag. 8)--τοῦ βαπτισθῆναι ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ (Mt
313), καὶ ἐβαπτίσθη ὑπὸ Τωάννου (Δ 19),—and seem to be conscious
of a certain amount of astonishment on account of the act.
The Lukan narrative, on the other hand, gives the story an
incidental character ; and by its uses of the participle, both in
describing the act of baptism and also His prayer which im-
mediately followed (zai Ἰησοῦ βαπτισθέντος καὶ προσευχομένου,
Lk 321), the Evangelist gives a human touch to the whole scene
which harmonizes well with the style of his history in this
place.
(5) It is, however, when we come to the scene of
His temptation, and study it in connexion with the
revelation which He had just received from His
Father, that we begin to appreciate the full mean-
ing of the words of He 415 that Jesus was One who
‘in all points’ (κατὰ πάντα) was tempted like our-
selves. Whatever be the interpretation we are
inclined to put upon the nature and method of the
temptations (see art. TEMPTATION) to which He
was subjected, one thing must be uncompromis-
* This would seem to be the original and correct form of the
expression, though the Matthzan record has ὁ τοῦ τέκτονος υἱός
(Mt 1355), to which the Western text (11) of St. Mark has con-
formed (see Wright, Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek, p. 52 f.).
ACCOMMODATION
ingly insisted on—the struggle was a real one, it
was intense, it was necessary (ἔπρεπεν yap αὐτῷ...
διὰ παθημάτων τελειῶσαι, He 2), It is necessary
that we should be on our guard against falling
into the errors which mar, for example, the work
of Hilary of Poitiers in his controversy with the
Arians (see especially his Libri XII. de Trinitate,
Liber x.). To explain away the reality of the
sufferings of Jesus arising out of His different
temptations, whether these sufferings are mental
or physical, is of the essence of Docetism ; and a
docetic Christ has never yet appealed, and we are
confident never will appeal, to the conscious needs
of humanity. Jesus Himself must have been the
ultimate source from which the story-of the Temp-
tation became known, and it is very evident that
the impression made upon His mind by the terrible»
ordeal was most profound. He had just received
from His Father the revelation of His unique Son-
ship.* St. Matthew and St. Luke agree in prefix-
ing to two of the temptations the words, ‘If thou
art the Son of God,’ the essence of the trial con-
sisting in the danger of doubting the truth which
had been disclosed to His consciousness, and of
testing the fidelity of God by a thaumaturgical
exhibition. There is also a subtle psychological
and spiritual fitness in the character of the first of
the series, which speaks, perhaps, more for its real
force than any direct statement could do. The
appeal came to Jesus in the hour and on the side
of His physical exhaustion, and this is in direct ae-
cordance with the general experience of humanity.
Temptation becomes infinitely stronger and more
dangerous when physical weakness comes to the
aid of the external promptings of the Evil One.
That Jesus believed, and led those to whom He recounted
His experiences to believe, in the near presence of a personal
spirit of evil during this critical period of conflict, is very
evident (see Gore, Diss. IS 24 ff.). Moreover, this Evil One
(ὁ διάβολος, Mt 45.8. 11, Lk 49. 6. 18... ὁ Σατανᾶς, Mk 113)is a prince
standing at the head of a kingdom which is the direct anti-
thesis of the kingdom of God. According to the Lukan version
of this incident, Jesus expected to meet again in personal con-
flict this great spiritual enemy. The devil left Him only till
further opportunity for assault should arise (ἄχρι καιροῦ, Lk
413); and towards the end of His ministry we find Him giving
expression to the consciousness that the great struggle with
His arch-foe was about to recommence—‘The prince of the
world (ὁ τοῦ κέσμου ἄρχων, Jn 1480) is (now) coming’ (cf. 121),
When His arrest, following upon His betrayal, was about to
become an accomplished fact, He recognized the return of the
spirit of evil, and that the return was with power (ἡ ἐξουσία τοῦ
σκότους, Lk 2253),
Perhaps there is no more vivid presentation of
the profound reality of His subjection to tempta-
tion than that afforded by the narrative dealing
with the events which occurred in Caesarea Phi-
lippi. It is almost possible to see the startled look
of Marne on Jesus’ face as He listens to Peter’s
well-meant, if indiscreet, remonstrance. In the
words of His chief Apostle He hears again the
voice of Satan (cf. Mt 1672 and Mk 833), and the
almost fierce way in which He rebukes Peter
points to the conclusion that this is not the first
time the suggestion has whispered itself into His
ear, to forego the bitter taste which He knows He
must experience before His work is ended.
(c) Before passing from the: consideration of this
aspect of the Incarnation viewed as the self-
adaptation of the Son of God to the conditions
of humanity, we must refer shortly to some of
the details of the last, greatest, and most awful
of the temptations to which Jesus was exposed.
Some have sought to explain away the reality
both of the temptations and the sufferings, through
a vain desire to exalt His Divine at the expense of
* For our present purpose it is immaterial whether we reject
the words of the Textus Receptus Σὺ εἶ ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός, ἐν
σοὶ ηὐδόκησα in favour of the Western reading of Lk 322 υἱός nov
εἶ σύ, ἐγὼ σήμερον γεγέννηκά ot, Which Resch and Blass as well as
others seem to prefer (cf. Blass, Hv. secundum Lucam, etc.,
Prefatio, pp. xxxvi-xxxvii).
ACCOMMODATION
ACCOMMODATION 17
His human nature; but this is not the method of
interpreting the life of Christ which brings out of it
God’s answer to man’s deepest and most conscious
needs. There can hardly be a doubt in the mind
man ae |
of any unprejudiced reader that the Synoptists
place on record their accounts of the Passion be-
lieving the facts detailed to be real and objective.
The words of Jesus are the expressions of a mind
torn with the mental and spiritual conflict ; and
if Lk 9238. # be not a mere Western interpolation,
the element of awful fear entered into and height-
ened His sufferings. It is only in this way that
we can interpret the words ἐν ἀγωνίᾳ. See art.
AGONY. The thrice-repeated prayer of Jesus, in
which He speaks of His own will as distinct from,
but completely subordinate to, His Father’s, adds
to the impression, already gained, of the purely
human feelings exhibited by Him in His struggle,
and recalls to our mind the words in His own
form of prayer, ‘ Thy will be done’ (Mt 6) ; thus
connecting, in the greatest crisis of His life, His
own with our absolute dependence upon the ex-
pressed will of His Father.
The writer of the Fourth Gospel records sayings
of Jesus which are very similar to this. After the
conversation of Jesus with the woman of Samaria,
He explains to His disciples the all-absorbing,
satisfying character of His life’s work, which is to
do the will (τὸ θέλημα) of His Father (Jn 4%). In
other places He distinguishes between His own
θέλημα and that of His Father (Jn 5°° 633). and
this is the word used by the Synoptic writers when
recording the words of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane.
On what grounds St. Luke employs the verb fov-
λομαι (227) in this connexion we do not know. If
the choice is not accident, it is evidence that even
in His great aftliction Jesus bowed Himself to the
deliberate determination of God (for the connexion
between βούλομαι and θέλω see Cremer, pp. 143 ff.
and 726 f.).
A very pathetic touch is given by St. Matthew to the por-
traiture of this scene in the garden. Both he and St. Mark
relate how Jesus expressed a wish that His three disciples
should be on their guard. St. Mark, however, leaves the im-
pression that He is bidding them watch against the too sudden
intrusion of their enemies upon His privacy. Twice He uses
the imperative ‘Watch.’ On the other hand, St. Matthew
twice adds to this same verb the expression ‘with me,’ as if
anxious to show the very buman desire of Jesus to have the
companionship of faithful friends in the hour of His need and
solitude. The same two writers have recorded a saying of
Jesus to His sleeping companions (‘Sleep on now, and take your
rest’) which is omitted by St. Luke. In these words it is pos-
sible to discover a tinge of bitter sadness and disappointment,
as if the reflection were forced upon Him that He was bereft
even of that loyal friendship which had left all and followed
Him ; and that, too, at a time when it was most precious, and
when He stood in sorest need of its help and sympathy. The
truth is, He felt the full force of the temptation to leave undone
the last and hardest part of the work which He came to do, or
to find a way of fulfilling His Father's will other than by tread-
ing the path of suffering and death. It was in the very act of
submission that He found His most effective weapon of resist-
ance ; and we have here αὖ the same time a verification of the
reality of His human nature, and an example of Himself carry-
ing out to fulfilment the princip!'e which He inculcated as a
cuide to others—‘He that humbieth himself shall be exalted’
(Lk 1814 1411),
ii. INCIDENTS INFERENTIALLY VALUABLE.—(@)
If we scrutinize carefully the method of resistance
which Jesus adopted in His first great conflict, we
cannot fail to see the results of that moral and
spiritual education which was the characteristic
element of His domestic surroundings, and with
which we become incidentally acquainted by the
tone of His remark to His mother in the temple.
The words ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός μου (Lk 2”) show how
rofoundly He was impressed with the sense of
is Divine Sonship; and, we must believe, they
were the outcome of His familiarity with the
thought underlying much of the language of the
OT. In repelling the Satanie attacks of the Temp-
tation He reveals to us a mind steeped in thie
VOL. I.—2
literature of, and full to overflowing with spiritual
principles culled from, the Book of Deuteronomy.
Nor was it only when He felt the sore stress of
temptation that His belief in the truth of Ged’s
revelation given in the OT, and His profound
knowledge of its contents, came to His aid. In
the hour of His intensest bodily and mental agony,
the words of Ps 22 leaped instinctively to His
mind, and gave expression to the feeling of awful
loneliness which then hung over Him like a black
cloud. If in moments of deepest feeling, when the
soul almost without conscious effort turns to the
sources whence it drew its early sustenance, Jesus
had recourse to the words of the OT, and was able
to extract from that wide field of literature all
that was purest and most spiritual, it was not, we
feel sure, without long, deep study and pondering
over the meaning of the different writers from His
childhood onwards. Remembering, then, this
feature in the mental and spiritual equipment of
Christ, it will not be surprising if we find Him
displaying the same habit of mind in almost every
variety of circumstance of which He found Him-
self the centre. St. Matthew and St. Mark tell
us that, at the time of St. Peter’s confession at
Ceesarea Philippi, He for the first time spoke to
His disciples of the fatal end in store for Him.
St. Matthew clearly points out that this was a
new departure—da76é τότε ἤρξατο, «.7.d. (167!),—and
that He continually reverted to the subject as if
desirous of impressing the disciples with the im-
possibility of His escape. We do not know at
what precise period Jesus was convinced that
there could inevitably be only one ending to His
work, or whether He knew trom the beginning,
and merely waited for a fitting time to prepare
His disciples for the shock. We do, however,
know that at this period He was convinced not
merely by the ‘signs of the times’ (Mt 16%), which
all pointed in this direction, but also by His know-
ledge and interpretation of the things which were
written ‘in the law of Moses, and the prophets,
and the psalms’ (Lk 2444), concerning Him, that
the way of glory was the way of the cross. St.
Mark makes a pointed reference to the connexion,
which evidently existed in Jesus’ mind, between
the death of the Baptist and His own coming end
(9!f) ; and we know that the murder of John made
a profound impression upon Him (Mt 14:5, οἵ. Jn
6'). Perhaps we may be allowed to conjecture
that this circumstance marked an advance in the
mind of Christ towards a great synthesis — the
identification of the Conquering with the Sutter-
ing Messiah.
The question σῶς γέγραπται, z.7.A., of Mk 912, shows what it
was that strengthened His resolve to pursue His mission to its
consummation. That He dwelt long and deliberately on this
aspect of His work is seen by the way in which He again refers
to it towards the end of His journey to Jerusalem (Mk 1099, to
which St. Luke adds the characteristic formula... terecliceras
πάντα τὰ γεγραμμένω διὰ τῶν προφητῶν, Lk 18315 cf. also ΜῈ:
χκαθὼ: γέγραπται, Lk 2932 κατὰ τὸ ὡρισμένον, 24551. 44. 40. Mt 2654,
(6) One οἵ the most widely canvassed, and, in-
deed, the most dithcult passage in the Gospel
history is that in which Jesus is said to have dis-
claimed the knowledge of the time of His glorious
Return. St. Matthew and St. Mark record His
disavowal in almost identical words, except that
the former emphasizes it by the addition of μόνος
to the words εἰ μὴ ὁ πατήρ, which are common to
both (cf. Mt 9456 and Mk 1393). In both narratives
Jesus is represented as speaking in the 3rd person
(οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, by which we are doubtless to under-
stand His usual self-designation ‘Son of Man,’
occurring as this title does in the context of both
passages, Mt 24%7-39| Mk 1375). How are we to
interpret, then, this self-revelation which emanates
from the consciousness of Jesus? Many expedients
have been tried to get over the logical conclusion
18 ACCOMMODATION
derivable from a literal exegesis, some even going
so far as to suggest that the passage is an Arian
interpolation.
Athanasius would almost dichotomize the Person of Christ
in his effort at explanation. Indeed, he plainly asserts that the
Son did know ‘the hour of the end of all things.’ But as being
the Word (ὡς μὲν Acyos) He knew, though at the same time as
man (ὡς δὲ ἀνθρωπο:) He is ignorant of it (ἀγνοεῖ). In the same
context he maintains that Jesus acted deliberately in speaking
of His ignorance for the sake of ‘economy’ (φανερὸν πετοίηξκεν
ὅτι περὶ τῆ: ἀνθρωπίνης αὐτοῦ λειτουργίας ἔλεγεν, " οὐδὲ ὁ Ties’). See
his Orations against the Arians, bk. ii. chapters xliii. and
xliv., where these passages occur (Bright’s ed.). Cyril of Alex-
andria, in his capacity of malleus Arianoruim, speaks in much
the same strain, and sometimes more unguardedly, as if he
were unwilling, as indeed most of the Fathers were, to face the
theological and exegetical difficulties of this whole question.
Most of us willsympathize with the strong and vigorous language
of Theodoret with respect to the evasions so commonly current.
‘Tf,’ he says, ‘He knew the day, but being desirous to conceal
it said He did not know, you see in what blasphemy the infer-
ence lands us. For the Truth lies’ (Kepr. XII. capp. Cyril in
Anath. IV.). :
There is also a considerable body of modern thought which
seems to reject all serious consideration of this aspect of the
Incarnation as being dangerous toa right and reverent attitude
towards the claims of Christ. We have only to read such a book
as Hall’s V’he Kenotic Theory, or several articles in the Ch. Q.
Review (e.g. vols. xliv., xlv., and lii.), to see how earnestly men
contend against the frank acceptance, in their most obvious
meaning, of the words of Jesus.
However mysterious the conclusion at which we
are forced to arrive may be, and however incon-
sistent the different parts of our Christological
system may appear, it is necessary for us candidly
to accept this self-revelation of Jesus as being
strictly in accord with His personal consciousness,
and, moreover, as being an infallible indication of
the complete and perfect manner in which the
Divine Word accommodated Himself to the con-
ditions of the race whose nature He took.
It would, again, be impossible and absurd to
treat the incident of the barren fig-tree, related b
both St. Matthew (21/8?) and St. Mark (1132-4), as
if it were a mere scenic display for the purpose of
solemnly inculcating a moral Jesson. Yet this is
practically what we are asked to do by writers
who refuse to believe that the mind of Jesus was
no more exempt from human characteristics than
His body was from the sufferings incident to
earthly life. On this occasion He felt the pangs of
hunger, and He believed He saw the natural
means of satisfying His need. We could look for
no more convincing example, in His life, of the
complete adaptation of Himself to all the laws
governing mortal existence. Other instances there
are in abundance which point in the same direc-
tion, viz. to His complete and willing submission
to the limitations which condition the haman mode
of life. He hungered, as we have seen (Mt 42, Mk
11”=Mt 218, Jn 4531), and sympathized with those
who suffered thus (Mt 15°2=Mk 85, ef. Mt. 12" and
25°"). He suffered the pangs of thirst (Jn 47
and 1958). He experienced physical weariness after
prolonged exertion (Jn 4°, cf. Mt S%4= Mk 438), Not-
withstanding O. Holtzmann’s interpretation of Lk
955 (= Mt 8) it is very certain that there is a per-
sonal reference to His homeless condition in these
words, and we notice a quiet sadness, as if He felt
the loneliness attaching to a life of continued
wandering (cf. O. Holtzmann’s Leben Jesu, Eng. tr.
p. 169, note 3, and p. 303f.).
(6) The element of spontaneity discoverable in
the words and actions of Jesus, expressive of His
attitude either towards His fellow-men or towards
God, lends force to what we have been saying
about limitations involved in His manhood. (1) He
experienced feelings of keen disappointment with
the people of His country for their lack of spiritu-
ality (Mk 8” 66, Jn 1158. 88. cf. Mk 9, Jn 149, Mk
8118. 64—Lk 4%, Lk 85- ΜᾺ 4°—Mt 835, Mk 35 738
8 107% —Lk 1818-39—Mt 191624). On the other
hand, He expressed astonishment at the spiritual
ACCOMMODATION
receptivity of some who had no claim to be amongst
the number of the chosen people of God (Mt 8”=
Lk 7°, ef. Mt 15%=Mk 739), though He recognizes
the fact that this phenomenon was not confined to
His own experience (Mt 124 =Lk 11%", Lk 4°"),
The legitimate inference to be drawn from the pas-
sage last mentioned is not so much that the Divine
love flowed over spontaneously towards those who
were outside the Abrahamic covenant, as that
faith and trust, often found amongst the heathen,
drew towards them God’s gracious intervention,
just as the lack of these spiritual graces amongst
His own people tended to dry up the fountain of
God’s active love (Mk 60:6 -- Mt 13°4°8= Lk 4!®4 (ef,
Plummer, 77 Joc.]).
One of the methods adopted by Jesus for pur-
poses of instruction was that with which the name
of Socrates is usually linked. Starting from pre-
mises universally recognized as valid, He leads
His hearers onwards by question and answer to
the result He wishes to establish (Mk 81:5 1:Ξ Μῦ
1672) Mik 1248) Mit 12% 20218) D446 — Milka ce
Lk 204'-4). With these examples we may also
compare the merciless way in which Jesus em-
ployed this method to involve His enemies in an
awkward dilemma (Mt 2174-6), driving home His
argument against their moral dishonesty by the
parable of the Two Sons, and the question arising
out of it (Mt 21°31; ef. 214-4, 12?" and 15%). Not
all the questions, however, asked by Jesus were of
this character. Some are of the nature of ordi-
nary inquiry—a demand for some needed informa-
tion. Such are the questions addressed to the
sisters of Bethany (Jn 11), to the Gerasene de-
moniac (Lk 8*=Mk 5%), to the father of the epi-
leptic boy (Mk 9*!), to the disciples on the two
occasions (if, indeed, they are not different versions
of the same occurrence) of His feeding the multi-
tude (Mk 6, 8=Mt 1553; cf., however, Jn 6°,
which is the author’s gloss).
(2) Not very far removed from this phenomenon
in Jesus’ life is the habit of prayer and quiet com-
munion with God which He habitually and sedul-
ously cultivated (Mt 11°-°=Lk 107%, Lk 3?!, Mk
1%, Mt 143, Lk 518 613 928 29%? 298". — Mt 26% —Mk
14%, with which we may compare Jn 175-15: * 141°
12°7t-), Of the three Synoptists, St. Luke seems to
be the one who most appreciates this feature of
Jesus’ attitude to His Father. No truer comment
has ever been made on it than that of the writer
of the Epistle to the Hebrews (57) in referring to
His supplications in Gethsemane—the ‘ obedience’
of Christ was slowly fashioned through prayer,
which was answered for His reverent devotion
(Westcott, Ep. to Heb. in loc.). The two descrip-
tive words employed by this writer (δεήσεις τε καὶ
ixernpias) illustrate well the intense nature of these
supplications (μετὰ κραυγῆς ἰσχυρᾶς Kal δακρύων),
reminding us of the vivid representation of Mk
145, We have here ‘the spectacle of true man,
weighted with a crushing burden, the dread of a
catastrophe awful and unfathomed’ (Gore, Diss.
η. 821.).
: iii. JESUS’ ACTIVITY AS TEACHER.—(a@) When
we look at the position of Teacher occupied by
Jesus, we not merely see Him assuming tacitly to
be the ultimate authority upon the ethical value
of OT laws, and giving instruction from that
standpoint suitable to the receptive powers of His
hearers, we are also confronted with His confessed
subordination even in this sphere. His is a dele-
gated authority conferred on Him by an unction
from God. He was sent with a definite message,
the contents of which He identified with that given
in Deutero-Isaiah (ch. 42, ef. 6115). We are re-
minded of the words of the Apostle Peter at
Cvesarea (Ac 10°8), where he uses the same word to
express this unction, and adds as the secret of the
ACCOMMODATION
ACCOMMODATION 19
marvellous power exhibited by the Anointed that
God was with Him. This thought is most fre-
quently and plainly dwelt on in the Fourth Gospel,
and this is the more surprising as it appears along-
side of claims the most far-reaching as to the
significance of His life and teaching. In His con-
versation with Nicodemus, Jesus sets forth His
place in the scheme of world-salvation. He is the
object of men’s faith and belief. It is through
Him that life is brought into the world. At the
same time He is the Sent of God (. . . ἀπέστειλεν ὁ
θεὸς Tov υἱὸν εἰς τὸν κόσμον, K.T.A., Jn 317, ef. 393 453. 539.
24. 30. 36-38 629- 38. 39. 44. 57 716. 18. 28, 29. 33 816. 18. 26. 29. 42 93
10° 11% 12-49-29 1474 1522 16° 173 and 2071, Lk 1016
9, Mt 10”, οἵ. Mk 997 and Jn 13”).
(6) Not only has He received His commission as
a Teacher from God, but there is a limitation de-
fined for Him in the scope of the delivery of His
message (Jn 11, Mt 15% 21°), (1) This limit He
not only observed Himself, but imposed also on
His disciples. During His ministry their preach-
ing was confined to the borders of Israel by His
direct orders (Mt 10%); and this limitation was
considered of binding force at the time (Ac 355),
though it was abrogated in the light of further
development (οἵ. Mt 2818, Mk 1015: Lk 2447, Ac 14),
It is important, then, to recognize that Jesus Him-
self consciously set national and local bounds to
His missionary activity, and was willing to adapt
His methods of work to suit the conditions which
governed the time and place of His incarnate life.
It is difficult to see how He could have approached,
with any hope of success, a people so hide-bound
in traditionalism as were His countrymen, in any
other way than He did. Discrimination in the
choice, rather than originality in the creation and
presentment of fundamental ideas, characterizes
His teaching. And in this we discover His Divine
wisdom and greatness. With conscious delibera-
tion He refused, so far as His own personal work
was concerned, to break with the best and truest
tradition as it was embodied in the teaching and
institutions of His time. (2) There is a line of
development observable in the Jewish mind from
the days of the earliest prophets right onwards to
the time of Jesus, and He did not break off at a
sharp angle from its continuation. He rather set
His face towards the direction in which that line
travelled, and unswervingly refused to turn aside
at the bidding of a childish literalism or of a debased
legalism. That He did not confine His recognition
of truth to what was overtly taught in the OT is
shown by the whole-hearted way m which He
accepted the doctrine of individual resurrection,
and pressed home the truth of this latter-day
Judaistic development upon those who refused to
accept it, by a magnificent argumentum ad hom-
mem (Lk 20°7-—Mk 1276 —Mt 9251) With this
doctrinal disputation between Jesus and the Sad-
ducees we may compare that on the same subject
between Gamaliel and the ‘scribes of the Saddu-
cees’ (see Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah, vol. i. p. 316 n.). This Rabbi bases his
argument also on a passage out of the Pentateuch
(Dt 18, ef. 11°), but misses the opportunity so well
utilized by Jesus of emphasizing the spiritual side
of that truth. It is significant in respect of this,
that. Jesus very seldom makes a formal declara-
tion or revelation of the truth of the resurrection
doctrine (Jn 5*-°8); and, except on this occasion
when He was challenged to prove it, He never
attempts to give any reasons for its acceptance.
He found the belief prevalent amongst the best
spirits of His time, and He simply refers to it as a
matter of course by taking for granted that His
hearers will understand the allusion, and accept
the consequences He deduces (Lk 14%, ef. Jn 11%).
On the one hand, He lays stress on His own judicial
functions as finding their final scope when that
wondrous result is achieved (οἵ. Jn 551: 37. Mt 2481
1677 2528-195 13%, Mk 13%). Then, again, He
incidentally refers to the resurrection as a future
event of universal significance, to be brought into
objective existence by the power of God (Mt 22”)
exercised through Himself, who will employ angels
as the executors of His final decrees (Mt 13:15. 496
Mk 13”).
(a) In these passages we are able to observe a
double object in the teaching of Jesus about two
distinct contemporary beliefs. As we have seen,
there was a current belief, existent amongst the
best religious thought, in the resurrection of the
dead. This was, however, intimately connected
with Jewish hopes as to the future earthly national
Messianic kingdom (ef. Is 26'+ 19. Ezk 3711, Dn 122,
where its extent is limited to those who have dis-
tinguished themselves on one side or other of the
national conflict, mainly with Antiochus Epiphanes
[see Driver, Daniel, in loc. and Introd. xcif., and
Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality‘, p.
19: Ὁ ΠΕ:
The imperfection and uncertainty of the hold which this
doctrine had on the Jewish mind is evidenced by such passages
as 2 Mac 79. 14. 23. 36, 2 Es 7(79)-(100) ; Jos. Ant. xvill. i. 3; Bar 217,
Sir 1727f 414. In the Apocalypse of Baruch, in answer to the
question as to the changes which are to take place (493), the
writer affirms his belief in the resurrection of the body, and
the subsequent transformation of the bodies of the righteous in
order to the enjoyment of unending spiritual happiness (chs. 50
and 51 [ed. by Prof. Charles}). The authors of the Book of
Enoch vary as to the extent of the resurrection, but all are
agreed as to the restoration of the righteous Israelite to the
fulness of a glorious life in the new Messianic kingdom which
God shall establish on earth.
Now, as we have just said, Jesus, in His allusions
to the doctrine of the resurrection, while accom-
modating His language to the received Jewish
opinions, emphasizes the truth and discards the
excrescences which had deformed the popular
belief. In His eschatological references and dis-
courses, connexions with current thought are easily
discovered, even when He is engaged in contradict-
ing the presumptuous expectations of those whom
He is addressing. Compare His use of apocalyptic
figures when speaking of His Parousia (Mt 81,
Lk 13°85 2216, Mt 267%), where the future kingdom
is likened to a banquet where the guests recline at
the table with the fathers of the Jewish nation (ef.
e.g. Mt 22)4 and Lk 14-4). This is the more
remarkable that it is accompanied by a stern re-
minder that the real heirs of the kingdom shall
find themselves outside their heritage. The refer-
ence to the judgment of the tribes of Israel is also
to benoted in Mt 1055, Lk 22°°, and Rey 20+, remind-
ing us of the idea expressed in Dn 7”, 1 Co 6°,
Wis 38, Sir 4).
The imagery in which Jesus clothed His description of the
events which were to precede the destruction of Jerusalem
(Mt 24131=Mk 131-27=Lk 215-3), and His subsequent Return,
finds many parallels in Jewish literature (cf. 2 Es 51-15 618-28
91-12 1329-31, 2 Mac 52f, Apoc. Bar 7023; Mishna, Sota, ix.
15; and Jos. BJ vi. v. 3). It is probable that in Mt 2423 we
have the quotation of a current proverb which may or may
not have had its origin in the detestation in which the symbols
of Roman power and authority were held (see Plummer on
Lk 1787; and Farrar, Life of Christ, vol. ii. p. 262). In any
event we know that the phrase οἱ ἀετοί was known to His hearers
as symbolical of God’s judgments wrought by means of heathen
enemies and oppressors (see Charles’ ed. of Enoch [92]; cf. Dt
2849, Job 926, Hab 18 etc.). The same may be said of the
reference to the trumpet (σάλπιγξ) as the instrument by which
the resurrection of the dead is immediately effected (cf. 1 Th
416, 1 Co 15°2, Mt 2431, and 2 Es 622). In this connexion, and
intimately related to the subject of the destruction of Jerusalem,
we may note the simile used by Jesus in His lamentation over
that city. The similitude of the hen and her brood (Mt 2327) ‘is
not found in the OT, but is frequent in Rabbinical literature’
(Plummer on Lk 1334). Compare, e.g., 2 Es 129, in which context
are also to be found very similar references to the righteous
wrath of God and its terrible consequences. He will require
the blood of all His servants and prophets slain by the hands of
those to whom they were sent (2 Es 182). Their house is left
unto them desolate (v.93). These words remind us of the
language of Jesus in Mt 23°f 35 (cf. Lk 1149), where Wendt
20
ACCOMMODATION
ACCOMMODATION
thinks there is a reference to a Jewish apocalyptic writing
(ἡ σοφία τοῦ θεοῦ εἶπεν) on the part of Jesus (Lehre Jesu, Eng. tr.
ii. 362). See, further, MESSIAN, PARousIA.
(8) The other contemporary belief referred to
above had to do with the part played by angels
in the Divine economy of revelation and grace.
Amongst the Jews of the time of Jesus there was
a tendency to emphasize the importance of the
functions ascribed to these beings. This tendency
arose out of the growing habit of thought which
removed God farther and farther from that active
participation in the world’s concerns which was
characteristic of early Israelitish belief (Ex 37*,
Gn 11" 18” (ef. G. B. Stevens, The Theology of the
NT, p. 11f.]). To them angels were the necessary
media connecting a transcendental God with the
world and men. (For the external influences which
helped the growth of this development see art. [by
Whitehouse] ‘Demon, Devil,’ in Hastings’ DB,
vol. i. p. 592). Over against God and His kine-
dom, thus conceived, stood Satan and his dominion,
ruled after the same method by means of dependent
demoniacal beings. It is important te note that,
although these dualistic conceptions held a large
place in the current thought of His day, Jesus has
let fall no hint as to His ideas on the subject of
angelology. By Him God is conceived as in direct
living contact with men, guiding their affairs, and
interesting Himself in their welfare (Mt 5”, Lk 085,
Mt 6? 618-82 711), Perhaps in no way does this
come out so clearly as in the stress laid by Him on
the Fatherhood of God (ef. e.g. Lk 15"). What
was halting, spasmodic, and inferential in the OT
becomes in the teaching of Jesus a central, illumi-
nating truth which He would have His hearers
emphasize during the most sacred moments of
their lives—IIdrep ἡμῶν (Mt 6°, cf. the Πάτερ of
Lk 11°). At the same time the Gospels furnish us
with many references by Jesus to angels and their
work, all of which are intimately related to con-
temporary ideas. It is unimportant for our present
purpose whether we interpret these references
literally, or, as Beyschlag and others do, meta-
phorically ; viz. as poetical and figurative ex-
pressions.
From Himself must have come the information noted by the
Synoptists as to angelic ministrations (cf. Mt 41.=Mk 113, Lk
2243); and He must have been thinking of these services when
He rebuked St. Peter with the question recorded in Mt 265% (cf.
Jn 18%6, where of ὑπηρέται of ἐμοί may refer to them also). That
He believed in the reality of their existence is, of course, true.
That He ascribed to them functions suitable to their state of
being is also true. They are described as ‘holy,’ possessed of a
knowledge of the ways of God in a higher degree than the sons
of men (οὐδὲ of ἄγγελοι), and interested in the spiritual condition
of mankind (cf. Mk 888, Mt 1627 2531, Mk 1382, Lk 1510, with
which*we may compare 2 Es 1666 and Lk 128). Jesus in the
parable of Dives and Lazarus, utilizes the Rabbinical belief that
the souls of the righteous are carried to paradise by the angels,
but in a way so incidental that we are not justified in affirming
or denying His belief in that tenet (Lk 162%, with which may be
compared the description of Elijah’s translation in 2K 211),
In Mt 1810 there is a deliberate assertion by Jesus that God’s
care over the least important of His people is exercised through
the media of angels. This is an extension or development of
the idea of national guardian angels in Dn 1018-20. He makes
an incidental reference to their supersensual nature in His
discussion with the Sadducees on the subject of the Resurrec-
tion (Mk 122%=Mt 22°0=Lk 2036), where He employs a well-
known Jewish opinion (with the Lukan ἰσάγγελοι compare Apoc.
Bar 5110 and Eth. Enoch 1044-6) in order to enforce a funda-
mental spiritual truth. The same didactic purpose is discover-
able in all the references of Jesus to these beings; and we are
therefore led to the conclusion that there is, in His attitude
towards this question, evidence of that deliberate economy by
which He set to Himself the task of accommodation to the
limited knowledge of His fellow-men. It seems to the present
writer to be very evident that Jesus knowingly refrained from
correcting their ideas on this subject because He had an
infinitely more important work to perform. To say with
Bishop Gore that His ‘language certainly reaches the level of
positive teaching’ about good spirits, seems to import more
significance into that language than it can bear (cf. Diss. p.
23f.). The work of Jesus lay on a far higher plane than this—
the correcting and revealing of details as to the nature, posi-
tion, and employment of subordinate spiritual agencies. It was
sufficient for His purpose that a general belief existed in the
loving activity of God, though that activity might be somewhat
too rigorously conceived of as mediated by certain personal
forces—Atitoupyize πνεύματα (He 114), A comparison of one pair
of parallel passages may throw some light on the way in which
Jesus’ attitude towards this belief was interpreted by those who
heard Him. In Mt 1022 we read of those who accept, and are
loyal in their adherence to, His Messianic claims, that the Son
of Man will confess them before His Father in heaven; while in
Lk 128 the words run, ‘Him shall the Son of Man also confess
before the angels of God.’ From this it would appear that ‘ the
angels of God’ is a popular synonym for the Sacred Presence,
and is employed by Jesus as such (cf. also Lk 157-10), But
see art. ANGELS, p. 57>f.
(y) On coming to the consideration of the kindred
question arising out of Jesus’ language respecting
Satan, demons, and demoniacal possession, we are
confronted with a more intricate and difficult
problem. There can be no doubt, the present
writer thinks, that as He believed in the personal
existence of good, so He also believed in that of
evil angels. How far, on the other hand, we are
bound to accept the views which a literal interpre-
tation of the passages where reference to them is
found would convey, is another question, and one
which demands some care in determining. In
the first place, there are several instances where
the language of Jesus respecting these beings is
obviously figurative, and intended to be inter-
preted as such. In relating His experiences
during the Temptation period, it would certainly
seem as if He intended to convey, in language
vividly syimbolical, an idea of the tremendous
difficulties which beset Him in His choice of two
alternatives. The popular Jewish Messianic ex-
pectations He embodied in a personified form, and
Satan appears in the narrative because of the
didactic purpose which He had in view.
A similar interpretation seems necessary in Jesus’ explanation
of the parable of the Sower (Mt 1319 ἔρχεται ὁ πονηρός; Mk 415
ἔρχέτα; ὁ Σατανᾶς; Lk 812 ἔρχεται ὁ διάβολος), though Plummer
(note on Lk 812) insists that Jesus is here emphasizing His belief
in the Personality of the evil there described as working. The
whole passage, however, is highly figurative, and it seems some-
what arbitrary to pick and choose in that way. A very remark-
able instance of similar personification is found in the Lukan
narrative of the healing of St. Peter’s mother-in-law. Just as
St. Luke seems to be the most deeply impressed of the Synop-
tists with this aspect of Jesus’ power and work, so he is the
only one of the three to note this. By using the verb ἐπετίμησεν
(434), which he had employed immediately before (ν.99) in de-
scribing the healing of the demoniac in the synagogue, he links
the two acts together by an inward connexion. The same verb,
indeed, is found in all three Synoptists in their narratives of the
stilling of the tempest on the Lake of Gennesaret (cf. Lk 874,
Mt 826, Mk 4389), and we cannot resist the conclusion that the
disciples saw behind the storm the work of a living personal
agent, and that Jesus acted in the spirit of that presupposition
(cf. O. Holtzmann’s Leben Jesu, Eng. tr. p. 268). Similarly in
His rebuke of St. Peter (Mk 833=Mt 1625), Jesus sees behind the
language of His chief Apostle that spirit of evil which all
through His work strove to thwart and hinder Him. He
addresses him directly and personally as ‘Satan’ (Σατανα), just
as He addressed the last and fiercest temptation in the first
dangerous crisis of His life (Mt 410). F :
A striking and illustrative example of this figure is discovered
in Jesus’ words to His returned missionary disciples (Lk 1018),
These, in their report, referred specially to the power over
demons, recently conferred upon the Twelve, as being also
possessed by themselves, which elicited from Him the following
reply, ‘I beheld Satan fallen (AV fall) as lightning from heaven’
(cf. Is 1412). Some see in these words a reference by Jesus to
the original Fall of the Angels, and an implied rebuke to the
disciples, warning them against the sin which caused that
catastrophe. On the other hand, the use of the aorist participle
(τεσόντα) in the place of emphasis points to the conclusion that
Jesus is speaking of an event occurring during the time of the
successful missionary tour (cf. Blass, Gram. of NT Greek, §58, 4,
p. 197f.; and Burton, NZ’ Moods and Tenses, ὃ 146ff., p. 67 f.).
Be that as it may, the simile is a familiar one to the Jews
(cf. Is 1412-15, Rey 127-9), and is used by Jesus to point to the
overthrow of the kingdom of evil, as it was foreshadowed by
the success which attended His disciples’ first efforts (cf.
Jn 1231), ᾿ i
A very remarkable instance of this method is peculiar to the
Lukan narrative. Jesus, in warning St. Peter of his coming
fall, informs him in solemn language that Satan ‘ obtained him
by asking’ (2ar7ca70, Lk 2231) for the purpose of testing him (cf.
Job 16-12 and 21-6). He puts Himself in direct personal opposi-
tion (ἐγὼ δὲ ἐδεήθην) to the Prince of Evil by praying for His
Apostle. No less remarkable and instructive is the allegory,
common to St. Matthew and St. Luke, by which He teaches the
danger of and tendency towards reverting to a former state of
ACCOMMODATION
ACCOMMODATION 21
sin. He speaks of the unclean spirit or demon (τὸ ἀκάθαρτον
πνεῦμα) Which, having been cast out of his victim, goes in search
of rest through dry and desert regions (δι᾽ ἀνύδρων τόπων).
Failing in his quest, he deliberates with himself as to his future
line of action, and finally makes up his mind to return to the
place whence he was driven. With himself he brings seven
other spirits, and they all take up their abode in the empty
chamber, which was all too ready to receive them (Lk 1124-26,
Mt 1243-45), For the belief that more than one demon might
possess ἃ human being, compare Mk 5!f., Mt 825f., Lk 826f, and
Lk 82 (ἑπτὰ δαιμόνια). The teaching of Jesus is not only based
on the popular belief in the active connexion between evil
spirits and the children of men, but there is a reference in it
to the generally accepted idea that wild and desert regions are
the special habitat of these beings (see art. ‘Demon, Devil’ in
Hastings’ DB, vol. i. p. 593»).
Jesus, on more than one occasion, seems to sanction the
current conception of the malignant influence of demons on
the human body, their activity in this respect being controlled
and guided by their chief, Satan (ὁ ἄρχων τῶν δαιμονίων, Mt 1224),
St. Luke’s diagnosis of the woman’s case who was afflicted for
eighteen years, is simply that she was possessed of a ‘spirit
of infirmity’ (πνεῦμα ἀσθενείαις, Lk 1311); and Jesus apparently
countenanced the belief by the words contained in His reproof
(ὅν ἔδησεν ὁ Σατανᾶς, v.16), A similar instance of His countenanc-
ing popular beliefs occurs in the healing of the deaf and dumb
epileptic (Mk 917-27), The boy’s father believes his son to be the
victim of demoniac malignity (ἔχοντα πνεῦμα ἄλαλον, v.17); and
Jesus addresses the spirit by an authoritative command (τὸ
ἄλαλον καὶ κωφὸν πνεῦμα, ἐγὼ ἐπιτάσσω σοι, V.29),
Perhaps the surest evidence we have that Jesus
deliberately suited His language to the notions of
His day arises out of the way in which He wrought
His cures, depending as He did on the moral and
spiritual forces inherent in His own Person. A
word, a command, a touch of the hand suffices His
purpose (cf. Mt 816, Mk 157, Lk 1313). There is no
trace of His ever having employed any of the
current methods of exorcism—the use of certain
magic formule, such as ‘the ineffable Name,’ ete.
(see Edersheim’s Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah, bk. iii. ch. xiv. and Ap. XVI. Cf. the
astonishment which Jesus’ method created amongst
His countrymen [Lk 436. cf. Ac 19]). That He
knew of such methods is evident from the ironical
question He put to the Pharisees who accused Him
of collusion with Beelzebub (Mt 1227=Lk 1119).
For evidence that Jesus believed in power over
evil spirits exercised by others not directly com-
missioned by Him, οἵ. Mt 72, Mk 98=Lk 9998
On the other hand, signs are not wanting that
Jesus recognized an essential difference between
the casting out of demons and the curing of bodily
disease—‘TI cast out demons and perform cures’
{5 ci. Mt 108, Mk 613, Lk 9! 611:.)., St.
Matthew, moreover, records the same distinction
in his account of the early Galilean ministry
(δαιμονιζομένους καὶ σεληνιαζομένους, 4523, with which
οἵ. Mk 155: We may also note in passing that
instances are not wanting of references to disease
withont mention of these agents (cf. e.g. Mt 9°7-*1,
77, Lk 171-19),
Looking then at this last aspect of the question,
and noting the way in which He employed the
language current in His day about this mysterious
phenomenon, we perceive Jesus’ knowledge to be
in advance of that possessed by His countrymen.
We see the workings of that love which, while it
appeals to man as he is, yet ever strives to draw
him upwards by gradually stripping him of the
clogging weights of superstition and of false con-
ceptions. See artt. DEMON, LUNATIC, POSSESSION.
(6) In harmony with this characteristic habit of
Jesus is His general method of imparting definite
instruction. It is impossible not to be struck with
the way in which He, not content with telling
His hearers directly what He wishes them to
know, approaches them from another side — the
side of reason and its resultant freedom and in-
dependence of thought. The Sermon on the
Mount is not a body of precepts like the Mosaic
code, so much as a series of paradoxes which arrest
and fix the attention, calling out and developing
the powers of rational deduction.
The same
feature runs through the parabolic form which
His teaching so largely took, and which was so
admirably suited to maintain the studied reserve
in the content of His communications. Notice
the way in which He keeps back, all through the
earliest period of His ministry, the revelation of
His claims to be the Messiah (Mk 1253! 83°, Lk 441,
ef. Mt 1216 8? etc.); and even to the Twelve He
does not impart the nature of those claims till
they slowly worked out for themselves the con-
viction to which St. Peter gave such emphatic
expression at Czesarea Philippi (Mk 839-- Mt 1618 =
Lk 9°°),
(1) Popularly intelligible and highly impressive,
the parables of Jesus have been the wonder and
admiration of every age. The OT is not without
examples of this mode of teaching (2S 12! 14,
1 K 20%, Is 56), and the Rabbinical writings
afford numerous examples of parables (see Eders-
heim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. i.
p. 580f.) some of which bear a striking resem-
blance to those of Jesus (ef. Midrash on Ca 1!).
The object of parabolie teaching was twofold, and
was thus purposely employed by Him (Mt 13?%!),
By it He meant to conceal the truth ‘from the
wise and clever’ (ἀπὸ σοφῶν καὶ συνετῶν, Mt 11% [see
Moffatt’s Histor. NT?, p. 316f.]). By it He at
the same time intended to unfold the same truth
‘to babes’ (vnmios). According to the Markan
narrative, there was an adaptation to the capaci-
ties of His hearers even within the zone of His
parabolic teaching. He did not, that is to say,
employ this method indiscriminately or harshly,
but in a tentative and gentle fashion, proportion-
ate to the intelligences of those who heard Him
(Mk 4°).
Such was the aim and intention of Jesus; and in
connexion with this it will not be unimportant to
note how, as His experience widened, and thie
stress of opposition increased, and the bitterness
of the enmity to which He was exposed intensified,
the parable enters more and more largely into His
publie teaching, and gradually assumes a more
admonitory, controversial, and sometimes a warn-
ing judicial tone. It is impossible to draw up any
hard and fast rule exemplifying this statement,
but a comparison of the parables grouped in Mt 13
With those in Lk 1471! 136-8 1416-24 16118 19-31 1912-27
etc. will show the gradual development of method
in the employment of the parable by Jesus to
drive home the meaning of His message to the
heart and understanding of His hearers. See
PARABLE,
(2) Without entering into a discussion as to the
ditference between the parable, the fable, the
allegory, and other forms of instruction by figure,
it is important to note that Jesus never disdains
to use popular figurative expressions in order to
point the truth He is aiming to disclose. Just as
in its outward form and method He conformed to
the usages of His time (cf. Mt 51, Lk 4”, Jn 83,
Mt 13! ete.), so in His choice of language He did
not disdain to employ what He found ready to His
hand, though it was manifestly imperfect. Hedid
not, for example, correct the popular notions as to
the local positions of Heaven and Hades. The one
was regarded as being situated at an indefinite
height above the earth (see Ac 1°*-), the other ‘as
a dark deep underworld in which the deceased
continued to exist’ (Salmond, art. ‘ Hades’ in
Hastings DB ii. 275). The ethical teaching of
Jesus is not disturbed by these erudities. On
more than one occasion He uses them as illustra-
tions of His meaning. Capernaum, because it
rejected the unparalleled opportunities afforded
by His presence and works, He addressed with the
question, ‘Shalt thou be exalted unto heaven?’
answering it Himself at the same time, ‘Thou
22 ACCOMMODATION
ACCOMMODATION
shalt go down to Hades.’ The idea was that a
complete moral and spiritual overthrow awaited
her, whereas she might have enjoyed the full and
lofty freedom characteristic of the atmosphere of
God’s presence (see Mt 11°°=Lk 1015).
The expression ‘gates of Hades’ (Mt 1618) is similarly figura-
tive, and in this place has reference to the forces of death and
spiritual decay. Here there is an incidental reference to the
general belief that’ Hades is an enclosed prison-like (cf. the ἐν
φυλακῇ of 1 P319) abode whose inhabitants are locked and detained
inside its gates (cf. Rev 118 ‘I have the keys of Hades’), while
there is added to this notion the further thought that there is
even in Hades a broad impassable line of demarcation (‘ between
us and youa great gulf is fixed,’ Lk 1626) between the souls of
those who have lived piously here and those whose lives were
selfish (cf. Lk 2343 where the former department of Hades is
called ‘ Paradise’). In connexion with this subject it is in-
structive to note such ideas as are found in Enoch 22, 51. 6310
102° etc., where, with the single exception of the locale of Sheol,
the general description is very similar to that we have been
discussing.
(3) One of the traditional forms of teaching was
by the employment of aphoristic sayings, such as
we have before us in the gnomic wisdom of the
Son of Sirach, or of the Pirke Aboth in the Mishna
(Schiirer, HJP I. iii. pp. 23-32). Jesus uses this
method with wondesral effect, as we see especi-
ally in the list of utterances grouped in Mt 5-7,
which were collected, we may feel sure, from many
different periods of His ministry. All four Gospels
afford examples of these proverbial expressions.
ΟΥ̓ οῖσε ΜΠ 227. O35 Sen Oui 35 ΝΠ οι δ γῆς 1925
1010, and the unrecorded saying in Ac 2055, Jn 80 474
12:5. while, in this Gospel, Jesus refers explicitly to
a proverb current in His time (‘ Herein is the saying
true,’ Jn 45. Very striking and vivid also are such
figures as those by which the doctrine or teaching
of the Pharisees is referred to by the word ‘leaven’
(Mk 815), His own suffering by the words ‘cup’
and ‘baptism’ (Mk 10°8, cf. Lk 12*f-), the relative
positions of Jew and Gentile in the kingdom of
grace by the words ‘ children’ and ‘dogs’ (Mk 7**).
In the Fourth Gospel there is a striking frequency
in this mode of expression. It is in this writing
that Jesus speaks of Himself as ‘the way’ (ἡ ὁδός,
Jn 14°), ‘the ight of the world’ (813), ‘the bread of
life’ (035), ‘the vine’ (15!), ‘the door’ (107). He
speaks of His work as His ‘meat’ (4%), of His
body as ‘ this temple’ (219). Cf. also such passages
as those which deal with the second birth (3°), the
living water (419), the heavenly mansions (147), and
soon. In all this we observe a method which is
peculiarly adapted to the intelligence of those He
meant to instruct; and this is still more emphati-
cally the case when, as He sometimes does, He
expands these figures and similes until they
assume the shape of allegories. We see examples
of this in His use of the figure of ‘the shepherd’
(10'f-), <the vine’ (15!™), ‘the light’ (12%), ete.
No one who has ever heard these can fail to
admire ‘the wonderful art and power of popular
eloquence’ which He possessed. It was precisely
the power to gain the attention and arouse and
retain the interest of the people which Jesus
wielded, and we can appreciate the reasons for the
willingness and eagerness with which He was
listened to by the proletariat (Mk 12°’). See art.
WISDOM.
(4) The references in the discourses of Jesus to
natural or world-phenomena, and to the psycho-
logical features of man’s being, exhibit the same
reserve, the same restraint in correcting popular
notions, the same frank acceptance of current
thought. A few examples will be sufficient to
show how completely He adapted His laneuage
to the limitations of contemporary knowledge.
(a) God makes His sun to rise (Mt 555); lightning
comes out of the east and takes its swift journey
towards the west (Mt 24°’), or it falls down
straight from heaven (Lk 1018) ; the germ of life in
the wheat-grain is brought into active play. only
by the death of the seed (Jn 12%). Even the signs
which enabled men to forecast the weather were
laid by Him under contribution to emphasize a
contrast (Lk 12°4#-), The wind blows hither and
thither, but men know neither its beginning nor
its ending (Jn 3°), any more than they can point to
the origin or the destiny of the mysterious (wy
ἄνωθεν, the reality of whose existence He never-
theless insists cannot be doubted. The gradual
growth of the kingdom of God eludes men’s ob-
servation, just as that of the planted seed does,
which receives the vital principle of its growth
from the earth, and advances steadily though
secretly (Mk 45).
It seems to the present writer that in the last two cases Jesus
is pointing to the existence of a wider field of knowledge into
which man has not as yet entered. At the same time He seems
to include Himself in the number of those who ‘know not’ the
how or the wherefore. Ages were yet to pass over the world
before men discovered the laws which govern the relations of
natural phenomena, and which enable them) in some cases at
least, to predict with almost infallible certainty their regular
sequence. Jesus consciously recognized that it was no part of
His work to add to the sum total of human knowledge of these
subjects.
(8) The same trait is observable in His refer-
ences to the anthropological ideas of His time;
but for the illustration of this we must refer the
reader to artt. FLESH, HEART, SOUL, SPIRIT.
iv. THE ATTITUDE OF JESUS TOWARDS THE
MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS OF HIS TIME. — A dis-
cussion of the question of Jesus’ attitude towards
Messianic hopes and longings is of the utmost
importance, on account of its bearing upon the
subject with which we are dealing. The attention
of the student is at once arrested by His obvious
anxiety during the early periods of His ministry
to conceal from the general public His claims to
the Messiahship. This He did expressly by for-
bidding the open proclamation of the truth not
merely by the demoniacally possessed (MI 155 815,
Mt 1216. Lk 441), but also by those amongst His
circle of disciples who grasped the purport of
His teaching and the secret of His Personality
(Mt 16°=Mk 8®=Lk9"; Mt 179=Mk 9°=Lk 9%).
For the same reason He courted secrecy in the
performance of miraculous cures, and enjoined
silence on those who were healed (Mk 142% 54 76
8*- 26, Mt 9%° 84). Indeed, there is no part of the
message which Jesus came to deliver where the
words of Mk 4° (‘He spake the word unto them
as they were able to hear it’) are more appropriate.
The declaration of His Messiahship was gradual ;
and even those who were nearest His Person, and in
closest touch with His teaching, were left by Him
to work out the truth slowly and by degrees.
(a) Perhaps the self-chosen title ‘Son of Man,’
by which He is styled early in His first Galilaean
ministry, might at first sight contradict this state-
ment (οἷ: Mikj210 = Miti9s=ikeh22i ΝΠ 2-5 Mit a5
=Lk 6°; Mt 12°°=Lk 12”). On further considera-
tion, however, it will be seen that Jesus, by this
designation of Himself, had a twofold object in
view—the concealment of His Messiahship from
the many who were not ready to accept His inter-
pretation of its meaning and purpose; and at the
same time, the unfolding to the few who could
bear the revelation, of the character of His Person
and His work as shadowed by the title ‘Son of
Man.’ See art. SON oF MAN.
(6) The attitude of Jesus to the Jewish Canon of
the OT must not be left out of account when con-
sidering the methods of His public teaching.
Frankly, the belief is at once confessed that here
also He ‘used the common language of His con-
temporaries in regard to the OT’ (Sanday, Bampton
Lect. p. 414), and in accordance with this we can
explain the words which St. Luke puts into the
mouth of the risen Jesus, where the tripartite divi-
t
{
|
{
ACCOMMODATION
sion of the Hebrew Bible is recognized—the Law
of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms (24+).
With this we may compare the division given in
the Prologue of the grandson of Jesus ben Sirach.
Other divisions were also current, as ‘Moses and
the Prophets’ (Lk 1659- *! 2457), ‘the Law and the
Prophets’ (Lk 16°, Mt 7°), where the idea is the
same, namely, the entire OT as then existing. In
perfect harmony with this is the acceptance by
Jesus of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch
{Ππ||.. 1059. 5 2477- Mt 19°=Mk 109-58, Mk 12°=Lk
207, Jn 5-47 719. 521.) and the Davidie authorship,
if not of the whole Jewish Psalter, at least of
many of the Psalms contained therein (Mk 12*f =
Ils ee He 20:5).
(1) Several other indications there are which
show that He accepted not only the general
popular belief in the authenticity ot the OT books
as a whole, but also the literal genuineness of the
stories with which they abound. The details of
the narratives of the Flood and Noah (Mt 24°7 =
Lk 17*-), the story of Jonah and his adventures
by sea as well as in Nineveh (Mt 12% 164, Lk
11°-), are utilized by Jesus on the assumption of
their genuine historicity. The glory of Solomon’s
reign, that heyday ot Israelitish prosperity, is
incidentally mentioned by Him without any re-
serve (Mt 6%=Lk 12%). The question is not, as
Dr. Sanday puts it (The Oracles of God’, p. 111),
whether Jesus ‘accommodated His language to
current notions, knowing them to be false,’ but
rather, was His ‘accommodation’ or ‘ condescen-
sion’ so complete that He never entertained any
other idea as to the character of these narratives
than the one currently held? It certainly seems
that it never entered into His mind to question
their historical truth; and if we seek for the
estimation in which He held ‘the Law and the
Prophets,’ we find it expressed in words which, if
enuine,* are as emphatic as any that are to be
nad. Not ‘one jot or one tittle’ (ἰῶτα ὃν ἢ μία κεραία)
was to be done away with until all was fulfilled (Mt
518). Into this Jewish idea of the abiding nature
of the Law, Jesus characteristically imported a
depth of meaning which, while it did not destroy,
transmuted its whole tenor, giving it the eternal
significance of which He speaks (ἕως ἂν παρέλθῃ ὁ
οὐρανὸς καὶ ἣ γῆ), and which it could never otherwise
have had. This habitual method, by which Jesus
based His teaching on the foundations of existing
knowledge, receives some illustration from the way
in which He treats the story of Moses and the
Bush (Mk 1277=Lk 20%’, cf. Mt. 221). He says
nothing whatever of the nature of this vision
beyond what the letter of the narrative expresses,
He does not tell us whether the sight was visible
to the outward eye or to the inward spiritual
understanding alone. Cf. also His references to
the brazen serpent (Jn 3! 12°),
(2) In the same way, it seems to the present
writer, we are to interpret the reference to the
authorship of Ps 110 (Mt 224-®=Mk 1235-37=Lk
204-44), There were three distinct ideas current
about this Psalm which Jesus adopts as the
groundwork of His argument: (i.) it was Davidie,
(11.} it was written by David under the influence
of inspiration (Δαβὶδ ἐν πνεύματι), (iii.) it was ex-
plicitly Messianic. If Jesus placed the imprimatur
of His Divine authority upon any one of these
notions, we are bound to believe that He did so on
all, and by consequence on the Messianic ideas
which were popularly held, and which doubtless
were supposed to be favoured by Ps 110. We
know, however, that He habitually discouraged
the popular belief in a Messiah who was to be an
earthly Sovereign of all-conquering power, which
was held to be countenanced by the words of this
* See Hastings’ DB, Extra Vol. p. 24 f.
ACCOMMODATION 23
Psalm (ef. Jn 6% 18° and Lk 172°F). There is no
hint given by any of the three Synoptists that
Jesus corrected these Messianic expectations during
the course of the argument. His purpose was
other than this, ‘to argue from the contents’ of
the Psalm, and not at all to correct ideas as to
authorship and interpretation (cf. Driver, LOT
Ρ. 363 n.; and A. F. Kirkpatrick, ‘ Psalms,’ in the
Cambridge Bible, Introd. to Ps 110).
The whole edifice so laboriously constructed by the opponents
of a rational criticism, on the basis of Jesus’ references to this
Psalm as well as to other portions of OT Scriptures, falls to the
ground when considered beneath ‘the dry light of reason.’
The following words of Bishop Gore are so moderate and reason-
able in connexion with this reference of Jesus to the Davidic
authorship of Ps 110, that we may be pardoned for quoting
them in full, ‘On the face of it, the argument suggests that
the Messiah could not be David’s Son,—‘‘if David calleth him
Lord, how is he his Son?”—but, in fact, its purpose is not to
prove or disprove anything, to affirm or deny anything, but
simply to press upon the Pharisees an argument which their
habitual assumptions ought to have suggested to them: to
confront them with just that question, which they, with
their principles, ought to have been asking themselves’ (Bamp-
ton Lect. p. 198). In a word, nothing can be truer than that
both ‘the Saviour and the Apostles have quoted a body of
sacred Scriptures, and it does not appear that in their teaching
they had any wish to introduce a novel theory as to the mean-
ing and authority of that collection. Neither the Apostolic writ-
ings nor the tradition of the Christian Church bear any trace
of an explicit decision given by Jesus Christ or the Apostles
with respect to the Canon of the Old Testament, and still
less of a decision which would have the effect of formally
correcting opinions which obtained in the Jewish world’ (Loisy,
Canon del Ancien Testament, p. 97).
vy. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.—In summing
up and reviewing the conditions under which the
teaching of Jesus was ushered into the world, and
the relation in which that teaching stood to the
human race, we cannot do better than quote a
passage from a little work of the last-named
writer (L’Evangile et U Eglise), though he is there
dealing with a very different problem :—
‘Nothing could make Jesus other than a Jew. He was only
man under condition of belonging to one branch of humanity.
In that in which He was born, the branch that may well be
said to have carried in it the religious future of the world, this
future was known in quite a precise manner, by the hope of the
reign of God, by the symbol of the Messiah. He who was to be
the Saviour of the world could enter on His office only by
assuming the position of Messiah and by presenting Himself as
the Founder of the Kingdom, come to accomplish the hope of
Israel. The Gospel, appearing in Juda, and unable to appear
elsewhere, was bound to be conditioned by Judaism. [08
Jewish exterior is the human body, whose Divine soul is the
Spirit of Jesus. But take away the body, and the soul will
vanish in the air like the lightest breath. Without the idea of
the Messiah, the Gospel would have been but a metaphysical
possibility, an invisible, intangible essence, even unintelligible,
for want of a definition appropriate to the means of knowledge,
not a living and conquering reality. The Gospel will always
need a body to be human. Having become the hope of Chris-
tian people, it has corrected in the interpretation certain parts
of its Israelitish symbolism. None the less it remains the
shadowy representation of the great mystery, God and the
Providential destiny of man and of humanity, because it is a
representation always striving after perfection, inadequate and
insufficient. This is the mystery that Jesus revealed, as far
as it could be revealed, and under the conditions which made
revelation possible. It may be said that Christ lived it as much
as He made it manifest.’
The present writer has no intention of entering
into the very difficult and much-debated question
of the connexion between Jesus’ ideas of ‘the
kingdom of God’ (or ‘of heaven’) during the
early and the later periods of His active ministry,
or how far the latter was a development of the
former ; nor again to inquire as to the period when
it dawned upon His consciousness that His death
was the condition upon which its inauguration
and subsequent life rested. Broadly speaking, a
line of demarcation might be drawn through the
life as it is presented to us, cutting it into two
fairly well marked divisions at the time of the
Petrine confession and the Transfiguration. After
these events Jesus bevan to concentrate His
teaching more especially upon the circle of dis-
ciples gathered closely round Him. It was then
ee
24 ACCOMMODATION
ACTIVITY
that He, in solemn and almost sad foreboding,
warned His followers of the events which were
soon to try His own fidelity to the cause which He
so constantly and fearlessly championed, and
which were to put their faith to a most cruel
test. Weare indebted to the writer of the Fourth
Gospel for the series of discourses in which He
endeavoured to strengthen and encourage His
disciples against the coming time of trial, From
these we gather that Jesus looked forward to the
establishment, on the basis of His own life, of a
kingdom amongst men which was to carry on His
teaching, even as it received the truth at the
hands of His Spirit. The time had not as yet
arrived when they could assimilate the full self-
revelation of God (Jn 1013), but as their experience
widened and their understandings became enlarged,
they would be made the recipients of ‘all the
truth’ (v.83, cf. also 15%). “hat ὙΠῸ looled
beyond the lives of those whom He thus addressed
will not, we think, be disputed (ef. εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα,
1410. Certainly His words were so interpreted by
His followers (see Mt 2879; cf. 187, Jn 1438 17%,
Ac 23). We are thus emboldened to state our
belief that this plan of Divine self-accommodation
enters into the very centre of the life of Jesus
Himself, and that it is the plan by which the
world has receivéd its education from the be-
ginning even till these latter days.
‘Each of them (Baptism, Temptation, and Transfiguration of
Jesus] constitutes a moment, and a moment important, nay
supreme, in the development of the Humanity of our Lord.
That for the ultimate, Divine consummation accomplished in
the garden and on the cross He was preparing all His life long,
and that we can see in these three events a scheme divinely
prepared, by which that development was set forward ; that we
can see Him in each of the three pass from stage to well-defined
stage of that incomprehensible process which is indicated in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, when He is spoken of as ‘learning
obedience.” . . . That this growth . . . should have gone on to
the end of His life is in itself no more marvellous or more
mysterious than that it should ever have been possible, and
have taken place’ (Ch. Quart. Rev., July 1901, pp. 303-4).
The question naturally arises at this stage, How
far is this Divine method of educating humanity
to enter into the conscious active life of the teach-
ing ‘Body of Christ’ (Eph. 4)? How is the
Church to exercise her functions as the guide and
instructress of the race? Is she to draw lines of
distinction between those who ‘are able to bear’
the fulness of the faith delivered to her keeping,
and those whose receptive faculties she considers
are not fitted to receive such revelation? How far
is she to practise the doctrine of economy or
reserve in disclosing to men ‘the faith which was
once for all delivered to the saints’? (Jude 3). That
grave dangers await a policy which seems to put
such judicial authority into the hands of men, is
not to be denied ; nor can we shut our eyes to the
tendency which such a course fosters, to hold up
different standards of belief and practice before
different minds. At the same time, we cannot shut
our eyes to the sad phenomenon of arent and dis-
tracted Christendom, which necessarily implies
inability somewhere to grasp the fundamental
verity of Christian life (cf. Jn 13%). Imperfect
belief and faith are the causes to which must be
attributed the vital as well as the minor differences
separating those who ought to belong to the same
household. The bearing with each other, the
sympathetic endeavour on each side to understand
the other’s point of view, seem to be the only
worthy methods of continuing the work of love
begun by Jesus. It seems, indeed, to be the
method which, springing from the love for men
which He inculcated, He bequeathed to His teach-
ing Body. Weare, however, bound to admit that
those occupying the position of Doctores erclesie
have not always marched in the van of human
progress, and that often they have adopted the
role of obscurantists where the discoveries of
science ran counter to preconceived ideas. The
Church, at times, seemed to have been committed
almost irrevocably to a false and transient philo-
sophy, to a weak and untenable exegetical process,
when she was forced by the onward march of God’s
self-revelation, grasped and promulgated in the
teeth of opposition and obloquy by the brightest
intellects amongst her children, to review her
position, to reject old prejudices, and to bring her
interpretation of the life and teaching of Jesus
into line with the newer discoveries which are so
constantly revealing to men’s minds wider and
profounder ideas of the condescending love of God.
The chief object for which the Church exists is,
while ‘reproving, rebuking, exhorting’ (cf. 2 Ti
4°), to interpret the Incarnation as it bears on
man’s life, and on the destiny of the world and the
race, in the light of an ever-increasing knowledge.
Her business is not so much to keep back the pro-
founder mysteries of a gradually accumulating
revelation from the minds of ‘the weak’ (1 Co 8%),
as to build up and strengthen the entire man,
intellectual and spiritual, so that all may learn
that there is no department of human life which
has not its own intimate relationship to the Incar-
nate Son of God.
LITERATURE.—The following works, most of which are either
quoted or referred to in the course of this article, are specially
recommended as throwing light on a difficult problem :—
Schurer, HJP, which is a veritable mine from which we may
excavate an immense amount of information about contem-
porary beliefs, customs, modes of thought and of teaching ;
J. B. Mozley, Ruling Ideas in Early Ages; Edersheim, The
Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah ; B. Weiss, Leben Jesu,
Eng. tr., and Bibl. Theol. NT, Eng. tr. (T. & T. Clark); H. J.
Holtzmann, Newtest. Theol.; O. Holtzmann, Leben Jesu, Eng. tr.
(A. ἃ C. Black); Farrar, The Life of Christ ; Gore, The Incarna-
tion (BL, 1891), and Dissertations on Subjects connected with the
Incarnation; Plummer, St. Luke (Internat. Crit. Com.);
Gould, St. Mark (Internat. Crit. Com.); Salmond, Christian
Doctrine of Immortality4; Jilicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu,
and §§ 28-29 of his Hinleitung in das NT, which are incidentally
rather than directly useful; Trench, Notes on the Parables, and
Notes on the Miracles ; V. Rose, Studies on the Gospels ; Loisy,
L’Evangile et UEglise!, and Autour Wun petit livre, especially
tivo letters therein, entitled ‘Sur la critique des Evangiles et
spécialement sur l’Evangile de Saint Jean,’ and ‘Sur la divinité
de Jésus-Christ’; T. H. Wright, The Finger of God; Wendt,
Lehre Jesu, Eng. tr. (T. & T. Clark); Stevens, Te Theology of
the NT ; Bruce, The Humiliation of Christ ; Sanday, Inspira-
tion (BL, 1893), and The Oracles of God ; A. Robertson, Regnum
Dei (BL, 1901); J. Lightfoot, Horce Hebraice et Talinudice
(ed. Gandell, Oxford 1859); several articles in Hastings’ DB,
especially Sanday’s ‘ Jesus Christ’ ; Driver’s ‘Son of Man,’ which
ought to be studied in conjunction with two papers on ‘The
use and meaning of the phrase The Son of Man in the Gospels,’
by J. Drummond in the Journ. of Theol. Studies (Apr. and
July 1901); Fairweather, ‘Development of Doctrine’ in Extra
Vol. of DB; R. L. Ottley, ‘Incarnation’ in vol. ii.; A. B.
Davidson, ‘ Angel’ in vol. i. ; and Whitehouse, ‘Demon, Devil’
in vol. i., and ‘Satan’ in vol. iv.
The reader is also recommended to refer to such articles in
the Encye. Bibl. as ‘Demons,’ §§ 6-10, and ‘Satan,’ δὲ 5-8, by
J. Massie, and Jiilicher’s art. ‘Parables.’ See also Charles, The
Book of Enoch and The Apocalypse of Baruch, which are useful
for a comparative study of some of the subjects treated in this
article, and in conjunction with these read his two articles on
‘Eschatology’ in Hastings’ DB and in the Encye. Biblica.
J. R. WILLIS.
ACCUSATIONS.—Sce TRIAL (OF JESUS).
ACHIM (’Ayxeiu).—An ancestor of Joseph, accord-
ing to the genealogy of our Lord in St. Matthew’s
Gospel (14). The name may be a shortened form
of Jehoiachim, or it may be for Ahiam (cf. 1 Ch
1135) or Jachin (cf. Gn 46").
ACTIVITY.—1. The period of our Lord’s activity
is, in other words, that of His ministry, in the ful-
filment of which His activity was exhibited. Its
duration is a matter of dispute, relevant only so
far as it compresses Into one year the recorded
details, or extends them to the traditional three.
In any case the records are in no sense exhaustive.
Manitold ministries are expressed in few words
(Mt 473-24 1599 Lk 4% 81. Jn 4! ete.); a complete
account is beyond an Evangelist’s scope (Jn 20° 91),
ACTIVITY
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 25
and would be voluminous (21%). This is said of
things done ‘in the presence of the disciples’ (Jn
20°"), and we cannot suppose they saw or knew all
that Jesus did. See art. MINISTRY.
In fact, we possess no more than specimens of
Christ’s labours; but these, no doubt, are so
selected as to give us a general idea of the whole.
In this connexion the first Sabbath at Capernaum
(of which a detailed account is given in Mk 17!-*4,
Lk 4°!) has well been pointed to as a specimen
day. Some details of the Son of Man’s toilsome
life—wearying journeys (Jn 4°), rising ‘a great
while before day’ (Mk 1*)—may be in themselves
not much more than features of Oriental life:
others—‘nowhere to lay his head’ (Mt 82°)—
cannot be so explained. Day to Him meant work.
The Father’s work was both a daily necessity (Jn
94) and His very ‘meat’ (4). Its substance was
twofold: (1) the general work of evangelizing and
healing; (2) the special work of training others,
the Twelve (Mk 3! 67 etc.) and the Seventy (Lk
10'), and superintending their efforts. Similarly
we may regard as twofold the conditions under
which it was carried on: (1) the normal conditions,
ever varying, of the day (Sabbath or week-day),
the place (synagogue, Temple or open-air) and
the hearers (multitudes or individuals); (2) the
abnormal conditions, created by the presence of
pee ΒΟΠΙΣ (Mt 1210-14. 24-42 ete.), or of crowds who
clung to Him sometimes for days together (Mt 15°,
Mk 87). Under such pressure there was often no
leisure to eat (Mk 3° 05). Night did not mean
sleep, but was given largely to prayer (Mt 145,
Lk 6! 978 22°9-41) till His exhausted nature, finding
opportunity for repose, could sleep undisturbed
even by a storm (Mk 455, Lk 8%). More than once
His disciples (accustomed by their trade to night-
watches, Lk 5°) proved unequal to the strain of
wakefulness (Lk 92, Mk 14°74). His friends,
fearing a mental breakdown, came to restrain
Him by force (Mk 33). It would be hazardous to
estimate degrees of spiritual activity by the pre-
carious test of numerical results (Jn 12°7-*°), but it
is noticeable that at one time He made more dis-
ciples than John the Baptist (Jn 4%).
Certain limitations of Christ’s activity are clear
and significant. (1) In scope it was contined to ‘the
house of Israel,’ more especially its ‘lost sheep’
(Jn 151, Mt 15%). A few outsiders (Gentiles and
proselytes) came within its range; but these were
exceptional (Mt 85:12 1572, Lk 17'%, Jn 4° 12” 24),
(2) In development it was regulated by the unfold-
ing of a Divine plan, frequently referred to by such
expressions as ‘my hour’ (Jn 24 7% 8° 13! ete.),
‘my time’ (Mt 9618, Jn 75). (3) In operation it was
morally conditioned by the existence (or otherwise)
of a certain measure of receptiveness (Mk 6°).
In reference to the source of His activity, it must
be noted: (1) that it was always and essentially
associated with times of retirement and prayer
(Mk 1° 318 646 9? ete.) ; (2) that its manifestation
is directly ascribed to the power of the Spirit (Mt
123, Lk 413 ete.); and (3) that, in its miraculous
exercise, there is indicated (at least once) a percep-
tion that ‘power had gone out’ (Mk δὴν, Lk 8%).
2. In the Christian course. energy is constantly
commanded (Mt 1113, Mk 1333, Lk 133. Yet it is
worthy of remark that in Christ’s estimate of
human character the active qualities seem some-
times to be depreciated in comparison with
the passive, contemplative, and devotional. The
latter attain to ‘the good part’ (Lk 10 98:2). and
find their place in the Beatitudes (Mt δ5:13), See,
further, CHARACTER (Christian).
3. Finally, the believer’s view of Christ is not,
in the Gospels, primarily directed to His active
labours. Such thines are the record of an Apostle
(2 Cor 64° ete.) rather than a Saviour: accord-
ingly, if with the account of our Lord’s active
labours we measure that of His Passion, both as
to general proportion and minutiz of detail, there
can be no doubt that in the Gospel picture the
Passion, and not the activity, occupies the fore-
ground. F. 5. RANKEN.
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.—The aim of this
article is to answer the question, What does the
Acts of the Apostles say of Christ ?; otherwise ex-
pressed, How is the Book of Acts related to ‘the
gospel?’ or, What is ‘the gospel’ of the Acts? We
do not know the name of the author of the book—
for St. Luke or some other disciple of St. Paul
did not compose it, but merely supplied valuable
materials for its composition—but his religious in-
dividuality may be ascertained from his work with
sufficient clearness to enable us to answer the ques-
tions just stated. The problem is all the more
interesting because the author can hardly have
written before the end of the Ist cent., and thus
cannot reckon himself among the first eye-witnesses
and ministers of the word (Lk 19. What then is
the picture of Christ that stamps itself on the
heart of a man of the second generation? Has
this man anything new, anything unique, to tell
us of Him?
Before we go on to answer this question, we
must make it clear to ourselves that our author,
in what he writes, does not always speak in his
own person. From the Gospel of St. Luke we
know to what an extent he is dependent on sources.
This may be observed and proved in particular
instances by a close comparison with St. Mark and
(in the case of the discourses) with St. Matthew.
In the Gospel he is almost entirely a mere retailer
of older tradition, and the lineaments ef his own
personality scarcely come into view. There can
be no doubt that likewise in the Acts he largely
reproduces early tradition, that he makes use of
sources, sometimes copying them in full, at other
times abbreviating or expanding them, grouping
them and editing both their language and their
contents. Modern criticism, however, has reached
the conviction that in this second work more of the
author’s idiosynerasy is to be detected than in his
Gospel. Hence it will be necessary to make the
attempt to distinguish the notions which reveal to
us the educated writer of the last decade of the
Ist cent. from those passages in which the réle is
played by early popular tradition.
The author's personality undoubtedly shows
itself more strongly in the second than in the first
part of the book, but most clearly in the way in
which the work is arranged in these two parts, so
that the first is dominated by the person of Peter
and the second by that of Paul. To him the Church
rests upon the foundation of the Apostles and
prophets (ef. Eph 2” 3°)—not upon one Apostle, as
in Mt 1018, but upon the two great leaders, the head
of the primitive Church who by a Divine dispensa-
tion was led to engage in a mission to the Gentiles,
and the great Apostle of the heathen world who by
Divine guidance had to turn his back on his own
people and betake himself to the Gentiles. ‘ Peter
and Paul’ is the watchword, the shibboleth of the
Roman Church, as we find again in the First
Epistle of Clement.
It is especially in the speeches contained in the
second part of the book that the author reveals his
conception of Christianity. When St. Paul dis-
courses (Ac 9432) of ‘the faith in Christ Jesus,’ the
subjects of his address are given in ν. "5 as ‘right-
eousness, temperance, and judgment to come.’
This future and not distant judgment is also the
point that forms the climax of St. Paul’s address
at Athens (171): ‘He hath appointed a day in the
which he will judge the world in righteousness,’
26 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
and immediately thereafter, ‘by a man whom he
hath (thereto) ordained, having given him his
credentials before all men by having raised him
from the dead.’ This last is the essentially new
point in contradistinction from the Jewish preach-
ing in the Diaspora. That there is to be a judg-
ment of the world had, indeed, been already
declared, but that the Judge ‘appointed by God
over living and dead’ (10%) is already present in
heaven (331), has already been manifested on earth
(1° 10%), and accredited by God through an un-
precedented miracle—this is the cardinal and sig-
nificant message of the Apostles. Now, it 15
noteworthy how the author of the Acts gives
point and practical application to this generally
accepted idea. The resurrection of Jesus is the
main content of the Apostolic preaching, so much
so that in 1% the Apostles are roundly designated
‘witnesses of the resurrection.’ In the eyes of our
author it comes to this, that in the gospel of the
resurrection of Jesus is implied the doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead in general. What St.
Paul (1 Co 1512:19) seeks to prove to his readers, is
to our author self-evident: the one speciai case
implies the general. This is plainly declared in
Ac 45 ‘they proclaimed in Jesus the resurrection
from the dead.’ So also in 1718 ‘he preached
Jesus and the resurrection,’ and in v.®2 ‘the resur-
rection of the dead’ is the point in St. Paul’s
address on which the Athenians fix. Before the
Sanhedrin St. Paul declares: ‘Touching the hope
and resurrection of the dead 1 am called in ques-
tion’ (23°); to Felix he says: ‘I have the hope
that there shall be a resurrection both of the just
and of the unjust’ (24:5. The latter passage is
specially important because in it the relation of
Christianity to Judaism is defined to the effect
that there 1s really no essential difference between
them. St. Paul, like his accusers, serves, although
after the new ‘ Way,’ the God of the fathers (v.'°) ;
‘for the hope of Israel’ he bears his chain (28:9).
All Jews who believe in the resurrection ought
really to be Christians. ‘Why is it judged in-
credible with you if God doth raise the dead ?’
(26°). Hence also the Pharisees, who believe in
the resurrection of the dead, appear as the party
favourable to Christianity ; whereas the Sadducees,
who say that ‘there is no resurrection,’ are its
enemies (238). Resurrection, then, is the main
theme of the new message, hence the preaching of
the Apostles bears the designation ‘words of this
Life’ (5°). The Risen One is ‘the Prince of Life’
(3). By His resurrection and exaltation He is
proved to be the Saviour (σωτήρ, the term best
answering our author’s purpose, and most intel-
ligible to the Greeks of the time, 5*°f 13%); the
‘word’ is the ‘word of salvation’ (1375); and the
whole of the Acts of the Apostles might have this
motto prefixed: ‘In none other is there salvation,
and neither is there any other name under heaven,
that is given among men, wherein we must be
saved’ (4!*). This religion is proved to be the
superior of all earlier ones, superior alike to the
darkness of heathendom (2018) and to Judaism, in
this, that it tells of a Saviour who saves alive. The
method is described in 10® 13% 9618 as the forgive-
ness of sins, or, to use the designation adopted in
one of St. Paul’s addresses, ‘ justification ’ (13%).
But who now is the Judge and Saviour accredited
by the resurrection? It is very characteristic of
our author that in those passages where for the
most part it is himself that speaks, e.g. in the
speeches put into the mouth of St. Paul before
Agrippa or Felix or Festus (chs. 22. 23), we scarcely
hear of the earthly Jesus but of the heavenly Lord.
The appearance of the Exalted One near Damascus
is the great matter which St. Paul has to com-
municate to his countrymen and to the Jewish
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
king. It is the heavenly Lord that permeates the
life of His Church and His apostles, the Κύριος on
whom Christians believe. ‘This Divine name is
very often applied in the Acts to God, but not
infrequently also to Christ. Thus the Exalted
Christ, working miracles from heaven by His name
(9*4), accredited by the miracle of the resurrection,
and destined to come again with judgment and
salvation, occupies the central point of the faith of
our author.
But it would be a mistake to suppose that our
author had no interest in the earthly Jesus of
Nazareth. As the heavenly Christ says to Saul,
‘I am Jesus of Nazareth whom thou persecutest’
(228), so to the writer of the Acts ‘the Christ’ and
‘ Jesus’ constitute an inseparable unity. He inter-
changes freely such expressions as ‘ proclaimed
unto them the Christ’ (8°) and ‘ preached unto him
Jesus’ (v.*) ; ef. 5% ‘to preach Christ Jesus’ (RV
‘ Jesus [as] the Christ’), 97° ‘ proclaimed Jesus that
he is the Son of God,’ 18° ‘ testifying to the Jews
that Jesus was the Christ.” And as our author in
his Gospel narrative already calls Jesus ‘ Lord,’ it
is always of the Exalted One that he thinks even
when communicating what he knows of the earthly
life of Jesus. More than once he defines the con-
tents of the Apostolic preaching as ‘the things
concerning Jesus’ (1855) or ‘the things concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ’ (2851), and this concise
formula embraces far more than one might infer
from the meagre sketches of St. Paul’s address in
1374-39 or St. Peter’s in 10°73. We must keep in
mind that the first readers of the Acts, Theophilus
in particular, when this work came into their
hands, were already acquainted with the Third
Gospel, and would thus, by means of the full details
supplied in it, unconsciously clothe with meaning
the brief formulze in question. Still more varied
was the knowledge which owr author possessed of
the life of Jesus, for he was acquainted not only
with St. Mark’s Gospel, but with other writings
which he utilized merely for extracts; and how
manifold may have been the oral tradition current
at the same time, which he made use of in an
eclectic fashion ἢ The whole of this copious tradi-
tion we must think of as forming the background
of the Acts if we are to appreciate rightly its
picture of Christ.
A special charm of the Lukan writings arises
from the fact that the author, with all his culture
and Greek sympathies, has had the good taste to
retain in large measure the peculiar, un-Greek,
popular Palestinian character of his sources,
and that both in language and contents. Some
scholars, indeed, are of opinion that he himself
deliberately produced the colouring appropriate to
place and time, as in the case of an artificial
patina. But this view is untenable. The more
thoroughly the Third Gospel and the Acts are ex-
amined, the deeper becomes the conviction that the
author worked upon a very ancient tradition which
he has preserved in his own style. As in the early
narratives of his Gospel he preserves almost unim-
paired the colouring and tone of Jewish-Christian
piety without any admixture of Grieco-Gentile-
Christian elements, so also in the Acts, especially
in the first part of the book, he has succeeded in
presenting the original picture of the religious con-
ceptions and the piety of the earliest Christian
community in Jerusalem. We are far from _ be-
lieving that everything here related is ‘ historical ἢ
in the strict sense. For instance, it is in the
highest degree improbable that the actual speeches
of St. Peter have been preserved verbatim ; all we
assert is that these chapters are a true representa-
tion of the spirit of early Jewish Christianity.
Very specially is this the case with the Christology.
For such a doctrine of Christ as is represented by
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 27
the Petrine discourses was scarcely to be found in
the Church after the time of St. Paul and at the
time when the Fourth Gospel was written. After
the xenosis doctrine of St. Paul had been pro-
pounded, and then, as its counterpart, the Johannine
picture of Christ, in which also the earthly Jesus
wears the ‘form of God,’ had taken hold of men’s
minds, a Christology such as the first part of
the Acts exhibits could not have been devised.
But we are grateful to the author for having pre-
served to us a picture of that earliest mode of
thought. Let us examine its main features.
We may use as a collateral witness the words of
the disciples on the way to Emmaus (Lk 2435), for
it isa mere accident, so to speak, that this story
is found in the Gospel and not in the Acts: ‘Jesus
of Nazareth, which was a prophet (ἀνὴρ προφήτη»),
mighty in deed and word before God and all the
people.’ So also He is described by St. Peter :
‘Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto
you by mighty works and wonders and_ signs,
which God did by him in the midst of you’ (Ac
2”). The peculiarity of this last statement is that
the wonders and signs are not attributed to Jesus
Himself: God wrought them through Him; He
was simply God’s organ or instrument. The same
thing is expressed in another passage (10%), where
it is declared that in His going about and in His
deeds God was with Him. 1n both instances the
conception comes out clearly that Jesus was a man
chosen and specially favoured of God. There is
not a word in all these discourses of a Divine birth,
no word of a coming down from heaven or of a
‘Son of God’ in a physical or supernatural sense.
On the contrary, Jesus is called more than once
‘the Servant of God’ (31%: 26 4°7), This designation
suggests a prophet, and as a matter of fact Jesus is
directly characterized as a prophet when in 4532 the
words of Dt 18-15! are applied to Him. At the
same time He is no ordinary prophet, but the pro-
phet like unto Moses ; He is the second Moses pre-
dicted by Moses himself.
But it may be asked, Was Jesus then nothing
more than this to the earliest disciples, was He not
to them the Messiah? Inacertain sense—yes, and
in another sense—no, Certainly He had received
the kingly anointing (10°); but, as David was
anointed long before he received the kingdom, so
Jesus was from the time of His baptism a king,
indeed, but a secret one with an invisible crown.
The primitive Jewish-Christian Church was far
from saying: Jesus of Nazareth, as He journeyed
through the land teaching and healing, was the
Messiah ; no, He was then merely the One destined
for lordship. It was only at a later period that
He received the crown, namely at His resurrection
and exaltation. Here comes into view the saying
of St. Peter in Ac 250, which is a gem to the his-
torian of primitive Christianity: ‘This Jesus hath
God made both Lord and Christ,’ namely by exalt-
ing Him to His right hand (v.*) and thereby ful-
filling the words of Ps 110! ‘Sit thou at my right
hand.’ The exaltation of Jesus marks His ascen-
sion of the throne ; now He has become in reality
what since His baptism He was in claim and
anticipation—‘ the Anointed.’ Now for the first
time the name ‘ Lord’ is fully appropriate to Him.
This is the principal extant proof passage for the
earliest Christology. It reveals to us the concep-
tions of the primitive Church, which, as a matter
of fact, still underlie the teaching even of St. Paul.
For, in spite of his advanced speculations on the
subject οἱ Christ, in spite of his doctrine of pre-
existence and his cosmological Christology, the
Apostle holds fast in Ro 14 and Ph 99 to the notion
that Jesus became ‘Son of God in power’ through
His resurrection from the dead, and was invested
with the title ‘Lord’ at His exaltation. To the
same effect St. Paul in Ac 1388 applies the words of
Ps 27 (‘Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten
thee’) not to the birth nor to the baptism of
Jesus, but to the day of His resurrection and exalta-
tion. With this fundamental passage corresponds
another. When in Ac 3%, speaking of the future,
it is said ‘ that there may come the times of refresh-
ing from the presence of the Lord, and that he may
send the Christ who hath been appointed for you,
even Jesus,’ this assumes that Jesus has not yet
made His appearance as Messiah ; in that capacity
He belongs to the future ; there is not a word of
coming again or of a second sending. Such is the
earliest primitive Christian conception, and it is
this alone which is in harmony ἘΠΕ the preaching
and the self-estimate of Jesus when these are
rightly understood.
But what now are the contents and the signifi-
cance of the life-work of Jesus? Thoroughly in
harmony with important words of Jesus, Ac 1038
replies : ‘He went about doing good, and healing all
that were oppressed of the devil.’ Just as the Third
Gospel deli ste to represent the work of Jesus as a
contlict with the devil, the brief formula we have
quoted reproduces accurately the contents of His
life work. Along with this, indeed, should be
taken also 3°° ‘God sent him to bless you in turn-
ing away every one of you from your iniquities.’
He was ‘the Holy and Righteous One’ (34), or,
absolutely, ‘the Righteous One’ (7%). The latter
expression is chosen no doubt in order to emphasize
His innocence in His sufferings and death, but it is
certainly not contrary to the spirit of the Acts to
find in 1t the testimony that it was He that was
called to break the sway of sin in the world. Less
clear is Ac 10%, according to which God caused
pee to be preached by Jesus to the children
of Israel,’ a form of expression which recalls Eph
2!7, and in its abrupt conciseness no doubt reflects
the conceptions of the author more than those of
the early Church.
This brings us to the question, What view, judging
from the evidence of the Acts, did the early Church
take of the death of Christ? Repeatedly in the
addresses of St. Peter it is urged upon opponents
that this Jesus, the Holy and Righteous One, was
put to death by the Jews (2% 819 410. 268. 5388. 752
10° 1358), by the hands of wicked men (233), although
Pilate was prepared to acquit Him (315). In all
these instances, as was fitting in addresses meant
to lead the hearers to conviction and repentance,
the innocence of Jesus is emphasized as a point to
awaken conscience, not as an element in a doctrine
of the atoning death of Christ. Such an element
is entirely lacking in these chapters, for in the
passage from Is 53 about the Suffering Servant,
which Philip expounded to the Ethiopian eunuch,
it is precisely ie expressions about bearing our
sins that are wanting. The early theology of the
death of Christ confines itself entirely to the point
that this event was in no way contrary to God’s
saving purpose ; on the contrary, it had long been
foreseen (2% 318 458 13°’). Hence the copious Scrip-
ture proofs, which, however, deal more with the
resurrection than with the sufferings and death
(2258. B4f. 411. 551. Qs2f. 13°84),
The resurrection is not in these passages, as with
St. Paul, regarded as a clothing of the Risen One
with a glorified body, but as the revivification, or,
to put it better, the conservation of the very same
body of flesh which was laid in the grave. The
wrinciple that governs the conception is found in
De 1010 (quoted in Ac 257), ‘Thou wilt not leave my
soul to Sheol, neither wilt thou sutier thine holy
one to see corruption.’ For, if Christ did descend
to Hades, He was not given over to its power (931),
God ‘having loosed ‘‘the pangs of death,” because
it was not possible that he should be holden of it’
28 ADAM
ADAM
(v.4), ‘nor did his flesh see corruption’ (v.*!). This
is the essential point, that the same body which
was laid in the grave was that which rose again.
For this reason, as in St. Luke’s Gospel (24°°-*%),
such emphasis is laid upon the eating and drinking
-of the Risen One (Ac 10); hence also the forty
days’ intercourse with the disciples (1°). Jesus, in
short, actually returned again to earth in complete
corporeality ; hence the necessity, at the end of the
forty days, of yet another special miracle, that of
the Ascension (15). Like Moses or Elijah, He is
varried up by a cloud, as He still walks on earth and
still belongs to earth. This tradition says nothing
about the necessary change whereby this fleshly
body that rose from the grave was transformed
into the glorified heavenly body that appeared to
Saul of Tarsus in kinely splendour. We have here
before us the popular view of the Resurrection in
its crudest form. That an author whose ideas
otherwise are cast in such a Greek mould should
reproduce it, shows that the popular concepticns
:annot have been so strange to him as we should
have supposed. Conceptions which ovr intelligence
thinks it necessary to separate, and which a St.
Paul did separate, appear to have found a place in
the same mind side by side.
We owe a special debt of gratitude to the author
of the Acts for having drawn for usseveral pictures
illustrating the prominent part played in the early
Church by the Spirit and the Name of the exalted
Christ. The Spirit sent by the latter is the proof
of His exaltation and Messiahship (2%°°°), This is
the culminating point of St. Peter’s Pentecostal
address (214%6), whose order of thought forms a
very interesting study for the historian of primitive
Christianity. This proof is addressed primarily
to the house of Israel (2%). The Jews have not,
indeed, seen the Risen One (10%), but for that very
reason His exaltation is designed as a final means
of leading Israel to repentance (5*!), for the coming
of the era of salvation is bound up with this re-
pentance (315). Through this Spirit the exalted
Lord is ever present with His own; He imparts
power and success to the words of the Apostles (237
o 6°); and miracles are wrought by the power of
God (68). It is noteworthy, however, that it is only
rarely that the Spirit of God is introduced in this
connexion ; far more frequently it is the Name of
Christ that, like a present representative of the
Lord, works miracles (310 490), Specially instructive
are 998 where the pronouncing ot the Name effects
healing, and 1915 where the use of the Name is
resorted to even by unbelievers.
LITERATURE.—Johannes Weiss, Absicht u. literar. Charakter
der Apostelgeschichte ; Weizsicker, Apostolic Age; Pfleiderer,
Urchristentum ; McGifiert, Hist. of Christianity in the A postol.
Aye; Hort, Judaistic Christianity ; Chase, Credibility of Acts ;
Expositor, tv. iv. [1891] 178 fi. J. WEISS.
ADAM.—41. In Lk 3% the ancestry of Jesus is
traced up to Adam. From what souree the
Evangelist drew his genealogy it is impossible to
say. But when compared with that in the First
Gospel, it clearly shows the purpose with which
St. Luke wrote. As a Gentile, writing for a
Gentile, he took every opportunity of insisting
upon the universal power of the gospel. The
effects of the life and Person of Jesus are not
confined to the Jews; for Jesus is not, as in St.
Matthew’s Gospel, a descendant of Abraham only,
but of the man to whom all mankind trace their
origin. See art. GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHRIST.
3ut further, St. Luke closes his genealogy with
the significant words ‘the son of Adam, the son of
God’ (τοῦ "Addu, τοῦ Θεοῦ). Adam, and therefore
all mankind, had a Divine origin. The same
Evangelist who relates the fact of the virgin birth,
and records that Christ was, in His own proper
Person, vids Θεοῦ (155), claims that the first man,
and hence every human being, is vids Θεοῦ. Thus
the genealogy, which might at first sight appear
to be a useless addition to the Gospel narrative,
possesses a lasting spiritual value.
The truth placed by St. Luke in the forefront of his Gospel is
treated in its redemptive aspect by his master St. Paul, who in
four passages brings Adam and Christ into juxtaposition :
(a) 1 Co 1522, The solidarity of mankind in their physical
union with Adam involves universal death as a consequence of
Adam's sin. Similarly the solidarity of mankind in their
spiritual union with Christ involves universal life as a conse-
quence of Christ's perfect work.
(6) In Ro 512-21 this solidarity and its results are treated in
fuller detail. (i.) Vv.J=14. There is a parallelism between Adam
and Christ. Adam ‘is a type of him who was to come’ (v.14),
in the sense that his act affected all men. Adam committed a
παράπτωμα, a lapse, a false step—commonly termed the Fall.
By this lapse, sin was as ‘ a malignant force let loose among man-
kind’; and through sin came physical death. (St. Paul sees no
occasion for proof of the connexion between sin and physical
death ; he unhesitatingly bases his position on the narrative in
Genesis; see 217 33. 19.21), Were this all, the passage would
implicitly annul human responsibility. But St. Paul, without
attempting fully to reconcile them, places side by side the two
aspects of the truth—the hereditary transmission of guilt, and
moral responsibility : ‘and thus death made its way (διῆλθεν) to
every individual man, because all sinned (ἐφ᾽ & πάντε: ἥμαρτον)".
Controversy has raged hotly round this phrase, Augustine and
many other writers having understood the relative ὦ as mascu-
line, and as referring to Adam ; so Vuig. in quo. But there can
be no doubt that ἐφ᾽ ᾧ must be taken in its usual meaning
‘because.’ Adai’s fall involved all men in sin, and therefore
in death ; but this was because all men (in full exercise of their
free will) sinned. It would be out of place here to discuss the
attempts that have been made to combine these two factors in
the moral history of man (see Literature): strictly speaking,
they cannot fully and logically be combined ; but many of the
most fundamental truths of the Christian religion ean be
arrived at only by the balancing of complementary statements,
In vv.18. 14 a qualification is entered, which causes St. Paul to
ruin his construction, and omit the apodosis of which v.12 forms
the protasis. He feels obliged to explain that, sin being an
offence against law, those who lived between Adam and Moses
had no law, and thus did not transgress an explicit command as
Adam had done. But the fact that death reigned throughout
that period only shows that—not the guilt of individuals, but—
the transmitted effects of Adam’s sin were at work. And it is
this that makes him a type of the Messiah. (11.) Vv.1917, T’he
contrast is far greater than the similarity. The contrast
between Adam and Christ is great :—In quality (v.15). The
one representative man, Adam, committed a παράπτωμα; but
over-ayainst that must be placed the undeserved kindness
(xepis) of God, and the gift of righteousness arising from the
kindness of the other representative Man, Jesus Christ. In
quantity (v.16). ‘One act tainting the whole race with sin, and
a multitude of sins collected together in one only to be for-
given.’ In character and consequences (v.17). Adam’s fall
ushered ina reign of death ; Christ’s work ensures that all who
have received His kindness and His gift of righteousness shall
themselves reign in life. (iii.) Vv.1821. Summary of the argu-
ment, in which it is further shown that Law ‘came in as an
afterthought’ (ταρεισήλθεν), multiplying sin, but thereby only in-
creasing the abundance of God’s kindness.
(c) 1 Co 1544-47, The two foregoing passages from St. Paul’s
writings deal with the practical moral results of union with
Adam and Christ respectively. These verses (i.) go back behind
that, and show that there is a complete and radical difference
between the nature of each; (ii.) look forward, and show that
this difference has a vital bearing on the truth of man’s resur-
rection.
(i.) St. Paul maintains (vv.36-44a), by aseries of illustrations from
the natural world, the reasonableness of a resurrection from
death. In Nature ‘every seed has its own particular body ’—
‘all flesh is not the same flesh’—the terrestrial differs from the
celestial—there is a different glory of the sun, the moon, and
the stars. So also it may be rightly held that it is possible
for man to exist in two different states, one far higher than the
other. Not only so, but (vv.44>-4°) there actually exists such
an analogous distinction between man and man, as Scripture
shows. The thought in v.4° is arrived at by an adaptation of
Gn 27: ὦ καὶ ἐγένετο ὁ ἄνθρωπος εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν. These words
relate only that after being lifeless clay, man was by God’s
breath transformed into a living being. But St. Paul reads into
the statement the doctrinal significance that the body of the
first representative man became the vehicle of a ‘ psychical’
nature, while the body of the Second is the organ of a ‘ pneu-
matical’ nature. St. Paul’s trichotomy of man may be repre-
sented thus:
TINEYMA
Everything in man that is not rvejw« may be called ‘ psychical’
in so far as it is considered as ‘intellect,’ and ‘carnal’ in so far
as it is thought of as the seat of the animal passions ; both the
adjectives Ψψυχικός and σαρκικός thus mean ‘non-spiritual.’ The
ADAM
ADULTERY 29
second half of St. Paul’s statement—‘ the last Adam became a
life-giving spirit’—finds no exact parallel in the OT, but seems
to be based on a reminiscence of Messianic passages which speak
of the work of the Divine Spirit, e.g. Is 111-2, J] 228-82,
(ii.) But as the Ψυχὴ ζῶσα came first and the πνεύμω ζωστοιοῦν
last, so it is with the development of mankind; the spiritual
must follow the psychical (v.46). As the first man was formed
from the clay, and had a nature in conformity with his origin,
while the second Man has His origin ‘from heaven’ (v.47), so
among mankind there are those whose nature remains low and
mean, tied to the clods of earth, and there are those whose
nature has become heavenly (v.45). But this implies more (v.49).
In his present state man is an exact counterpart, he visibly
reproduces the lineaments and character, of the first man,
because of his corporate union with him (ἐφορέσαικεν τον εἰκόνα
τοῦ χοϊκοῦ). But the time is coming when we shall become the
exact counterpart or image of the second Man (cf. Gn 226f-),
because of our spiritual union with Him (¢gopicousy καὶ τὴν εἰκένα
τοῦ ἐπουρανίου). The above follows the text of Bacg 17 aeth.
arm. [syr. is indeterminate] ; and Theodoret dis-
tinctly says τὸ γὰρ φορέσομεεν προρρητικῶς οὐ παραινετικῶς εἴρηξεν.
The mass of authorities read φορέσωμκεν, ‘from a desire to turn
what is really a physical assertion into an ethical exhortation’
(Alf.); so Chrys., τοῦτ᾽ ἐστιν, ἄριστα πράξωμεν... συμβουλευτικῶς
εἰσάγει. τὸν λόγον. But it is difficult to conceive how St. Paul,
who has from v.?° been leading up to the thought of the resur-
rection, could at the critical moment throw his argument to the
winds, and content himself with saying, ‘according as we have
been earthly in our thoughts, let us strive to be heavenly.’
It has been suggested that St. Paul adopted the designation
of Christ as ‘the last Adam’ and ‘the second Adam’ from
Rabbinic theology. But such a comparison between Adam
and the Messiah was unknown to the earlier Jewish teachers.
Passages adduced to support it belong to the Middle Ages, and
are influenced by the Kabbala. See G. F. Moore, JBL xvi.
(1897), 158-161; Dalman, The Words of Jesus, Eng. tr. 248 f.,
251 f.
(4) Ph 28, St. Paul speaks of ‘Christ Jesus, who being [in His
eternal and inherent nature, ὑπάρχων) in the form of God,
deemed it not a thing to be snatched at (ἁ ρταγμόν) to be on an
equality with God.’ There is here an implied contrast with
Adam, who took fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and
evil, which God said had made him ‘as one of us’ (Gn 322).
2. In Mt 19* || Mk 10%® reference is made by
Jesus to the account of Adam and Eve in Gn 1
‘male and female created he them’ (ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ
ἐποίησεν αὐτούς), Pharisees came and asked Him
whether divorce was allowable [‘for any cause,’
Mt.].. Our Lord’s answer is intended to show
that the provision made for divorce in the Mosaic
law (Dt 24!) was only a concession to the hardness
of men’s hearts. The truer and deeper view of
marriage which Christians should adopt must be
based on a nobler morality,—on a morality which
takes its stand on the primeval nature of man and
woman as God made them. ‘To suit (πρός) your
hardness of heart he wrote for you this command-
ment. But from the beginning of the creation
*‘he made them male and female.”’ And with
this quotation is coupled one from Gn 953 (see also
Eph 5*!), ‘For this cause shall a man leave his
father and mother [and shall cleave to his wife
(Mt.)1, and they twain shall become one flesh.’ The
same result is reached in Mt., but with a trans-
pe uton of the two parts of the argument. See
Wright’s Synopsis, in loc. Thus Jesus bases the
absolute indissolubility of the marriage tie on the
union of man and woman from the first. In Mt
19°5* this pronouncement is practically annulled
by the admission of the words ‘ except for fornica-
tion’ (μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ, and παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας).
See Wright, in loc., who contends that ‘the
Church (of Alexandria?) introduced these two
clauses into the Gospel in accordance with the
permission to legislate which our Lord gave to all
Churches (Mt 1818). See art. MARRIAGE.
3. In Jn 8 ἀνθρωποκτόνος may refer to the intro-
duction of death into the world by the fall of
Adam. But see art. ABEL.
4. The parallel drawn by St. Paul between Adam and Christ
may have been the origin of the tradition that Adam was
buried under Golgotha. Jer. (Com. in Mat. § iv. 27) rejects it,
saying that it arose from the discovery of an ancient human
skull at that spot. He also declines to see any reference to it
in Eph 514, But in Ep. 46 he says, ‘The place where our Lord
was crucified is called Calvary, because the skull of the primitive
man was buried there. So it came to pass that the second
Adam, that is the blood of Christ (a play on O78 and 077), as it
dropped from the Cross, washed away the sins of the buried
protoplast,* the first Adam, and thus the words of the apostle
were fulfilled,—quoting Eph 514. Epiphanius (contra Her.
xlvi. 5) goes farther, stating that Christ’s blood dropped upon
Adam’s skull, and restored him to life. The tradition is men-
tioned also by Basil, Ambrose, and others.
LITERATURE.—Besides the works cited in the article, the fol-
lowing may be consulted on the relation between Adam and
Christ : Sanday-Headlam, Com. on Epistle to Romans (pp. 130-
153): Bethune-Baker, An Introduction to the Early History of
Christian Doctrine, ch. xvii.; Tennant, The Sources of the
Doctrine of the Fail and Original Sin; Sadler, The Second
Adam and the New Birth; Thackeray, The Relation of St.
Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought, ch. ii.
A. H. M‘NEILE.
ADDI.—An ancestor of Jesus Christ, Lk 3”.
‘ADULTERY (woryeia).—This word is used to de-
note the sexual intercourse of a married man or
woman with any other than the person to whom
he or she is bound by the marriage tie. It has
sometimes been maintained that μοιχεία is confined
in its use to the misdemeanours, in this respect, of
the woman. That it has, however, a wider sense
is evidenced by the reference which Jesus makes to
the inward lust of any man after any woman (ὅτι
πᾶς ὁ βλέπων γυναῖκα πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτῆς 7d
ἐμοίχευσεν αὐτήν. x.7.\., Mt δ:8). The word πορνεία is
also employed to describe this sin, though it has
been contended that it refers solely to pre-nuptial
immorality ; and again we havea reference made by
Jesus in His teaching to this sin, which disposes
of that contention, and which establishes the fact
that the married woman who commits herself in
this way was said to be guilty of πορνεία (ef. ma-
ρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας, Mt 5**, and (εἰ) μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ,
Mt 199). In both passages just quoted Jesus makes
the woman’s guilt the ground of His teaching on
divorce. With these examples we may compare
the words of Am 7!7(LXX) . . . ἡ γυνή σου ἐν τῇ
πόλει πορνεύσει, k.T.A., Where the form of the expres-
sion incidentally but conclusively carries out our
argument.
A very favourite figure of speech, by which the
intimate relations of Jehovah and Israel were de-
noted by OT writers, was that of marriage (see, 6.0.»
Is 54° 62°, Jer 3'4, Hos 2% 19. 30). and accordingly in
the prophetic books the defection of the Jewish
people from the altars of Jehovah, and their repeated
reversions to the worship and practices ot their
heathen neighbours, were stigmatized as ‘ adultery’
(nviph or nviiphim, Jer 18:57, Ezk 23"; ef. Is 573,
Jer 3%, Ezk 23°7). This transference of an idea
from the daily social life to the life spiritual finds
its place in the teaching of Jesus, whose example
in this respect is followed by writers of a subse-
quent period (cf. Ja 4. The generation in which
He lived was denounced by Him, for its continued
rejection of His claims, as *wicked and adulterons’
(γενεὰ πονηρὰ καὶ μοιχαλίς, Mt 12% 164; cf. also Mk
85). It is, of course, possible that Jesus by these
words had in view the social evils of His day, as
well as the general lack of spiritual religion.
‘That nation and generation might be called
adulterous literally ; tor what else, I beseech you,
was their irreligious polygamy than continual
adultery? And what else was their ordinary prac-
tice of divorcing their wives, no less irreligious,
according to every man’s foolish or naughty will ?’
(Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. et Talmud. ad Mt 1239),
It is not necessary, however, in the interpretation
of His teaching in this and similar places to insist
on such a view of His words. The entire body of
the recorded teaching of Jesus betrays the most
intimate acquaintance with the literature and
ethical tendencies of the OT.
That exceedingly lax and immoral views of this
sin were held generally by the generation in which
Jesus lived, becomes evident not only from His
casual references to the subject, but also from His
SOE Warner
cE
30 ADULTERY
ADULTERY
positive teaching in answer to hostile questions
addressed to Him about adultery and the kindred
subject of divorce. We are also confronted with
the same phenomenon in the writings, e¢.g., of
Josephus (ef. Ant. IV. viii. 23; Vita, § 76), Sir 7%
25°6 429, and in the Talmud. The result of the
teaching of Hillel was of the worst description,
reducing as it did the crime of adultery to the level
of an ordinary or minor fault. This Rabbi actually
went the length, in his interpretation of the
Deuteronomic law of divorce as stated in Dt 94},
of laying down the rule that a man might put
away his wife ‘if she cook her husband’s food
badly by salting or roasting it too much’ (see
Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. e¢ Talmud. ad Mt 531), and
Nt. ‘Akiba, improving on this instruction, inter-
preted the words ‘if she find no favour in his eyes’
as giving permission to a man to divorce his wife
“if he sees a woman fairer than her.’
On the other hand, R. Shammai refused to take
a view so loose and immoral, and in his exposi-
tion of the Deuteronomie permission confined the
legality of divorce to cases of proved unchastity
on the part of the wife. Other celebrated Rabbins
took a similarly rigid view of this question, while
all, of every school, were agreed that the crime of
adultery demanded divorce as its punishment.
The form of the question addressed to Jesus by
the Pharisees (κατὰ πᾶσαν αἰτίαν) in Mt 19° shows
the nature of the controversy between the rival
Rabbinical schools, and also lets us see how far
the pernicious teaching of the school of Hillel had
permeated the social fabric. Men’s ideas about
this sin were also debased by the polygamous
habits then prevalent. Of Herod the Great we read
that he had ten wives; which, according to Jose-
phus, was not only permissible, but had actually be-
come a common occurrence amongst the Jews, ‘it
being of old permitted to the Jews to marry many
wives’ (BJ 1. xxiv. 2). In another place the same
historian remarks, in connexion with the story of
the Herodian family, that ‘it is the ancient prac-
tice among us to have many wives at the same
time’ (Ant. XVII. i. 2). There seems to have been
no hard and fast rule limiting the number of wives
permissible to each man, but their teachers advised
them to restrict themselves to four or five (cf.
Schirer, HJP I. i. 455, note 125).
From these observations we see what an im-
portant bearing the teaching of Jesus had on the
current conceptions of sexual morality obtaining
amonest His countrymen. It is quite in harmony
with His method of instruction to reduce the overt
commission of a sin to the element out of which it
originates and takes its shape. ‘A corrupt tree
cannot bring forth good fruit’ (Mt 7!"*, ef. 12° and
Lk 6**), and the heart corrupted by evil desire
fructifies, just as surely, by an inexorable law of
nature. ‘There exists within the man whose inner
life is thus tainted not merely latent or germinal
sin, such as may or may not yet issue in deeds of
wrong. The lustful eye gazing with sinful longing
is the consummation, —the fruit of the corrupt tree,
—and so far as the man’s will is concerned, the
sinful act is completed (Mt 58). The note of stern-
ness which characterizes this teaching is not alto-
gether original, as will be seen if we refer to such
commands as are found, eé.g., in Ex 2017, Pr 6”, Sir
98 ete., and to such interpretative sayings in the
Talmud as forbade the gazing upon ‘a woman’s
heel’ or even upon her ‘little finger’ (cf. Lightfoot,
Hor. Heb. et Talmud. ad Mt 5%). The ethical
foundation, however, upon which Jesus based His
doctrine strikes the reader as being the deepest
and the firmest of any that had as yet been re-
vealed on the subject ; and this must have seemed
to His hearers to be not the least remarkable of
those luminous addresses by which He contra-
dicted the laboriously minute guidance of their
moral and religious guides. We are not concerned
here to inquire whether Jesus put no difference
between the guilt of the man who, though he has
lustful desires, abstains from carrying them into
practice, and that of the man who completes them
by the sinful act. Common sense forbids us to
suppose that Jesus put out of sight the social
aspects of the question when He discussed it.
What is of importance is to note the lofty tone
assumed by Him when engaged in inculeating the
absolute necessity of sexual purity. Nor is it pos-
sible to infer that Jesus confined His remarks to
the case of those who were married. The general
terms into which He casts His instruction (πᾶς ὁ
βλέπων) forbids us to assume that γυναῖκα and
ἐμοίχευσεν are to be limited to the post-nuptial
sin with a married woman. It gives a much more
fitting as well as a truer meaning to Jesus’ words
if we think of Him as giving directions for the
guidance of the entire social and ethical life to all
members of society whether married or otherwise.
According to the laws of the ancients, those
guilty of adultery were to be put to death, whether
by burning (Gn 38%) or by stoning (Jn 8°, ef. Dt
22°38.) Lv 2010, Ezk 18"). This punishment was
not, however, universally prescribed; for where
the woman was a slave, and consequently not the
owner of her own person, the man was exonerated
by presenting a guilt-offering (Lv 19°). It is
doubtful, indeed, if ever capital punishment was
insisted on. Lightfoot, for example, says: ‘I do
not remember that I have anywhere in the Jewish
pandect read any example of a wife punished with
death for adultery’ (Hor@ Heb. et Talmud. ad
Mt 198). This statement is borne out by such
incidental references as we have in Mt 119, where
Joseph receives the praise of his contemporaries
(δίκαιος ὦν) for his merciful intention; and if the
story of Hosea’s wife is to be taken literally, we
have an OT example of mercy towards the guilty
being recommended, and even of divorce not being
suggested as a punishment. Jesus Himself also
leaned to the side of mercy ; and nowhere does the
tenderness of His solicitude for the guilty sinner
appear so deep as in the traditional, yet doubtless
genuine, narrative incorporated in the Fourth
Gospel (Jn 755-85). For a discussion of the ‘ peri-
cope adulterw’ see Blass, Hv. sec. Lucam, Pref. p.
xlvii, and his Philology of the Gospels, pp. 155-163.
A closer examination than we have as yet
attempted in this place, of the words and teaching
of Jesus Christ will reveal some startling results,
and furnish obvious reasons to explain the difti-
culties which have been always felt on the re-
lations of adultery, divorce, and remarriage, by
Christian thinkers and legislators. A compara-
tive examination of the passages in the Synoptic
writers (Mt 5% 199, Mk 10%, Lk 1018) discloses a
peculiar addition to the words and teaching in the
first of these places. According to Mt 5%, Jesus
asserts that the wife who is wrongfully divorced
is involved compulsorily in the guilt of her hus-
band. He is not only an adulterer himself (Lk
1018), but ‘he causes her to be an adulteress,’ or
rather ‘he makes her to commit adultery’ (ποιεῖ
αὐτὴν μοιχευθῆναι). ‘The interpretation which would
explain these words as if they meant that the
divorced wife is placed in such a position that she
probably will commit adultery by marrying another
man, is manifestly unsatisfactory. ‘The statement
is unqualified even if we are absolutely convinced
of the genuineness of the succeeding words, ‘ καὶ ὃς
... moxara.’ [They are omitted by D1], see WH,
New Test. in Greek). Itisas if Jesus said: ‘The
wife who is divorced is, in virtue of her false posi-
tion, an adulteress though she be innocent, and
the man who marries her while she occupies that
ADULTERY
ADULTERY 31
sition becomes a willing partner in her guilt.’
tis not too much to say that, in this place, we
have a glimpse of the profound depth which Jesus
was accustomed to sound in His ethical teaching.
Marriage is a Divine institution, and has its roots
in the eternal order of things (cf. Mt 194°). It
results in a mystical union so close that the married
pair are no longer two; they have become ‘one
flesh.’ With this we may compare the teaching
which St. Paul embodies in a few luminous words
based on his Christological doctrine (Eph δ᾽ 5),
especially vv.* and *), and of which he says ‘ this
mystery is great.’
We have thus a clue to the meaning of the diffi-
cult expression ποιεῖ αὐτὴν μοιχευθῆναι. Any mode
of conduct or action which tends to mar or set at
nought the mysterious relationship of marriage is
of the essence of adultery. Perhaps we shall not
be considered to be importing more meaning into
words than they were originally intended to con-
vey, if we press the Markan addition ἐπὶ αὐτήν into
our service here. Jesus, according to St. Mark,
seems to teach His hearers that the husband in
wrongfully divorcing his wife is guilty of the
ageravated sin of dragging her into the slough
where he is himself already wallowing. On him
fails the woe pronounced in another connexion by
Jesus (Mt 18% 7) ; for he compels his wife to occupy
a position which is a living contradiction of the
Divine law. A course of action tending to the
dissolution of that which in the Divine intention
is indissoluble, Jesus places in the category of
adulterous acts. He mentions nothing as to His
view of the case of the remarriage of a woman
justifiably divorced, but to the present writer He
appears plainly to assert that the man who marries
an innocent divorced woman is guilty of adultery.
In our critical examination of these passages we are confronted
with a still greater and no less remarkable variety. St. Matthew
differs from the other two Synoptists by giving a place in Jesus’
teaching to an implied ground for legitimate divorce. He
alone includes the ec puve Clauses σαρεκτὸς λόγον πορνείας (592)
and μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ (199). It is this variety in the records of
Jesus’ words which has introduced so much difficulty, doctrinal
and legislative, into the questions of divorce and the remarriage
of divorced persons. We are not, of course, without that form
of conjectural criticism which would delete these clauses as
mere glosses or unsuitable interpolations (see Bacon, 7'he Ser-
mon on the Mount, ad loc.). In the absence, however, of
external or textual evidence we are not entitled to invent
textual emendations in the interests of a preconceived theory
(cf. Wright, Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek, p. 98f.). It is
but fair to add that the Codex Vaticanus (B) and some less im-
portant authorities manifest a strong desire to make Mt 199
conform literally to Mt 582, and thereby create some uncertainty
as to the textual purity of these passages. The evidential value,
however, of these variations is too slight to be of any avail
against the unanimity of all our other witnesses; they are
transparent and later attempts at assimilation or harmony.
The araumentum e silentio is in this case too strong to admit
the validity of conjecture. A forcible statement of the other
side of the case may be found in the art. ‘Sermon on the
Mount’ (Votaw) in the Extra Vol. of Hastings’ DB p. 27.
At all periods of the history of Christian teach-
ing, differences of opinion have existed within the
Church as to the practical application of Jesus’
words concerning adultery, divorce, and remar-
riage. These differences have been stereotyped in
the Eastern and Western branches of the Catholic
Church. The former takes the more lenient view,
and permits the remarriage of the innocent
divorcé(e), while the latter has always maintained
the more stringent and (shall we say?) the more
strictly literal conclusion from Jesus’ words, that
inequality of treatment is not to be tolerated, in-
terpreting the conclusion by refusing the right of
remarriage to either during the life of the other.
On the other hand, the general consensus of
theological opinion amongst English - speaking
divines since the Reformation has leaned towards
the view held by the Eastern Church, and the
resolutions of the bishops in the Pan-Anglican
Conference of 1888 on this subject were but the !
formal expressions of a traditional mode of inter-
pretation. When we turn from the words of Jesus
to see what were the ideas of those who taught in
His name during the ages immediately subsequent,
we have St. Paul’s teaching on, and references to,
the question of divorce. In one place he treats
marriage as indissoluble, and he has no hesitation
in saying that the woman who marries another
man during the lifetime of her husband is guilty
of adultery (Ro 71:3). On the other hand, we must
not forget that the Apostle in this place is dealing
with the Jewish law and with Jews who did not
admit the absolute indissolubility of the marriage
tie. The fact that he has made no reference to
this Jewish law of divorce forbids us drawing any
certain conclusion as to the length St. Paul was
willing to go in stating a universal principle which
would guide the legislative activity of the Chris-
tian Church. In another place he speaks of separa-
tion as the possible outcome of an unhappy or
unequal marriage, and gives permission, if not
encouragement, to that contingent result (χωρι-
ζέσθω). In this he goes farther than Jesus, so far
as we have His teaching recorded for us, went.
According to Jesus, adultery is the only crime of
sufficient enormity to warrant divorce ; according
to St. Paul, the law of marriage does not govern
the deserted wife or husband (οὐ δεδούλωται ὁ ἀδελφὸς
ἢ ἡ ἀδελφὴ ἐν Tots τοιούτοις, 1 Co 7:5 [ef. Newman
Smyth, Christian Ethics*, p. 419 f. and note)).
The Shepherd of Hermas (Mand. iv. 1. 6) lays
down the rule that adultery demands separation
or divorce (ἀπολυσάτω αὐτήν), because by continuing
to live with his wife after she has been convicted
of guilt, the husband becomes ‘an accomplice in
her adultery.’ On the other hand, he is equally
insistent that the man thus wronged must not
marry another, lest he cut his guilty partner off
from the hope of repentance, and lest he involve
himself likewise in the sin of adultery (ἐὰν δὲ
ἀπολύσας THY γυναῖκα ἑτέραν γαμήσῃ, καὶ αὐτὸς
μοιχᾶται).
Amongst the number of those who are debarred
from inheriting the kingdom of God, St. Paul men-
tions fornicators and adulterers (πόρνοι καὶ μοιχοί,
1 Co 6°; cf. Eph 5°, 1 Ti 17°, He 13, Rev 218 22'*).
The universal conclusion is that this sin creates
a breach of the marriage relation so grave and far-
reaching that it makes divorce the only legitimate
sequel—divorce a mensd et thoro. The question,
however, remains whether the Christian Church
has the right to go farther and say that, as the
result of an adulterous act, the aggrieved party
has a just claim to divorce a vinculo; has a right,
that is to say, to be placed in a position as if the
marriage had never taken place. This will, no
doubt, be answered differently by different minds,
and the difficulty is not decreased by merely
appealing to the authority of Jesus. Different
answers are given to the more fundamental ques-
tions, Did Jesus intend to oeeupy the position of
legislator when He spoke of adultery and divorce?
or was He simply enunciating a general principle,
leaving future generations to deal with social con-
ditions as they arose? The present writer has no
hesitation in saying that his own opinion leans
strongly to the side of those who believe that
Jesus affirmed solemnly the indissolubility of the
marriage tie, and that He meant His followers to
understand that the remarriage of either party
during the life of the other constitutes adultery.
At the same time he is not unaware of the fact
that there is a strong body of sober modern
thought which tends towards a relaxation of this
view in favour of the innocent (see Gore, The
Sermon on the Mount, p. 73).
If Jesus in Mt 5%? is making a categorical
statement of universal application, then the
ADVENT
32
opinion, given by the present writer as his own,
can scarcely be disputed ; but if He is interpreted
as dealing with the foundations rather than
making structural alterations in the ethical beliefs
of His countrymen, we must conclude that He
leaves His followers to deal with the question as it
arises. In the latter case it is, of course, com-
petent for the Church in each age to treat the
question de novo. The conditions of society alter,
and what constitutes danger to the social welfare
at one time, may have comparatively little peril
for the people of another period. At the same
time it must not be forgotten that the tendency of
human legislation has been and is likely to be, for
some time to come at least, towards the loosening
of the marriage bond, and the minimizing of the
seriousness of that guilt by which men uproot the
foundations of their social and domestic life.
LITERATURE.—Newman Smyth’s Christian Ethics 3 contains a
very fair and cautious discussion of this whole question, and
along with that work it will be found useful to study the more
abstract volume of Bampton Lectures on the same subject
(1895) by T. B. Strong; cf. G. B. Stevens’ The Theology of the
NT. Gore’s The Sermon on the Mount may be read along with
Bacon’s volume of the same title, and Votaw’s article ‘Sermon
on the Mount’ in the Extra Volume of Hastings’ DB. In the
latter work (vols. i. and iii.) are also to be found useful refer-
ences under artt. ‘Crimes,’ ‘ Marriage.’ A very suggestive art.,
‘The Teaching of Christ about Divorce,’ by the Rev. the Hon.
E. Lyttelton, will be found in the Journal of Theol. Studies for
July 1904. Cf. also H. M. Luckock’s History of Marriage (1894),
and O. D. Watkins’ Holy Matrimony (1895).
J. R. WILLIS.
ADVENT.—In its primary application the term
is used to denote the first visible coming of Jesus
into the world. His coming again at an after
period is distinguished as the Second, or the Final,
Coming (see COMING AGAIN and PAROUSIA).
The term is also employed to designate one of the ecclesias-
tical seasons,—that immediately preceding the Festival of the
Nativity,—during which, in certain sections of the Church, the
thoughts of believers are turned to the first appearance of their
Lord in the flesh. This season includes four Sundays, com-
mencing on the one nearest St. Andrew’s Day (Nov. 30) and last-
ing till Christmas Eve. With Advent the appointed order of
Church services is renewed, and the ecclesiastical year begins.
Dealing here specially with the primary his-
torical application, the first coming of Jesus pos-
sesses a unique significance as marking the
entrance into the world of a moral force altogether
unparalleled, a momentous turning-point in the
religious progress of mankind. As the Son of God
(Mt 10%, Jn 310. 17), revealing and representing God
in His own person (Jn 5*° 14% 1°), whose mission it
was to redeem men from sin (Mt 18", Lk 4% 17?!),
Jesus was to prove Himself in the truest sense the
Messiah whom the Jewish people had long been
expecting,—‘a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord’
(Lk 2"),
1. The foreshadowing Promise.—The expectation
entertained by the Jews had its roots in a promise
enshrined in their earliest literature and dating
from the dawn of history, that a signal deliverance
from sin should be brought to the human race,—
the promise contained in the sentence pronounced
on the tempter, that the seed of the woman should
bruise his head (Gn 3). This brighter outlook
for fallen humanity was confirmed by the assur-
ance given to Abraham that in the line of his
descendants the original promise was destined to
be fulfilled (Gn 12?:%),—an assurance which was
further strengthened when, under Moses, Israel
was formed into a nation and entered at Sinai into
covenant with Jehovah as His chosen people (Ex
20-24). It was not, however, till David’s prosperous
reign, with its recognition of ruling power held in
the name of Jehovah, had passed, and when the
idea of the theocratic kingship had been deeply
implanted in the national consciousness, that the | Bom: ἢ
| line is once more revived.
conception of the blessing to be looked for took
definite shape. Then, as successive rulers failed
ADVENT
and the nation’s fortunes became embarrassed, the
splendours of David’s time, glorified by the halo
which memory and distance cast around them,
were projected into the future, forming a picture
full of allurement and charm. It fired the imagi-
nation of the prophets amid the troubles of the
later monarchy.
The promise, as thus transformed, was that of a
king, or line of kings, sprung from David’s house,
who, endowed with transcendent gifts, and acting
by special authority as the Anointed of the Lord,
should reign in righteousness, introduce an era of
Divine salvation for Israel, and draw all other
nations round them in loyalty to Jehovah’s law
(Is 2? 115° 271, Mie 41-4). This was the blossoming
out of the Messianic idea.
During the period of the Exile, with the fall of
the monarchy and the collapse of the expectations
based upon it, the figure of the victorious and
righteous king was thrown into the background ;
yet the prospect of a future glorious manifestation
of Divine mercy, rescuing the people from their
iniquities and miseries, kept its hold on suscep-
tible minds (Is 55° 60"8). It was in this period that
the distinctively spiritual character of the coming
deliverance emerged into prominence. As deline-
ated in Ezekiel and the Second Isaiah, it was to
consist in an inward regeneration, wrought by
penitence and the impartation of a new spirit and
a new heart (Is 65® 7, Ezk 111% 2° 3675-8"). In those
prophecies of the Exile, Jehovah Himself is set
forth as the true and ever-living King of Israel;
and collective Israel, the nation regarded poetic-
ally as an individual, is conceived as the Anointed
Servant of Jehovah, who, amid manifold -afilic-
tions, is to bear witness for Jehovah, and be the
medium of accomplishing His saving purpose for
mankind. On the return from the Exile the hope
of salvation through a Davidie kingship revived,
as is evident from the prophetic utterances of
Haggai (2? 39) and Zechariah (3° 613); but in Mala-
chi’s day it had again disappeared.
With the Maccabeean struggle against Antiochus
Epiphanes (B.C. 167-135) the Messianic idea entered
on a fresh course of development. In the Book of
Daniel, which dates presumably from that time,
we find supernatural elements more freely intro-
duced. The writer in vision beholds an ancient
of days, seated on his throne to judge the great
world-kingdoms and their rulers. Before him
appears, coming with the clouds of heaven, ‘one
like unto a son of man,’ and to him is given ever-
lasting dominion and a kingdom which shall not
be destroyed (7-14). This dominion is passed over
to ‘the saints of the Most High,’ to be theirs for
ever and ever (718: 27), There is thus a picture of
the Messianic future in which the triumph and
rule of the godly over the nations are the dis-
tinguishing features.
We look in vain in the books of the Apocrypha for any ex-
pansion of these ideas. Their allusions to the Messianic hope
are somewhat meagre, and do not expressly refer to the appear-
ance of a personal Messiah. It isin the Apocalyptic literature,
which sprang up in imitation of the Book of Daniel, that we
find the conceptions which gave peculiar shape and colour to
the Messianic expectations entertained in later times. We see
there, amid the stress of national misfortunes, the predictions
of the prophets interpreted and expanded in such a way as to
furnish elaborately drawn out schemes of future glory. The
coming of the God-sent king is depicted (Sib. Orae. iii. 652 ff.),
the supernatural Son of Man, who was hidden with God before
the world was created, and who, clothed with Divine attributes,
will suddenly appear along with the Head of Days to execute
judgment on men and angels (Similitudes of Enoch 461.2 482. 3),
The dispersed of Israel will be restored, and the Gentiles drawn
into submission (Enoch 9039); sin and wrong will be banished
(Simil. 492); the faithful dead will be raised to life again, and
the righteous will dwell in everlasting joy (Enoch 511 9087),
In the Psalter of Solomon, written under the pressure of the
Roman domination (B.c. 70-40), the idea of a king of the Davidic
The Messiah is regarded as ‘the Son
of David, ‘the Anointed of the Lord,’ free from sin and
endowed with miraculous powers, who will conquer, not by
ADVENT
ADVENT 33
force of arms, but will smite the earth by the rod of His mouth
(1746), and bring to an end all unrighteousness (1736), ς
In those Apocalyptic writings peculiar prominence is given to
the spiritual content of the Messianic hope. Notwithstanding
the supernatural elements they so largely introduce, they throw
into strong relief the higher religious conceptions which the
best of the prophets had insisted on as essentially bound up
with the great period of blessing expected ; while the scope of
the ancient promise is widened out beyond national and tem-
poral limitations to embrace the world and the life to come.
Meanwhile the scribes were at work, hardening
the Messianic idea into scholastic form, and re-
ducing the poetic language and bold imagery of
the prophets to dogmatic statements and literal
details, with the result, on the whole, of a restora-
tion of the theocratic idea that God was to vindi-
eate His authority as the true Sovereign of the
nation, and to send His vicegerent in the line of
David to establish His law and introduce the rule
of righteousness under His anointed King.
Such was the form which the long-cherished hope
had assumed when Jesus appeared. It was largely
mixed up with expectations of political deliver-
ance, yet the thoughts of many earnest spirits
were centred mainly on the prospect of a spiritual
emancipation for Israel. He came to meet the
great hope by fulfilling in their ideal and spiritual
significance the prophecies that had kindled and
kept it alive. Leaving aside the merely earthly,
time-coloured features that bulked so largely in
the popular imagination, He entered the world to
offer Himself as the true representative of God,
in and through whom all that was eternal and
most precious in the Messianic idea was destined
to be realized. See art. MESSIAH.
2. The state of Religion at the date of Christ’s
Advent.—In many respects the way had been pre-
pared for the appearance of Jesus and the spread
of His influence as Messiah and Saviour. ‘There
were national, political, social, and other con-
ditions existing in the world at the time, which
rendered His coming and work singularly oppor-
tune (see FULNESS OF TIME); but here we are
specially concerned with the prevailing aspects of
religious life in the immediate scene in which He
appeared. Undoubtedly, among the Jewish people
at that period religion was a dominating interest,
and was based on principles far higher than any
that obtained in other nations. Yet its quality
was vitiated by certain serious defects. There
was—
(1) Its partisanship. Scribes and Pharisees on
the one hand, and Sadducees on the other, stood
in mutual antagonism, striving for ascendency as
leaders of national religious feeling,—the scribes
and Pharisees combining to enforce the mass of
stringent precepts which the former had elaborated
to supplement the original written word ; the Sad-
ducees entirely rejecting those precepts, and con-
tending that the Law as written was suflicient,
and that the observance of the temple ordinances,
its worship and sacrifices, was the central element
in religion. The controversies that arose over those
points of difference, and over the doctrine of the
resurrection, created a fierce party spirit, bitter
and bigoted on the one side, haughty and con-
temptuous on the other, while the smaller sect of
the Essenes, with their extremist views and rigid
austerity, maintained an inflexible protest against
both these classes of religionists.
(2) Then there was its legalism. By their in-
Sistence on conformity to the regulations they had
added to the Law as a condition of Divine favour,
the seribes and Pharisees, who were the most
humerous and aggressive party, converted religion
itself into a matter of slavish obedience, in which
the instigating motives were the hope of reward
and the fear of punishment. The calculating temper
thus engendered rendered the religious life a task-
work of anxious scrupulosity and constraint, want-
VOL. I.—3
ing in spontaneous action from the higher impulses
of the soul; while in the case of those less sincere
it introduced an element of prudential self-regard
concerned only with the prospect of future benetit
and safety.
(3) Closely allied to this was the externalization
of piety. ‘lhe Rabbinical regulations were held to
be so binding, and their multiplicity was so great,
that the effort to observe them inevitably involved
a machine-like routine and formality. The Jew
in his fulfilment of the Law found himself at every
turn brought under the pressure of hard and fast
exacting rules,—in his food, his clothes, his daily
occupations, his devotions, and the smallest acts of
his hie. The endeavour to yield obedience under
such circumstances necessarily Jed to a laborious
outward punctiliousness; a tendency to ostenta-
tion and spiritual pride was fostered ; and many
were ensnared into hypocrisy by finding they could
obtain a reputation for exceptional piety by an
obtrusive parade of their ceremonial performances.
The most precise minuteness was observed in trifles,
the tithing of mint and cummin, but in matters
of greater import the principles of morality were
surrendered.
These are the darker shades of the picture.
Nevertheless, it is clear that a very considerable
measure of religious earnestness was preserved in
the nation. It was fed by the ancient Scriptures,
which were regularly read in the synagogues and
committed to memory in the synagogue schools.
Thus in the body of the people there was kept
alive a sense of the holy character and mighty
doings οἵ Jehovah; and although, owing to the
decayed influence of the priesthood, the Temple
itself was not a centre of spiritual life, yet the
hallowed memories it recalled in the breasts of the
multitudes assembled at the religious festivals
were calculated to inspire the higher emotions.
At all events, there is evidence enough to show
that many hearts throughout the nation were
imbued with a deep-seated reverence for God and
a true spiritual longing for the hope of Israel.
The soul of religion might be sadly crushed by
legality and formalism, but it was not utterly
dead. Devout men and women in varied ranks of
society were holding a pure faith and leading
lives of simple sincerity, vaguely dissatisfied with
the bondage of legal observances and Rabbinical
rules, and yearning to rise into a more spiritual
atmosphere, a closer communion with the Divine
mind and will. Of these Zacharias and Elisabeth
(Lk 1-8), Anna (2° *7), and the aged Simeon (2°)
may be taken as examples; while the numbers
who responded to the living preaching of John the
Baptist and became his followers are an index of
the extent to which genuine piety survived in the
land. It was amongst such that the spiritual pre-
paration was found for the recognition and welcome
of the promised Saviour when He appeared. The
coming of Jesus brought the birth of a new spirit
in religion, a spirit of fresh vitality and power ;
and the life of absolute devotion to righteousness
which He began to live, and which He was ulti-
mately to close in a death of sacrificing love, infused
into religion an inspiring energy destined on a scale
of vast magnitude to regenerate and redeem.
3. The national unrest of the period.—The Jewish
people, fretting under political depression, had
flung themselves with impassioned eagerness on
the hope that the long-desired Messiah and His
kingdom must be drawing nigh. It was even
thought by many that He was hidden somewhere
in obscurity, only waiting for a more penitent dis-
position in the national mind; and so inflamed was
the common imagination with these ideas, that
popular excitement was easily aroused, and any
bold spirit, rising in revolt against the existing
<= Σ}Ξ:Ξ-
ie
34
ADVERSARY
ADVOCATE
state of things, could find a group of followers
ready to believe in him as the one who should
deliver Israel. In the broader world outside, too,
the expectation of a powerful king, issuing from
Judzea, who was to conquer the world, appears to
have been widely spread; and the references to
this given by Tacitus (Hist. v. 13) and by Suetonius
(Vesp. 4) may be taken at least as an echo of views
disseminated throughout the Roman Empire by
the Jews of the Dispersion. When Jesus was born
into the world, however, an event had transpired
vastly grander than Jewish expectation at the
time conceived. The day at last had dawned to
which the original promise to fallen humanity
pointed forward, and for which the best minds of
the nation had for ages yearned ; the divinely-
pledged Deliverer from sin and its curse had ar-
rived, to set up the kingdom of righteousness, love,
and peace.
LITERATURE.—For a lengthened treatment of the Messianic
hope and its transformations, see Riehm, Messianic Prophecy?
(Eng. tr. 1900); Drummond, The Jewish Messiah (1877); Stan-
ton, The Jewish and Christian Messiah (1886); Briggs, Mes-
sianie Prophecy (1886); Orelli, OT Prophecy of the Consuwmma-
tion of God’s Kingdom (Eng. tr.); and for a more condensed
survey, Schtrer, HJP πὶ. ii., and Schultz, OT Theol. (Eng. tr.
1898) vol. ii. For the Apocalyptic writings, see Charles’ editions
of the Book of Enoch, etc. On the religious condition of the
Jewish nation at the date of the Advent, see Stapfer, Palestine
in the Time of Christ (Eng. tr. 1886); Edersheim, Life and
Times of Jesus the Messiah, 1. v. (1883); Keim, Jesus of Nazara
(Eng. tr.), vol. i.; Wellhausen, Die Pharisder und die Sadducder
(1874); Ewald, Hist. of Israel (Eng. tr.), vol. vi. ; and Cheyne,
Jewish Religious Life after the Exile.
G. M‘HArpy.
ADVERSARY.—In the Gospels the word ‘ adver-
sary’ stands twice (Lk 13!7 9115) for ἀντικείμενος,
and thrice (Mt 5%, Lk 12% 18%) for ἀντίδικος. The
first two passages require no comment, as they
describe the opponents of the gospel in the simplest
terms, as adversaries. Thus we read that when
Jesus triumphantly vindicated His actions, His
adversaries were ashamed and could not answer
Him. Similarly Jesus assured His disciples that
none of their adversaries in the approaching time
of persecution should be able to gainsay or resist
the words of wisdom which the Holy Spirit would
put into their mouths.
In Mt 5® (|| Lk 12°), and again in the parable of
the Unjust Judge (Lk 18%), the question suggests
itself, ‘Who is the adversary referred to?’ The
passage from the Sermon on the Mount oceurs as
one of a series of maxims of Christian prudence,
and the key to its interpretation is suggested by
that which immediately precedes it (Mt 5“), whore
Christ says that reconciliation with an offended
brother must go before the offering of a gift at
God’s altar.
Alienation from the brother offended must oper-
ate as a hindrance to true worship. Therefore he
who would be accepted of God must do justly by
his brother and have all cause of difference with
him removed, for if he regards iniquity in his
heart, has upon his conscience the guilt of wrong-
doing or ill-will, or a grudge, the Lord will not
hear him (Ps 6618). Thus a certain order must
be observed in connexion with this matter of wor-
ship. Still more, Jesus appears to suggest, does
this principle of order hold in respect of the con-
troversy between God and sinners. Reconciliation
with God must be for every man the first’ business
to be attended to. That antagonism must be re-
moved, and he must satisfy the claim which the
law of God has against him in the first place, else
if he fails to avail himself of the present oppor-
tunity of ending the controversy, the law must
take its course. The adversary referred to is thus
the broken law, or God Himself as the Author of
the law, whom the unreconciled sinner treats as an
adversary (cf. Lk 143"),
In the parable of the Unjust Judge the widow’s
petition against her opponent at law, and her im-
portunity in pressing it upon the attention of the
judge, are used to illustrate the prayers of God’s
elect. ‘The reference seems to be to the opposition
which, in her efforts to promote the cause and
kingdom of God, the Church is obliged to en-
counter, some adverse influence to which she has
long been exposed, and against which she fears
she is left to struggle alone. Here there is no
special reason for identifying this adversary with
Satan (cf. Alford, im loc. ; Trench, Parables, 488,
etc.) or with the Jewish persecutors of the Early
Church (Weizsiicker, who regards the passage as a
late addition ; cf. Weiss in Meyer’s Commentary,
in loc.). We must not forget that the word oceurs
in a parable which was spoken with a special
didactic purpose, that being, as St. Luke is careful
to explain, the encouragement not of the Church
only, but especially of individual believers, to per-
severe in their efforts by faith and prayer to with-
stand the power of evil in the world, in whatever
form it may assail them or thwart their endeav-
ours. Christ’s object was to assure them that
their importunity must prevail with God, who
shall soon respond to their prayers and grant them
the victory over all that would frustrate their
efforts for the advancement of His cause. See
also art. SATAN.
LITERATURE.—Cremer, Bib.-Theol. Lea. 8.0». ἀντίδικος, ἀντικεί-
μενος ; Trench, Notes on the Parables; Bruce, The Parabolic
Teaching of Christ; Comm. of Meyer, Alford, Bengel, etc. ;
Schmid, Biblical Theology of the N17, p. 175ff.; Beyschlag,
NV Theology (2nd Eng. ed.), i. 90; H. J. Holtzmann, Lehrbuch
der neutest. Theologie, i. 179 ff. ; Weizsicker, Apostolic Age,
ii. 61; Wernle, he Beginnings of Christianity, i. 76 ff.
H. H. CURRIE.
ADVOCATE (παράκλητος). --.- Α term applied to
Christ in 1 Jn 2! (AV and RV; RVm ‘Or Com-
forter or Helper, Gr. Paraclete’), and to the Holy
Spirit in RVm of Jn 141% * 1536 167, where both AV
and RV have ‘Comforter’ in the text. For an
examination of the Greek word and its cognates,
see art. ‘Paraclete’ in Hastings DB ii. 665-
668. The verb παρακαλέω occurs in the papyri in
the contrasted senses of ‘encourage’ (Oxyr. Pap.
663. 42) and of ‘entreat’ (ib. 744. 6); but the
passive verbal form has not been found. The
term in its Latinized form came originally from
the Itala or one of the Old Latin versions through
the Vulgate. And Wyelif introduced it into the
English versions, translating 1Jn 2! ‘we han
avoket’ in 1382; so Purvey ‘an aduocat’ in 1388.
Etymologically the word means ‘called to one's
side,’ especially for the purposes of help, and, in its
technical usage, for advice in the case of judicial
procedure, with the further suggestion of en-
deavouring to enlist the sympathy of the judge
in favour of the accused. In 1 Jn 2! the last is
generally taken to be the only sense; and the
meaning evidently is that, if any believer sin,
Jesus Christ in person intercedes in his behalf
with the Father, and, representing the believer,
carries on his cause in the courts of heaven. Sim1-
larly, according to the passage in the Fourth
Gospel, the Holy Spirit may be regarded as God’s
Advocate both with and in man, promoting the
Divine interests in the human sphere, from_re-
pentance (Jn 167", ef. Job 337°) to perfecting. .
But here the technical legal sense of the word
disappears, and the Spirit becomes, according to
another marginal rendering, the God-sent ‘ Helper
of a man who is struggling against everything
within or around him that makes godly living
difficult. Whilst, therefore, the provisions of
grace inelude the twofold advocaey,—Christ as
the Advocate of a believer with God, and the
Spirit as the Advocate of God with man, whether
believing or unregenerate,—the two functions
differ both in range and in relation; and the term
.
ZENON
AFFLICTION 35
‘Advocate’ is too specialized to characterize or
to cover the operations attributed to the Spirit.
The Spirit, as an Advocate sent from God, entreats
and helps a man (see art. COMFORTER), but does
not represent him before God as Judge or as
Father, and does not appeal to anything in man of
final and supreme authority. hk. W. Moss.
ENON (Aivév, probably from Aramaic pry
‘springs’).—Mentioned only in Jn 3°‘ And John
also was baptizing in A‘non near to Salim, because
there were many waters there’ (Vm). The place
cannot be identified with certainty. Four sites
have been proposed, two in Samaria and two in
Judea.
4. Eusebius and Jerome (Onomast.? 229. 91, 99.
25) place AXnon in the Jordan Valley, 8 miles
south of Scythopolis (Beisén), ‘juxta Salem et
Jordanem.’ About 7 miles south of Beisén and
2 miles west of the Jordan there are seven springs,
all lying within a radius of a quarter of a mile,
and numerous rivulets. Three-quarters of a mile
to the north of these springs van de Velde found
a tomb bearing the name of Sheikh Salim. But
the fact that a modern sheikh bore the name Salim
is far from satisfactory proof that the Salim of
our narrative was at this place. If we are to find
Salim in Samaria at all, does not the mention of it
as a well-known place suggest the well-known
Salim 4 miles east of Shechem? And would it not
be gratuitous for the Evangelist to say of a place
so near the Jordan that there was much water
there? But, in spite of these objections, Sanday
(Sacred Sites of the Gospels, p. 36) and others still
think this site has the best claim.
2. Tristram (Bible Places, p. 234) and Conder
(Lent Work in Palestine, i. pp. 91-93) place ποι
at ‘Ainun on a hill near the head of the great
Far‘ah valley, the open highway from the Damieh
ford of the Jordan to Shechem. Four miles south-
west of the village of ‘Ainun, in the Wady Farah,
is a succession of springs, yielding a copious per-
ennial stream, with flat meadows on either side,
where great crowds might gather. Three miles
south of the valley (7 miles from ‘Ainun) stands
Salim. Conder says: ‘The site of Wady Farah
is the only one where all the requisites are met—
the two names, the fine water supply, the proximity
of the desert, and the open character of the ground.’
The situation is a central one also, accessible by
᾿ roads from all quarters, and it agrees well with
the new identification of Bethabara. But (a)
‘Ainun is not ‘near to Salim,’ the two places being
7 miles apart, and separated by the great Wady
Farah. (6) There is not a drop of water at ‘Ainun
(Robinson, Bib. Pes. iii. 806). (6) It is not likely
that John the Baptist was labouring among the
Samaritans, with whom the Jews had no dealings
(cf. Mt 3° 105). (ὦ) It appears that both Jesus and
John were baptizing in Judea (Jn 3% 33), and their
proximity gave occasion to the remarks referred
to in Jn 3”, and that Jesus left Judwa for Galilee
with the intention of getting out of the neighbour-
hood of John and removing the appearance of
rivalry (Jn 4). But if A2non was in Samaria,
Jesus was nearer John than before.
8. Ewald and Hengstenberg prefer Shilhim
(LXX Σελεείμ) in the extreme south of Judea,
mentioned (Jos 15**) in connexion with Ain. Godet
says the reason given for John’s baptizing in AZnon
would have greater force as applied to a generally
waterless region like the southern extremity of
Judah than if the reference were to a well-watered
district like Samaria. But elsewhere (Jos 197,
1 Ch 4, Neh 1139) Ain is connected with Rimmon
and not with Shilhim.
4. More probable as a Judean site for Ainon is
Wady Far‘ah, a secluded valley with copious
springs about 6 miles north-east of Jerusalem
(quite different, of course, from the great Wady
Farah of Samaria). This is the view adopted by
Professor Konrad Furrer in his article on the
geographical allusions in the Gospel of St. John in
the ZNTW, 1902, Heft 4, p. 258. The suggestion
is not new. It was put forward nearly fifty
years ago by Barclay (City of the Great King,
pp- 558-570), but has never received the atten-
tion it deserves. Barclay says that ‘of all the
fountains in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, the
most copious and interesting by far are those that
burst forth within a short distance of each other
in Wady Farah.’ He quotes the following descrip-
tion from The History of the Jerusalem Mission :—
‘From the brow at Wady Far'ah we descended with some
difficulty into that ‘‘ Valley of Delight,’—for such is the literal
signification of its name,—and truly I have seen nothing so
delightful in the way of natural scenery, nor inviting in point of
resources, etc., in all Palestine. Ascending its bold stream from
this point, we passed some half-dozen expansions of the stream,
constituting the most beautiful natural natatoria I have ever
seen ; the water, rivalling the atmosphere itself in transparency,
of depth varying from a tew inches to a fathom or more, shaded
on one or both sides by umbrageous fig-trees, and sometimes
contained in naturally-excavated basins of red mottled marble
—an occasional variegation of the common limestone of the
country. These pools are supplied by some half-dozen springs
of the purest and coldest water, bursting from rocky crevices at
various intervals. Verily, thought I, we have stumbled upon
Enon! .. . Portions of aqueducts, both of pottery and stone,
and in a tolerable state of preservation, too, in many places, are
still found remaining on each side of the valley, indicating the
extent to which the valley was at one time irrigated ; and richer
land I have never seen than is much of this charming valley.
. . . Several herds of cattle were voraciously feeding on the
rich herbage near the stream; and thousands of sheep and
goats were seen approaching the stream, ΟΥ̓“ resting at noonday”
in the shadow of the great rock composing the overhanging cliff
here and there. . . . Rank grasses, luxuriant reeds, tall weeds,
and shrubbery and trees of various kinds, entirely conceal the
stream from view in many places. . . . Higher up, the valley
becomes very narrow, and the rocky precipices tower to a
sublime height.’
The name 4Enon does not seem to have survived
in connexion with these springs, but within 2 miles
of them there is another valley called by the Arabs
Wady Saleim. It is at least possible that this
name was once borne by one of the towns whose
ruins still crown the neighbouring heights. A
town thus placed would have been a conspicuous
object from many parts of Judza, and would have
been naturally referred to by the Evangelist when
describing the location of A‘non.
LITERATURE.—In addition to writers cited above, see artt.
‘#non’ in Smith’s DB, and ‘Salim’ in Eneye. Biblica.
W. W. Moore.
AFFLICTION.—In AV of the Gospels ‘aftliction’
occurs only twice (Mk 4!" 135), corresponding both
times to θλῖψις in the original. RV gives ‘tribu-
lation ’—its invariable rendering of θλῖψις except in
Jn 1031, where, like AV, it has ‘anguish.’ In Mt
24° AV translates εἰς θλῖψιν ‘to be afflicted’ (RV
‘unto tribulation’). In all remaining cases it
renders θλῖψις by ‘ tribulation ’ (Mt 137! 244+, Mk
1353, Jn 16%), The Greek θλῖψις (WH θλίψις) signi-
fies literally ‘ pressing together,’ ‘ pressure’ (cf. ὁδὸς
τεθλιμμένη in Mt 714 of the ‘straitened way’ ; ἵνα
μὴ ONBwow αὐτόν, ‘lest they should throng him,’ in
Mk 3°). In classical Greek it is found infrequently,
and with its literal meaning only. In Biblical
Greek, where the metaphorical significance pre-
vails, it is of much commoner occurrence, always
possessing a passive sense, and usually suggesting
‘sufferings inflicted from without’ (Lightfoot).
In the sayings of Christ the word bears three
references. It denotes the persecution to which
His followers will be subjected, and by which their
loyalty will be tested (Mk 4”=Mt 137; Mt 249,
Jn 1055). It describes the privations and sufferings
(not, as above, necessarily induced by His service)
attendant upon a great national or universal crisis
(Mk 13!:4%=Mt 2471-29). And, finally, it is em-
ployed in one of His illustrations to indicate a
——— Sa
παῦε".
36 AGE
AGONY
woman’s pangs in childbirth (Jn 167, AV and
RV ‘anguish’). See, further, artt. PERSECUTION,
SUFFERING, TRIBULATION. H, BISSEKER.
AGE.—The word ‘age’ is a vague term, as may
be seen by its doing duty as a possible translation
for αἰών (Lat. evwm, an unmeasured period of
existence), for γενεά (Lat. generatio), and even
for the more precise and exact terms χρόνος (Lat.
tempus), and καιρός (Lat. occasio). Its strictest
Greek equivalent, however, is ἡλικία (Lat. wtas).
An examination into the significance of the term
shows a remarkable parallel between its employ-
ment in classical literature and in the Greek of the
New Testament. ‘Hdcxla marks a normal develop-
ment of life ; such development may be registered
in the individual by years, or by physique. In
classical Greek, the former is the usual reference of
the term, and hence the most ordinary meaning of
the word is, like the poetical ἥβη, the flower or prime
of life. The significance, however, of ἡλικία as stat-
ure or height, that feature of physical development
which mostly attracts the eye, is quite classical ;
and this sense occurs in Herodotus (ili. 16),* Plato,
and Demosthenes. Turning tothe New Testament, |
we find the same oscillation of meaning in ἡλικία.
In the Fourth Gospel the parents of the blind man |
for fear of excommunication evade the question of |
the Jews, and shift the responsibility of answering
upon their son; ‘ Therefore said his parents, He is
ot age,t ask him.’ In the Sermon on the Mount
‘age ’{ appears to be the true rendering of ἡλικία.
A cubit would be a prodigious addition to a man’s
height, while a span was already a proverbial
expression§ to signify the brevity of life. ‘Stature’
is, of course, the only possible rendering in the
interesting note about Zaccheus ;|| and this is the
only place in the Gospel where, as will be seen,
ἡλικία bears this meaning with an absolute cer-
tainty.
The idea of periodicity, which is largely foreign
to the meaning of ἡλικία in classical Greek, appears
only once, and that doubtfully, in the New Testa-
ment.{1_ The different ‘ages of man’** and so of
our Lord,}t are indicated by the classical formula of
time, ‘ years’ being in the genitive case. Hence the
word yields no suggestion as to those characteristic
periods, or epochs in the earthly life of our Lord—
the infancy, childhood, manhood of Christ. Nor
would the word deserve a place in this Dictionary
were it not for two passages in which it occurs or
is referred to when its interest is a real one, as is
evident by the attention paid to them by all com-
mentators on St. Luke’s Gospel.tt Both passages
appear as a postscript to the narrative of the Holy
Child with the doctors in the temple. It is an
incident in the regular equable development of
His life upon earth. This development is shown
in two aspects. The Evangelist declares that
Jesus increased (or advanced) in wisdom and
stature, and in favour (or grace) with God and
man. St. Luke’s phraseology was no doubt. in-
fluenced by his recollection of a similar encomium
passed upon the youthful Samuel,gg and already he
had found it not unsuitable to be quoted in refer-
ence to the Baptist.|||!
The key to the meaning of ἡλικία in Lk 255 may
Mt 26%,
“Ὁ my Father, if it be possible,
Mk 143,
‘Abba, Father, all things are
be discovered by a comparison of these four pas-
sages—
1S 256 Kai τὸ παιδάριον Σαμουὴλ ἐπορεύετο [ + μεγα-
λυνόμενον], καὶ ἀγαθὸν καὶ μετὰ Κυρίου καὶ μετὰ
ἀνθρώπων (LXX, B, said of Samuel).
Lk 180 τὸ δὲ παιδίον ηὔξανε καὶ ἐκραταιοῦτο πνεύματι
(said of the Baptist).
Lk 2 τὸ δὲ παιδίον ηὔξανεν καὶ ἐκραταιοῦτο πλη-
ρούμενον σοφίᾳ, καὶ χάρις θεοῦ ἣν ἐπ᾽ αὐτό (said of
Christ).
Lk 2° καὶ ᾿Ιησοῦς προέκοπτεν ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ καὶ ἡλικίᾳ
καὶ χάριτι παρὰ θεῷ καὶ ἀνθρώποις (said of Christ).
A careful comparison of these passages appears
determinative of the sense of ἡλικία in the last
as ‘stature,’ not ‘age.’ What was noticeable in
a measure in Samuel and in the Baptist, was
supremely characteristic of the Holy Child,
namely, an equal development both on the
physical and spiritual side. Translate it as RVm,
and it is little more than a truism. ‘Stature’ is
not only not superfluous, but an interesting and
unexpected contribution to that group of refer-
ences which lay stress on our Lord’s humanity.
It helps to explain His ‘favour with men’ with
which it stands in parallel. It suggests that our
Lord’s personality, even His appearance, may have
had a fascination about it. Even more, it may
make the student of Messianic prophecy cautious
in attaching a too physical meaning to the descrip-
tion of the countenance of Jehovah’s Servant (Is
5214 53°). B. WHITEFOORD.
AGONY.—This word is used in Lk 22 to de-
scribe the sorrow, suffering, and struggle of Jesus
in Gethsemane. The Greek word agonia (ἀγωνία)
is derived from agén (ἀγών), meaning: (1) an assem-
bly of the people (cf. ἀγορά); (2) a place of as-
sembly, especially the place in which the Greeks
memes τς to celebrate solemn games; (3) a contest
of athletes, runners or charioteers. ᾿Αγών is used in
a figurative sense in He 12! ‘let us run with
patience the race that is set before us.’ The word
has the general sense of struggle in 1 Th 2? ‘in
much conflict’; Ph 1° ‘having the same conflict’ ;
1 Ti 615. ‘the good fight of faith’; 2 ΤῚ 47 “1 have
fought the good fight.’ It means solicitude or
anxiety in Col 2! ‘how greatly I strive for you’
(literally, ‘how great an agon 1 have for you’).
The state of Jesus in Gethsemane is described in
the following phrases: Mt 26%7 ‘he began to be
sorrowful and sore troubled’; Mk 14* ‘he began
to be greatly amazed and sore troubled’; Lk 224
‘And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly :
and his sweat became as it were great drops of
blood falling down upon the ground.’* Jesus con-
fesses His own feelings in the words, ‘ My soul is
exceeding sorrowful, even unto death’ (Mt 26%,
Mk 1453). That He regarded the experience as a
temptation is suggested by His warning words to
His disciples: ‘Watch and pray, that ye enter not
into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but
the flesh is weak’ (Mt 264, Mk 14°8; ef. Lk 22%: 4),
That He was conscious of human weakness, and
desired Divine strength for the struggle, is evident
from the prayers, in reporting the words of which
the Evangelists do not verbally agree, as the follow-
ing comparison shows :—
Lk 22%,
‘Father, if thou be willing,
let this cup pass away from me: | possible ynto thee; remove this | remove this cup from me: never-
nevertheless not as 1 will, but | cup from me: howbeit not what | theless, not my will, but thine,
as thou wilt.’
* ἔχων τὴν αὐτὴν ἡλικίην Ausor ἡ ἡλικίαν ἔχει (Jn 921. 23),
+ Mt 627, Lk 1225, § Ps 399,
|| Lk 198, ef. Eph 413, 4 He 1111,
** Mk 542, Lk 842, tt Lk 829,
tt Lk 240. 52, §§ 1S 226,
"}} Lk 180,
I will, but what thou wilt.’
be done.’
St. Mark and St. Luke give the words of one
prayer only, although the former evidently intends
to report three distinct acts of prayer (vv.* 59. 41),
* On the genuineness of this passage see the ‘ Notes on Select
Readings’ in Westcott and Hort’s ΝΊ' in Greek.
AGONY
AGONY 37
and the latter apparently only two (vy.*! +).
But St. Matthew gives the words of the second
prayer, which he reports as repeated the third
time (vv.42 44): “Ὁ my Father, if this cannot pass
away, except I drink it, thy will be done.’ It is
not at all improbable that there was such progress
in Jesus’ thoughts. At first He prayed for the
entire removal of the cup, if possible (Mt.), because
possible to God (Mk.), 1f God were willing (Lk.) ;
and then, having been taught that it could not be
taken away, He prayed for strength to take the
cup. It is not necessary for us to decide which of
the reports is most nearly verbally correct, as the
substance of the first prayer is the same in all
reports. Although St. John gives no report of the
scene in Gethsemane, yet in his account of the
interview of Jesus with the Greeks there is intro-
duced what seems to be a faint reminiscence :
‘ Now is my soul troubled ; and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour: but for this
cause came 1 unto this hour. Father, glorify thy
name’ (Jn 12’7-*8), It is substantially the same
request, expressed in the characteristically Johan-
nine language. But even if this conjecture be
unwarranted, and this be an utterance on the
occasion to which the Fourth Evangelist assigns
it, the words serve to illustrate Jesus’ struggle in
view of His death. Much more contident can we
be that Gethsemane is referred to in He 575
‘Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up
prayers and supplications with strong crying and
tears unto him that was able to save him from
death, and having been heard for his godly fear ;
though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by
the things which he suffered.’ Having passed in
review the material which is offered us in dealing
with the question of the nature of the agony in
Gethsemane, we may now concentrate our atten-
tion upon it, excluding all reference to other
matters which are dealt with in their own place.
Many answers have been given to the question,
What was the cup which Jesus desired to be taken
away ?
(1) The most obvious, but not on that account
the most intelligent and reverent, answer is that
in Gethsemane Jesus was overcome by the fear of
death, from which He longed to escape. But this
is to place Christ on a lower plane of manhood
than many men, even among the lowest races. If
the love of Christ has constrained many martyrs
for His name to face rack and block, water and
flame, and many other painful modes of death
without shrinking, and even with the song of
praise upon the lips, is it at all likely that He
Himself shrank back ?
(2) A more ingenious view, which has an apparent
verbal justification in Mt 9038, Mk 14°! (‘even unto
death’), and He 57 (‘to save him from death’), is
that Jesus felt Himself dying, and that He feared
He would die before He could offer the great
sacrifice for the sin of the world. But to this
suggestion there are three objections. Firstly,
there is no evidence of such physical exhaustion on
the part of Jesus as would justify such a fear;
although the stress of His work and suffering had
undoubtedly put a severe strain upon His bodily
strength, yet we have no proof that His health
had given way so far as to make death appear at
all probable. Secondly, only a very superficial
and external view of His work as Saviour warrants
the supposition that His sacrifice could be accom-
plished only on the Cross ; that its efficacy depended
in any way on its outward mode; that His death,
if it had come to Him in Gethsemane, would have
had less value for God and man than His cruci-
fixion has. Thirdly, even if this supposition be
admitted, we may be sure of this, that Jesus was
so confident of His I'ather’s goodness and guardian-
ship in every step of His path, that it was impos-
sible for Him to fear that the great purpose of His
life would be left unfulfilled on account of His
premature death. His rebuke of the ‘little faith’
(Mt 8535) of His disciples during the storm at sea
would have been applicable to Himself had He
cherished any such fear.
(8) A much more profound view is offered to our
consideration, when not the death itself, but the
circumstances of the death, are represented as the
cause of Jesus’ agony. He regarded His death not
only as a sacrifice which He was willing to offer,
not only as a tragedy which He was ready to
endure, but as a crime of man against God trom
which He shrank with horror. That the truth
and grace of God in Him should meet with this
insult and injury from the race which He had
come to save and bless—this it was that caused
His agony. He could not endure to gaze into ‘the
abysmal depths’ of human iniquity and impiety,
which the murder of the Holy One and the Just
opened to view. Surely this apocalypse of sin was
not necessary as a condition of the apocalypse of
grace. If we look more closely at the conduct of
the actors in this drama, we shall better under-
stand how appalling a revelation of sin it must have
appeared to Jesus. “The fickleness of the multi-
tude, the hypocrisy and bigotry of the Pharisees,
the worldliness and selfishness of the priesthood,
the treachery of Judas, the denial by Peter, the
antagonism of the disciples generally to the Master’s
saving purpose, the falsehood of His accusers, the
hate and the craft of His persecutors,—all these
were present to the consciousness of Jesus as an
intolerable offence to His conscience, and an un-
speakable grief to His heart. To His moral
insight and spiritual discernment these were not
single misdeeds, but signs and proofs of a wicked-
ness and godlessness spreading tar and wide in the
life of mankind, reaching deep into the soul of
man. Must this antagonism of sin to God be
forced to its ultimate issue? Could He not save
mankind by some mode of sacrifice that would
involve the men concerned in it in less heinous
guilt? Must He by persevering in His present
course drive His enemies to do their worst against
Him, and thus by His fidelity to His vocation
must He involve all who opposed Him in tiis
greater iniquity? ‘That such questions cannot
have been present to the mind of Jesus, who can
confidently affirm? He foresaw the doom of the
guilty nation, and He also saw that it was the
crime about to be committed against Him that
would seal its doom. That He shrank from
being thus the occasion of its judgment cannot be
doubted. but if in Gethsemane Jesus anticipated
distinctly and accepted deliberately what He so
intensely experienced on the Cross, then this solici-
tude for all who were involved in the crime of His
death does not at all exhaust His agony. The
words of darkness and desolation on the Cross,
‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’
(Mt 2155), must be our clue to the mystery of this
experience.
(4) The only view that seems to the present
writer at all adequate is that what Jesus dreaded
and prayed to be delivered from in the experience
of death was the sense of God’s distance and
abandonment. His sorrow unto death was not
the fear of death as physical dissolution, nor of
dying before He could finish His work on the
Cross, but the shrinking of His filial soul from
the sting of death, due to sin, the veiling in dark-
ness of His Father’s face from Him. His prayer
was answered, for He was saved from death,
inasmuch as the experience of darkness and
desolation was momentary, and ere He gave up
the ghost He was able to commit Himself with
Ea ee ee Ne eae ee .
38
AGONY
AGRICULTURE
childlike trust unto His Father. ‘Father, into
thy hands Τ commend my spirit’ (Lk 23%). His
agony in Gethsemane was worthy of Him as the
Son of God, for it was the recoil of His filial spirit
from the interruption of His filial communion with
His Father, which appeared to Him to be neces-
sarily involved in the sacrifice which He was about
to offer for the sins of the world.
It is not the function of this article to offer a
theological interpretation of Jesus’ experience in
Gethsemane ; but a justification of the above
answer to the question of the nature of Jesus’
agony may be brietly offered in a psychological
analysis of His experience. First of all, then,
we note Jesus’ sense of solitude. He must leave
behind Him the disciples except three, and even
from these three He must withdraw Himself
(Mt 26%). He sought this outward isolation
because He felt this inner solitude. Since His
announcement of His Passion (Mt 162) the dis-
ciples had been becoming less and less His com-
panions, as they were being more and more
estranged from His purpose. At last He knew
that they would abandon Him altogether, their
outer distance but the sign and proof of their
inward alienation. Yet the comfort of the father’s
presence would remain with Him: ‘Behold, the
hour cometh, yea, is come, that ye shall be scat-
tered every man to his own, and shall leave me
alone: and yet Iam not alone, because the Father
is with me’ (Jn 16°). But now in Gethsemane
He began to realize that it might be necessary for
the accomplishment of His sacrifice that even the
Father's presence should be withdrawn from Him.
That dread drives Him to the Father’s presence,
but the assurance that there is no mound for this
fear does not come to Him. Again He turns to
His disciples. Secondly, therefore, we note His
need of sympathy. When He withdrew from the
three, He asked them to watch with Him; when,
returning, He found them sleeping, His words
are a pathetic reproach: ‘What, could ye not
watch with me one hour?’ (Mt 262°). He craved
sympathy, not only because He felt solitary, but
because this solitude was due to His love for man.
The sacrifice He was about to ofier, in which the
sense of His Father’s abandonment was the sting
of death, was on behalf of, and instead of man ;
and yet not even the men He had chosen would
sorrow with Him, although He was sutiering for
all mankind. Thus man’s denial of sympathy
must have made Him feel more keenly the dread
that even God’s comfort and help might be with-
held from Him. Thirdly, we note that this dread
was not groundless, but was rooted deep in His
experience and vocation. We must then go be-
yond any of the words uttered in Gethsemane
itself to discover all that was involved in His
agony there. As the incarnate love, merey, and
grace of God, His experience was necessarily
vicarious. He suffered with and for man. He
so identified Himself with sinful mankind, that
He shared its struggle, bore its burden, felt its
shame. Himself sinless, knowing no sin, He was
made sin for mankind in feeling its sin as it were
His very own. ‘The beloved of God, He became
a curse in experiencing in His own agony and
desolation the consequences of sin, although as
innocent He could neither feel the guilt nor bear
the penalty of sin. So completely had He become
one with mankind in being made sin and a curse
for man, that even His consciousness of filial union
and communion with God as His Father was ob-
scured and interrupted, if even for only a moment,
by His consciousness of the sin of man. God did
not withdraw Himself from, or abandon His only-
begotten and well-beloved Son, but was with Him
to sustain Him in His sacrilice; but the Son of
God was so overshadowed and overwhelmed by
His consciousness of the sin and the consequent
curse of the race which He so loved as to make
Himself one with it, that He dreaded in Geth-
semane to lose, and did on Calvary lose for a
moment, the comfort and help of His Father's
love. In this experience He exhibited the an-
tagonism of God and sin, the necessary connexion
between the expulsion of God and the invasion of
sin in any consciousness, since His self-identitica-
tion with sinful man involved His self-isolation
from the Holy Father. This, then, was the agony
in Gethsemane, such a sense of the sorrow, shame,
and curse of mankind’s sin as His very own as
became a dread of the loss of God’s fatherly pres-
ence. Although He at first prayed to be delivered
from this, to Him, most terrible and grievous ex-
perience, yet He afterward submitted to God’s
will, as God’s purpose in the salvation of mankind
was dearer to Him than even the joy of His filial
communion with God His Father. In this sur-
render He was endowed with such strength from
above that He finished the work His Father had
given Him to do, and in His obedience even unto
death offered the sacrifice of His life, which is a
ransom for many, and the seal of the new covenant
of forgiveness, renewal, and fellowship with God
for all mankind. See also art. DERELICTION.
LiTERATURE.—The standard Commentaries and Lives of Christ 5
Hastings’ DB ii. 712f.; Jonathan Edwards, Works, ii. 866 ff.;
Expos. Times, vi. [1894-1895], 433 f., 522 5 Expositor, 3rd ser. v.
180ff.; Fairbairn, Studies in the Life of Christ, ‘Gethsemane,’
where the explanation numbered (3) above is fully elaborated.
ALFRED E. GARVIE.
AGRAPHA.
See SAYINGS.
AGRICULTURE.—The influence of the physical
and climatie characteristics of a land upon the
character of its people has been a favourite theme
with many writers. But we are more concerned
here with another marked feature—the profound
influence exerted by the occupations of a people
on their manner of thought and their modes of
expressing it. Nowhere was this subtle influence
more manifest than in the case of the Hebrews.
Their occupations were largely determined by the
characteristics of the land they inhabited, but
their thought and the language that was its vehicle
were equally moulded by their occupations.
1. The place of Agriculture in the life and
thought of the Hebrews. — From the first the
Hebrews were a pastoral, and from very early
times an agricultural people; and these twin
employments have lent their colour and tone to
their literature, and shaped their profoundest
thoughts and utterances regarding God and man.
God is the Shepherd of Israel (Ps 801) ; Israel is
‘the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his
hand’ (957, ef. 74! 79! 100%). God is the Husband-
man ; Israel is His vineyard (Is 5), God is the
Ploughman; Israel is the land of His tillage
(Is O82") etal Coo).
When we turn to the Gospels we find the same
stream of thought in full flow. The highest
Christian virtue is enforced by appeal to Him
who ‘maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on
the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the
unjust’ (Mt 5”). The kingdom of God is set forth
under such emblems as the sower going forth to
sow (13%), the wheat and the tares growing to-
gether until the harvest (v.4), the lord of the
vineyard going out early in the morning to hire
labourers (20!), or sending to demand its fruits
(21%*-). Christ compares Himself to the shepherd
who seeks his lost sheep until he finds it (Lk 15%),
or lays down his life for the sheep (Jn 10"). The
multitude are, to His compassionate eye, as ἡ sheep
not having a shepherd’ (Mt 9%, Mk 6%).
The
AGRICULTURE
world appears to Him as a great field ‘white unto
harvest’ (Jn 435), and awaiting the labour of the
reapers (Mt 9516). His relation to His disciples is
expressed under the figure of the vine and its
branches (Jn 15!"-) See also art. HUSBANDMAN.
Noteworthy also is the place assigned by Biblical
writers to the cultivation of the soil. It is re-
presented as the duty of the first man. Adam,
placed in the Garden of Eden, is ‘to dress it and
to keep it’ (Gn 215) ; driven from it, he is sent ‘to
till the ground from whence he was taken’ (3°).
To Noah the promise is given that ‘while the
~ earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest... shall
not cease’ (83). The land of promise is ‘a land of
wheat and barley’ (Dt 8°). The Golden Age will
be a time when men ‘shall beat their swords into
ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks,’
and ‘they shall sit every man under his vine and
under his fig-tree’ (Is 24, Mic 44). The glad-
ness of the Messianic age is ‘joy according to the
joy in harvest’ (Is 95).
Nor was it only in their conception of the past
and their anticipation of the future that the in-
fluence of agriculture made itself felt: it was the
very foundation of their national and religious
life. A pastoral age, it is true, preceded the
agricultural, and the patriarchs are represented,
for the most part, as herdsmen rather than culti-
vators (Gn 37!” 47°); and even as late as the be-
ginning of the settlement in Canaan, the trans-
Jordanie tribes are said to have had a great
multitude of cattle (Nu 391. But, on the other
hand, we learn that Isaac, who had gone to Gerar,
‘sowed in that land, and found in the same year
an hundredfold’ (Gn 26”); while the first dream
of Joseph shows that if he did not actually follow,
he was at least. familiar with, agricultural pur-
suits (975, But it was not till after their con-
quest of the Land of Promise that the Hebrews
became an agricultural people on any large scale.
Prior to that time, however, agriculture was
highly developed among the Canaanites (Dt 8°) ;
and it may have been from the conquered race
that they acquired it. Once learned, it became
the staple industry of the country.
The Mosaic legislation presupposes ἃ people
given to agricultural pursuits. That 15. 58{Π-
ciently attested by the laws anent the three
annual festivals (Ex 234-15), the septennial fallow
(23), the eleanings of the harvest field (Ly 195-10),
the year of Jubilee (25'"- 27"), and many others.
Further attestation of the same fact is found in
the blessings that were to attend the faithful
observance of the Law, and the curses that would
follow disobedience (Ly 26%: 142°, Dt 281-5 15-18),
2. The soil of Palestine.—The fertility of the
soil of Palestine was remarkable, as is testified
by Josephus (6. Apion. i. 22; BJ ii. 3) and others
(Diod. xl. 3,7; Tac. Hist. ν. 6). The soil varies
in character. In the Jordan Valley and the
maritime plains it consists of a very rich alluvial
deposit ; in the regions lying at a higher elevation
it has been formed from decomposing basaltic rock
and cretaceous limestone. This, however, was
greatly enriched by the system of ‘ terracing,’ low
walls of ‘shoulder-stones’ being built along the
mountain slopes, and the ledges behind them
filled with the alluvial soil of the valleys. These
walls gave protection against the heavy rains, and
prevented the soil from being washed away. It
was to this system that districts such as Lebanon,
Carmel, and Gilboa owed the wonderful fertility
that formerly characterized them.
All parts were not, of course, equally productive.
Thus we find the Mishna (Gittin, v. 1) enumer-
ating several classes of soil according to their
ΠΗ or the degree of moisture. Such a Classi-
cation is quite distinct from that of the parable
AGRICULTURE 39
of the Sower, where the wayside, the rocky
places, ete., are all within the limits of a single
field (Mt 13°, Mk 45, Lk 85). It may be noted
here that ground which yielded thorns was
considered specially good for wheat-growing, while
that which was overrun with weeds was assigned
to barley. The most productive fields were often
marked by the presence of large stones, some
of which were beyond a man’s own strength to
remove. Their presence was regarded as a token
that the soil was fertile. Smaller stones, which
were also plentiful, were often used for making
rude walls along the side of the fields. In some
districts they were so numerons that they had to
be removed every year after ploughing had taken
place.
3. Agricultural operations, ete. —The work of
preparing the land for cultivation was the first
concern of the farmer. Where virgin soil had
to be reclaimed, a beginning was made by clear-
ing it of timber, brushwood, or stones (Jos 1738,
Is 5°). It was then ready to receive the plough
(which see).
(a) Ploughing began immediately after the
‘early rain’ had softened the ground, 7.e. towards
the end of September or beginning of October,
and went on right through the winter, provided
the soil had not become too wet and, therefore,
too heavy. Usually a single ploughing sufficed,
but if the soil was very rough it was ploughed
twice.
In some cases the hoe or mattock took the place
of the plough. That is the common practice in
modern times where there is a rocky bottom and
only a sparse covering of earth. In ancient times
the same course was followed where hillsides were
brought under cultivation (Is 7°°). The same im-
plement was employed for breaking up large clods
of earth (Is 28:3, Hos 10"), but whether the refer-
ence includes the clods upturned by the plough, or
merely those occurring in ‘stony ground,’ is not
quite certain.
(6) Dung was employed for increasing the pro-
ductiveness of fruit trees (Lk 13%), but not, as a
rule, for grain fields. The most common forms
were house and farmyard refuse mixed with straw
(Is 2519), withered leaves, oil-scum, and wood-
ashes. The blood of slaughtered animals was also
used for this purpose.
(c) The principal crops were wheat, barley, spelt,
millet, beans, and lentils (see articles on the first
two of these). Oats were little cultivated. From
Jos 26 we learn that flax was grown. It was
sometimes sown as an experiment for testing the
quality of the soil, for a field which had yielded
good flax was regarded as specially suitable for
wheat-growing.
(d) The sowing season began in the early days
of October. A beginning was made with pulse
varieties, barley came next, and wheat followed.
Millet was sown in summer, the land being pre-
pared for it by irrigation. When the winter set
in cold and wet, barley was not sown till the
beginning of February.
The sower carries the seed in a basket or bag,
from which he scatters it broadcast. Where a
single ploughing suffices, the seed is sown first and
then ploughed in. When it is sown on ploughed
ground, the usual course is also to plough it in,
but sometimes a light harrow (not infrequently a
thorn-bush) is used to cover it. Seed that falls on
the footpath or ‘wayside’ cannot be covered
owing to the hardness of the ground, and is
picked up by the birds (Mt 134 and parallels).
(6) The crops thus sown were exposed, as they
grew, to various dangers, such as the inroads of
roaming cattle, the depredations of birds, or the
visitation of locusts; and also to such adverse
|
40 AGRICULTURE
natural and climatic influences as drought, east
wind, and mildew. Some of these will be separ-
ately treated, and need not be dwelt upon now.
But it may be convenient to say a few words at
this stage regarding—
(f) The water supply of the cowntry.— Unlike
Egypt, which owed its fertility exclusively to the
Nile, Palestine had its time of rain (Dt 112% Ὁ. 4,
Jer 5% ete.). The ‘early rain’ (9719) of the Bible
is that of October, which precedes ploughing and
sowing: the ‘latter rain’ (vipbp) denotes the re-
freshing showers that fall in March and April, and
give much-needed moisture to the growing crops.
The intervening period is marked by the heavy
rains of winter (ow3), the wettest month being
January. The rainfall is not uniform over the
country. In the Jordan Valley it is very slight ;
at Jerusalem it averages about 20 inches annually ;
in some other upland regions it is almost twice as
much. In the highest lying parts, as Lebanon,
there is a considerable fall of snow. There are
also many brooks and springs (Dt 8"), and irriga-
tion is employed, especially in gardening, though
naturally on a much smaller scale than in Egypt.
The summer months are hot and rainless.
(σ) Harvest.—Barley harvest (2S 21°) began in
April or May, according as the district was early
or late ; wheat and spelt were ripe a few weeks
after (Ex 991-33). The grain was cut with a sickle
(JI 515, Dt 16°, Mk 4°; see art. SICKLE), or pulled
up by the roots (Mishna, Peah iv. 10). The
latter method was followed both in Palestine and
in Egypt, and is so still ; but the use of the sickle
goes back to very early times, as the excavations
at Tell el-Hesy have shown. Ordinarily the stalks
were cut about a foot beneath the ear, but in
some instances even higher (Job 24). The reaper
grasped them in handfuls (Ru 916), reaped them
with his arm (Is 17°), and laid them behind him ;
while the binder, following him, gathered them in
his bosom (Ps 1297), tied them with straw into
sheaves (Gn 377), and set them in heaps (a72y*
Ru 2’). :
(h) Threshing.—The sheaves thus prepared were
carried to the threshing-floor on the backs of men
or of beasts of burden, such as donkeys, horses, or
camels. Am 2 has been taken by some as im-
plying that they were sometimes removed in carts,
but this is very doubtful. The reference is more
probably to the threshing-sledge (Is 287).
The threshing-floor is simply a circle of level
ground which has been carefully cleaned and
beaten hard, and is enclosed with a row of big
stones to prevent the straw from being too widely
scattered. The spot selected always stood higher
than the surrounding ground, so that it should be
open to the air currents, and that rain, if it
occurred, though it was rare in harvest time (1S
1911), might run off without doing injury. The
sheaves were unbound and scattered over the floor,
till a heap was formed about a foot high. Cattle
(Hos 10") were then driven over it repeatedly, or
a threshing-wain drawn by cattle. The Penta-
teuchal law provided that the cattle engaged in
this operation should not be muzzled (Dt 25). It
was also the custom to blindfold them, as other-
wise, moving continually in a circle, they became
dizzy (Talmud, Kelim xvi. 7). Certain erops,
however, were threshed by being beaten with a
stick (Is 28%").
Two kinds of threshing machines were employed,
the drag and the waggon. The drag (3719, 7:74)
was a heavy wooden board,+ the under-surface of
which was studded with nails or sharp fragments
of stone (Is 41"). It was further weighted with
* See Vogelstein, Landwirthschaft in Pal. 61.
+ See illustration in Driver’s Joel and Amos (Camb. Bible),
p. 227.
AKKLDAMA
large stones, and by the driver himself, who stood,
sat, or even lay upon it. The waggon (πον Is
9858) was provided with sharp metal dises. ‘These
were affixed to revolving rollers set in a rude
waggon-frame.
(ἡ) Winnowing. —'The operation of threshing
yielded a confused mass of grain, chaff, and broken
straw, which required to be winnowed. Two imn-
plements were used for this process—the shovel
and the fan (Is 30%4).. With these the mixed mass
was tossed into the air, against the wind. The
chaff was blown away (Ps 1), the straw fell a little
distance off, and the grain at the feet of the win-
nower. Where, as at large public threshing-floors,
there was an accumulation of chaff, it was burned
(Mt 3). The chopped straw (j27 Is 11’) was used
as fodder for cattle.
(j) Sifting.—The winnowed grain stili contained
an admixture of small stones and particles of clay,
stubble, and unbruised ears, and also of smaller
poisonous seeds such as tares, and so stood in need
of yet further cleansing. This was effected hy
means of sifting. In modern Palestine the sieve
in common use is a wooden hoop with a mesh made
of camel-hide. This implement probably corre-
sponds to the 732 (kébharah) of ancient times (Am
9). The mesh was wide enough to allow the
separated grains to pass through, but retained the
unthreshed ears, which were cast again on the
threshing-floor.* In Is 303 another implement is
mentioned, 723 ‘nd@phah), which both AV and hV
render ‘sieve.’ It is not quite certain, however,
that the n@phah was really a sieve. If it was, it
may have resembled the modern ghirbal, which is
of smaller mesh than the hébharah (Arab. kirbal),
and permits only broken grains and dust to pass
through, while retaining the unbruised kernels.
The sifted grain was collected in large heaps,
and, pending its removal to the granary, the
owner, to guard against thieving, slept by the
threshing-floor (Ru 3’). In the Gospels there is
one reference to sifting (Lk 22%).
(k) Storage.—In the NT a granary is called
ἀποθήκη (Mt 675 13%, Lk 1238: *4), In the OT quite
a variety of names occurs (ni3299 Ex 1; ops Dt
238; ΞΕ Jer 50%; on Ps 144%; ninyx and
niiod J] 17). But though the nomenclature is
so rich, of the construction and character of those
granaries we know nothing. Some of them were
probably sheds, and may have resembled the flat-
roofed buildings used in Egypt for storing grain.
Others may have been dry wells, or cisterns, or
caves hewn out of the rock, such as are common in
modern times. The grain stored in these maga-
zines will remain good for years.
LiTERATURE.—Ugolinus, Thesaurus, vol. xxix.; Benzinger,
Heb. Arch. 207 ff.; Nowack, Lehrbuch der Heb. Archdologie, i.
228 ff.; Vogelstein, Die Landwirthschaft in Paldstina zur Zeit
der Mischna ; Stade, Geschichte αἰ. Volkes Israel, τ. vii.; Wilkin-
son, Ancient Egyptians, passim ; Thomson, The Land and the
Book; van Lennep, Bible Lands and Customs; ZDPV_ix.;
PEF'St, passim ; Ungewitter, Die landwirthschaftlichen Bilder
und Metaphern i. d. poet. Biich. d. Alt. Test.; Hastings’ DB,
and Encyce. Bibl. s.v. ‘ Agriculture.’
HuGuH DUNCAN.
AHAZ.—One of the kings of Judah (6. 735-
720 B.c.), named in St. Matthew’s genealogy of
our Lord (Mt 1°).
AHIMELECH.—See ABIATHAR.
AKELDAMA.—The name given in Ac 1} to the
field purchased with the price of Judas’ treachery.
*In this case the meaning of ‘ the least grain’ in Am 99 must
be ‘the least pebble’ (so Preuschen, ZA TW, 1895, p. 24). Others
(e.g. Driver, Joel and Amos, p. 221; Nowack and Marti in their
Comm. ad loc.) take the word 7)7s (zér6r, lit. ‘ pebble’) to stand
here for a grain of wheat, while admitting that the word is not
elsewhere so used. On this supposition the action of the
kébharah would be similar to that of the modern ghirbal de-
scribed above.
᾿
'
!
'
AKELDAMA
ALABASTER 41
The true reading seems to be ἀκελδαμάχ (B; οἵ.
ἀχελδαμάχ, NA 61, etc. ; ἀκελδαιμάχ, D; ἀκελδαμάκ,
ἘΠ) rather than the TR ἀκελδαμά; and the final
aspirate is here of importance, as will be seen.
The two accounts of the death of Judas (Mt 277
and Ac 11:85) are hard to reconcile (see JUDAS,
and art. in Hxpositor for June 1904, by the present
writer) ; but it is sufficient to note here that they
are clearly independent of each other. The salient
features of the Matthzan tradition are—(a) Judas
stricken with remorse returned the money paid to
him as the price of his treachery ; (4) he hanged
himself in despair, nothing being said as to the
scene of his suicide; (6) the priests bought with
the money a field known as ‘the Potter’s Field,’
which (d) thenceforth was called ἀγρὸς αἵματος, the
allusion being to the blood of Christ, shed through
the treachery of Judas; (6) the field was devoted
to the purpose of a cemetery for foreigners. In
Acts, on the other hand, (a) nothing is said of a
refunding of the money by Judas ; (4) his death was
not self-inflicted, nor was it caused by hanging ;
it is described as due to a fall and a consequent
rupture of the abdomen ; (6) the field was bought
by Judas himself, and not by the priests ; (d@) no-
Biss is said of its former use as a ‘ potter’s field,’
nor (6) of the purpose for which it was used after the
death of Judas; (f) the blood which gave its name
to the tield was that of Judas, by which it was
deliled, for (gy) the field Akeldama is identified with
the place of his death, a fact of which there is no
mention in Matthew.
The only point common to the two accounts is
that the name by which the field was known in
the next generation after Judas’ death was an
Aramaic word which was variously rendered ἀγρὸς
αἵματος and χωριον αἵματος by Mt. and Luke. Lk.
gives a transliteration of this Aramaic name; he
says it was ἀκελδαμάχ, that is, he understands it as
equivalent to x27 Spm, ‘Field of Blood.’ And ἀκελ-
dauax is, no doubt, a possible transliteration of
these Hebrew words, for we have other instances
of final x being represented by the Greek x, as,
é.g., im the equation Xyway—-xyo. But we should
not expect a final x, although it might be defended,
if the last part of the Aramaic title were x27; the
presence of x suggests rather that the Aramaic
title ended with the letters 725. Now it is remark-
able that Ὡῷι-Ξ-Ξ κοιμᾶσθαι, so that κοιμητήριον ‘ ceme-
tery’ would be the exact equivalent of 927 ὅπ.
And Klostermann (Probleme im A posteltexte, p. 6 ff.)
has suggested that this was really the name by
which the field was known to the native Jews,
and that we have here a corroboration of St.
Matthew’s tradition ‘to bury strangers in’ (Mt
27"). This conjecture is confirmed by the fact,
which has been pointed out above, that the signifi-
cance of the name ‘ Field of Blood’ was differently
understood by Mt. and Luke. When we have two
rival explanations offered of a place-name, it is
probable that the name itself is a corruption of
some other, akin in sound, but not in sense.
The evidence, then, points to the following con-
clusions. The field which was purchased with the
wages of Judas was originally a ‘ potter’s field,’ or
it, in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. It may
ave been (as Christian tradition had it afterwards)
the place in the Valley of Hinnom where the
potter of Jeremiah’s day pursued his craft (Jer 18°
19’); but of this there is no hint in the NT, for the
reference to Jeremiah in the text of Mt 27° is an
inadvertence, the passage quoted by the Evangelist
being Zec 113. This ‘ potter’s field’ was used as a
burial-ground for strangers, and so was called ὅρη
WI=cemeterium. Within half a century the name
became corrupted to x27 ὅρη ‘the Field of Blood,’
the allusion being variously interpreted of the
blood of Christ and the blood of Judas.
There is no good reason to doubt the identity of
the modern Hakk ed-Dumm, on the south bank of
the Valley of Hinnom, with the ‘ Akeldamach’ of
Lk. and the ἀγρὸς αἵματος of Matthew. The early
pilgrims, e.g. Antoninus (570) and Arculf (685),
describe its site with sufficient accuracy, and so do
the later medieval travellers.
Tradition has distinguished Akeldama, the field purchased
with Judas’ thirty pieces of silver, from the scene of his death
—a distinction of sites which, though inconsistent with Ac 1,
is compatible with Mt., as has been pointed out above. Thus
Antoninus places ‘ Akeldemac, hoc est, ager sanguinis, in quo
omnes peregrini sepeliuntur’ (ὃ 26), near Siloam; but the fig-
tree ‘on which Judas hanged himself’ was shown him on the
N.E. of the city (ὃ 17). Arculf seems to place the latter upon
the Hill of Evil Counsel (ὃ 18), where it is shown at the present
day ; but the tradition has not been constant, the ‘ elder-tree’
of Judas having been pointed out to Sir J. Maundeville (in 16th
cent.) near Absalom’s pillar.
The best description of Hakk ed-Dumm, and of
the buildings which remain of the old charnel
house, will be found in an article by Schick (PEFS?,
1892, p. 283 ff). It is quite possible, as he says,
that this was once the site of a potter’s cave; and
clay used to be taken, up to quite recent times, from
a place a little higher up the Hill of Evil Counsel.
This burial-place was much used in Crusading
times ; indeed, it came to be regarded as an honour
to be buried in Akeldama, so completely were the
old associations of horror forgotten or ignored.
J. H. BERNARD.
ALABASTER (ἀλάβαστρος or ἀλάβαστρον; in
secular writers always ἀλάβαστρος [more correctly
ἀλάβαστος], though with a heterog. plur. ἀλάβαστρα ;
in NT only in accus., and only once with art.,
which is found in different MSS in all the genders
—r7v, Tov, To [Tisch., Treg., WH, Meyer, Alford
prefer τήν]).-- 6 word oceurs four times in the
Gospels: Mt 267, Mk 149s, Lk 797. The Oriental
alabaster, so called from the locality in Egypt (the
town of Alabastron, near Tell el-Amarna) * where
it is found in greatest abundance, is a species of
marble softer and more easily worked than the
ordinary marble. It was so frequently used for
holding precious ointment that ἀλάβαστρος came to
be a synonym for an unguent box (‘Theoer. xv. 114 ;
τὰ ili. 20). Horace (Od. iv. 12. 17) uses onyx
in the same way.
In all three of the Gospel narratives emphasis is
laid on the costliness of the offering made to our
Lord. The ointment was that with which monarchs
were anointed. Judas valued it at three hundred
pence. If we bear in mind that a denarius was a
day’s wage for ordinary labour, it would represent
about four shillings of our money, and unguent
and box would have a value of something like £60.
Mary ‘brake the box.’ This is generally inter-
preted as merely meaning ‘unfastened the seal’ ;
but is it not in accordance alike with a profound
instinct of human nature and with Oriental ideas
to interpret the words literally? The box which
had been rendered sacred by holding the ointment
with which Jesus was anointed would never be put
to a lower use.
This incident is the gospel protest against phil-
anthropic utilitarianism. ‘Man shall not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of God.’ We have here the warrant
for the expenditure of money on everything that
makes for the higher life of man. Whatever tends
to uplift the imagination, to ennoble and purify
the emotions, to refine the taste, and thus to add
to the spiritual value of life, is good, and is to be
encouraged. Jesus claims our best. He inspires
us to be and do our best, and the first-fruits of all
the higher faculties of the soul are to be devoted
to Him. See, further, art. ANOINTING i. 2.
A. MILLER.
* The reverse supposition is possible, that the town derived
its name from the material (see Kncye. Bibi. i. 108). |
42 ALEXANDER AND RUFUS
ALMSGIVING
ALEXANDER AND RUFUS.—The Synoptists all
record that the Saviour’s cross was borne by one
Simon of Cyrene. St. Mark (1574) alone adds that
he was ‘ the father of Alexander and Rufus.’ From
this we gather that, when the Second Gospel was
written, the sons of him who bore the cross were
followers of the Crucified, and men of prominence
and note in the Church. This information as to
the two sons of Simon being Alexander and Rufus,
is also found in the Gospel of Nicodemus (ch. 4).
The name Alexander appears in Ac 4° 19°, 1 Ti 1°°,
2 Ti 44, but there is not the slightest ground for
identifying any one of these with the Alexander of
Mk 157}.
In the case of Rufus, however, it has generally
been considered that he is probably the same as
the Rufus who, with his mother, is saluted by St.
Paul in Ro 1015 (Ῥοῦφον τὸν ἐκλεκτὸν ἐν Κυρίῳ). And
if this is so, it tells us that not only the sons of
Simon of Cyrene, but his wife also, were members
of the Church. Lightfoot supports this view, and
Swete considers that it has ‘some probability.’
In St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, written
from Rome, occurs a salutation sent to the Church
at Philippi from Czesar’s household (453). Lightfoot
has compared the list of names of those to whom
St. Paul sends greeting in his letter to the Romans
(ch. 16) with the names in the lists of the house-
hold which occur in the inscriptions, and on the
name Rufus he writes (Philippians’, p. 176)—
‘Rufus is a very ordinary name, and would not have claimed
notice here but for its occurrence in one of the Gospels. There
seems no reason to doubt the tradition that St. Mark wrote
especially for the Romans; and if so, it is worth remarking
that he alone of the Evangelists describes Simon of Cyrene as
the ‘“‘father of Alexander and Rufus” (1521), A person of this
name, therefore, seems to have held a prominent place among
the Roman Christians: and thus there is at least fair ground
for identifying the Rufus of St. Paul with the Rufus of St. Mark.
The inscriptions exhibit several members of the household bear-
ing the names Rufus and Alexander, but this fact is of no value
where both names are so common.’
In connexion with Bishop Lightfoot’s note, it is
worthy of notice that in Polycarp’s Epistle to the
Philippians (9) we find Ignatius, Zozimus, and
Rufus adduced as examples, with St. Paul and the
rest of the Apostles, of men who had obeyed the
word of righteousness and exercised all patience,
‘and are gone to the place that was due to them
from the Lord with whom also they sufiered ; for
they loved not this present world, but Him who
died and was raised again by God for us.’
In the Acts of Andrew and of Peter, Rufus and
Alexander appear as the companions of Peter,
Andrew, and Matthias, but no further information
is given. J. Β. Bristow.
ALLEGORY.—See PARABLE.
ALMSGIVING (ἐλεημοσύνη).---[Ἐον the history of
the word, and Jewish teaching, see Hastings’ DB
i. 67). Only on three occasions does our Lord in
the NT employ the word (Mt 64, Lk 114! and 12°),
But these texts by no means exhaust His teaching
on the subject. All the Gospels witness to His
interest in it. Mk. contains the incidents of the
Rich Young Man whom He told, ‘Yet one thing
thou lackest: go, sell all that thou hast, and give
to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven’ (1074); the Widow’s Mite (12); and the
emphatic praise of Mary of Bethany (147). Jn.
again exhibits all Christ’s miracles as so many
charities (e.g. 2"), ‘good works’ which Christ
‘showed you from the Father’ (10%); tells the
Lord’s defence of Mary’s act (12°) ; and drops a hint
twice over (12° and 13”) of Christ’s own practice of
giving something to the poor out of His: scanty
wallet. But it is St. Matthew the converted tax-
gatherer who left all and followed Him, and St.
Luke the beloved physician, with his abounding
sympathy for wretchedness of every sort, who have
preserved to us the most numerous and striking of
His sayings on the subject.
The general character of our Lord’s teaching
concerning Almsgiving has been described as in
close accordance with the Jewish thought of the
time, even in points where we should have least
expected it. Certainly He endorses and very much
enhances the praise of Almsgiving which we find in
the OT (e.g. Ps 41}, Pr 1917, Dn 457. But in deal-
ing with the teachings of the Apocrypha, which
probably reflect more closely the views He found
prevailing, He discriminates. If, on the one hand,
He combines (Mt 67: °- 16) Almsgiving, Prayer, and
Fasting, as in To 12°, and describes Almsgiving as
providing a treasure in the heavens which faileth
not (Lk 12°), as in Sir 4017. yet, on the other
hand, He explicitly condemns (Mt 6°) the notion
countenanced in Sir 91} [LXX, 34] that alms
may be done to gain a reputation for piety ; while
in Mt 5* He directly contradicts both the precept
and the doctrine of Sir 125: ‘Give not to the un-
godly . .. for the Most High hateth sinners, and
will repay vengeance.’
Almsgiving is, according to Christ, a duty even
towards our enemies, and those with whom we
have little to do (Mt 574, Lk 6-5 10°”); it is a
means whereby we may conform ourselves to the
example of cur Father which is in heaven (Mt 5*,
Lk 6°); it is the first exercise of righteousness
(Mt 61-. As eliminating from our enjoyment of
material things the elements of unthankfulness
and selfishness, it is the true way to purify them
for our use (Lk 11”). To obtain the means of
almsgiving, we may profitably part with earthly
goods, because we shall thereby provide ourselves
with ‘purses which wax not old,’ and raise our
hearts, with our treasures, to heaven (Lk 1225. *),
In certain cases, like that of the Rich Young
Ruler, it may be needful for a man to sell all and
distribute to the poor (Mt 1951, Mk 107, Lk 1874);
while the poor whom we may make our friends by
using ‘the mammon of unrighteousness,’ for their
benefit, are able, by their grateful prayers for us,
to ‘receive us, when ἐξ (our wealth) has failed
us, into the eternal tabernacles’ (Lk 16" parable
of the Unjust Steward). Even trifling alms, given
in the name of a disciple, are sure to be rewarded
(Mt 10:3. And surely in those words of the Good
Samaritan to the innkeeper, ‘Whatsoever thou
spendest more, when (not, if) I come again I will
repay thee’ (Lk 1055), we must discern the voice of
our Lord Himself: since no one but He can be certain
either of returning (Ja 4"), or of ability to reward
the ministrations of love. His rewards, when He
does come, will surprise some, who did not realize
that in ministering to ‘his brethren’ they minis-
tered to Him (Mt 25°7"-), On the other hand, for
the rich to indulge themselves, and neglect their
poor neighbour, is the way for them to Gehenna
(Lk 16%-*! parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus) ;
and the omission of the duty will be a ground of
condemnation at the Last Day (Mt 25*).
Other notices, though less direct, are worth con-
sidering, e.g. our Lord’s injunction to the Twelve,
‘Freely ye have received, freely give’ (Mt 108);
His own compassionate feeding of the hungry
multitudes (Mt 14:6 152, Mk ΟἿ 83, Lk 91%); His
rebuke of the Rabbis’ rule, that when sons had
rashly or selfishly taken the vow of Corban, they
must no longer be suffered to do aught for their
father or their mother (Mt 15°, Mk 711); His ac-
ceptance of the Jews’ intercession for the Gentile
who had built them a synagogue (Lk 7°); the praise
of the women who ministered unto Him of their
substance (85); His advice, when we make a feast,
to invite the poor (14:5) ; and the vow of the peni-
tent Zacchzeus, ‘ The half of my goods I give to the
ALOES
poor’ (198). Nor may we omit ‘the words of the
Pid Jesus,’ quoted by St. Paul, but preserved by
St. Luke (Ac 2055), ‘It is more blessed to give than
to receive.’
We do not find in the teaching of our Lord Him-
self any of those cautions, which are so dear to the
present day, against excessive almsgiving ; though
doubtless St. Paul ‘had the mind of Cliuist’ (1 Co
216) when he laid down his rule, ‘If any man wid/
not work, neither let him eat’ (2 Th 3. Not
far, at any rate, from this is His parable of the
Labourers in the Vineyard (Mt 2011"), where Jesus
describes God under the figure of a rich and generous
householder who gives work and wages (not mere
alms) to those who are able to work, asks with
surprise of such, ‘Why stand ye here all the day
idle?’ and, on learning it was their misfortune and
not their fault, makes them work for the last hour,
yet pays them a whole day’s wages.
We have seen how Christ condemns the doing of
alms to have glory of men. He exposes also the
ugliness of boasting of our giving before God (Lk
18" parable of the Pharisee and the Publican) ;
insists that justice, merey, and truth are of in-
finitely greater importance than minute scrupulous- |
ness in tithing, and lays down the comprehensive |
principle that, however there may be opportunities
for us to do more than we have been explicitly
commanded, yet we never can do more than we
owe to God: ‘ When ye have done all, say, We are
unprofitable servants: we have done that which it
was our duty to do’ (LK 17"). Again, by His own
example, in the case of the woman of Canaan (Mt
151-35), He cuts off another unworthy motive, too
often active in our so-called almsgiving, the wish
to get rid of a beggar’s importunity ; while, both
in the case of this woman and of her with the
issue of blood (Mt 9%, Mk 5%, Lk 8533), He shows
by His own example that true kindness is not in-
discriminate, but takes the most careful account, |
not so much of the immediate and material, as of
the ultimate and spiritual benefit which may be |
done, by its assistance, to the afflicted or the needy.
The soul’s wellbeing is higher than the body’s.
And, of course, our almsgiving, like all our works,
is to be done in subjection to the two command- | the Son furnishes a problem of great interest for
ments which are the standing law of His kingdom, |
that we love the Lord our God with all our heart |
and all our mind, and that we love our neighbour |
as ourself (Mt 22°": |\),
LitgratuRE.—Besides the Commentaries on passages referred
to, consult Ὁ. Cone, Rich and Poor in the New Vestament,
112 ff.; B. F. Westcott, Incarnation and Common Life, 195- |
208; A. T. Lyttelton, College and University Sermons, 256;
W. C. E. Newbolt, Counsels of Maith and Practice, 227; F.
Temple, Jiughy Sermons, 2nd ser. 7; Pusey, Sermons.
JAMES COOPER.
ALOES.—We have in the NT only one referénce
to aloes, Jn 1959, where Nicodemus brings myrrh
and aloes with him, when he joins Joseph of Ari-
mathea in taking away the body of Jesus for burial.
In English, ‘aloe’ is used to designate (1) Aloe vul- |
garis, A. spicata, ete., of the natural order Lili-
acex, from which the medicine known as ‘ bitter
aloes* is obtained; (2) Agave Americana, or |
American aloe, of the order Amaryllidacee, a |
plant which is noted for its long delay in flowering,
and for the rapidity with which it at length
puts forth its flowering stalk; and (3) Aquilaria
Agallocha, Aq. secundaria, ete., of the order Aqui-
lariacewe, from which is obtained the aloes-wood
or eagle-wood of commerce. The substance so
named is the result of disease occurring in the
wood of the tree. To obtain it, the tree has to be
split, as it is found in the centre. With this eagle-
oe are probably to be identified the aloes of the
ible.
The grounds on which this identification rests
are chiefly these :—(1) Under the name ἀγάλλοχον
ALPHA AND OMEGA 43
Dioscorides (i. 21) describes an aromatic wood
which was imported from India and Arabia, and
was not only used for medicinal purposes, but also
burned instead of frankincense. Similarly Celsius
(Hierobot. i. 135 ff.) discusses references of Arab
writers to many varieties of aghdliji found in
India and Ceylon which gave off, when burned, a
sweet fragrance, and which were used as a perfume
for the very same purposes as those which ‘aloes’
served among the Jews(Ps 458, Pr 7:7, Ca 4:3.
Quite analogous is the employment of aloes for
perfuming the coverings of the dead (Jn 1999 ; οἵ,
2 Ch 1614).
(2) It is practically certain that ἀγάλλοχον and
aghdluji, and also the Hebrew 0779s (dhalim) and
ngs (chaléth), are derivatives of the Sanskrit word
aguru, of which the term ‘eagle-wood’ is itself a
corruption. If this etymology is correct, it indi-
cates that both the name and the commodity were
brought from the Far East (cf. 373, Sanskrit narada).
The Greek ἀλύη and our own ‘aloe’ may be from
the same root.
(3) There was an active trade in spices carried
on in ancient times, not only through Phoenicia
but also through the Syrian and Arabian deserts,
so that there is no great difficulty in supposing
that ‘aloes’ were brought from India. These con-
siderations seem to attord sutiicient justification
for the belief that eagle-wood was the aloes of the
Biblical writers. HuGH DUNCAN.
ALPHA AND OMEGA.—A solemn designation of
divinity, of Jewish origin, peculiar to the Book of
Revelation. In Rev 15 it is applied to Himself by
‘the Almighty,’ with obvious relation to Ex 34
(ef. v.4) and Is 41’ 445 (for the LXX rendering of 7”
mings by παντοκράτωρ, cf. Am 3% 418). In Rey 21°
also the epithet is applied not to the Son but to
the Father, as shown by the context (cf. verses ὃ
‘a voice out of the throne,’ ὅ ‘He spake that is
seated on the throne,’ 7‘ I will be his God and he
shall be my son’). In 22! it is placed in a derived
sense (i.c. ‘I, the primary object and ultimate ful-
filment of God’s promise’) in the mouth of the
glorified Jesus. This transfer of a Divine title to
the early development of Christology ; for, as
R. H. Charles pomts out (Hastings’ V6 1. p. 70),
‘although in Rev 18 [add 21°] this title is used of
God the Father, it seems to be confined to the Son
in Patristic and subsequent literature.’
1. Origin and Significance. —(a) The simplest
and most primary use of this figure, derived as
it is from the first and last terms of the alphabet,
which with Greeks and Hebrews were also those
of numerical notation, is common to several lan-
guages. ‘Thus in English we have the expression
‘from A to Ζ. Schoettgen (Hor. Heb. 1. 1086)
adduced from Jalkut Rubein, fol. 17. 4, ‘Adam
transgressed the whole law from αὶ to π᾿; and
48. 4, ‘Abraham kept the law from & ton.’ As
Cremer shows (Theol. Worterbuch, p. 1), this has no
bearing on the case except linguistically. In
Jalkut Iub. 128. 3, God is said to bless Israel
from ἃ to n (because Ly 109: 15 begins with κα and
ends with n), but to curse only from Ὁ to 5 (because
Ly 16-3 begins with 1 and ends with 5). RK. H.
Charles (/.c.) adds examples of this (general) use
from Martial (v. 26 and ii. 57) and Theodoret
(HE iv. 8).
(6) In the later, more philosophical, period of
Hebrew literature similar expressions are applied
to God, as indicative of His omnipresence and
eternal existence. God, as the Being from whom
all things proceed and to whom they tend, is thus
contrasted in Deutero-Isaiah with heathen divini-
ties (414 43! [cf. Ex 3] 44° 48:3. Here the best
example is the IXabbalistic designation of the
44 ALPHA AND OMEGA
}
ALPHA AND OMEGA
Shekinah as nx, according to Buxtorf =‘ principium
et finis’ (Lew. Chald. Valin. et Rabb.).
But a threefold designation of God as the Eter-
nal is also employed. The Jerusalem Targum on
Ex 3" so interprets the Divine name (‘ qui fuit,
est, et erit, dixit mundo’), and the Targ. Jonathan
on Dt 32° (‘ego ille est, qui est, et qui fuit, et qui
erit’). So also, according to Bousset (ad Rev 1%),
Shemoth R. iii. f. 105. 2, Midrash Tillim 117. 2,
Bereshith R. on Dn 107 (the ‘writing of nox—
truth=the seal of God.’ See below). Thus in
He 2” God is both end and means of all things (δι᾽
ὅν, δι᾿ οὗ τὰ πάντα) ; in Ro 11° “ΟΥ̓ him, through him,
and unto him are all things’; cf. Rev 1+.
Instances of expressions of like implication
applied to the Deity (ὁ θεός), or to individual
divinities, are naturally still more common in
Greek philosophical literature, so that, as Justin
says (ad Grecos, xxv.), ‘Plato, when mystically
expressing the attributes of God’s eternity, said,
“(οὐ is, as the old tradition runs, the end and the
middle of all things” ; plainly alluding to the Law
of Moses.’ The tradition was indeed ‘old’ in
Plato’s day, but there are many more probable:
sources than Ex 3" for Plato. We need refer only
to the song of the Peleiadz at Dodona: Ζεὺς ἣν,
Ζεὺς ἔστιν, Leds ἔσσεται (Paus. x. 12. 5); and the
Orphic saying, Ζεὺς πρῶτος γένετο, Leds ὕστατος
ἀρχικέραυνος, Ζεὺς κεφαλή, Leds μέσσα, κ.τ.λ. (Lobeck,
Aglaophamus, 521, 523, 530f.). Similar attributes
are applied to Athene and Asclepius in examples
quoted by Wetstein. Notoriously the Jewish
apologists had been beforehand with Justin Mar-
tyr in ascribing to Moses the larger and more
philosophical conceptions of Deity enunciated by
the philosophers ; and from these writings of the
period of Revelation and earlier it is possible to
demonstrate the existence of a Jewish kerygma
(formula of missionary propaganda) defining the true
nature of the Deity and of right worship, wherein
Is 44°" with the expression borrowed in Rev 15 21°,
or its equivalent, is the central feature. Josephus
(c. Apion. ii. 190-198 [ed. Niese]), contrasting the
law of Moses on this subject with heathenism,
calls it ‘our doctrine (λόγος) concerning God and
His worship.’ What he designated ‘the first com-
mandment’ is easily recognizable as part of such
a kerygma, and seems to be derived from the same
Jewish apologist. pseudo - Hecatzeus (6. 60 B.C.)
whom he quotes in 6. Apion. 1. § 183-204, and ii.
43. It is traceable already in the diatribes against
idolatry in the Ep. of Aristeas (132-141) and the
Wisdom of Solomon (chapters 13-14). The Pro-
cemium of the oldest Jewish Sibyl (Sib. Or. v.
7-8, 15) has: ‘There is one God Omnipotent, im-
measurable, eternal, almighty, invisible, alone all-
seeing, Himself unseen. . . . Worship Him, the
alone existent, the Ruler of the world, who alone
is from eternity to eternity.’ It appears again in
Christian adaptation in Ae 1774?! (cf. 144-17, 1 Th
19. 10 Ro 138-82 Wis 1139 13% 19 1412. 22-27) . in the
fragment of the Kerygma Petri, quoted in Clem.
Strom. vi. 5. 39-43 (Frags. 2 and 3 ap. Preuschen,
Antileg. p. 52: eis θεός ἐστιν, ὃς ἀρχὴν πάντων
ἐποίησεν καὶ τέλους ἐξουσίαν ἔχων, κ.τ.λ.): in the
Apology of Aristides; Tatian’s Oration iv.; Athena-
goras, Leg. xili., and the Hp. to Diogn. iii. It
begins in Josephus: ὅτε θεὸς ἔχει τὰ σύμπαντα
παντελὴς καὶ μακάριος, αὐτὸς αὑτῷ καὶ πᾶσιν αὐτάρκης,
ἀρχὴ καὶ μέσα καὶ τέλος οὗτος τῶν πάντων-- He
is the beginning and middle and end of all things’
(c. Apion. ii. 190).
On the other hand, the apologetic and eschato-
logical literature, which Rabbinic Judaism after
the rise of Christian speculation more and more
excluded from se οὐ use, shows a marked ten-
dency to offset these heathen demiurgic ascriptions
by similar ones applied not directly to God but to
a hypostatized creative Wisdom (Pr 876, Wis 721
81 91:9. Sir 24% 28, Bar 3°"), or to an angelic Being
endowed with the same demiurgic attributes (2 Es
5°8_68).
The statement of Rabbi Kohler (Jewish Encyel.
1. p. 438) is therefore correct regarding the phrase
in Rey 18 and 21° if not in 9218; “ This is not simpl
a paraphrase of Is 44° ‘‘ I am the first and the last,”
but the Hellenized form of a well-known Rab-
binical dictum, ‘‘ The seal of God is Hmet, which
means Truth, and is derived from the letters n> x,
the first, the middle, and the last letters of the
Hebrew alphabet, the beginning, the middle, and
the end of all things.”’ In other words, we must
realize the metaphysical development of Jewish
theology which had taken place between Devtero-
Isaiah and Revelation. The passages adduced by
Kohler from Joma 696 and Sanh. 64a, and in par-
ticular Jerus. Jeb. xii. 13a, Gen. R. 1xxxi., show
the early prevalence of this interpretation of Dn
10” ‘I shall show thee what is marked upon the
writing of truth (ndx 3n23), as the signum of God;
for, says Simon ben Lakish, ‘‘x is the first, > the
middle, and n the last letter of the alphabet.”’
This being the name of God according to Is 44°, ex-
plained Jerus. Sanh. i. 18a, “1 am the first [having
had none from whom to receive the kingdom]; [
am the middle, there being none who shares the
kingdom with me ; [and I am the last], there being
none to whom 1 shall hand the kingdom of the
world.’ It would seem probable, however, con-
sidering the connexion with Is 44° (‘ first and last,’
the passage is a commonplace of early Christian-
Jewish polemic), that the Kabbalistic form nx is
the earlier, the middle term having perhaps been
inserted in opposition to Jewish angelological and
Christian cosmological speculation. Cf. Rev 117
and 16° with 1? 45 ; and 2 Es 61-6 (where Uriel, speak-
ing in the name of the Creator, says, ‘In the
beginning, when the earth was made. . . then
did I design these things, and they all were through
me alone, and through none other: as by me
also they shall be ended, and by none other’) with
He 210
In 1 Co 8° we have a significant addition to the
two-term ascription, ‘One God, the Father, of (ἐξ)
whom are all things, and we wnto (es) him.’ St.
Paul (or his Corinthian converts) adds, ‘And one
Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,
and we through him.’ This addition marks the
parting of the ways for Jewish and Christian
theology, implying a mediating hypostasis identi-
fied with Christ, that is, a Wisdom-Logos doctrine.
That in Rev 18 and 21° the phrase is still applied
in the purely Jewish sense to God the Father alone,
is placed beyond all doubt by the connected ascrip-
tions, especially ὁ ὧν καὶ ὁ ἣν Kal 6 ἐρχόμενος (not=
ἐσόμενος) connecting 18 with 14.
Why, and in what sense, the term A- is applied
in Rev 22! by the glorified Christ to Himself, is
the problem remaining ; and this independently of
the question of composite authorship ; for to the
final redactor, whose date can scarcely be later
than A.D. 95, there was no incompatibility.
(c) Besides the metaphysical or cosmological de-
velopment, which we have traced in connexion
with the Divine title A-Q from Deutero-Isaiah
through Wisdom and pseudo-Aristeas to its bi-
fureation in Jewish and Christian theology con-
temporary with the Book of Revelation, we have
a parallel development of eschatological character.
Jehovah is contrasted with the gods of the heathen
in Is 415. 27 499 435: 1 448. 7. 26 4521: 469: 10 48. ὅ. 15.
also, and indeed primarily, as ‘first and last’ in
the sense of director of all things to the fulfilment
of His predeclared purpose, 7.e. confirmer and ful-
filler of His promise of redemption (447). And
manifestly the development of this idea of Jehovah
ALPHA AND OMEGA
ALPHAUS 45
as ‘first and last’ in the redemptive or soterio-
logical sense, would be more congenial to Hebrew
thought than the metaphysical, although cosmo-
logy plays a great and increasing part in apoca-
lyptic literature. In the substitution of ὁ ἐρχόμενος
for the anticipated ὁ ἐσόμενος in Rev 14 48 (οἴ. 11”
16°) recalling Mt 11° and He 1057, we have evidence
of the apocalyptic tendency to conceive of God by
preference soteriologically.
But the final redemptive intervention of Jehovah
is necessarily conceived as through some personal,
human, or at least angelic (Mal 3!, 2 Es 5°°) agency,
even when creative and cosmological functions are
still attributed to Jehovah directly, without any,
or with no more than an impersonal, intermediate
agency. Hence, while in Rev 1° as in 1 and 21°
Jehovah Himself, ‘the Alpha and Omega, the be-
ginning and the end,’ is also ὁ ἐρχόμενος, there is
no escape for any believer in Jesus from trans-
ferring the title in this soteriological sense to Him
as Messiah. This will be the case whether his
cosmology requires a Logos-doctrine for demiurgic
functions, as with St. Paul, the Epistle to the
Hebrews, and the Fourth Evangelist, or not. (The
only trace of a true Logos-doctrine is the very super-
ficial touch Rev 19!%>), Thus in Rev 117 28 the
Isaian title ‘the first and the last’ is applied to
Christ, and in 3" He is called ‘the Amen . . . the
beginning of the creation of God.’ The titles are
combined in 22!%, where we should perhaps render
(Benson, Apocalypse, 1900, p. 26), “1, the Alpha
and the Omega (am coming), the first and the last,
the beginning and the end.’ As Hengstenberg
maintained (on Rev 18), ‘In this declaration the
Omega is to be regarded as emphatic. It is equi-
valent to saying, As lam the Alpha, so am I also
the Omega. The beginning is surety for the end’
(cf. Ph 1%). For this reason it is perhaps also
better to connect the words Ναί, ᾿Αμήν of 17 with
v.2 ‘Verily, verily, 1 am the Alpha and the
Omega’ (Terry, Bibl. Apocalyptics, 1898, p. 281).
The true sense, and at the same time the origin
and explanation of this application of the Divine
title, is to be found, as before, in the Epistles of
St. Paul. In 2 Co 159 the promises of God, how-
soever many they be, are said all to have their
Yea in Christ. And, because this is so, it is
further declared, ‘the Amen is also through him.’
The conception that Christ is the Amen or fulfil-
ment of all the promises of God, as ‘heir of all
things’ and we ‘joint heirs with him’ (Ro 4:5 811,
1 Co 3”, He 1", Rev 21"), is comparatively familiar
tous. It represents the significance of the term
Q in the eschatological application. We are much
less familiar with the idea expressed in the A,
though it is equally well attested in primitive
Christian and contemporary Jewish thought. In
Pauline language it represents that the people of
Messiah were ‘blessed with every spiritual bless-
ing in the heavenly places in Christ, inasmuch as
God chose them in his person before the founda-
tion of the world . . . and foreordained them to
be an adoption of sons,’ Eph 14°; ef. Is 44% 27,
Wis 18, He 2°", Rev 217, and the doctrine of the
apocalyptic writers, Jewish and Christian, that
‘the world was created for the sake of man’—
resp. ‘Israel,’ ‘the righteous,’ ‘ the Church’ (As-
sump. Mos. 132-14; 2 Es 6-59 710. 11 018. Hermas, Vis.
li. 4 ete. The doctrine rests on Gn 176, Ps 81:8,
Ex 4” ete.). Harnack has shown (History of Dogina,
vol. i. Appendix 1, ‘The Conception of Pre-exist-
ence’) how pre-existence is for the Jewish mind in
some sense involved in that of ultimate persistence.
The heir ‘for whom’ all things were created was
in a more or less real sense (according to the dis-
position of the thinker) conceived as present to
the mind of the Creator before all things. Thus
in Rabbinic phrase Messiah is one of the ‘seven
pre-existent things,’ or His ‘soul is laid up in
Paradise before the foundation of the world.’
Apocalyptic eschatology demanded a representative
‘Son,’ the ‘ Beloved,’ chosen ‘in the beginning’ to
be head of the ‘Beloved’ people of ‘sons’ in the
end, with at least as much logical urgency as
speculative cosmology demanded an agent of the
creation itself. It is this which is meant when St.
Paul says that ‘however many be the promises of
God, they are in Christ Yea.’ ‘This is ‘ the mystery
which from all ages hath been hid in God who
created all things . . . according to the eternal
purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus.’ In
Pauline language, Christ ‘the Beloved,’ the ‘Son
of his love,’ is the Yea and the Amen of the pro-
mises of God. Cosmologically, He is the precrea-
tive Wisdom, ‘the firstborn of all creation, in
whom all things were created’ (ef. Rev 34, Pr 872).
But it is not only that ‘he is before all things,
and in him all things consist’ (ef. Sir 24°, Wis 17),
not only that ‘all things have been created through
him,’ but also’ eschatologically ‘unto him’ (Col
ΤΟ chy ey 155 ande Wiisiirsas)) se Looicalliyarsulb-
sequent to Him because made for His sake. In
Revelation we have only the latter. The cosmo-
logical ‘through’ Him practically disappears. It
is only in the eschatological sense that Christ be-
comes the original object and the ultimate fulfil-
ment of the Divine purpose and promises, ‘the
Yea, the Amen,’ ‘the Alpha and the Omega, the
first and the last, the beginning and the end.’
2. The Later History. —It is doubtless from
Revelation that the use of the term in Patristic
literature and Christian epigraphy is mainly de-
rived, though its popularity may well have been
partly due to oral currency in Jewish-Christian
circles before the publication of Revelation. ‘The
eschatological interest is still apparent in the
hymn of Prudentius (Cathem. ix. 10-12), wherein
the first line contains a reference to Ps 45! Vulg.
(‘ Eructavit cor meum Verbum bonum’), treated as
Messianic by the Fathers—
‘Corde natus ex Parentis
Ante mundi exordium
Alpha et 2 cognominatus
Ipse fons et clausula
Omnium que sunt, fuerunt
Queque post futura sunt.’
But in Clem: Alex. (Strom. iv. 25 and vi. 16) and
Tertullian (de Monog. 5) the cosmological pre-
dominates. Ambrose (Hapositio in VII visiones,
i. 8) presents a different interpretation. In Gnostic
circles speculative and cosmological interpretations
are unbridled. Thus Mareus (ap. Irenieus, Har.
I. xiv. 6, xv. 1) maintained that Christ designated
Himself A Q to set forth His own descent as the
Holy Ghost on Jesus at His baptism, because by
Gematria A Q(=800+ 1) and περιστερά (=80+5+ 100
+10+200+300+5+ 100+ 1) are equivalent.
LITERATURE.—For the great mass of later epigraphic material
the reader is referred to N. Muller in Herzog-Hauck’s Keal-
encykl. i. pp. 1-12, and the article ‘Monogram’ in Smith and
Cheetham’s Dict. of Christian Antiquities. Besides the works
already cited, articles on A and 2 may be found in the various
Bible Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. Its use in Rev 18 216and
2213 should be studied in the critical commentaries On Divine
epithets and the doctrine of hypostases see Bousset, Religion
des Judenthums, iv. chs. 2 and 5 (1903). Older monographs in
J. C. Wolfe, Cure Philolog. et Crit. on Rey 18.
B. W. BAcon.
ALPHEUS (A\¢atos).—In the NT this name
is borne by (1) the father of the Levi who is
commonly identified with Matthew the Apostle
(Mk 234); (2) the father of the second James in
the lists of the Apostles (Mt 10°, Mk 338, Lk 6”,
Ac 115). The desire to connect as many of the
Twelve as possible by ties of natural relationship
has led some (e.g. Weiss) to identify the two. But
in the lists Matthew and James are separated by
Thomas in St. Mark and St. Luke; and even in
St. Matthew, where one follows the other, there is
46
ALTAR
ALTAR
no note that they were brothers, similar to that
attached to the names of the sons of Zebedee.
The identification of (2) with the Clopas of Jn
1055 rests on two hypotheses: (a) The assumption
that as a Mary is given as the mother of James,
and consequently as the wife of Alphzeus, she
must be the same as Mary the wife of Clopas who
stood by the Cross. Jerome (de Perpet. Virg. v.
16) adopted this argument. But Mary is a name
of far too common occurrence in the NT to make
this theory of any value. (8) The alleged deriva-
tion of the names Alphzeus and Clopas from a
common Aramaic original. But this has not been
satisfactorily established: there is even a lack of
agreement as to the form of the original. WH
hold that its initial letter would be n, and print
᾿Αλῴφαῖος accordingly ; but Edersheim quotes the
Babylonian Talmud to show that the letter would
be x. Jerome, although predisposed by his view
of the Brethren of the Lord in favour of finding
the same man under both names, rejects the
linguistic identification ; and the Syriac versions
also represent them by different words. Delitzsch
held Alphzeus to be a Grecized form of an Aramaic
word, but Clopas and Cleopas to be abbreviations
of a Greek name Cleopatros (against this see
Deissmann, Bible Studies, Eng. tr. p. 315 n.).
Nothing is known of either Alphzeus beyond the
name ; for such details as that (2) was the brother
of Joseph, the reputed father of the Lord, stand or
fall with his identification with Clopas to whom
they really belong. See art. CLOPAs, below.
LITERATURE. — Lightfoot, Essay on ‘The Brethren of the
Lord’ in his Commentary on Galatians, also in Dissertations
on the Apost. Age, p. 1; Mayor, The Epistle of St. James,
Introd. p. xxi; Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah, bk. v. ch. 15; Andrews, Life of our Lord upon
Earth, 114,115; Weiss, Life of Christ, bk. iv. ch. 7 [Eng. tr.].
C. T. DIMonr.
ALTAR (θυσιαστήριον, a word of Hellenistic usage,
applied to Jewish altars as distinguished from
βωμός, the ordinary word for heathen altars [cf.
Ex 34%, Nu 231, Dt 75, Ac 177]).—The raised
structure on which sacrifices and oblations were
presented. As used in the Jewish ritual, the word
was applied not only to the great altar of burnt-
offering before the temple, but also to the altar of
incense within the holy place, and on one or two
occasions even to the table of shewbread (cf. Mal
11:1). Ezk 4153). When no further specification
was added, it denoted the altar of burnt-offering,
the altar κατ᾽ ἐξοχήν.
The Jewish altar of Christ’s day was the last
term of a long development, the history of which
remains still in many points obscure. In the
primitive Semitie worship it seems that no altar,
properly speaking, was in use; unless we choose to
give that name to the sacred stone or pillar beside
which the victim was slain, and on which the blood
or fat. of the sacrifice was smeared (ef. 1S 14°? 614},
1 K 19). In such cases the victims were slain (or
slain and burnt), not on the sacred stone, but
beside it. No doubt the significant part of the
offering lay in the smearing of the stone, which
was more or less identified with the Deity (Gn
2818-2) and might thus be considered as both altar
and temple. Later the burning of the victim came
to be an integral part of the ceremony, and the
hearth of burning acquired more importance. The
hearth was originally the bare ground, or a rock
(Je 67° 131-2°), but later it was artificially formed.
In the earliest law (Ex 20476) if was prescribed
that the altar should be of earth, or of unhewn
stone, and be made without steps, evidently a rever-
sion to a simpler custom than prevailed in many of
the Canaanite altars, or in the altars of the high
places. That the stone was not to be hewn may
also be connected with the primitive idea that the
| deity which inhabited the stone might be offended
or injured by the dressing.
were respected in a modified degree in the building
of the altars of the temple at Jerusalem. The
altar built by Ahaz, on an Assyrian model, was
probably designed in total disregard of the early
prescriptions ; but the later altars endeavoured to
conform somewhat to the original ideal. Thus
the altars of the second temple — both that of
Zerubbabel and that built by Judas Maccabeus—
were built of unhewn stone. In all probability
there were steps up to the altar of the first temple *
(ef. the altar of Ezekiel’s vision [4311], which had
steps on the eastern side); but the altars of the
second temple were ascended by means of a gradual
acclivity.
The altar of Herod’s temple, though larger than
all former altars, preserved their main character-
istics. It stood in front of the temple, in the inner-
most court. It was built of unhewn stone; no iron
tool was used in its construction. In this the
letter of the law in Exodus was adhered to, while
its evident intention was evaded. A new inter-
pretation of the law against the use of hewn stone
was given by Jewish tradition in the words of
Johanan ben Zakkai: ‘The altar is a means of
establishing peace between the people of Israel and
their Father in heaven; therefore iron, which is
used as an instrument of murder, should not be
swung over it.’ The altar was of huge dimensions.
According to Josephus (BJ Vv. v. 6) it was 15 cubits
high and 50 cubits square at the base; according
to the more reliable tradition of the Mishna,
which enters into precise details, it was 32 cubits
square at the base and correspondingly less in
height.t Like the earlier altars, it rose up in a
series of terraces or stages, contracting at irregular
intervals. (The first landing was a cubit from the
ground, and a cubit in breadth; while 5 cubits
higher came a second landing). The hearth on the
top still measured 24 cubits in length and breadth.
The altar-hearth was made accessible to the mini-
stering priests by a structure on the south side,
built in the form of a very gradual acclivity, and
making a pathway 32 cubits long by 16 broad.
Beside this main ascent were small stairs to the
several stages of the altar. Round the middle of
the entire altar ran a red line as an indication
to the priest when he sprinkled with blood the
upper and lower parts of the altar. At the south-
west corners of the hearth and of the altar’s base
were openings to earry off the wine of the drink-
offerings or the blood sprinkled on the side of the
altar. These openings led into a subterranean
canal which connected with the Kidron. At
the corners of the altar-hearth were projections,
called horns. The supposition that these were a
survival of the time when the victims were slain
as well as burnt on the altar, and required to be
bound upon the hearth, has at least the recom-
mendation of simplicity ; but it scarcely explains
the peculiar sacredness attached to the altar-horns,
or the important part they had in the ritual (1 K
151 973, Lv 815 99 1618; in certain cases they were
sprinkled with blood, Ex 2915, Ly 47). The ex-
planation given by Stade and others connects them
with the worship of Jahweh as symbolized by a
young bull. Northward from the altar was the
place of slaughtering, with rings fastened in the
ground, to which the animals were tied ; it was
*7.e. the altar of Ahaz. For the ‘brazen altar’ of Solomon
see the daring hypothesis of W. R. Smith (AS, note L), and A. R.
S. Kennedy’s note in Hastings’ DB i. 76».
+ The dimensions given by pseudo-Hecateus (Jos. c. Apion. i.
22)—20 cubits square and 10 cubits high—are not adducible
here; they refer to an altar of the second temple. The altar of
Ezekiel’s vision was 18 cubits square at the base and 11 cubits
high. The altar of Solomon, according to 2 Ch 41, was 20 cubits
square at the base and 10 high; dimensions perhaps taken, by
the author who inserted them, from the altar of the second
temple, with which he was acquainted.
These regulations
AMAZEMENT
provided also with pillars and tables for purposes
of hanging, flaying, and washing. The temple,
together with the altar and the place of slaughter,
were separated from the rest of the inner court by
a wall of partition, a cubit high, to mark off the
part reserved for the priests from that free to
Israelites generally.
On this great altar the fire was kept burning
night and day; it was the centre of the Jewish
ritual. On it, morning and evening, was offered
the daily burnt-otiering in the name of the people,
accompanied with meal-offerings and drink-ofier-
ings. On the Sabbaths and during the festival
days, the public offerings were greatly augmented.
Still more vast was the number of private sacri-
fices which were offered day by day ; and on the
festival days, when Jerusalem was crowded with
worshippers, thousands of priests officiated, and
the great altar was scarcely sufficient to burn the
masses of flesh that were heaped continuously
upon it.
The altar of incense, or the golden altar, stood
within the Holy Place. It was of very modest
dimensions, and was used chiefly for the offering
of incense, which took place twice daily, in the
morning before the burnt-offering, and in the
evening after it.
Besides an incidental mention of the altar (Mt
23°, Lk 1151), there are two pregnant sayings of
Christ in the Gospels where the altar is concerned.
In the first (Mt 5*°-*4) He opposes to the mere ex-
ternalism of the altar-worship the higher claims of
brotherhood, teaching that what God requires is
mercy and not sacrifice. In the other (Mt 23!8-2°)
He exposes the puerility of the distinction made,
in swearing, between the altar and the gift upon
it. It was by such miserable casuistry that the
scribes and Pharisees evaded the most solemnly
assumed obligations.
LITERATURE.—Benzinger’s and Nowack’s Heb. Arch. (Index,
s.v. ‘ Altar’); Josephus, BJ y. v. 6, and 6. Apion. i. 22; Mishna,
Middoth iii. 1-4; Schenkel, Bibellexicon, ‘ Brandopferaltar’ ;
Lightfoot, The Temple Service ; Schitirer, HJ FP τι. i. 24; Well-
hausen, Prolegomena ( Die Opfer’), and Reste des Arab. Heiden-
thums2, 101f.; W. R. Smith, 2S (Index, s.v. ‘ Altar’); Perrot
and Chipiez, Histoire de l’Art (Eng. tr., sections on Pheenicia
and Judea). See also Lightfoot (J. B.), ‘Essay on the Chr.
Ministry’ in Phil. pp. 251, 261, 265, and in Dissertations, pp.
217, 229, 234; Westcott (B. F.), Hebrews, pp. 453-461.
J. Dick FLEMING.
AMAZEMENT.—The interest of this word to
students of the Gospels is twofold, and arises out
of its employment, on the one hand, as one of the
terms used to express the effect upon the people
of our Lord’s supernatural manifestation, and on
the other, in one unique instance, to describe an
emotion which tore the heart of the God-man
Himself.
The nominal form, ‘amazement,’ is of rare occurrence in EV
(only Ac 310, 1 P 36 (for στόησις] in AV ; Mk 522, Lk 436 526, Ac 310in
RY); the passive verb, ‘to be amazed,’ occurs not infrequently
in the narrative books of NT (rarely in OT, e.g. Ex 1515). They
are especially characteristic of the Synoptic Gospels, and are
currently employed in their narratives, along with several kin-
dred terms, to describe the impression made by our Lord’s
wonderful teaching and His miraculous works. In the AV they
translate in these narratives a number of Gr. words: θάμβος,
θαιμϑέομαι, ἐκθαβέομαι; ἔκστασις, ἐξίσταμαι; ἐκπλήσσομα.. But
the RV, studying greater uniformity of rendering, omits ἐκσλήσ-
cous from this list, and makes ‘amazement,’ ‘ to be amazed,’ the
stated representatives of the other two groups [exceptions are :
Mk 168 where ézerzciz is rendered ‘astonishment’; Ac 310f.
where θάμεβος, ?z0zuG0; are represented by ‘wonder’: passages
like Mk 321, 2Co 518, and again Ac 1010 1115 2217 are, of course,
not in question]. To ἐκσλήσσομαι it uniformly assigns ‘aston-
ish,’ ‘astonishment’; and to the accompanying terms of kin-
dred implications similarly appropriate renderings : to θαυμάζω
(ἐξθαυμάζω, Mk 1217) renerally ‘to marvel’ (but ‘to wonder,’
Mt 1531, Lk 218 422 2412.41, also Ac 721), and to φοβέομμα, (φόβος Mt
1476, Mk 441, Lk 526 716 837; cf. ταράσσω Mt 1426, Mk 620, τρόμος
Mk 168, τρέμω Mk 533, Lk 847) ‘to be afraid,’ varied to ‘ to fear.’
The constant recurrence in the Synoptic narrative of one or
another of these terms as a comment upon the effect of our
Lord’s teaching or works, imparts to the reader a vivid sense
of the supernaturalness of His manifestation and of the deep
impression which it made as such on the people.
AMAZEMENT 47
Sometimes it appears to have been tlhe demeanour
or bearing of our Lord which awoke wonder or
struck with awe (Mt 274 || Mk 15°, Mk 9» 108;
cf. Lk 2%). Sometimes the emotion was aroused
rather by the tone of His teaching, as, with His
great ‘I say unto you’ He ‘taught them as havy-
ing authority, and not as the scribes’ (Mk 12? || Lk
482, Mt 773; οἵ. Mk 1118. Mt 2223), At other times it
was more distinctly what He said, the matter of
His discourse, that excited the emotions in question
—its unanticipated literalness, or its unanticipat-
able judiciousness, wisdom, graciousness, or the
radical paradox of its announcements (Lk 247-8
42; Mt 13*|| Mk 65; Jn 7°; Mt 19% || Mk 10°;
Mt 22” || Mk 1217, Lk 2058). Most commonly, how-
ever, it was one of His wonderful works which
brought to the spectators the dread sense of the
presence of the supernatural (Lk 5°; Mk 127 |) Lk
455. Mk 2151} Lk 5%, Mt 98; Lk 716 11241) Mt 122;
Mt 877 || Mk 4%, Lk 8%; Mk 5% || Lk 82-37; Mk
590. 83. 22 || Lk 8%; Mt 9%; Mk 651; Jn 6'9|| Mt 145 -
Mk 77; Lk 9%; Mt 21”), and filled the country
with wonder (Mt 1591).
The circle affected, naturally, varies from a
single individual (Mk 5*), or the few who happened
to be concerned (Lk 2% 5%), or the body of His
immediate followers (Mt 178, Mk 1074-25) Mt 1925
21”), up to a smaller or larger assemblage of spec-
tators (Lk 2 4%; Mk 1 jj Lk 42; Mk 127 || Lk 436.
ΜΠ ΘΙ le 715.8": 2" Mk 52 Μ 155: ΜῈ ΟΠ
6 || Mt 14°, Mk 6°; Mk 753, Lk 98, Mk 168; Mt
2255} Mk 1211 Lk 203). These spectators are often
expressly declared to have been numerous: they
are described as ‘ the multitudes’ or ‘all the multi-
tudes,’ ‘all the people of the country,’ or quite
generally, when not a single occasion but a sum-
mary of many is in question, ‘great multitudes’
(Mt 9° || Lk 5%; Mt 7% 12°, Lk απ 8% || Mk 5;
ΜῈ 8... Mt 955 152) Mik 915: Ini 715 Mike 1118. Mt
padi
The several terms employed by the Evangelists to
describe the impression on the people of these super-
natural manifestations, express the feelings natural
to man in the presence of the supernatural. In
their sum they leave on the reader’s mind a very
complete sense of the reality and depth of the
impression made. Their detailed synonymy is not
always, however, perfectly clear. The student will
find discriminating discussions of the two groups
of terms which centre respectively around the
notions of ‘wonder’ and ‘fear’ in J. H. Heinrich
Schmidt’s well-known Synonymtk der griechischen
Sprache, at Nos. 168 and 139. It will probably suttice
here to indicate very briefly the fundamental impli-
cation of each term in its present application.
Θαυμάζω is a broad term, primarily expressing the complete
engagement of the mind with an object which seizes so power-
fully upon the attention as to compel exclusive occupation with
it. It is ordinarily used in a good sense, and readily takes on
the implication of ‘admiration’; but it often occurs also when
the object contemplated arouses internal opposition and dis-
pleasure. What it always implies is that its object is remark-
able, extraordinary, beyond not so much expectation as ready
comprehension, and therefore irresistibly engages attention and
awakens ‘wonder.’ It does not import ‘surprise,’ but rather, if
you will, ‘curiosity,’ or better, ‘interestedness.’ In this it
separates itself from θαμβέομαι, in which the notion of ‘un-
expectedness’ is, at least originally, inherent.
This latter term gives expression to the sense of mental
helplessness which oppresses us on the occurrence of an un-
anticipated and astonishing phenomenon. The affection of the
mind it suggests is one of mingled admiration and fear; and in
the usage of the word this passes both downward into ‘ conster-
nation,’ strengthened to ‘ fright’ and ‘terror,’ and upward into
‘awe’ and ‘veneration.’ In the LXX the lower senses are pre-
dominant (e.g. Sir 125, Ca 38 63[4] 910, Ezk 718; 1K 1415, 2S 715,
Wis 17%, Dn 817-18; 1 Mac 68, Dn 77, Sir 309). In the Evangelical
passages now before us, on the other hand, the higher senses
come forward, and the idea expressed lies near to ‘awe,’ and
the term comes thus into close synonymy with ceBiouzs.
The notion of ‘surprise’ which underlies JeuGiou~s seems to be
much more prominent in ἐξίσταμαι. This term, broad enough
to be applied to any ‘derangement,’ bodily or mental, was par-
ticularly employed, with or without a defining adjunct, to de-
48 AMAZEMENT
AMBASSAGE
scribe that aberration of the mind, the subjects of which in
English too we speak of simply as ‘demented’ (2Co 515). In
its more ordinary usage the implication is no more than that
the subject is thrown out of his normal state into a condition
of ‘ecstasy,’ or extreme emotion,—the emotion in question
being of varied kind, but more commonly an ‘amazement’
which carries with it at least a suggestion of perplexity, if not
of bewilderment.
Whei this ‘ surprise’ rises to its height, however, especially if it
is informed with alarm, the appropriate term to express it would
seem to be ἐκσλήσσοικαι, although this term is used so frequently
for purely intellectual effects arising from intellectual causes,
that it falls readily into the sense of pure ‘astonishment.’
Nevertheless, the element of ‘alarm’ inherent in it places it
among the synonyms of φοβέομαι, from which it differs as a
sudden access of fright differs from an abiding state of fear, or
as, in connexions like those at present engaging our attention,
to be ‘awestruck’ differs from the continuous sense of ‘awful
reverence’ which prompts to withdrawal from the dread pres-
ence.
The same fundamental emotion of fear which finds its most
natural expression in φοβέομμαι is more rarely given expression
also in such terms as ταράσσω, the basal implication of which is
‘agitation,’ ‘perturbation,’ passing on into the ‘ disquietude,’ on
the one side, of that ‘troubled worry’ the extreme of which is
expressed by &dzuovéw, and on the other into that terrified
‘consternation’ which finds its extreme expression in +rozouwcs
(Lk 2487): or as τρέμω, which in its application to the trembling
of the mind—to mental ‘shivering ’—draws near to the notions
of ‘anxiety ’ and ‘ horror.’
The emotions signalized as called out by the
manifestation of Jesus in His word and work, it
will be seen, run through the whole gamut of the
appropriate responses of the human spirit in the
presence of the supernatural. Men, seeing and
hearing Him, wondered, were awestruck, amazed,
astonished, made afraid, with a fear which dis-
quieted their minds and exhibited itself in bodily
trembling. The confusion by RV under the com-
mon rendering ‘amaze,’ ‘amazement’ of two of
these groups of terms (θάμβος, θαμβέομαι, ἔκθαμβος,
ἐκθαμβέομαι, and ἔκστασις, ἐξίσταμαι), Seems scarcely
to do justice to the distinctive implications of
either, and especially fails to mark the clear note of
the higher implication of ‘awe’ that sounds in the
former. The interest of noting how completely the
notion of ‘surprise,’ originally present in θάμβος, has
in usage retired into the background in favour
of deeper conceptions, is greatly increased by the
employment of the strengthened form of the verb
ἐκθαμβέομαι by St. Mark (1433) to describe an ele-
ment in our Lord’s agony in Gethsemane.
When St. Matthew (2057) tells us that Jesus ‘ be-
gan to be sorrowful (λυπεῖσθαι) and sore troubled’
(ἀδημονεῖν), St. Mark, varying the phraseology,
says (in the RV) that He ‘began to be greatly
amazed (ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι) and sore troubled (1455).
Surely the rendering ‘amazed,’ however, misses
the mark here: the note of the word, as a parallel
to ἀδημονεῖν and λυπεῖσθαι, is certainly that of
anguish not of unexpectedness, and the commen-
tators appear, therefore, to err when they lay
stress on the latter idea. The usage in the LXX,
both of the word itself (Sir 30°, where also, oddly
enough, it is paralleled with λυπέω) and of its
cognates, seems decisively to suggest a sense for
it which will emphasize not the unexpectedness
of our Lord’s experience, but its dreadfulness,
and will attribute to our Saviour on this awful
occasion, therefore, not ‘surprise,’ but ‘anguish
and dread,’ ‘depression and alarm’ (J. A. Alex-
ander), or even ‘inconceivable awe’ (Swete).
The difficulty of the passage, let it be remarked, is not a dog-
matic, but an exegetical one. There is no reason why we
should not attribute to the human soul of the Lord all the
emotions which are capable of working in the depths of a sin-
less human spirit (cf. J. A. Alexander’s excellent note on Mk
810 and Swete’s on Mk 66). But certainly the employment of
the verb :zfuuSiouxs here by St. Mark affords no warrant for
thinking of the agony of Gethsemane as if it exceeded the ex-
pectation of our Lord, and as if it consisted in large part of the
surprise and perplexity incident upon discovering it to be worse
than He had anticipated (cf. the otherwise admirable note of
Dr. Swete, in loc.—‘ long as He had foreseen the Passion, when
it came clearly into view its terrors exceeded His anticipations’ ;
A. J. Mason, The Conditcons of our Lord’s Life on Earth, pp.
tions’). On the contrary, the usage of the word combines with
the context here to suggest that its whole force is absorbed in
indicating the depths of soul-agony through which our Lord
was called upon to pass in this mysterious experience. On the
terms employed, the note of Pearson, On the Creed, ed. 1835,
p- 281; ed. New York, 1847, pp. 288-289, is still worth consult-
ing.
In studying the emotional life of our Lord’s human spirit
during His life on earth, as it is exhibited to us in the Gospel
narratives, nothing in point of fact is more striking than the
richness of the vocabulary by means of which He is pictured to
us as the ‘man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,’ and the
slenderness of the suggestion that He may have been subject
to the surprises which constitute so large an element in the
lives of mere men. So far as the explicit assertions of the
Evangelic narratives go, it would seem that the unexpected
never happened to Jesus. Neither surprise, nor astonishment,
nor amazement, nor suspense, nor embarrassment, nor per-
plexity, nor distraction, is ever, in so many words, attributed
to Him. Those who would discover in the narratives, never-
theless, some ground for supposing that He may have experi-
enced these emotions (e.g. A. J. Mason, The Conditions of
our Lord’s Life on Earth, pp. 135-138; Τὶ Adamson, Studies
of the Mind in Christ, pp. 11, 12, 167: and in its extremity,
E. A. Abbott, Philomythus, on which see Southern Presbyterian
Review, Oct. 1884, ‘Some Recent Apocryphal Gospels,’ p. 733 ff.),
must needs depend on an inferential method, the inconclusive-
ness of which has been repeatedly pointed out of old, as, for
example, by Augustine (e.g. 6. Faust. Manich. xxii. 13), who
remarks upon its equal applicability to the anthropomorphisms
of the OT.
‘Wonder’ (AV; RV ‘ marvelling’), to be sure, is attributed
to Jesus on two occasions (Mt 8!9 || Lk 79, Mk 66). But the
term used (θαυμάζω) is on both occasions precisely that one
which least of all implies ‘surprise,’ which declares its object
rather extraordinary than unexpected. ‘ Θαυμάζω, remarks
Schmidt (op. cit. p. 184), ‘is perfectly generaily ‘‘to wonder”
or ‘‘to admire,” and is distinguished from #«ev precisely as
the German sich wundern or bewundern is from staunen ; that
is, what has specially seized on us is in the case of θαυμάζειν
the extraordinary nature of the thing, while in the case of
θα μβεῖν it is the unexpectedness and suddenness of the occur-
rence.’ All that needs be imported by these passages is that the
circumstances adverted to were in themselves remarkable ; and
that Jesus recognized, felt, and remarked upon their remark-
ableness,—in the one instance with the implication of admira-
tion, in the other with that of reprobation. That the circum-
stances which called out His sense of the incongruity in the
situations He remarks upon were unanticipated by our Lord,
and therefore when observed struck Him with a shock of sur-
prise, we are not told. BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD.
AMBASSAGE.—This term is used in Lk 147 (AV
and RV) and in RV of Lk 1915 (more accurately
instead of AV ‘message’), The Greek is πρεσβεία.
Both in the original and the translation the
abstract is used for the concrete ; a term meaning
the office or message of an ambassador or body of
ambassadors for the ambassadors themselves.
The formation of the word is not fully explained. The earlier
form both in English and French was ambassade. The French
suffix -age (= Lat. -atiewm) is usually found in words transferred
from France, but 'sometimes it was added to English words.
Ambassage seems to be an exception to both. It may be either
a formation from a French root or a softening of ambassade by
the influence of analogy. The word was accented by some on
the first syllable, by others on the second. An alternative
spelling was embassage. Both forms are obsolete, being sup-
planted by embassy, the direct equivalent of ambassade.
In Lk 14°**> Jesus is speaking of discipleship
and the necessary condition of entire surrender to
spiritual authority. And He gives in illustration
the parable which teaches the folly of entering on
an enterprise without counting the cost. A prince
who has provoked to war a superior power will
do well to send an ambassage to sue for peace—
peace without honour. The man whose force of
character is not able to withstand and overcome
the worldly obstacles, must in some form or other
make compromise with the worldly powers. He is
not fit for the kingdom of God. (For other inter-
pretations see Trench and the Commentators).
The second occurrence (Lk 1914) is in the parable
of the Pounds; not in the main part, which bears
resemblance to the parable of the Talents, but in
one of two verses (νν. 1" 37) directed to a subsidiary
aspect of the situation. While the servants of the
distant dignitary are, in his absence, carrying out
instructions and using opportunities, a section of
his subjects resolve to cast off his authority. To
| 135-138—‘ when the hour came, it exceeded all His expecta- | this effect they sendan embassy. When he returns
AMBITION
AMEN 49
he rewards the faithful and executes punishment
on the disloyal. The application is to the Second
Coming of the Lord.
The term πρεσβεία (from πρέσβυς, ‘old’) belongs
to classical Greek, and it contains an expression of
the rule that responsible duties of statecraft are
naturally entrusted to approved elders and heads
of families. St. Paul uses the corresponding verb
in 2Co 5%, where he describes the Christian
preachers as ‘ambassadors for Christ,’ and in
ph 6% the idea is repeated. Perhaps we may
connect the occurrence of πρεσβεία in the Third
Gospel with St. Luke’s apparent preference of
‘presbyter ’ to ‘ bishop’ (Ac 20"), and _ his repeated
use of presbyterion for the body of Jewish elders
(Lk 22%, Ac 45 22°), For the terms are expressive
of dignity, and in St. Luke’s literary style a sense
of dignity is clearly shown.
It is further notable that commentators are able
to refer the suggestion of both these parables to
contemporary history. The former corresponds
with the struggle between Antipas and his father-
in-law, Hareth, king of Arabia; the latter is
illustrated by Herod, by Archelaus, and by Anti-
pas, each of whom went to Rome to obtain an
enhancement of power. But details apply to the
case of Archelaus, who put his friends in command
of cities, and against whom the Jews sent to the
emperor an embassy of fifty men (Jos. Ant. XVII.
ἈΠ): R. Scort.
AMBITION.—The word ‘ambition’ is not found
in the AV or RV, but the propensity signified is,
of course, represented in the New Testament. Its
derivation is Latin [amdi, ‘about,’ and ire, ifaw,
‘to go’ ], meaning a going about in all directions,
especially with a view to collecting votes. It thus
means to have such a desire as to make one go
out of one’s way to satisfy it, and, in a secondary
sense, denotes the object which arouses such desire
and effort. Asa psychological fact, Ambition may
be defined as a natural spring of action which
makes for the increment of life. Ethically speak-
ing, it takes its colour from the object towards
which it is directed. In ordinary use it implies
blame ; but in true Christianity, where the utmost
is given for the highest, it is otherwise.
In the Epistles the verbs διώκω, σπουδάζω, ξητέω
are used figuratively for this propensity (Ph 3,
2 P 34, Ro 10°); but perhaps a nearer synonym is
ζηλόω with its corresponding substantive ζῆλος (as
in 1 Co 14!- 13. 39. ef, Weymouth’s NZ’ in Modern
Speech), though ζῆλος in a good sense is generally
translated ‘zeal,’ and in a bad sense ‘jealousy,’
both words being of rather broader significance
than ‘ambition.’
It is in accordance with the literary character-
istics of the Gospel narratives that such an abstract
idea as ambition can be found only under some
picturesque phrase, e.g. ‘lamp of the body’ (Mt
6 *8), <food’ (Jn 43). “Τὸ cut off the right hand’
or ‘to pluck out the right eye’ is the expression
used by our Lord for destroying one’s dearest
ambition, whether it is controlling one’s energies
or directing one’s imagination (Mk' 9", ef., as
Trench points out, the use of ὀφθαλμὸς πονηρός [Mt
6%, Mk 7] for ‘envy’).
But although there is no explicit reference to
Ambition in the NT, it is so characteristic a fact
of human nature that a large part of the teaching
of Christ might be exhibited in relation to it.
And because it is capable of being bent towards
lofty as well as sinister, or at least selfish ends,
Christian ethics seems from one point of view to
be the exaltation of Ambition, from another its
deposition,
1. For Ambition.—Christ’s method was to use
the fact of Ambition and purify it by exercising
Wor; τ ἢ
it on the highest objective. The call to the first
disciples was an appeal to their ambition for a
higher life: ‘Follow me, and I will make you
fishers of men’ (Mt 4159). He gave primacy to an
ambition for the ends of the Kingdom over all
worldly ambitions in the words: ‘Seek ye first the
kingdom of God and His righteousness’ (Mt 6%).
He compared the earnestness of true followers
with the ambition of a pearl-merchant (Mt 13"),
and encouraged the religious ambition of the
young ruler by trying to turn it into a new and
deeper channel (Mt 19%): ‘If thou wouldest be
perfect, sell... give... and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven.’ It was part of His teaching
to set before His disciples a prize to aim at (Lk
2279. 30, Mt 5'3-14, Jn 1256). and He expected them
to go out of their way in devotion, and to all
lengths in fidelity (Lk 9° 1476 1915-19, Mt 2514-3), in
order to win the truest praise and most lasting
success. ‘The Christian moral reformation may
indeed be summed up in this—humanity changed
from a restraint to a motive’ (θυ Homo).
2. Against Ambition.—But it may with equal
truth be said that the aim of the life and teaching
of Christ was to depose Ambition from its ruling
place. He was always rebuking (1) inordinate
desires for any kind of selfish satisfaction, whether
they were associated with greed (Jn 6% ‘ food
that perisheth’; Lk 6%, and esp. 195-21) or with
pride (Mt 6-4 * glory of men,’ 20-28 “lord it,’ 235-12
‘seen of men and called Rabbi’); or (2) even a
high-placed desire if it was held thoughtlessly and
without counting the cost (Lk 14°8** the builder
and the king who failed in their ambition; Mk
10*- the sons of Zebedee who ‘knew not what
they asked’). Moreover, Christ cut away the
very tap-root of Ambition by turning self out of
its place at the seat of the motives of life, in
favour of a living trust in the Father and an
undivided allegiance to Himself. The virtues
which are most prominent in the Christian ideal
leave no room at all for Ambition in the gener-
ally accepted use of the word. For Christianity
demands humility (Mt 5° ete., Lk 147" ete., Jn
13215), generosity (Mik 1274+ Lk 6%-3! 1933 ete.);
and self-renouncement (Mt 1038. %, Mk 102% 29,
my 1274525):
On the whole, the influence of Christ’s teaching
and inspiration on Ambition has been not to ex-
tirpate it, but to control and chasten it by the
discovery and establishment of other standpoints,
such as the outlook of other-worldliness, the sense
of brotherhood, and personal allegiance to Himself.
LITERATURE.—Lightfoot (J. B.), Cambridge Sermons, 217;
Moore (A. L.), Advent to Advent, 239; Shedd ΟΥ̓. G. T.), Sermons
to the Spiritual Man, 371; Mozley (W. B.), University Sermons,
262. A. NORMAN ROWLAND.
AMEN.—Like the Greek ἀμήν, this is practically
a transliteration of the Heb. j2x, which itself is a
verbal adjective connected with a root signifying
to make firm, establish. In the last instance, and
as we are concerned with it, it is an indeclinable
particle. Barth treats it as originally a substan-
tive (=‘ firmness,’ ‘certainty’). For the deriva-
tion, οἵ. our Eng. ‘yes,’ ‘yea,’ which is also
connected with an old verbal root of similar sig-
nificance.
As a formula of solemn confirmation, assever-
ation and assent, it was established in old and
familiar usage amongst the Jews in the time of
our Lord. Its function is specially associated with
worship, prayer, the expression of will and desire,
the enunciation of weighty judgments and truths.
Four modes in which Amen is used may be dis-
tineuished—(1) Jnitial, when it lends weight to
the utterance following. (2) Final, when used by
the speaker himself in solemn confirmation of what
it
50 AMEN
Ξε ξεν meee nn SN ΟΕΣΣ ΕΕΥΒΕΕΒΕΙΒΝΝ
precedes. (3) Responsive, when used to express
assent to the utterance of another, as in prayers,
benedictions, oaths, ete. (4) Subseriptional, when
used to mark the close of a writing, but hardly
amounting to much more than a peculiar variant
of “ Finis.’
The subscriptional Amen requires but a brief
notice. No instance of it is found in the OT;
and as regards the closing Amen in the several
Scriptures of the NT there is for the most part a
lack of textual authority. The AV, following the
TR, in most instances has it; the RV in most
instances omits it. Where it is found, in the
Epistles and the Apocalypse, it is rather due to
the fact that these writings close with a doxology,
prayer, or benediction. The variations of authority
in such cases seem to a large extent capricious:
else why, e.g., Amen at the end of 1 Corinthians
and not at the end of 2 Corinthians? The closing
Amen in each of the Gospels, though without
authority, is a genuine instance of the subscrip-
tional use of later times. This use has a further
curious illustration in the practice of copyists of
MSS who wrote 99 at the end of their work, this
being the. total numerical value of the characters
in ἀμήν. For the purposes of the present article it
will be necessary to examine the whole Biblical
usage of ‘Amen.’
1. Amen in the OT.—The formula is found in (a)
the Pentateuch (Nu 5”, Dt 27 passim) as a ritual
injunction (LXX γένοιτο throughout). (6) In 1 Kk
1%, 1 Ch 1055, Neh 5%, Jer 115 286 it is mentioned
as being actually used (LXX in 1 Καὶ 1° γένοιτο
οὕτως, Jer 28° ἀληθῶς, elsewhere ἀμήν). (c) In the
Psalms (4113 72! 8058. 106483) we meet with its
liturgical use (LXX γένοιτο). The most common
equivalent for Amen in the LXX is γένοιτο ; and
with this may be compared St. Paul’s familiar μὴ
γένοιτο, the negative formula of dissent and depre-
cation.
No clear instance of the use of an initial Amen
occurs. Hoge thinks we have such in 1 Καὶ 1°, Jer
115 and 28°; but in each of these cases it will be
found that the Amen is a responsive assent to
something that precedes. It is true that the LXX
rendering in Jer 28° (ἀληθῶς) shows that the trans-
lators were inclined to regard this as an instance
of an initial Amen; but even here the term is
really an ironical response to the false prophecy of
Hananiah in vv.?4+. Almost all the instances,
indeed, in which Amen is met with in the OT are
examples of the responsive use ; the only consider-
able instances of the jinal use being found at the
end of each of the first three divisions of the
Psalter. In the Apocrypha we have further in-
stances of the responsive Amen in To 88 and in
Jth 1330 and 15” (EV in the latter book renders
‘So be it’). The doubled formula (‘ Amen, Amen,’
οἵ, Jth 13°) thus used is naturally explained as an
expression of earnestness. It may here be added
that among the Jews at a much later period Amen
has a responsive and desiderative use in connexion
with every kind of expression of desire and feli-
citation; e.g. ‘May he live to see good days:
Amen !’
2. Amen in the Gospels.—We must set aside
the instances of swbscriptional Amen (see above)
as without authority. In Mt 6 some ancient
authorities support the conclusion of the Lord’s
Prayer with doxology and Amen; but it can
hardly be doubted that Amen here, along with
the doxology which it closes, is not original, but
due to liturgical use (see ‘Notes on Select Read-
ings’ in Westcott-Hort’s NZ in Greck, ad loc.).
In all the other instances in the Gospels it is the
imitial Amen that is found, given always and
only as a wsus loguendi of Christ in the formula,
ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν (σοι), according to the Synoptists,
AMEN
andl ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν (σοι), according to St.
John.
Now, whilst final Amen as a formula of con-
clusion or response remains unaltered throughout
in NT in the various versions, it is of interest to
notice the different ways in which this initial
Amen is treated. The Vulgate, e.g., invariably
keeps the untranslated form, and reads Amen (or
Amen, Amen) dico vobis. The modern Greek
equivalent is ἀληθῶς (ἀληθῶς ἀληθῶς) ; and with
this accords our EV ‘Verily,’ and also Luther’s
Wahrlich. And, indeed, among the Synoptists
themselves there are indications that an initial
Amen has sometimes been replaced by another
term. ‘This is specially so in the case of St. Luke,
who has only 6 instances of ἀμήν as against 30 in
St. Matthew, and 13 in St. Mark. We have,
e.g., vat in Lk 11°! for ἀμήν in the parallel Mt 23%,
ἀληθῶς in Lk 957 (cf. Mt 16°, Mk 9). Ali this goes
to show that this use of Amen on the part of Jesus
was quite a peculiarity.
The very λέγω ὑμῖν alone would have been notice-
able as a mode of assertion: the addition of ἀμήν
does but intensify this characteristic, as an enforce-
ment and corroboration of the utterances that are
thus prefaced. The Heb. 2s, which in our Lord’s
time was usual only in responses, thus appears to
have been taken by Him as an expedient for con-
firming His own statement ‘in the same way as if
it were an oath or a blessing.’ Formule of pro-
testation and affirmation involving an oath were in
use among Rabbinical teachers to enforce teachings
and sayings, and with these the mode of Jesus
invites comparison and contrast.
The attempt of Delitzsch to explain this Amen (particularly
in the double form) through the Aramaic 83°28 ‘I say,’ cannot
be sustained. Jannaris, again (Expos. Times, Sept. 1902,
Ῥ. 564), has ventured the suggestion that ἀμήν thus used is a
corruption of ἢ μήν (ei μήν); but interesting and ingenious as
this may be, it lacks confirmation, and amongst the instances
of the use of ἢ μὴν which he adduces from the LXX, the
papyri, etc., not one suits the case here by showing any such
construction as 7% qv λέγω viv in Use.
A parallel between Amen and our ‘ Yes’ has been
already suggested: and in the NT we similarly
find ἀμήν and vai closely associated (2 Co 1°, Rev
1’), whilst we have before noticed how in St.
Luke vat is found as a substitute for ἀμήν. It may
not therefore be out of place here to suggest that
we have an illustration and analogy as regards the
use οἵ an initial Amen in the use of an intro-
ductory ‘Yes’ sometimes found in English (see,
e.g., Shakspeare, 2 Hen. IV.1. ili. 36; Pope, Moral
Essays, 1. 1).
The double Amen, which occurs 25 times in St.
John, and is peculiar to that Gospel, has provoked
much curiosity as to how it is to be explained. If
Jesus used as a formula in teaching now ἀμὴν λέγω
ὑμῖν and again ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, it is very
strange that the Synoptics should invariably re-
present Him as using the former, and the Fourth
Gospel invariably as using the latter. Why not
instances of both promiscuously through all the
Gospels if the two were thus alike used ?
The statement that the Johannine form ‘intro-
duces a truth of special solemnity and importance’
(as Plummer in Camb. Gr. Test. for Schools, ete.,
‘St. John,’ note on ch. 1°!) is quite gratuitous, as a
comparison of the sayings and discourses of our
Lord will show. It is too obviously a dictwm for
the purpose of explanation. The truth is, if we
have regard to the exclamatory character of ἀμήν
as a particle in this special use, there is noth-
ing surprising in its being thus repeated ; and we
have the analogy of the repeated Amen in re-
sponses, as noticed above. Why St. John alone
sgate give the formula in this particular way is a
further question. If a consideration of the pheno-
mena connected with the composition of the Fourth
Be AMEN
AMEN 51
Gospel leads to the conclusion that in the form in
which the ntterances of Jesus are there presented
we have not His ipsissima verba, we may most
naturally regard the repetition of ἀμήν as a peculi-
arity due to the Evangelist, and (taking the
evidence of the Synoptists into account) not neces-
sarily a form actually used by Jesus.
3. Amen in the rest of the NT.—In the numerous
instances in which Amen occurs in the ΝΊΣ out-
side the Gospels, it is almost entirely found in con-
nexion with prayers, doxologies, or benedictions, as
a solemn corroborative conclusion (final use). In
addition, we have the responsive use of Amen illus-
trated in 1 Co 14:6 (see below, s. ‘ Liturgical use’)
and Rev 54: and ἀμήν in Rev 22” is responsive
to the ἔρχομαι ταχύ preceding. Extra-canonical
writings furnish plentiful examples of the same
use. Two instances, again, of an introductory
Amen in the Apocalypse (1713 195), as a form of
exultant acclamation, are interesting, but are
quite distinct from the initial Amen in the utter-
ances of Jesus in the Gospels.
Amen as a substantive appears in two forms:
(1) τὸ ἀμήν, (2) 6 ἀμήν. We meet with the former
in 1Co 1416 and 2Co 1%. In both cases there
appears to be a reference to a liturgical Amen. In
the latter passage, indeed, it might be contended
that ἀμήν is merely in correspondence with vai,
both simply conveying the idea of confirmation
and assurance; but if we follow the better sup-
ported reading (as in RV) the presence of such a
reference can hardly be denied.
The use of ὁ ἀμήν as a name for our Lord in Rev
34 is striking and peculiar. The attempt, how-
ever, to explain it by reference to 2 Co 15 is not
satisfactory. The curious expression ‘the God of
Amen’ (EV ‘the God of truth’) in Is 6515 is not
sufficiently a parallel to afford an explanation, for
the Amen in this case is not a personal name, but
the EV furnishes a satisfactory equivalent in the
‘rendering ‘truth.’ Surely, however, there need be
little difficulty about the use of such a term as a
designation of Jesus. Considering the wealth of
descriptive epithets applied to Him in the NT and
other early Christian writings, and also the termin-
ology favoured by the author of the Apocalypse,
we must feel that this use of Amen, if bold, is not
unnatural or unapt, so suggestive as the term is
of truth and firmness. Another but very different
use of Amen as a proper name may be mentioned.
Among certain of the Gnosties ἀμήν figured as the
name of an angel (Hippolytus, Philosophumena,
eexvili. 79, ecciv. 45).
4 Amen in liturgical use.—(a) Jewish.—In the
Persian period Amen was in use as ‘ the responsory
of the people to the doxology of the Priests and
the Levites’ (see Neh 8%, 1 Ch 16%, Ps 106%). In
the time of Christ it had become an established
and familiar formula of the synagogue worship in
particular, the response used in the Temple being
alonger form: ‘Blessed be the Name of the glory
of His kingdom for ever and ever!’ In still later
times a formula of response was used which was
apparently a combination of the synagogue Amen
with the Temple responsory: ‘Amen: praised be
the great Name for ever and ever!’ In the syna-
gogue service the Amen was said by the people in
response to the reader’s doxology. (In the great
Synagogue of Alexandria the attendant used to
signal the congregation with a flag when to give
the response). Amen was also the responsory to
the priestly blessing.
Responsive Amen at the end of prayers was
evidently an old custom among the Jews. In
later times they are said to have discouraged this,
because Amen at the end of every prayer had
become the habit of Christians. The use of Amen
In this connexion was thus considerably restricted ;
but certain synagogue prayers were still specified
as to be followed by the Amen.
The Rabbis in their liturgical exactness rigor-
ously determined the sense of Amen, and, among
other things, enjoined that every doxology, on
whatever occasion, must be followed by this re-
sponse. Curious sayings were current among
them, emphasizing the significance and value of
Amen. Should, e.g., the inhabitants of hell ex-
claim ‘Amen!’ when the holy Name of God is
praised, it will secure their release (Yalk. ii. 296
to Is 262).
(ὁ) Christian. — This use of Amen was un-
doubtedly borrowed by the Christians from the
Jewish synagogue, as, indeed, other liturgical fea-
tures were. St. Paul’s words in 1 Co 14 are of
special interest here. The reader is so to recite
his prayers that the ignorant should have the
boon of answering the Amen to the doxology.
The ἰδιώτης (879) tor whom he pleads is similarly
considered by the Rabbis, and they give the
same instruction. It cannot be maintained that
the term εὐχαριστία used here by St. Paul has that
special and, so to speak, technical sense which
it afterwards acquires as applied to the Lord’s
Supper, and that so ‘the Amen’ (τὸ ἀμήν) intended
is specifically the response connected with the
observance of that institution. At the same time,
the whole reference clearly indicates that Amen
as a responsory in Christian worship was already
a regular and familiar usage.
It is, however, in connexion with the Eucharist,
in the special sense of the term, that the Fathers
particularly mention the responsive Amen, and
refer to it as said after the doxology with which
the long Prayer of Consecration closed. Justin
Martyr (Apol. 2), Tertullian (de Spectacul. 25),
Dionysius of Alexandria (ap. Euseb. HE), and
Chrysostom (Hom. 35 in 1 Cor.) make such refer-
ence. This prayer, of course, was at first said
aloud, so as to be heard by all; but in the course
of time (after the 8th cent.) the custom grew for
the officiating minister to say it sotto voce. Even
then, such importance was attached to the re-
sponse of the people that the priest was required
to say the closing words (‘world without end’)
aloud, so that then the ‘Amen’ might be said.
This in the West: in the Greek Church it was
similarly required that the words of the institution
should be said aloud, though the first part of the
prayer was said inaudibly, so that the people
might hear them and make their response. A
writer of the 9th cent. (Florus Magister), referring
to this usage, says: ‘Amen, which is responded
by the whole church, means 76 is true. This,
therefore, the faithful respond at the consecration
of so great a mystery, as also in every prayer duly
said, and by responding declare assent.’ A similar
use of Amen at the end of the Exhortation (which
is not a prayer), commencing the second part of
the eucharistic service (see Book of Common
Prayer), and at the end of the corresponding
‘Preface’ in the old Gallican Liturgy, may also
be pointed out.
Jerome has an interesting reference to tie loud
congregational Amen, which he describes as re-
sounding like thunder (‘ad similitudinem ccelestis
tonitrui’— Com. ad Galat.). This corresponds
to a synagogue custom of uttering the ‘Amen
with the full power’ of the voice (Shab. 1190).
The modern practice of singing Amen at the
close of hymns in public worship is partly due to
a musical demand for a suitable cadence to con-
clude the tune: but it is also in harmony with
the most ancient practice of closing hymns with
doxologies, which naturally carried an Amen with
them. The discrimination observable in some
hymnals, whereby hymns containing a prayer or
02 ΑΜ HA’AREZ
ANDREW
a doxolovy are closed with Amen and others not,
arises from misapprehension. Amen not only
means ‘So be it,’ but equally ‘So it is,’ and should
thus be suitable as a conclusion to all hymns that
are appropriate for Christian worship.
(c) Mohammedan.— Among the Mohammedans
Amen is used liturgically, but only to a slight
extent. It is universally used by them after every
recital of the first Sura of the Koran—the so-called
Surat al-Fdtihat (= Preface or Introduction). This
brief, prayer-like form is held in great veneration,
and has among them a place corresponding to that
of the Paternoster amongst Christians.
LITERATURE.—The Bible Dictionaries, s.v.; Jewish Encyclo-
pedia, s.v.; Berakhoth i. 11-19; H. W. Hogg, Jewish Quart.
Review, Oct. 1896; articles in Eapository Times, by Nestle
(Jan. 1897), and Jannaris (Sept. 1902); Dalman, Die Worte Jesu
(Eng. tr. 1902, p. 226 ff.); Scudamore, Notitia Eucharistica.
J. S. CLEMENS.
AM HA’AREZ (7x7 ov) means literally ‘the
people of the land.’ Sometimes—particularly in
later books of OT—it is found in the plural ‘ammé
λα ἄγος or ‘ammé h@drdzéth. Its use in the time
of Christ indicates the following development :—
From being (1) applied to the ordinary inhabitants
of the land (Gn 23%: 12:13) or to the people at large as
a body (2 K 1114-38-19. 20 155 16 214 ete.), the term
came (2) to be used to designate the common people
as distinguished from the king, princes, priests,
etc. (Jer 447, Hag 24, Zec 7°), and (3) like ‘pagan’
from pagus, was applied to those remote from or
untouched by the culture (particularly religious
culture) of the time, till it became (4) finally,
an expression of contempt meaning ‘uncultured,’
‘rude,’ ‘barbarous,’ ‘irreligious,’ applied to a
certain class or even to a member of that class.
To the ‘am h@darez the Pharisees directly refer in
Jn 7% ‘This multitude which knoweth not the
Law are accursed.’
The origin of this cleavage is found in the OT.
At the Exile we are told ‘none were left save the
very poor of the people of the land’ (7287 oy nba
2K 244), These mingled with the neighbouring
non-Israelites and perhaps also with the settlers
from Assyria, intermarrying with them, and prob-
ably adopting their customs. Hence at the Return
both Ezra and Nehemiah demanded a complete
separation (Ezr 9}- 15, Neh 10°88!) between the re-
turned exiles who observed the Law strictly, and
those settlers who constituted ‘the people of the
land.’
This idea developed and led to the formation
of a party called ‘Separatists,’ Hdstdim or Pe-
rishim (Aram. Périshayy@ ; see art. ‘ Pharisees’ in
Hastings’ DB iii. p. 826”), who regarded all contact
with the vulgar crowd (‘am h@drez) as detiling,
observed a strict régime of ceremonial purity, and
called each other habér (i.e. brother’). The ‘am
λα ἄγος was the antithesis of the abér, outside the
pale of this higher Judaism, poor, ignorant of the
Law, despised. In Rabbinical literature, where he
is always regarded as a Jew, many definitions of
the ‘am h@arez are given. Thus in the Talmud
(Berakhéth 476) he is described as one ‘ who does
not give his tithes regularly,’ or ‘who does not
read the Shema morning and evening,’ or ‘ who does
not wear ¢éphillim,’ or ‘who has no mézizah on his
doorposts,’ or ‘who fails to teach his children the
Law,’ or ‘who has not associated with the learned.’
Montefiore in his Hibbert Lectures denies that
such sharp cleavage between the Hdsidim and the
‘un h@arez ever existed save in the minds of later
Rabbis who had difficulty in defining ‘am h@drez,
and consequently he questions the authenticity of
Jn 7, but on insufficient grounds. <A great gulf
and much bitterness existed between the two.
A Pharisee would not accept the evidence of an
am hd ἄγος as a witness, nor give him his daughter
in marriage. Even the touch of the garment of an
‘am h@arez was defiling; and Lazarus (Ethics of
Judaism) quotes a saying, ‘An ‘am ha’arez may be
killed on the Sabbath of Sabbaths, or torn like a
fish.’ This can hardly be taken literally ; yet it
illustrates the feeling which doubtless prevailed in
the time of Christ towards the‘am λα ἄγος. The
mind of Jesus triumphed over this narrow spirit.
In these poor despised outcasts He saw infinite
possibilities for goodness. They were the objects
of His special care. To them had the Father sent
Him, for at the very worst they were only ‘the lost
sheep of the house of Israel’ (Mt 10°).
LITERATURE. —Jewish Encyclopedia (art. ‘Am -haaretz’);
Schirer, G/JV3 ii. 40 [Eng. HJ P τι. ii. 22]; Weber, Jud. Theol.2
(Index, s. ‘Am haarez’); Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus
the Messiah, i. 85; Wtnsche, Der Bab. Talm. τι. i. 295;
Lazarus, Ethics of Judaism, Eng. tr. i. Appendix, note 488,
258; C. 6. Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures, 1892, ‘Origin and
Growth of Hebrew Religion,’ pp. 497-502; Rosenthal, Vier
Apokryphische Bicher, pp. 25-29; Hamburger, RH ii. 54-56.
G. GORDON STOTT.
AMMINADAB.—An ancestor of our Lord, Mt 14,
AMON.—A king of Judah (c. 640 B.c.) mentioned
in our Lord’s genealogy, Mt 1 (Gr. ᾿Αμώς, RVm
Amos).
ANDREW (Ἀνδρέας, ‘manly’).—In the Synoptie
Gospels, Andrew is little more than a name; but
the references to him in the Fourth Gospel are of
such a character as to leave upon our minds a
wonderfully clear impression of the manner of
man he was, and of the service which he ren-
dered to the Church of Christ. Andrew was a
native of Bethsaida (Jn 1"), but afterwards shared
the same house (Mk 1%) at Capernaum. (v.*!)
with his better known brother Simon Peter. By
trade he was a fisherman (Mt 4:8), but, attracted
by all that he had heard or seen of John the
Baptist, for a time at least he left his old work,
and, following the Baptist into the wilderness,
came to be recognized as one of his disciples
(Jn 15-49), A better teacher Andrew could not
have had; for if from John he first learned the
exceeding sinfulness of sin, by him also he was
pointed to the promised Deliverer, the Lamb of
God, who was to take away the sin of the world.
And when, accordingly, the Christ did come, it
was to find Andrew with a heart ready and eager
to welcome Him. Of that first interview between
the Lord and His new disciple the Fourth Evan-
gelist, who was himself present, has preserved the
record (Jn 155-4), and he it is also who tells us
that no sooner had Andrew realized for himself
the truth regarding Jesus, than he at once went
in search of his brother Peter (νν. 1: ἢ). And
thus to the first-called of Christ’s disciples (πρωτό-
κλητος, according to a common designation of
Andrew in early ecclesiastical writers) was given
the joy of bringing next his own brother to the
Lord. The call of James and of Jolin, if they
had not been previously summoned, would seem
to have followed ; but in none of these instances
did this imply as yet more than a personal re-
lationship to the Saviour. The actual summons
to work came later, when, by the Sea of Galilee,
Jesus bade Andrew, along with the same three
companions, leave his nets and come after Him
(Mt 45), And this in turn was followed shortly
afterwards by Andrew’s appointment to a place
in the Apostolic Band (Mt 107). His place,
moreover, was a place of honour, for his name
always occurs in the first group of four, and it is
with Peter and James and John that he is again
associated in the ‘private’ inquiries to Jesus re-
garding the time of the Last Things (Mk 13°). |
Still more interesting, however, as illustrating
Andrew’s character, are the two occasions on which
ANGELS
ANGELS 53
he is specially associated with Philip, the only
other Apostle who bore a Greek name. The first
incident occurred at the Feeding of the Five
Thousand, when, in contrast to the anxious, cal-
culating Philip, the downright, practical Andrew
thought it worth while to draw the Saviour’s atten-
tion to the lad’s little store, even though he too
was at a loss as to what it could effect (Jn 6°),
And the second occurred when to Philip, again
perplexed by the desire of certain Greeks (Gentiles,
therefore) to see Jesus, Andrew suggested that the
true course was at least to lay the request before
Jesus Himself, and leave Him to decide whether
or not it could be granted (Jn Ee)
After this, with the exception of the incident
already referred to (Mk 13°), Andrew is not again
mentioned in the Gospels, and the only subsequent
reference to him in Scripture is the mere mention
of his name in Ae 11, Tradition, however, has
been busy with his after-history; and he is re-
presented as labouring, according to one account,
in Seythia (Eus. H# 111. 1), whence he has been
adopted as the patron-saint of Russia; or, ac-
cording to another, in Achaia. In any case, there
is general agreement that he was martyred at
Patre in Achaia, being bound, not nailed, to the
cross, in order to prolong his sufferings. There
is, however, no warrant for the belief that the
cross was of the decussate shape (ΣΧ), as this cross,
usually associated with his name, is of a much
later date.
A striking tradition preserved in the Muratorian Fragment
brings Andrew and John together in their old age as they had
been in their youth: ‘The fourth Gospel [was written by]
John, one of the disciples (1.6. Apostles). When his fellow-
disciples and bishops urgently pressed him, he said, ‘‘ Fast with
me [from] to-day, for three days, and let us tell one another any
revelation which may be made to us, either for or against [the
plan of writing].” On the same night it wasrevealed to Andrew,
one of the Apostles, that John should relate all in his own
name, and that all should review [his writing]’ (see Westcott,
Gospel of St. John, p. xxxv ; History of NT Canon, p. 523).
It is also deserving of mention that about 740 Andrew became
the patron-saint of Scotland, owing to the belief that his arm
had been brought by St. Regulus to the town on the East Coast
that now bears his name.
The character of Andrew, as it appears in the
few scattered notices that we have of him, is that
of a simple, kindly man who had the courage of
his opinions, as proved by his being the first of
the Baptist’s disciples openly to follow Jesus; who
was eager to share with others the privileges he
himself enjoyed (witness his search for Peter, and
his treatment of the Greeks) ; and who, his work
done, was always ready to efiace himself (see
especially Lightfoot, Sermons on Special Occasions,
p. 160 ἢ). Again, when we think of the Apostle
In his more official aspect, it is sufficient to recall
that he was not only the first home-missionary
(Jn 1*), but also the first foreign-missionary (12**)
—evidence, if evidence be wanted, of the close
connexion between the two spheres of work.
LITERATURE.—In addition to what has been noted above, and
the references to Andrew in the different Lives of Christ, see
H. Latham, Pastor Pastorum, p. 156 ff. ; the present writer's
The Twelve Apostles (J. M. Dent), p. 24 ff. ; Expositor, 1st ser.
vii. [1882], 424 ff. ; Ker, Sermons, 2nd ser. 100 ff. The principal
authority on Andrew’s traditional history is Lipsius, Die A pokry-
phen Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegenden, i. p. 543 ff.; cf.
M. R. James in Hastings’ DB, vol. i. p. 93. His place in Art is
discussed by Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, i.
. 226 ff. We may refer also to Keble’s poem on ‘St. Andrew’s
ay’ in The Christian Year, and to the poem on ‘St. Andrew
and his Cross’ in the Lyra Innocentium.
GEORGE MILLIGAN.
ANGELS.—The statements as to angels which
meet us in the Gospels are in most respects the
same as. are found in the Jewish literature of
the period, both Biblical and extra-Biblical. In
the main, Christ and His Apostles appropriated
the Angelology of current Judaism — but not
without critical selection. It would be difficult
to point to a time when the Jews, as a people, did
not believe in angels; yet there were exceptions.
Possibly it was the exuberance of the belief that
produced in some minds a reaction. At all events,
it is a fact that the portion of the OT known to
criticism as the Priests’ Code is silent on the sub-
ject of angels; and it is also noteworthy that the
Sadducees, who were the descendants of the high-
priestly families, protested in the time of our Lord
against some, if not all, of the popular notions re-
specting angels (Ac 235).
It is probable that belief in angels is originally
a corollary from the conception of God as King.
A lone king—a king without a court—is almost
a contradiction in terms. And inasmuch as the
recognition of God as King is the earliest and
most prevalent of Israel’s conceptions of God, we
naturally expect the belief in angels, as God’s
court, serving Him in His palace and discharging
the function of messengers, to be ancient and per-
vasive. We have then, doubtless, a very primitive
conception of angels in the words of Micaiah to
Ahab, in 1 Καὶ 22" 1] saw Jahweh sitting on his
throne, and all the host of heaven standing by
him, on his right hand and on his left.’ A second
and quite distinct feature of the Angelology of the
OT is found in the appearances of one who is called
‘the Angel of Jahweh’—who is described as un-
distinguishable from man in appearance, and yet
claims to speak and act in the name of Jalweh
Pirrsebi (ΟἿΣ 18% 10.172. 3224-90) Jie 19: 8 eas
noteworthy as a feature of OT criticism, that, as
P is silent as to angels, so the appearances of an
angel as a manlike manifestation of God and not a
mere messenger, are confined to those portions of
the OT which, on quite other grounds, are assigned
to JE. Thirdly, when the Jews came to have
more exalted views of God, and of the incompati-
bility between Divinity and humanity, spirit and
matter, good and evil, and, in consequence, con-
ceived of God as aloof from the world and ineapable
of immediate contact and intercourse with sinful
mortals, the doctrine of angels received more
attention than ever before. ‘The same intluences
which led the Persians to frame such an elaborate
system of Angelology, led the Jews, during and
after the Exile, to frame a similar system, or in
some respects to borrow from the Persian system ;
to believe in gradations among the angelic hosts ;
to give names to those who were of high rank,
and to assien to each of these some definite kind
of work to do among men, or some province on the
earth to administer as satrap under ‘the King of
Heaven’ (see art. ‘Zoroastrianism’ in vol. iv. of
Hastings’ DB).
In the Gospels there are clear indications of the
first and third of these phases of belief. The
second is of interest to the NT student as a pre-
paratory discipline in the direction of Christology ;
and as such has no further importance for us at
present. Ewald has said (OT and NT Theology, p.
79) that in Christianity there is ‘no denial ot the
existence of angels, but a return to the simpler
colouring of the early narratives.’ So far as sim-
plicity of narrative is concerned, there is certainly
a close resemblance between the angel-incidents
of St. Luke and Acts on the one hand, and of
Genesis on the other; but in the NT the angel
never identifies himself with Jahweh as is done in
Genesis ; and there are in the NT’ some phases of
Angelology which belong, not to ‘the early narra-
tives,’ but to post-exilic conceptions.
We wish now, with the help of Jewish literature,
more or less contemporary, to make a systematic
presentation of those beliefs as to angels which
are found in the discourses and narratives of the
four Gospels. It might be supposed that we should
find it helpful to keep apart the utterances of our
i
Ma
54 ANGELS
Lord from the descriptions of the Evangelists ; but,
in fact, there is such complete unity of conception
underlying both discourses and narratives, that no
useful purpose can be served by treating them
separately.
1. ANGELS IN HEAVEN.—4. They form an army
or host. Lk 2 ‘There was with the angel (who
appeared to the shepherds) a multitude of the
heavenly host’ (στρατιά). Our Lord carries the
military metaphor even further when He speaks
of ‘more than 12 legions of angels’ (Mt 26%").
Oriental hyperbole was fully employed in express-
ing the magnitude of the heavenly army. Rev δ᾽}
speaks of ‘myriads of myriads and thousands of
thousands’; and He 12” speaks of ‘ the myriads of
angels ’—both in probable allusion to Dn 7’. In
Job 25° also the question is asked: ‘Is there any
number of his armies?’ Similarly the Pal. Targ.
to Ex 12” tells of 90,000 myriads of destroying
angels; and in Dt 34° the same Targum speaks of
the glory of the Shekinah being revealed to the
dying Moses, with 2000 myriads of angels and
42,000 chariots; as 2 K 617 tells of a ‘mountain
full of horses and chariots of fire round about
Elisha.’
2. They form a cowrt. Heaven is ‘God’s throne’
(Mt 5% 23%), and there also ‘the Son of Man shall
sit on the throne of his glory’ (Mt 19:8. The
angels, as courtiers, stand in vast multitudes before
the throne (Rev 5" 7"). As in earthly courts there
are gradations of rank and dignity, so in heaven.
It is St. Paul who speaks most explicitly of ‘the
principalities and powers in the heavenly places’
(Eph 3"), and of Christ’s being ‘exalted tar above
all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion’
(Eph 151); and ‘evidently Paul regarded them as
actually existent and intelligent forces’ (Robinson,
in loco); but the same conception presents itself in
the Gospels in the reference to archangels, who
were four, or in some authors seven, in number:
Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, and Uriel being those
most frequently mentioned. In Lk 119 the angel
who appears to Zacharias says: ‘I am Gabriel,
that stand in the presence of God’; as in To 12”
the angel says to Tobit: ‘I am Raphael, one of
the seven holy angels, which present the prayers
of the saints and go in before the glory of the
Holy One.’ Even in the OT the angels are spoken
of as forming ‘a council’: e.g. in Ps 897, where
God is said to be ‘ very terrible in the council of
the holy ones,’ and in Ps 82! where He is said to
‘judge amidst the Elohim.’ This idea was a great
favourite with later Jews, who maintained that
‘God does nothing without consulting the family
above’ (Sanhedrin, 386). To thesame circle of ideas
belong the words of the Lord Jesus: ‘ Every one that
shall confess me before men, him will the Son of
Man confess before the angels of God ; but he that
denieth me in the presence of men shall be denied
in the presence of the angels of God’ (Lk 12*-°),
Evidently the angels are interested spectators of
men’s behaviour, responsive to their victories and
defeats, their sins and struggles; and we are here
taught that to be denied before such a vast re-
sponsive assembly intensifies the remorse of the
apostate, as to be confessed before them intensifies
the joy of those who are ‘faithful unto death.’
Again, in many courts, and particularly in that
of the Persians, there were secretaries or scribes,
whose business it was to keep a ‘ book of records’
(Est 6!), in which the names and deeds of those
who had deserved well of the king were honour-
ably recorded. The metaphor of heaven as a
palace and court is so far kept up, that the Jews
often spoke of books in heaven in which men’s
deeds are recorded. Not only do we read in
Slavonic Enoch 19° of ‘angels who are over tlie
souls of men, and who write down all their works
----.
ANGELS
and their lives before the face of the Lord’; and
in the Apocalypse of John, where symbolism
abounds, of ‘ books’ being ‘opened,’ and of the
‘dead’ being ‘judged according to what was
written in the books’: but even in an Epistle
of St. Paul we read of those ‘whose names are
in the book of life’ (Ph 45), and in He 12%, of
‘the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in
heaven’; and precisely in accord with the above
our Lord bade His disciples rejoice, because their
names ‘are written in heaven,’ ὁ.6. enrolled for
honour (Lk 1059).
3. They form a choir in the heavenly temple.
The description of heaven in the Apocalypse is
quite as much that of a temple as a_ palace.
Heaven contains its altar (8° 9:9), its censers (58
8°), its musicians (5° 157), and its singers (5° 143
15°). In extra-Biblical literature the veil is often
mentioned, concealing the abode of God in the
Most Holy Place, within which the archangels are
permitted to enter (To 12!*:15, Enoch 402). The
only reference in the Gospels under this head is
the song of the angels, described in Lk 24%, It
is possible, in spite of the reading of some very
ancient Greek MSS (S*ABD), that this song, like
that of the seraphim in Is 6°, is a triple antiphonal
one—
* Glory to God in the highest [heaven],
Peace on earth,
Among men [Divine] good pleasure.’
4, They are ‘sons of God.’ In this respect the
saints who are raised again are ‘equal to the
angels’ (Lk 20%), They are sons of God by
creation and by obedience (Job 1° 2! 38’). They
‘do not owe their existence to the ordinary process
of filiation, but to an immediate act of creation’
(Godet, OT Studies, 7); thus resembling in their
origin the bodily nature of those who are ‘sons of
the resurrection.’ Hence we find that they are
frequently described as ‘holy’ (Mt 25%!, Mk 5583,
Lk 9°, Job δ᾽ 1515, Dn 815), and by implication we
learn that angels obey God’s will in heaven, since
we are taught by our Lord to pray that God’s holy
will may be done on earth as it is in heaven (Mt 61",
ef. Ps 103?°).
5. They are free from sensuous feelings. This
is taught in Mt 22% ‘In the resurrection they
neither marry [as men] nor are given in marriage
[as women], but are as the angels of God in
heaven.’ These words were spoken by our Lord
in response to the doubts of the Sadducees on the
subject of the resurrection. Christ’s reply is in
effect this: The source of your error is that you do
not fully recognize the power of God. You seem
to think that God can make only one kind of body,
with one sort of functions, and dependent on one
means of life. In that way you limit unduly the
power of God. ‘In that age’ (Lk 20%), ‘when
they rise from the dead’ (Mk 12”), men do not eat
and drink (Ro 1417, Not being mortal, they are not
dependent on food for nourishment, nor have they,
by nature, sensuous appetites, but are ἰσάγγελοι
(‘equal to the angels’). Thus skilfully did Jesus
give a double-edged reply to the teachings of
the Sadducees (Ac 238). While answering their
objection against the resurrection, He affirms that
‘those who are accounted worthy to attain to that
αἰών, and the resurrection from the dead . . . are
equal to the angels’—thus plainly disclosing His
belief in angels and setting it over against their
disbelief. As to the spiritual nature of angels,
Philo speaks of them as ἀσώματοι καὶ εὐδαίμονες
ψυχαί (‘incorporeal and happy souls’); and again,
as ‘bodiless souls, not mixtures of rational and
irrational natures as ours are, but having the irra-
tional nature cut out, wholly intelligent through-
out, pure-thoughts (λογισμοί, elsewhere λόγοι) like
a monad’ (Drummond’s Philo, 145-147 ; cf. Philo’s
ANGELS
Confusion of Tongues, p. 8, Allegory, iii. 62). The
Rabbis interpreted Dn 7’° to teach that the nature
of the angels is fire. ‘They are nourished by the
radiance which streams from the presence of God.
They need no material nourishment, and_ their
nature is not responsive to bodily pleasures’
(Weber, Jiid. Theol.? 167; Pesikta, 57a; Exodus
R. 832). They are also said to be ‘spiritual beings’
(Lev. R. 24), ‘without sensuous requirements’
(Yoma, 746), ‘without hatred, envy, or jealousy’
(Chag. 14). The Jewish legends which interpret
Gn 64 as teaching a commingling of angels with
women, so as to produce ‘mighty men, men of
renown,’ seem at variance with the above belief
as to the immunity of celestial intelligences from
all passion. It is true that Jude ® and Enoch 15*7
both speak of the angels as having first ‘left their
habitation’ in heaven; but the fact that they were
deemed capable of sexual intercourse implies a
much coarser conception of the angelic nature
than is taught in the words of our Lord, of Philo,
and of the Talmud.
6. They have extensive, and yet limited, know-
ledge. This is clearly taught in one utterance of
Christ’s, recorded in Mt 24°°|| Mk 13° ‘Of that day
and hour knoweth no man, not even the angels
of heaven.’ The implications clearly are (1) that
angels know most things, far better than men; but
(2) that there are some things, including the day of
the Second Advent, which they do nof know. Both
these propositions admit of copious illustration
from Jewish literature. First, as to their exten-
sive knowledge. There are numerous intimations
of the scientific skill of the angels, their acquaint-
ance with the events of human lives, and their
prescience of future events. The Book of Jubilees,
a pre-Christian work extensively read, affirms (127)
that Moses was taught by Gabriel concerning
Creation and the things narrated in Genesis; that
angels taught Noah herbal remedies (10!), and
brought to Jacob seven tablets recording the
history of his posterity (327). In Enoch 8! Azazel
is said to have taught men metallurgy and other
sciences ; as Prometheus was said to have taught
the Greeks. In To 12” the angel assures Tobit
that he was familiar with all the events of his
troublous days: as in 28 14'7-2° the woman of
Tekoa flatters Joab that he was ‘as wise as an
angel of God to know all things that are in the
earth.’ But this knowledge has its limits. Angels
Were supposed to understand no language but He-
brew (Chagigah, 16a). In 2 Es 4, in revealing
eschatological events, the angel gives the tokens
of the coming end, but confesses his ignorance as
to whether Esdras will be alive at the time. The
Midrash on Ps 2513 affirms that ‘nothing is hidden
from the angels’; but according to Sanhedrin,
99a, and other Talmudic passages, ‘ they know not
the time of Israel’s redemption.’ In 1 P 115 we are
told that ‘the angels desire’ (but in vain) ‘to look
into’ some of the NT mysteries; and in Slav.
Enoch 245 402, Enoch tells his children that not
even the angels know the secrets which he discloses
to them.
1. They take a deep interest in the salvation of
men. We gather this from the evident joy with
which angels announced the advent of the Messiah
to the shepherds at Bethlehem. The angel who
brought the ‘tidings of great joy’ (Lk 910) clearly
felt the joy himself; and the song which the
heavenly host sang in praise to God was the out-
come of joyous hearts. Even more explicitly is
this taught in Lk 15” ‘There is joy in the pres-
ence of the angels of God over one sinner that
repenteth.’ The word ἐνώπιον seems here to mean
‘in the midst of,’ ‘among.’ ‘Joy is manifest on
every countenance.’ Even if the joy intended be
“the joy of God, which breaks forth in presence of
ANGELS 55
the angels’ (Godet, in doco), still the implication
would be that the heart of the angelic throng is
en rapport with the heart of ‘the happy God.’
On this point the words of the angel are instruc-
tive which are recorded in Rev 22” ‘] am a
fellow-servant with thee and with thy brethren
the prophets, and with them that keep the words
of this book.’ The interpreting angel confesses to
unity of service with the Church, and in so doing
implies a oneness of sympathy and Jove with the
saints. So also when, in 1 P 115, we read that ‘the
angels desire to look into’ the marvels of redemp-
tion, there is, as Dr. Hort says, ‘a glimpse of the
fellowship of angels with prophets and evangelists,
and implicitly with the suffering Christians to
whom St. Peter wrote.’ The same deep interest
in the progress of the Church appears in Eph 3,
where we are taught that one great purpose which
moved God to enter on the work of human salva-
tion was, that ‘through the Church the manifold
wisdom of God might be made known to the
principalities and powers in heavenly places.’ The
Church on earth is the arena on which the attri-
butes of God are displayed for the admiration and
adoration of ‘the family in heaven’ (Eph 3).
ii. ANGELS AS VISITANTS TO EArtrH. —1. To
convey messages from God to man.—(a) In dreams.
It is a peculiarity of the Gospel of the Infancy, as
recorded by St. Matthew, that the appearances of
the angels are in dreams to Joseph, bidding him
acknowledge Mary as his wife (Mt 159), take the
young child and His mother to Egypt (2:5), and
return to Palestine on the death of Herod (2!%).
The only OT parallel to this is Gn 31", where
Jacob tells his wives that ‘the angel of God spake’
to him ‘in a dream.’
(ὁ) In other instances the message of the angel is
brought in full, wakeful consciousness. It was
while Zacharias was ministering at the altar of
incense in the Holy Place that an angel who called
himself Gabriel appeared, foretelling the birth of
John (Lk 1"). It was while the shepherds were
keeping watch over their flock that the angel stood
near them and directed them to the babe in Beth-
lehem (Lk 2%"); and it is narrated by the three
Synoptists that it was through angelic agency
that the disciples were informed of the Resurrec-
tion. St. Matthew narrates that it was an angel
who had ‘descended from heaven’ (287), that spoke
to the women at the tomb (287). St. Mark
speaks of a young man ‘arrayed in a white robe’
(16°), and St. Luke of ‘two men in dazzling
apparel’ (244), who assured the women that Christ
was risen. The author of the Fourth Gospel is
silent as to angelic appearances at the Resurrec-
tion, but he bears testimony to the popular belief
in angelie voices (Jn 12%). When a voice came
from heaven, saying, ‘I have glorified and will
avain glorify (my name),’ the Evangelist records:
‘Some of the people said, An angel spake to him.’
We reserve for special consideration the sacredly
mysterious interview of the angel Gabriel with the
Virgin Mary (Lk 1°%*8), The salutation of the
angel was: ‘ Hail, thou favoured one! The Lord
is with thee.’ When she was perplexed at the
saying, the angel announced : ‘ Thou shalt conceive
in thy womb and bear a son, and shalt call his
name Jesus.” This Son is further described as
‘Son of the Most High’ and He to whom ‘the
Lord God will give the throne of his father David.’
Then, in reply to the Virgin’s further doubts and
perplexities, the angel vouchsafes the dread ex-
planation, ‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,
and the power (δύναμι5) of the Most High shall
overshadow thee. . . . No word from God shall be
devoid of power.’ The full consideration of these
words will be fittingly considered under ANNUNCIA-
TION (which see). On us it seems to devolve to
ἘΠΕῚ
56 ANGELS
speak of the view which arose very early in Jewish
Christian circles, and which regarded the angel as
not merely the messenger, but the cause of the
conception. It was a general belief among the
Jews that a spoken word has causal efficacy. This
lay at the root of the belief in the potency of spells
and charms. And if every spoken word is mighty,
the words of God are almighty. The expression
‘No word from (παρά) God shall be devoid of
power’ (Lk 157) was accordingly interpreted to
mean that the message brought from God through
the angel had causal efficacy: the Divine word
spoken by the angel caused the conception. In
the Protevangelium of James (115) the angel is
recorded to have said : ‘Thou shalt conceive from
His word’ (ἐκ τοῦ λόγου αὐτοῦ), and the same ex-
pression occurs in the Arabic Gespel of the Infancy.
This is the origin of the curious doctrine of the
ancient Church, that the Virgin conceived through
the ear. The word of the angel, which was a
Divine message, reached the Virgin through the
ear. The ear was thus believed to be the channel
through which the Divine potency was operative.
Even Augustine says: ‘ Virgo per aurem impreg-
nabatur.’ As bearing on this subject, we may
note that in the Ascension of Isaiah the angel
Gabriel is called ‘the angel of the Holy Spirit’
(316 73 0586), In pseado-Matthew (c.10), Joseph says :
“Why do ye mislead me to believe that an angel
of the Lord hath made her pregnant?’ and in the
Protevangelium of James the Virgin explains her
condition to Joseph in these words: ‘The case is
the same as it was with Adam whom God created.
He said, ‘‘ Let him be”; and he was.’
2. Angels as performing physical actions. This
is an ancient representation of which the OT
furnishes many instances: Ps 91" (cited Mt 4°, Lk
4"), ‘angels... shall bear thee up on their hands’ ;
in Dn 6” angels shut the lions’ mouths; in Ps 947
angels encamp round about them that fear God;
so in Apocrypha (Bel *6, Three 36). Τῦ is therefore
precisely in accord with Jewish modes of thought
that we read in Mt 28? ‘There was a great earth-
quake: for an angel of the Lord descended from
heaven, and came and rolled away the stone’ ; and
in Mk 115 ‘ He was with the wild beasts; and the
angels ministered unto him’ (cf. Mt 42).
3. As performing psychical actions. When Jesus
was in the garden, and ‘being in an agony prayed
more earnestly,’ we are told that ‘there appeared
to him an angel from heaven strengthening him’
(Lk 22%).* So in Dn 10 Daniel records that
there was ‘no strength in him, and no breath
left in him,’ and an angel ‘touched him and
strengthened him.’ The Hebrews drew no dis-
tinction between the physical and the psychical.
It was in their regard just as easy for these
spiritual existences to roll away a stone as to
infuse vigour into the system, and give power to
the enfeebled nerves and will.
4. Angels are deputed to guard the righteous
from danger. In Gn 247 Abraham prays for his
servant: ‘May God send his angel before thee’ ;
and Jacob saw angels ‘ascending and descending’
over him in his sleep (Gn 98:3). In the time of
Christ it was a Jewish belief not merely that
angels are sent to guide and guard men, but also
that every man has his own guardian spirit, or, as
others teach, two guardians. In the Talmudic
treatise Berakhoth (606), when a man goes into an
unclean place, he prays his guardian angels to wait
outside till he returns. In Pal. Targum to Gn 33”
Jacob says to Esau, ‘I have seen thy face as if I
saw the face of thy angel’; on Gn 4816 the same
Targum reads: ‘May the angel whom thou hast
assigned to me bless the lads.’ Similarly the Sohar
* On the question of the genuineness of this passage see the
* Notes on Select Readings’ in Westcott and Hort’s NT in Greek.
ANGELS
to Exodus (p. 190) says: ‘From the 13th year of
a man and onwards, God assigns to every man two
angels, one on the right hand and one on the left ;
and the Testament of Joseph (c. 6) names the angel
of Abraham as the guardian of Joseph. It is
here more than elsewhere that we seem to recog-
nize the influence of Persia on Jewish beliefs.
The question now occurs, What connexion is
there between the above and Mt 1810 ‘See that ye
despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto
you, that their angels in heaven continually behold
the face of my Father who is in heaven’? It is
evident that ‘their angels’ means angels that
watch over them. But did our Lord refer to the
‘angels of the presence’ or to individual guardian
angels? The former is more probable for two
reasons—(1) It was not part of the Jewish creed
that any angels behold the face of God except
the archangels; (2) the guardian spirits accon-
panying men on earth could hardly at the same
time be said to be iz heaven continually beholding
the face of the Father who is in heaven. The
allusion probably is, then, to the ‘angels of the
presence, and especially to Michael the guardian
of the pious and the helpless. It must be admitted
that in Ac 12! we seem to have the popular Jewish
notion in all its later development. When many
brethren were met in the house of Mary, mother
of John Mark, and were unable to believe that
Peter had really been delivered, they said to
Rhoda, first, ‘Thou art mad,’ and then, ‘It is his
angel.’ This, if pushed to its apparent implica-
tions, seems to contain an allusion to a notion
which occurs in some Jewish writings, that heaven
is a counterpart of earth, and every man has his
double in the celestial sphere; or at all events the
guardian angel is ike him whom he guards. It
is quite likely, however, that on the lips of the
disciples these words might be merely an allusion
to a popular conception, without carrying with
them any literal belief.
5. Angels visit wrath on the adversaries of the
righteous. Thisis implied in Christ’s words: ‘See
that ye despise not one of these little ones’ (Mt
1819), The word ὁρᾶτε implies ‘beware!’ and the
teaching clearly is that angels are capable of
punishing any who injure those whom it is their
business to guard. The OT contains instances of
their punitive abilities. It was an angel of the
Lord who smote 185,000 in the camp of the
Assyrians (2 Καὶ 19%), and who destroyed the chil-
dren of Israel till, when he came to Jerusalem, the
Lord said to him, ‘It is enough’ (28 24°); and Ps
35°* presents a picture calculated to inspire terror ~
in every breast: ‘Let them be as chatf before the
wind, the angel of the Lord driving them on. Let
their way be dark and slippery, the angel of the
Lord pursuing them.’ It is very noteworthy that
the Lord Jesus, even in His hour of intensest
agony, drew comfort from the thought of angelic
help. It was areal comfort to Him that the angels
were at His control, if He needed them. ‘The
military band led by Judas could not arrest or
injure Him unless He voluntarily submitted Him-
self to them. He had ‘authority to lay down’
His ‘life’; and when the struggle was over, and
the resolve retaken that the path of the cross was
the path of duty, He conveyed to the Eleven the
fact of His self-surrender by saying to Peter, who
had impetuously used the sword in his Lord’s
defence, ‘Thinkest thou that I cannot now beseech
the Father, and he would even now send me more
than twelve legions of angels’? (Mt 9055). We note
here that the prayer is not to be addressed to
angels. There are very few instances of Jews
praying to angels. The Rabbis discouraged it.
Every pious Jew would, as Jesus did, pray to God
that He would send angelic ministry ; as in 2 Mac
i re
ANGELS
ANGELS 57
15%, where Judas is said to have prayed: ‘O
sovereign Lord, send a good angel before us to
bring terror and trembling.’
6. Angels render aid at death. Lk 16” ‘Lazarus
was carried away by the angels into Abraham’s
bosom.’ We come here upon a widespread belief
among Jews and Jewish Christians—that angels
convey the souls of the righteous to Paradise.
Michael is usually the one entrusted with this
duty. If he hasa companion, it is Gabriel. The
Gospel of Nicodemus records that when Jesus de-
scended into Hades and released the righteous
dead from captivity, He delivered Adam and all
the righteous to the archangel Michael, and all
the saints followed Michael; and he led them all
into the glorious gate of Paradise: among them
being the penitent thief. The History of Joseph
the Carpenter records that Michael and Gabriel
drew out the soul of Joseph and wrapped it ina
silken napkin, and amid the songs of angels took
him to his good Father, even to the dwelling-place
of the just. In the Testament of Abraham we
have a similar account of the death of Abraham.
The Ascension of Isaiah (7) attirms that ‘those
who love the Most High and His Beloved will
ascend to heaven by the Angel of the Holy Spirit.’
7. Angels are to be the ministrants of Christ at
His Second Advent. ‘The reapers’ in the great
Harvest ‘are angels’; and they separate the tares
from the wheat (Mt 13°"). ‘The Son of Man will
send forth his angels to gather out all that offend’
(Mt 13%). ‘ He shall come in his glory, and all the
holy angels with him’ (Mt 25*'). ‘He shall send
forth his angels with the great sound of a trumpet
to gather the elect’ (Mt 2451; cf. 1 Th 4", 2Th 1’).
8. To complete our survey, we must add one
word as to the appearance of angels when men
were conscious of their presence. It is taken for
granted that there needs to be a preparation of
vision before man can recognize their presence.
As Balaam was unaware that the angel con-
fronted him until the Lord opened his eyes (Nu
2231), and as Elisha prayed that God would open
the eyes of his servant (2 K 617), so when the
risen Jesus appeared to Saul of Tarsus, those who
travelled with him ‘saw no man’ (Ac 97). (a)
Angels had a manlike appearance. As Alraham
and Manoah’s wife mistook them for men(Gn 18",
Jg 13°), so, in describing the Resurrection, St. Mark
says that the women ‘saw a young man’ (16°), and
St. Luke that ‘two men stood by them’ (244).—()
Their appearance was usually with brilliant light
or ‘glory.’ When the angel appeared to the shep-
herds, ‘the glory of the Lord shone round about
them’ (Lk 2°), and when the Son of Man cometh,
He will come ‘in the glory of the holy angels’ (Lk
936), So in To 8:5, Cod. B reads: ‘The prayer of
both was heard before the glory of the great
Raphael’ ; in 2 Mac 3% two young men appeared,
‘notable in their strength and beautiful in their
glory’; and the Protevangelium of James narrates
that ‘an angel of the Lord appeared in the great
light to Joachim.’—(c) They wear raiment of great
luminousness. Mt 28% ‘His appearance was like
lightning, and his raiment white as snow’; cf.
Dn 108, Ezk 13, Rev 1419" So Apoc. of Peter
says of the angels, ‘their body was whiter than
any snow.’
111. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NT AND RABBINISM
AS TO ANGELS.—We undertook to show that ‘in
the main Christ and His Apostles appropriated
the Angelology of Judaism’; and the above sys-
tematic treatment has surely rendered this evi-
dent. It has often been observed that ‘Jesus says
very little about angels’; and, so far as the bulk
of His sayings is concerned, this is quite true; but
when we classify His utterances, we find that they
constitute almost a complete Angelology ; and so
far as it goes, it is in harmony with the Jewish
beliefs of the period. The Jews believed all that
the NT says of angels, but they also believed much
more.
1. It is very significant that the Gospels are
silent as to the mediation of angels. In Judaism
this was very prominent. In Tobit, ¢.g., one great
function of angels is said to be to carry the prayers
of saints within the veil, before the glory of the
Holy One (12°). In Enoch 40° the seer says:
‘And the third voice heard I pray and intercede
for those who dwell on the earth, and supplicate
in the name of the Lord of spirits.’ In the Greek
Apoc. of Baruch (c. 11), Michael is said to have a
great receptacle in which the prayers of men are
placed to be carried through the gates into the pre-
sence of the Divine glory (Texts and Studies, v.
i. 100). In the Midrash Hxodus Rabba 21 an angel
set over the prayers of men is said to weave them
into crowns for the Most High.—But not only are
the Gospels silent as to the need of angels to be
mediators in carrying the prayers and necessities
of saints into the unapproachable chamber of the
Most High, the teaching of Jesus was designed to
counteract such a view of God. When our Lord
said: ‘Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye
have need of all these things’ (Mt 6); ‘ Your
heavenly Father feedeth the fowls’ (6°); ‘Thy
Father seeth in secret’ (618); ‘ Pray to thy Father
who ts in secret’ (6°), He certainly wished to break
down the barriers which the Jewish mind had
placed between itself and God, and encourage men
to come direct to the Father in childlike contidence.
2. In other respects the only difference is, that
the Gospels are free from the extravagant embel-
lishment in which the Rabbis indulged, when
speaking of angels: (a) as to their size. The Tal-
mudic treatise Chagigah (150) says that Sandalfon
is taller than his fellows by the length of a journey
of 500 years; and the Gospel of Peter (c. 9) tells
how the Roman soldiers saw two men descend
from heaven, and the head of the two reached
unto heaven, but that of Him whom they released
from the tomb overpassed the heavens.—(4) As
to a fondness for the marvellous in describing
their appearance and actions. For instance, Yoma
21a narrates how a high priest was killed by an
angel in the Holy of Holies, and the impress of
a calf’s foot was found between his shoulders.
Joshua ben Hananiah is reported to have told
the Emperor Hadrian that God hears the song of
new angels every day. When asked whence they
come, he replied, ‘Frem the fiery stream which
issues from the throne of God’ (Dn7!°) ; see Bacher,
Agada der Tannaiten, 1. 178.—(c) The Jews also
speculated much as to the origin of the angels,
their connexion with the four elements, ete. ; and
they had ingenious methods of computing their
number by Kabbalistic Gematria—the whole thing
being the extravaganza of Oriental phantasy.
iv. THE OBJECTIVE VALUE OF THE NT DOCTRINE
oF ANGELS.—The most difficult part of our task
now awaits us, to give some account of modern
views as to the reality of angels, and to discuss
whether there are valid reasons why we, as Chris-
tians, are bound to accept the prima facie NT
teaching as to the angelic ministry. Every Chris-
tian must feel that it is of very great importance
to decide whether the Lord Jesus really believed
in the objective existence and ministrations of
angels. To this question the present writer feels
obliged to give an affirmative reply [but see art.
ACCOMMODATION, above, p. 20], and that for the
following reasons: (1) Though Jesus did not speak
much concerning angels, yet His recorded sayings
cover, With some intentional exceptions, almost
the complete Angelology of the Jews—which is
evidence that He was, in the main, in agreement
58 ANGELS
with it. (2) If the disciples had been radically
mistaken on this subject, surely this is a matter
as to which Christ’s words were applicable: ‘If it
were not so, [ would have told you,’ Jn 14%. (3)
In controversy with the Sadducees, who were
sceptical as to angels, He adroitly gave them such
a reply to their objection against the resurrection
as to show that the existence and nature of angels
was to Him a settled matter, and might be used
to elucidate the nature of the resurrection body.
There is a wealth of conviction in the words of
Jesus: ‘Those who rise again are like the angels.’
(4) Christ made mention of angels not merely in
the parables, where we expect symbolism and pic-
torial illustration, but also in the interpretation
(Mt 13°: 41-49), (5) He used the punitive ability of
angels to warn men against despising the little
ones in His kingdom (Mt 1810. Apart from a
literal belief in angels, such words are an empty
threat. (6) In the time of His most intense agony
He evidently derived comfort from the loving sym-
pathy of the ‘cloud of witnesses’; for when He
emerges from the trial and its bitterness is past,
He assures Peter that, had He permitted it, more
than twelve legions of angels would readily have
intervened to deliver Him (Mt 26°"). — Stevens
(Theology of NT, p. 80) is impressed by other pas-
sages. ‘In several places,’ he says, ‘Christ seems
to refer to angels in such a way as to show that
He believed in their real existence. He will
““come in the glory of his Father with his holy
angels” (Mk 858). ‘‘ Angels in heaven” neither
marry nor are given in marriage (Mk 12”). Of
the hour of his Advent ‘‘not even the angels in
heaven” know (Mk 1353).
In recent times the views of scholars are much
divided on this subject. 1. There are large sections
of the universal Church to whom the existence of
angels is very real, not only as a matter of theo-
retical belief, but as a matter of religious experi-
ence. They set great value on the services of
angels as mediators between themselves, in their
sins and needs and miseries, and the holy, infinite
God ; and they delight to think that the spiritual
strength and light and succour which come to
them in answer to prayer, reach their low estate
through the mediation of angels. Wemight readily
quote from saints of the Greek and Roman Churches
on this head, but we prefer to give the ‘disclosures’
of Swedenborg. ‘According to him, we are every
moment in the most vital association with the
spirits both of heaven and hell. They are the
perpetual prompters of our thoughts: they inces-
santly work by insinuating influences on our loves ;
and they give force on the one hand to the power
of temptation, and on the other fortify the soul,
by hidden influx, to resist temptation’ (Rev. G.
Bush, Disclosures of Swedenborg, 79).
2. There are many who believe in angels theo-
retically. They take the teaching of the NT in
a thoroughly literal sense. They are prepared to
maintain and contend that Jesus Christ believed
in the real existence of angels ; and, in consequence,
a belief in angels forms part of their ‘creed’ ; but
angels have no part in their inner religious life.
Some admit, not without regret and self-reproach,
that angels do not seem so real to them as they
did to Jesus; while others are reluctant to admit
that it can be a fault to yearn as they do for heart-
to-heart fellowship with God Himself, without the
intervention of an angel ministry —to seek for
direct interaction with God, without even the
holiest angel intervening in the sacredness of the
communion. As a specimen of this attitude, we
quote from an article in the First Series of the
Expositor (viil. 409 tf.) by R. Winterbotham: ‘TI
do not mean to imply that we disbelieve either the
existence or the ministry of angelic beings: we
ANGELS
cannot do so without rejecting and denying point
blank the unquestioned and unquestionable dicta
of our Lord and of His apostles. But I do say
that our belief in angels is formal only, or at the
best merely poetic. It does not strike its roots
down into our religious consciousness, into that
inner and unseen, but most real and often passion-
ate, life of the soul towards God and the powers
of the world to come.’
3. There are others yet again who set such a
high value on the immediacy of the interaction of
fellowship with God, believing, as they do, that it
was the chief feature of Christ’s teaching to reveal
the possibility of fellowship with God as our Father
—or led perhaps by scientific predilections to feel
that there is now no room for angels in our modern
world—that they sweep away the intervention of
angels, and are reluctant to admit that the Lord
Jesus really believed in their existence. They
would believe rather that He accommodated Him-
self in this matter to current popular notions. For
instance, Beyschlag maintains that ‘ the immediate
relation to the world in which Jesus viewed His
heavenly Father left no room for such personal
intermediate beings’ [as the Jews of that time be-
lieved in]. In passages like Lk 12° and 15” angels
are ‘a poetic paraphrase for God Himself.’ ‘The
holy angels of the Son of Man, with whom He will
come again in His glory, are the rays of Divine
majesty which is then to surround Him with
splendour: they are the Divine powers with which
He is to waken the dead.’ And again, ‘The most
remarkable passage is Mt 18, and it is the very
vassage which we can least of all take in prosaic
fame According to it, even the least of the
children of men has his guardian angel who at all
times has access to the Heavenly Father, viz. to
complain to Him of the offences done to his pro-
tégé on earth. But as God, according to Jesus,
knows what happens to each of His children with-
out needing to be told, in what other way can we
conceive this entirely poetical passage, than that
in every child of man a peculiar thought of God
has to be realized, which stands over his history,
like a genius, or guardian spirit, and which God
always remembers, so that everything which op-
poses its realization on earth comes before Him as
a complaint?’ (New Test. Theology, i. 86f.). Dr.
Bruce is even more pronounced. In his Epistle to
the Hebrews (p. 45) he says: ‘For modern men,
the angels are very much a dead theological cate-
gory. Everywhere in the old Jewish world, they
are next to nowhere in our world. They have
practically disappeared from the universe in thought
and in fact.’ Then, with a strange lapse of the his-
toric sense, he adds: ‘This subject was probably
a weariness to the writer of our Epistle. <A Jew,
and well acquainted with Jewish opinion, and
obliged to adjust his argument to it, he was tired,
[ imagine, of the angelic régime. Too much had
been made of it in Rabbinical teaching and in
popular opinion. It must not be supposed that he
was in sympathy with either.’
A belief in angels among men of to-day depends
entirely on one’s religious outlook, one’s general
view of God and the world. The man who has
scientific proclivities, who has toiled through much
doubt and uncertainty before he can sincerely aftirm
the first article of the Christian creed, ‘I believe
in God the Father Almighty,’ will probably be re-
luctant to take more cargo aboard than his faith
can carry. In other words, he will employ the
Law of Parsimony, ‘ Entia prieter necessitatem
non multiplicanda sunt,’ and, finding the full satis-
faction of his religious needs in direct intercourse
with God the Father, will reject, or ignore as
superfluous, the ministry of angels. So also the
man of mystical tendencies, whose eager desire 15
ANGELS
ANGELS 59
to have communion with the Divine—who claims
to be endowed with a faculty by which he can
cognize God, and receive immediate communica-
tions from Him, is also likely to regard the inter-
vention of angels between his spirit and the Divine
Spirit as an intrusion. And not less so is this the
case with one who has leanings to Pantheism—
whether he regards God as altogether immanent
in the world, or as both immanent and transcen-
dent. In proportion as one’s thoughts centre on
Divine immanence, and as one regards God as more
or less identical with Force, variant but transmut-
able, present everywhere, and everywhere causa-
tive, in that proportion are one’s thoughts drawn
away from every theological conception but that
of the One Great Cause of motion, life, and mind.
There is no room for angels.
The only scientific conception which to some
minds seems to foster the belief in angels is the
Law of Evolution, or, to speak more accurately,
the anticipation of gradation of being, encouraged
by that law. T. G. Selby, in his volume of ser-
mons headed by one on ‘The Imperfect Angel,’
contends that a true science welcomes the belief
in angels as intervening between man and God.
‘It is surely not unscientific,’ he says, ‘to assume
the existence of the pure and mighty beings spoken
of by seers and prophets of the olden time.’ ‘The
spirit of inspiration, in seeking to convey to us
some faint hint of the strict and awful and abso-
lute holiness of God, depicts ranks of angels in-
definitely higher and better than the choicest saints
on earth: and then tells us that these angels,
which seem so lofty and stainless and resplendent,
are creatures of unwisdom and shortcoming in
comparison with the ineffable wisdom and surpass-
ing holiness of God’ (p. 7). Godet in his Biblical
Studies on the OT has elaborated a scientific apo-
logia on behalf of angels. He contends that science
recognizes three forms of being: species without
individuality, in the vegetable world ; individuality
under bondage to species, in the animal world ;
individuality overpowering species, in the human
race. He holds, therefore, that it is antecedently
probable that there is a fourth form of being—
individuality without species — each individual
owing his existence no longer to parents like
himself, but immediately to the Creative Will.
This fourth form would exactly be the angel
(p. 2 ff.).
It remains now to show that a belief in angels
is in precise accord with the fundamental views of
God and the world which present themselves in
the recorded life and teaching of the Lord Jesus.
Were the belief in angels at variance with Christ’s
personal religious outlook, we might readily regard
it as an excrescence which modern thought might
lop off without much detriment ; but if it is closely
allied to our Lord’s fundamental doctrines, then
this will surely confirm the impression arrived at
from other evidence, that Jesus sincerely believed
in the reality of angels, and would have us derive
from the belief the same comfort and support
which He did. Where shall we look with more
assurance for the first principles of the doctrine of
Jesus than to the Lord’s Prayer? There our
Saviour taught His disciples to say, ‘Our Father
which art in heaven. Hallowed be Thy name... .
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ Be-
yond all contradiction, then, it is an axiom of the
creed of Jesus that there are beings in heaven
who do God’s will. It is generally recognized that
Jesus presented to men a conception of God which
meets the needs of man’s religious nature, rather
than of his reason and intellect. Men of culture
and philosophical training may aspire to know God
as ‘the One in all,’ ‘the Absolute,’ ‘the First
Cause’; and may appeal for support to isolated
sayings of the Apostles, but not to sayings of the
Master. His sayings owe their eterna’ permanence
to the fact that they appeal to that which is com-
mon to all men—the innermost in all men—the
heart—the religious nature. To conceive of God
as the Absolute, or the First Cause, may satisfy
the reason ; but before the heart can be satisfied, it
must know God as Father, the ‘ Father in heaven.’
But the very phrase ‘ Father in heaven’ seems to
imply that He has sons in heaven. And that this
implication is warranted, is irrefragably substan-
tiated by the words which follow: ‘Thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.’ Surely no one
can deny that Christ firmly believed that there are
beings in heaven who do God’s will, to say the
least, far more perfectly than we do, since their
obedience is the model to which we are constantly
taught to pray that we may attain. Again, it was
the outstanding feature of Judaism to push God
aloof from men and the world, whereas Jesus
brought God nearer to men, as a Father who takes
a minute interest in all that concerns us. But if
Jesus thus brought heaven nearer to man, He must,
in the very act, have brought the occupants of
heaven nearer, and must wish us to believe that
they also are deeply interested in our welfare.
There is no need that angels should ¢e// God any-
thing that concerns us. He knows already far
more than they can tell. Those who object to the
doctrine of angels because it interposes a barrier
between our prayers and our Father’s love, mis-
understand Christ’s teaching. His disclosure of
the Fatherliness of God was meant to correct
Judaism, in so far as it made angels the bearers
of our prayers and the informants to God of our
requirements. Those Christians also who approach
God through angels contravene in this way Christ’s
teaching: and also His example, for in the garden
He said to Peter (Mt 2059): ‘I could pray the
Father, and he would send... angels.’ Christ’s
teaching and example both show that it is our
duty and privilege to have direct intercourse with
God in prayer and fellowship. But this is not to
say that there is no room for the ministry of
angels. We may still believe that angels are sent
on errands of mercy. Indeed, we may well say to
those who on this subject are of doubtful mind,
as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews said:
‘Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to
do service on behalf of those who shall inherit
salvation?’ (11. There is nothing at all in the
Gospel doctrine of angels which is at variance with
the religious needs of the most cultured among us.
It may present difficulties to reason, as everything
which is supernatural does ; but the heart of man
which loves God must surely rejoice to think that
the heavenly Father has also a ‘family in heaven’
as on earth (Eph 315). It must always find a re-
sponsive chord in the nature of men who allow the
heart a place in their creed, to be told that there
are beings who ‘continually behold the face of our
Father,’ who are deeply interested in us (Mt 18") ;
that our penitence gives the angels joy (Lk 15'°) ;
that in our times of depression and anguish it
may be our privilege to have ‘an angel sent from
heaven, strengthening’ us (Lk 22?*), as in our times
of gladness it is our privilege to ‘give thanks to
the Father from whom the whole family in heaven
and earth is named’ (Eph 315).
LirERATURE. — Articles on ‘Angels’ in Hastings’ DB (by
Davidson ; cf. also Extra Vol. p. 285 ff.), Schenkel’s Bibellexicon
(by Schenkel), Riehm’s HWB (by Delitzsch), Eneyclopcedia
Britannica (by Robertson Smith). For Jewish beliefs see
Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. i. p. 583 ff. ; Edersheim, Life and Times
of Jesus, vol. ii. Appendix xiii. ; Bousset, Religion des Juden-
thums, 313-325; Gfrorer, Urchristenthum, i. 352-378; Weber,
Jiidische Theoloyie2 (see Index 8. ‘ Engel’); Donehoo, 4 pocry-
phal and Legendary Life of Christ; Schiefer, Die religidsen
und ethischen Anschauungen des IV Ezrabuches ; Kohut, Die
Jiidische Angelologie. On the general subject see Everling,
60 ANGER
ANGER
eee
Die Paulinische Angelologie ; Latham, The Service of Angels ;
Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 127 ff. ; Hapositor, First Series,
viii. 409 ff. ; Eapository Times, iii. 437, vi. 145, 193; Davidson,
Theology of OT, 289-306 ; Beyschlag, NT’ Theology?, i. 86 ff.
J. T. MARSHALL.
ANGER.—Anger is the instinctive resentment
or reaction of the soul against anything which it
regards as wrong or injurious. It is part of its
equipment for self-preservation, and the prompti-
tude and energy with which it comes into play are
a fair measure of the soul’s power to protect itself
from the evil which is in the world. If there is
not an instant and indignant repulsion of evil, it
creeps into the apathetic soul, and soon makes it
not only its victim but its instrument. The child’s
anger with the fire which burns him is in a sense
irrational ; but one true meaning and purpose of
anger in the moral world is illustrated by it. It
is the vehement repulsion of that which hurts,
and there is no spiritual, as there is no natural,
life without it.
An instinct, however, when we come into the
world of freedom and responsibility, always needs
education ; and the radical character of the educa-
tion required by the instinct of anger is apparent
from the fact that the first thought of almost all
men is that anger is avice. Taking human nature
as it is, and looking at the actual manifestations
of anger, this is only too true. There is, as a rule,
something vicious in them. They are self-regard-
ing in a selfish way. Men are angry, as Aristotle
puts it (Zthics, iv. 5. 7), on wrong grounds, or with
the wrong people, or in a wrong way, or for too
long atime. Their anger is natural, not spiritual ;
selfish, not guided by consideration of principle ;
the indulgence of a temper, not the staking of
one’s being for a cause. In the NT itself there are
far more warnings against anger than indications
of its true place and function. Yet when we read
the Gospels with the idea of anger in our minds,
we can easily see that justice is done to it both as
a virtue anda vice. There is a certain arbitrari-
ness in trying to systematize the teaching of Jesus
on this or on any other subject, but most of the
matter can be introduced if we examine (1) the
occasions on which Jesus Himself is represented as
being angry ; (2) those in which He expresses His
judgment on moral questions with a vehemence
which is undoubtedly inspired by indignation ;
and (3) those in which He gives express teaching
about anger.
1. Occasions on which Jesus Himself is repre-
sented as being angry.(a) The most explicit is
Mk 3° ‘He looked round on them with anger {μετ᾽
ὀργῆς), being grieved (συνλυπούμενος) over the har-
dening of their heart.’ The objects of Christ’s
anger here are the people in the synagogue, who
maintained an obstinate and prejudiced silence
when He asked them, ‘ Is it lawful on the Sabbath
day to do good or to do evil, to save life or to
kill?’ What roused His anger was partly their
inhumanity, which cared nothing for the disable-
ment of the man with the withered hand, but even
more, perhaps, the misrepresentation of God of
which they were guilty, when in His honour (as
they would have it) they justified inhumanity on
the Sabbath day. To be inhuman themselves was
bad enough, but to impute the same inhumanity
to the Heavenly Father was far worse, and the
indignation of Jesus was visible as He looked
round on them. He passionately resented their
temper, and repelled it from Him with vehemence,
as injurious at once to God and toman. Yet His
indignation was expressed in one indignant glance
(περιβλεψάμενος, aorist), while it was accompanied
by a deep pain, which did not pass away (συνλυπού-
μενος, present), over the hardening of their heart.
This combination, in which resentment of wrong
is accompanied with a grief which makes the
offender’s case one’s own, and seeks to win him by
reaching the inner witness to God in his soul
before insensibility has gone too far, is character.
istic of Jesus, and is the test whether anger is
Christian.
(Ὁ) ‘The next oceasion on which we see our Lord
display an emotion akin to anger is found in Mk
10", He was ‘moved with indignation’ (RV
ἠγανάκτησεν) When the disciples forbade the chil-
dren to be brought to Him. The other instances
in which the same word is used (Mk 104 144, Mt
21%, Lk 1913) show that a natural feeling of being
hurt or annoyed is what the word_ specifically
means. The disciples should have known Him
better than to do what they did: they wronged
Him in forbidding the approach of the children,
Hence doctrines and practices which refuse to
children, and to the intellectually and morally
immature in general, their place and interest in
the kingdom of God, are proper subjects of resent-
ment. In one aspect of it, the kingdom of God is
a protest against nature, and to enter into it we
must be born again ; but in another, there is a real
analogy between them; the order of nature is
constituted with a view to the order of grace; man
is made in God’s image and for God, and it is his
true nature to welcome God; if the children are
‘suffered,’ and not forbidden, they will go to Jesus.
They wrong God who deny this, and therefore the
denial is to be resented.
(c) There is a striking passage in Luke (14%),
where, although anger is not mentioned, it is im-
possible not to feel that Jesus is speaking with a
profound and even passionate resentment. ‘Great
multitudes followed with him, and he turned, and
said to them, If any man cometh to me, and hateth
not his father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and brothers, and sisters, yea, and his own life also,
he cannot be my disciple.’ Jesus was on His way
to die; and it moved Him as an indignity, which
He was entitled to resent, that on the very path
to the cross He should be attended by a shallow
throng who did not have it in them to do the
slightest violence to themselves for the sake of the
kingdom of God. The whole passage, in which
the moral demands of discipleship are set at the
highest, vibrates with indignation. To follow
Christ is a great enterprise, like building a tower,
or going to war ; it requires the painful sacrifice of
the tenderest natural affections, the renunciation
of the most valued possessions; and when it is
affected by people who have no moral salt in
them—who could not win it from themselves to
give up anything for God and His cause—the
resentinent of Jesus rises into scorn (v.*4), With
all His love for men, there was a kind of man
whom He did not shrink from describing as ‘ good
for nothing.’
(dq) The last passage is that in which Jesus
cleanses the Temple: Mk 1115 and parallels. What
stirred His indignation here was in part the pro-
fanity to which sacred places and their proper
associations had lost all sacredness ; in part, the
covetousness which on the pretext of accommodat-
ing the pilgrims had turned the house of prayer
into a den of thieves; in part, again, the inhu-
manity which, by instituting a market so noisy in
the Court of the Gentiles, must have made worship
for these less privileged seekers after God difticult,
if not impossible. The text quoted in Jn 217 (Ps
69°), as remembered by the disciples in connexion
with this event—‘the zeal of thy house shall eat
me up’—sums up as well as anything could do
the one characteristic which is never wanting 1n
the anger of Jesus, and which alone renders
anger just. It is jealousy for God—the identifica-
tion of oneself with His cause and interest on
earth, especially as it is represented in human
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ANGER
beings, and resentment of everything which does
it wrong.*
2. The occasions on which Jesus expresses His
gudgment on moral questions with a vehemence
which is undoubtedly inspired by indignation.—
Every moral judgment, of course, contains feeling:
it is not merely the expression of assent or dissent,
but of consent or resentment. We are all within
the moral world, not outside of it; we cannot be
spectators merely, but in every thought we are
actors as well; to deny this is to deny that there
isa moral world at all. Hence all dissent is econ-
demnation, and all condemnation, if real, is resent-
ment; but there are circumstances in which the
condemnation is so emphatic that the resentment
becomes vivid and contagious, and it is illustra-
tions of this that we wish to find in the life of
Jesus.
(a) The most conspicuous is perhaps that which
we find in the passage on σκάνδαλα (Mt 18"),
Jesus has taken a little child to rebuke the am-
bitious strife of the Twelve ; but ‘these little ones
who believe in me’ are not children, but the
disciples generally (οἵ. Mt 10%). “ΤῸ make one of
them stumble’ (cxavdadifev) is to perplex him, to
put him out about Christ, to create misunderstand-
ing and estrangement, such as we hear of for a time
in the case of the Baptist (11°*-) and the Nazarenes
(1351), and so to make his discipleship void. In a
more general sense it means to mislead, or to be
the cause that another falls into sin which his
better conscience condemns. If we are to judge
from His language, nothing ever moved Jesus to
such passionate indignation as this. The sin of
sins was that of leading others into sin, especially
‘the little ones’—the weak, the untaught, the
easily perplexed and easily misled—whose hearts
were otherwise naturally right with Him. Every
word in Jesus’ sentence is laden with indignation :
‘Better for him that a great millstone were hanged
about his neck, and that he were drowned in the
depth of the sea.’ This anger of Jesus is exactly
what is meant in the OT by ‘the jealousy of God,’
z.e. His love pledged to His own, and resenting
with all the intensity of the Divine nature any
wrong inflicted on them (cf. Zec 853), Though anger
is often sinful, the absence of anger may be due to
the absence of love: and the man who can see the
‘little ones’ being made to stumble and who takes
it quite coolly is very far from the kingdom of God.
(6) It is possibly an instance of this same indig-
nation that we find in Mt 16%. Peter tempts
Jesus to decline the cross—in other words, tries to
make Him stumble at the will of the Father; and
the indignant vehemence with which he is repelled
—‘Get thee behind me, Satan’—shows how real
the temptation was, and how a prompt and deci-
sive resentment is the natural security in such
trials. We have a right and a duty to be angry
with the tempter.
(c) In the answer of Jesus to the Sadducees in
Mk 12% we have another light on what moved
Him to indignation. In the scornful πολὺ πλανᾶσθε
with which the discussion closes, resuming the
πλανᾶσθε of v.%4, Jesus’ resentment shines out.
The question at issue, that of man’s immortality,
was a great and solemn question. It involved the
whole character of God—what He was, and what
in His power, His goodness, and His faithfulness
He could and would do for the souls He had made
* In Mt 2151 Wellhausen adopts the reading ὁ ὕστερος instead
of ὁ πρῶτος. This makes the Jews deride Jesus, instead of
seriously answering Him; and Wellhausen, taking it so, finds
in the words which follow—‘ The publicans and the harlots go
into the kingdom of God before you’—not an explanation of
the parable, but a Zornesausbruch, an outburst of wrath, which
could hardly be cleared of petulance (Das Evangelium Mat-
thei, 106 f.). O. Holtzmann’s idea that Jesus cursed the fig-
tree in a momentary fit of temper is only worth mentioning as
ὃν warning (see his Leben Jesu, p. 324).
ANGER 61
-ς ὦ
in His own image. The Sadducees had tried to
degrade it and make it ridiculous, and the indigna-
tion of Jesus is unmistakable. It is an example
which justifies indignation with those who by
unworthy controversial methods profane or render
ridiculous subjects in which the dearest concern-
ments of humanity are involved.
(d) To these passages may be added Jesus’ de-
nunciation of the Pharisees in Mt 23, The long
series of woes is not merely a revelation of things
which in the mind of Jesus are illegitimate, it is a
revelation of the passionate resentment which
these things evoke in Him. They are the things
with which God is angry every day, and it is a sin
in men if they can look at them without indigna-
tion. To keep people ignorant of religious truth,
neither living by it ourselves, nor letting them do
so (v.'3); to make piety or the pretence of it a
cloak for avarice (v.14, only introduced here from
|| Mark); to raise reeruits for our own faction on
the pretext of enlisting men for the kingdom of
God (v.); to debauch the simple conscience by
casuistical sophistries (vv.!%**); to destroy the
sense of proportion in morals by making morality
a matter of law in which all things stand on the
same level (ν. 335); to put appearance above reality,
and reduce life to a play, at once tragedy and
farce (vv.*-*8) ; to revive the spirit and renew the
sins of the past, while we affect a pious horror of
them, erucifying the living prophets while we
build monuments to the martyred (v.**"-): these
are the things which made a storm of anger sweep
over the soul of Jesus, and burst in this tremendous
denunciation of His enemies. Yet it is entirely in
keeping with the combination of ideas in Mk 3°
(μετ᾽ ὀργῆς . . ..cuvurovmevos) When the Evangelist
attaches to this our Lord’s lament over Jerusalem
(v.28, cf. Lk 13%). His anger does not extin-
guish His compassion, and if the city could be
moved to repentance He would still gather her
children together as a hen gathers her chickens
under her wings.
Putting the whole of the passages together, and
generalizing from them, we may infer that the two
things in human conduct which moved Jesus most
quickly and deeply to anger, were (1) inhumanity,
wrong done to the needs or rights of men ; and (2)
misrepresentation of God by professedly religious
people, and especially by religious teachers. He
stood in the world for the rights and interests, or,
we may say, for the truth of God and of human
nature ; and His whole being reacted immediately
and vehemently against all that did wrong to
either.
3. Something may further be learned from the
passages in which Jesus gives express teaching about
anger.—(a) The chief of these is Mt δ: Here
our Lord interprets the sixth commandment for
the citizens of the kingdom of God. It is not
only the act of murder which is condemned, but
the first movement of the passions which leads in
that direction. ‘He who murders shall be liable
to the judgment? I tell you, every one who is
angry with his brother shall be lable to the judg.
ment.’ The reading εἰκῆ (‘without cause,’ temere)
is no doubt erroneous here; but the introduction
of it is rather a rhetorical than an exegetical
blunder. As Tholuck observed, to bring in the
idea that there is such a thing as lawful anger
would only weaken the condemnation passed here
upon such anger as men are familiar with in them-
selves and others ; but after what has been said
under (1) and (2), it does not need to be proved
that there is a place for anger in the Christian in
the world in which we live. What Jesus condemns
here is not any kind of anger, but anger with a
brother, which forgets that he is a brother, and
that we have a brother’s duty to him; the anger
}
62 ANGER
ANIMALS
which leads straight to contemptuous and insult-
ing words (the paxd and μωρέ of ν.33), and ends in
irreconcilable bitterness (v.%). Anger like this
on the part of one Christian toward another is sin,
and sin so deadly that no words could exaggerate
the urgency of escape from it. No religious duty,
not even the most sacred, can take precedence of
the duty of reconciliation. If a man should be
offering his gift at the altar—if he should actually
be seated at the communion table with the com-
munion cup in his hand, let him put it down, and
go first, and get out of these angry relations with
his brother, and then come and have fellowship
with God (v.“*). How can an angry man, with
the temper of a quarrel in him, have communion
with the God of peace? It is possible to raise
casuistical questions in all such situations as are
here supposed, but as these questions present them-
selves only to the spectators, not to the respon-
sible actors, it is not worth while to raise them.
The one duty insisted on here, as in the partly
parallel passage in Mt 181-18, is the duty of placa-
bility. The person who has suffered the wrong—
that is, who is in the right, who is entitled to be
angry—is for that very reason to take the initiative
in reconciliation, and to bear the expense of it.
That is how God deals with us, who have offended
Him, and that is how we are to deal with those
who offend us. There is to be no anger in the
sense of a selfish resentment into which the bad
passions of unregenerate human nature can pour
themselves; and the lawful anger of the soul,
whose wrong is a wrong done to the kingdom
of God, will pass away at once when he who has
done the wrong is brought to repentance. The
penitence and the resentment are the guilty and
the innocent index of the reality of the wrong;
and each is as inevitable as the other if the Chris-
tian life is to be morally sincere.
(4) It is natural to take account here of the pas-
sage on retaliation and non-resistance in Mt 5*8".
Anger seems to be unconditionally precluded by
such a saying as, ‘ Whosoever smiteth thee on the
right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ It is
difficult to believe that any one was ever struck
on the face unjustly (as is assumed in the con-
nexion) without resenting it, and just as difficult
to believe that it would be for the good of humanity
or of the kingdom of God that it should be so.
But Jesus, who came to abolish one literalism,
did not come to institute another. His words are
never to be read as statutes, but as appeals to
conscience. What He teaches in this place is that
there is no limit to be laid down beforehand beyond
which love is no longer to regulate the conduct of
His disciples. _No provocation can be so insult-
ing, no demand can be so unjust, so irrational, so
exasperating, as that His disciples shall be entitled
to cast love overboard, and meet the world with
weapons like itsown. Love must to all extremities
be the supreme and determining principle in their
conduct, the same love, with the same interests in
view, as that of their Father in heaven (v.45); but
no more in them than in Him does it exclude all
manifestation of anger. What it does exclude is
the selfish anger which is an alternative to love,
not the Divine resentment which is a mode of
love, and expresses its sense of the reality of
wrong. If this died out of the world, society
would swiftly rot to extinction; but the gospel,
in the sense of the words, the example, and the
spirit of Jesus, is so far from proscribing this that
it is the greatest of all powers for keeping it alive.
For those who have learned that where the spirit
of the Lord is there is liberty, the literal inter-
pretation of words like Mt 5*-42 is a combination
of pedantry and fanaticism which no genius will
ever make anything else than absurd.
Echoes of the teaching of Jesus on anger are
probably to be traced at various points in the
teaching of the Apostles. E.g.in Ro 12, a chapter
which often recalls the Sermon on the Mount,
νν. 18:1 are entirely in the key of Mt 5%. ‘The
wrath’ of Ro 1215, to which Christians are to leaye
room, is the wrath of God which will be revealed
at the last day. God has reserved for Himself
(ἐμοὶ ἐκδίκησις, ἐγὼ ἀνταποδώσω) the vindication of
the wronged, and they are not to forestall Him
or take His work out of His hands; in the day of
wrath, when His righteous judgment is revealed,
all wrongs will be rectified ; meanwhile, as Christ
teaches, love is to rule all our conduct, and we
must overcome evil with good. It is perhaps with
a vague recollection of Mt 5° that men are
directed in 1 Ti 28 to pray χωρὶς ὀργῆς : an angry
man cannot pray. Accordingly a bishop must not
be ὀργίλος, given to anger, or of an uncontrollable
temper (Tit 17. Exhortations like those in Eph
4°1, Col 38, Ja 115, show that anger was known to
the Church mainly in forms which the Christian
conscience condemned. Ja 119 is particularly in-
teresting, because it reminds us of the danger (in
anger) of enlisting self in the service of God, call-
ing on the old man to do what can be done only
by the new: ‘The wrath of man worketh not the
righteousness of God.’ But though it is difficult,
it need not be impossible that the wrath which a
man feels, and under the impulse of which he ex-
presses himself, should be, not ‘the wrath of man,’
but a Divine resentment of evil. The words of
Mt 18° or Mt 231%: fell from human lips, but they
are the expression and the instrument of the
jealousy of God. To be angry without sin is diffi-
cult for men, but it is a difficult duty (Eph 455).
Apart from anything yet alluded to is the use
of the verb ἐμβριμᾶσθαι to describe some kind of
emotion in Jesus (Mk 1*, Mt 9°, Jn 11°: 8), Ordi-
narily the word conveys the idea of indignation
which cannot be repressed ; but this, though found
elsewhere in the Gospels (e.g. Mk 14°), is ποῦ obvi-
ously appropriate in the passages quoted. In the
first two it may be due to our Lord’s consciousness
of the fact that the persons on whom He had con-
ferred a great blessing were immediately going to
disregard His command to keep silent about it;
the sense of this put something severe and peremp-
tory into His tones. In the last two it has been
explained as expressing Jesus’ sense of the indignity
of death; He resented, as something not properly
belonging to the Divine idea of the world, such
experiences as He was confronted with on the way
to the grave of Lazarus. But this is precarious,
and on the whole there is little stress to be laid on
any inference we can draw from the use of ἐμβρι-
μᾶσθαι in the Gospels.
LITERATURE.—Butler, Sermons, viii., ix.; Law, Serious Call,
ch. xxi.; Seeley, Hece Homo, chs. xxi.-xxiii. ; Dale, Atonement’,
p. 338 ff. ; Expos. Times, iv. [1893], pp. 256 ff., 492 ff. ; Hxpositor,
1st ser. i. [1875], 133 ff. JAMES DENNEY.
ANIMALS.—It cannot be said that animals play
avery important part in the life and teaching of
our Lord ; yet the Gospel references cover a wider
range than is usually imagined. The Evangelists
use no fewer than 40 different Greek words denot-
ing animals, and, apart from such general terms
as ‘birds of the air,’ ‘wild beasts,’ and ‘serpents,’
they mention at least 20 particular kinds. The
references may best be classified under the head-
ings ‘Domestic’ and ‘ Wild.’
i. Domestic ANIMALS.—4. The beasts of burden
in Palestine in the time of our Lord were the ass
and the camel. The horse is not mentioned in the
Gospels, its use in the East being restricted to
purposes of war. Thus the horse becomes pro-
ininent in the military imagery of the Apocalypse.
— μα νῦν,
ANIMALS
ANIMALS 63
A general term for ‘ beast of burden’ occurs in the parable of
the Good Samaritan (Lk 10%4 zr7yvos). In Rev 1813 ‘beasts of
burden’ are distinguished from horses. Josephus (Ant. tv. vi. 3)
uses the word of asses in particular. In Ac 2374 a ‘beast’ is
provided to carry St. Paul to Cesarea; in the NT therefore
χτῆνος is clearly some ‘beast of burden’ which is not a horse.
Probably the Good Samaritan rode on an ass, or possibly on a
mule.
The ass is denoted by four other words in the
Gospels, viz. πῶλος, ὀνάριον, ὄνος, and ὑποζύγιον. The
animal on which our Lord made His triumphal
entry into J erusalem is described by all four Evan-
gelists as a colt (πῶλος, Mt 217-7, Mk 113: 4 57, Lk
192 33.35, Jn 12!°), The word is not used else-
where in the Gospels, and in John it occurs only
in the quotation from Zechariah. St. John de-
scribes the colt as ὀνάριον, ayoung ass. St. Matthew
introduces the she-ass, the mother of the colt, into
the story. In the Matthzan form of the quota-
tion from Zechariah (Mt 21°) the mother ass is
further described as a draught beast (ὑποζύγιον).
The meaning of this fulfilment of prophecy is well brought
out by Chrysostom. Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on an ass,
‘not driving chariots like the rest of the kings, not demanding
tributes, not thrusting men off, and leading about guards, but
displaying His great meekness even hereby’ (Hom. C6 in J/t.).
The triumphal entry into Jerusalem is the only
incident in the life of our Lord in which an ass is
concerned ; but in His teaching, as reported by
St. Luke, there are two other references. The
synagogue-ruler, who forbade people to come to
be healed on the Sabbath, received the rebuke,
‘Hypocrites, does not each one of you loose his ox
or his ass (τὸν ὄνον) from the stall on the Sabbath
and lead him away to watering?’ (Lk 1315. On
another occasion, with reference to the same ques-
tion of Sabbath healing, our Lord asked, ‘ Which
of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a well,
and will not straightway draw him up on a Sab-
bath day’ (Lk 145).
The text of the latter passage is uncertain, the evidence of
sand B being divided. B reads υἱός, adopted by Westcott and
Hort; while & reads ὄνος, retained by the Revisers. Possibly
neither is the correct text; but if we follow the Revisers, we
may notice that on the only two occasions when the ass is men-
tioned in our Lord’s teaching, it is coupled with the ox, as if to
imply that the Jewish farmer took equal care of each. ‘The
ox, the ass, and the sheep are the (chief) domestic animals with
which an Israelite household is provided’ (O. Holtzmann).
The ass occupies a much more important place
in the farm life of the East than his neglected de-
scendant occupies in England to-day. The finer
breeds are regularly used for riding, while the
commoner breeds draw the plough and carry bur-
dens. ‘The ass is still the most universal of all
beasts of burden in Bible lands’ (Post, in Hastings’
DB).
The camel (κάμηλος) figures in two sayings of
our Lord which have a proverbial ring. (Thomson
notes that the camel is still the subject of many
Arabian proverbs). The three Synopties record
the saying, ‘It is easier for a camel to pass through
a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of God’ (Mt 193’, Mk 10°, Lk 18:5). There
is ne need to stumble at the hyperbole involved in
‘a needle’s eye,’ nor is it necessary to explain the
phrase as a reference to a particularly small gate
(see art. ‘Camel’ in Hastings’ DB). The second
reference is found in the denunciation of the
Pharisees, who strain out a gnat while they gulp
down a camel (Mt 23"). A camel-caravan would
be one of the sights of our Lord’s boyhood, and the
awkwardness of meeting a camel in the narrow
street, which modern travellers experience, was
not unknown nineteen hundred years ago. The
camel must have been the largest animal with
which our Lord was familiar, and in both sayings
it is mentioned for its size.
The only other reference to the camel occurs in
the description of the dress of John the Baptist,
whose garment, like that of Elijah, was of camel’s
hair (Mt 34, Mk 1°).
On this Sir Thomas Browne notes : ‘a coarse garment, ἃ cilicious
or sackcloth garment, suitable to the austerity of his life—the
severity of his doctrine, repentance—and the place thereof, the
wilderness—his food and diet, locusts and wild honey.’
2. Of larger cattle,* oxen, bulls, and calves find
a place in the Gospels.
The ox (βοῦς) is mentioned three times in Luke,
twice in connexion with the ass in the passages
previously cited (Lk 13% 14°), and again in the
parable of the Great Supper, when one of the
invited guests excuses himself on the ground that
he has bought five yoke of oxen which need to be
tested (Lk 1415). The ox was employed in the
East for ploughing and threshing ; it was also used
for sacrifice, as appears from the only other pas-
sage in the Gospels where oxen are mentioned,
viz. St. John’s account of the cleansing of the
Temple court. Sheep and oxen (Jn 24!) were
driven out along with their vendors.
Bulls (ταῦροι) and fat beasts (σιτιστά) + are men-
tioned only in Mt 224. They form samples of the
rich dainties prepared for the marriage feast of
the king’s son, and illustrate the magnificent scale
of the entertainment which those summoned to
partake so insolently spurned. Similarly the fatted
calf (ὁ μόσχος ὁ σιτευτός), Which appears only in the
parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15** 21: °°), indicates
an unusual feast, made to celebrate an unusual
joy. The fatted calf is contrasted with the kid,
the customary repast, which Oriental hospitality
provides to this day. The elder brother complains
that he has never been allowed to offer his friends
the entertainment which his father is wont to pro-
vide for any chance visitor ; while for the graceless
prodigal is killed the fatted calf, which is destined
only for high festivals. The bulls and fatlings in
the parable of the Marriage Feast, and the fatted
calf in the parable of the Returning Prodigal,
alike stand for the lavish generosity of God’s love,
which the Scribes and Pharisees could not ap-
preciate, even when offered to themselves, the king’s
invited guests, much less when those prodigals,
the publicans and sinners, were likewise embraced
therein.
3. Of smaller cattle, goats and sheep are men-
tioned.
Goats (ἔριφος, ἐρίφιον, lit. ‘kid,’ a meaning re-
tained in Lk 15”; in LXX the word=‘ goat’ as
well as ‘kid’) appear only in the picture of the
Last Judgment (Mt 2555), where they are con-
trasted with sheep. The point of the contrast lies
in the colour rather than the character of the
animals, the sheep being pure white, while the
goats are covered with long jet-black hair. So in
the Song of Solomon (4') the locks of the beloved
are compared to ‘a flock of goats that appear from
Mt. Gilead.’ The Son of Man shall separate all
the nations ‘as a shepherd separateth the sheep
from the goats,’ and the simile is quite true to
pastoral life. Tristram (Nat. Hist. p. 89) says
that sheep and goats pasture together, but never
trespass on each other’s domains; they are folded
together, but they do not mix; they may be seen
to enter the fold in company, but once inside they
are kept separate.
The Syrian goat, Capra mambrica, is the most
common breed in Palestine. It is distinguished
by long pendant ears, stout recurved horns, and
long black silky hair. Flocks of goats are most
frequent in hilly districts from Hebron to Lebanon,
where their habit of browsing on young trees tends
to deforest the country.
*The word ‘cattle’ is used to tr. θρέμματα in Jn 412, The
word is also found in the AV of Lk 177.
+ Wyclif, following the Vulg. altilia, translates ‘my volatilis
(fowls)’ ; but fatted cattle are probably meant. |
64 ANIMALS
ANIMALS
oo, π ππ-π-“π------ς-ς-ς-ς------ ------ς-ς-ς-ς-ς-ςςςς-ς-ς.--- ΄΄ὃἷἝὮἝἝ5Ὗἃ, ὃ ΤἕΤ᾿᾽'
A kid (ἔριφος, some MSS ἐρίφιον) is mentioned in
the parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15%). The
kid formed the ordinary dish at an Eastern feast,
as lambs were preserved for the sake of wool, and
were, as a rule, slain only in sacrifice. For the
contrast between the kid and the fatted calf see
above, 5. ‘fatted calf.’ There is no other direct
mention of the goat in the Gospels, though the
wine-bottles (ἀσκοί) referred to in Mt 917 (|| Mk 253,
Lk 5*7-) were doubtless made of goat-skin. These
bottles were made by cutting off the head and legs,
and drawing the carcass out by the neck, and then
tying the neck, legs, and vent, and tanning the
skin, with the hairy side out (Post, in Hastings’
DB ii. 195).
The word for sheep (πρόβατον) is to be found in
the Gospels no fewer than 36 times, while words
connected with sheep, 6.4. ποίμνη, ποίμνιον, ‘a flock,’
are not infrequent. Sheep were so often in the
thoughts of Jesus that we have postponed fuller
consideration of these passages to § iv.
Of the two words for lamb, one, ἀμνός, is applied
only to our Lord, whom John the Baptist twice
describes as ‘the Lamb of God,’ adding in one
ease ‘which taketh away the sin of the world’
(Jn 1°-%), The title implies sacrifice.
Whether the Baptist was thinking of the Paschal lamb or of
the lamb daily offered in the temple matters little. In Jesus he
saw ‘the reality of which all animal sacrifice was the symbol’
(Marcus Dods). No doubt the patience of the lamb is implied
in the title, as unfolded in Is 53? ‘as a lamb before its shearer is
dumb, so he opened not his mouth.’ The purity of the lamb,
without spot and without fault, on which St. Peter dwells
(1 P 119), is also involved. But the idea of redemption through
sacrifice is fundamental in the Baptist’s words.
The second word for ‘lamb’ occurs in two forms,
ἄρνας (ace. pl.) and ἀρνίον. The diminutive form is
found only in Jn 21", where our Lord bids Peter feed
His lambs. ‘Lambs’ is used instead of ‘sheep,’
to bring out more strongly the appeal to care, and
the consequent complete confidence in Peter (M.
Dods). In the Apocalypse our Lord is called ‘ the
Lamb’ (τὸ ἀρνίον) no fewer than 27 times. The form
ἄρνας is confined to Lk 105 ‘ Behold, I send you forth
as lambs into the midst of wolves.’
The parallel Mt 1016 reads ‘sheep,’ but the Lukan form is
supported by Clement of Rome, Lp. ii. 5, ‘Ye shall be as lambs
(ἀρνία) in the midst of wolves. But Peter answered him, say-
ing, If then the wolves tear the lambs in pieces? Jesus said to
Peter, Let not the lambs fear the wolves, after they (the lambs)
are dead.’ Further support for the reading ‘lambs’ may per-
haps be derived from Justin’s casual description of Marcionites
as lambs torn by wolves (ἄρνες συνηρπασιένοι, Apol. c. 58).
4. Poultry were kept in Palestine in the time
of our Lord, as is clear from the references to the
cock (ἀλέκτωρ) and the hen (ὄρνις). If we except
the mention of cock-crow (see sep. art.) in Mk
1955. the cock appears only in the story of Peter’s
denial, and our Lord’s prediction of it (Mt 264: τὰν,
Mk 1450 (8). 72, Lk 2234-60f. Jn 1378 1827), The hen
(ὄρνις) affords a simile in the lament over Jeru-
salem. ‘How often would I have gathered thy
children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens
(Lk. ‘her brood’) under her wings!’ (Mt 23°7, Lk
13%), The action by which the hen gives rest and
protection to the chickens under the shelter of her
wings is too well known to need comment. The
tenderness of the simile witnesses to the love of
Jesus for His own countrymen, and His longing
to avert national disaster. The words used for
‘chickens’ and ‘brood’ (νοσσίον and νοσσιά) are
found here only, though a word from the same
root is employed in the phrase ‘two young pigeons’
(νοσσοὺς περιστερῶν, Lk 2°4),
5. To the list of domestic animals we may add
dogs and swine, which were classed together as
unclean. ῖ
Dogs (κύνες) are mentioned twice. In the Sermon
on the Mount the disciples are warned not to give
that which is holy to dogs (Mt 75). The pariah
dogs that infest Eastern towns, and have to be
cleared off periodically with poison, are ‘a lean,
mangy, and sinister brood,’ acting as scavenvers
and living on offal. Naturally these animals do
not possess a fastidious palate, and their manner
of life is disgusting enough to justify the Jews’
contempt for them. To call aman a dog is through-
out the Bible a customary form of abuse. These
wild dogs, says Tristram (Nat. Hist. p. 80), were
the only dogs known in Palestine, with the excep-
tion of the Persian greyhound ; and though they
could be trained enough to act as watch-dogs for
the sheep-folds,* they hardly became companions
to man [the dog of To 5° 11* 1s altogether an excep-
tional case]. “Ὁ the Jew the dog was a very fitting
symbol of the man who had depraved his moral
and spiritual taste by evil living. In the Didache,
‘Give not that which is holy to dogs’ is interpreted
to mean, Do not administer the Eucharist to the
unbaptized ; but the principle involved in the text
is capable of wider application. A Christian is
not required to wear his heart on his sleeve! In
the parable of Dives and Lazarus it is said that
these street-dogs came and licked the beggar’s
sores (Lk 102). This is an aggravation rather than
an alleviation of Lazarus’ suffering. It shows his
destitute and defenceless condition, that he could
not even keep the dogs away! A diminutive form
of κύων, Viz. κυνάριον, occurs in the story of the
Syro-Pheenician woman. ‘It is not right,’ said the
Master, ‘to take the children’s bread and cast it
to dogs.’ ‘Yea, Lord,’ replied the woman, ‘yet
the does eat of the crumbs that fall from their
masters’ table’ (Mt 15°, Mk 731), Bochart treats
the diminutive κυνάριον as doubling the contempt
inherent in the word. But it is clear from the
woman’s reply that the dogs in question are kept
within the house; they are household pets. Tris-
tram says that he found no difficulty in making a
pet of a puppy taken from among the pariah dogs
(Nat. Hist. p. 80). Probably the κυνάρια were
puppies which had been taken into Jewish house-
holds as pets in a similar way. The word is not
intended to add to the harshness of our Lord’s
saying; the woman saw in it her ground for appeal.
Swine (χοῖρος, not vs) appear in the story of the
Gadarene demoniae (Mt 8%, Mk 54, Lk 8%f),
‘The fact that swine were kept in Palestine at all
is evidence of the presence of the foreigner ’(O.
Holtzmann). Cf. in 117, Dt 148, Is 652 ihe
country on the east side of the Lake was much
under Gentile influence. The Prodigal Son is put to
tend swine. The nature of the task is evidence at
once of the difference between his home and the
far country, and of the want and degradation into
which he has fallen (Lk 15%) ‘The only further
reference to swine is the saying, ‘Cast not your
pearls before swine’ (Mt 7°), in which our Lord
emphasizes the necessity of tact in religious work.
ii. WILD ANIMALS.—4. θηρίον, the general word
for wild beast, is found in the Gospels only once.
Mk 1? tells us that during the Temptation our
Lord was with the wild beasts. Thomson says
that ‘thoueh there are now no lions (in Palestine),
wolves, leopards, and panthers still prow] about. the
wild wadys’ (Land and Book, ‘Central Palestine,’
Ρ. 594). ‘In the age of Jesus, the chief beast of
prey in Palestine was, as to-day, the jackal.
Mark’s addition indicates Jesus’ complete sever-
ance from human society’ (O. Holtzmann, Life of
Jesus, Ὁ. 143f.).
The word 6z,/ov is now to be found in the second of the five
new Sayings recently recovered by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt:
‘The birds of the air and whatever of the beasts are on the
earth or under it are they who draw us into the kingdom.’
* Tt would be truer to say that the pariah dogs have degene-
rated from the sheep-dogs than that the latter have developed
from the former.
| ANIMALS
ANIMALS
65:'
Jere the word is not confined to ‘beasts of prey’; it stands for
he whole kingdom of wild animals. There is a similar use of
he word in a saying of our Lord as given by Justin Martyr:
Be not anxious as to what ye shall eat or what ye shall put on:
re ye not much better than the birds and the beasts?’ (1 Apol.
5), These considerations support the conclusion that St. Mark’s
ας does not imply physical danger, but is rather intended
o suggest that our Lord was alone with Nature.
Two beasts of prey mentioned by name in the
xospels are the fox (ἀλώπηξ) and the wolf (λύκος).
[The fox, which has at least a hole to live in, is
ontrasted with the homeless Son of Man (Mt 8”,
Uk 958). In Lk 13” our Lord speaks of Herod as
that fox.’ The cunning and perhaps the cowardice
yf the animal are the basis of the comparison.
‘The name,’ says O. Holtzmann, ‘must have been
riven to Herod because he was inimical, yet, not
laring to make any open attack, timidly prowled
bout until he found an opportunity to murder in
ecret’ (Life of Jesus, p. 364).
The wolf is mentioned only in connexion with
3 in contrast to sheep. The wolf is the chief
nemy against which the shepherd has to guard
lis flock. ‘A single wolf,’ says Tristram, ‘is far
nore destructive than a whole peck of jackals’
Nat. Hist. p. 153). Eastern shepherds employ
logs (if they employ them at all) not to help in
lerding the sheep, but to ward off wolves. In
ontrast to the hireling, the Good Shepherd faces
he wolf even at the risk of his life (Jn 10’).
false prophets are wolves in sheep’s clothing (Mt
15, The contrast between outward profession
nd inward character could not be more vividly
xpressed. The same antithesis is used by our
word to portray the contrast between the Church
nd the world, between the patient non-resistance
ἢ the one and the brutal violence of the other.
The disciples are sent forth as sheep (Lk. as lambs)
nto the midst of wolves (Mt 10'®, Lk 105).
2. The general term for wild birds is τὰ πετεινά,
the birds,’ often 7a πετεινα τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, ‘the birds
f heaven.’ They are mentioned in the Sermon on
he Mount: ‘Consider the birds: they do not sow,
lor reap, nor gather into barns’ (Mt 6*°; in the
arallel passage, Lk 12%, the reading is κόρακας,
ravens,’ which, however, are themselves called
ετεινά at the end of the verse). Dean Stanley
ays that the birds most in evidence round
he Sea of Galilee are partridges and pigeons.
finches and bulbuls are also abundant, accord-
ng to Thomson. For the doctrine of providence
nvolved in this and similar sayings of our Lord,
ve must refer our readers to § iv. Like the
oxes, the birds are contrasted with the Son of
Mian ; they have nests, while He hath not where
6 lay His head (Mt 8”, Lk 9%). The birds appear
n the parable of the Sower, where they pick up
he seed that falls by the wayside (Mt 13+, Mk 4+,
4k 85. No doubt the fields round the lake, with
he birds busy upon them, could be seen from the
lace where Jesus stood to teach the people. Prob-
bly the parable was spoken early in tlie year.
The parable of the Mustard Seed also introduces
he birds, which come and lodge in the branches
Mf the full-grown tree (Mt 13%, Mk 4%, Lk 131%).
dere the imagery seems to be drawn from Dn
2-21, where the kingdom of Nebuchadrezzar is
ikened to a tree ‘upon whose branches the birds
yf the heavens had their habitations.’ Daniel
nterprets the tree to represent the greatness of
Nebuchadrezzar’s dominion, which is to reach to
he end of the earth. The description in the
arable carries with it the same implication with
egard to the kingdom of heaven. There is one
sther reference to ‘the birds’ in Lk 12% ‘How
much better are ye than the birds "ἢ
The following particular wild birds are men-
fioned in the Gospels :—dove (pigeon), eagle, raven,
sparrow, turtle-dove.
VOL. 1.—5
In all four Gospels the dove appears as the”
symbol of the Holy Ghost at our Lord’s Baptism. ,
In Mt 316 the vision of the Holy Ghost descending -.
in the form of a dove (ὡσεὶ περιστεράν) seems to ᾿
have been granted to all present at the Baptism. |
In Mk 1° and Lk 3” the vision is apparently
addressed more especially to Jesus Himself. In_
Jn 1” it is a sign given to John the Baptist. In
the story of the Creation, a metaphor from bird-life '
is employed to describe the Spirit of God finttering
(RVm ‘ brooding’) over the waters (Gn 1*). The-
same Spirit rests on the Saviour with whom begins
God’s new creation. But the mention of the dove
naturally carries us back to the story of the Flood
(Gn 8"). For Jesus the dove with olive-leaf after
the Flood is the emblem of the Spirit (A. B. Bruce
in Expositor’s Greek Testament, on Mt 3168).
The Holy Ghost in the form of a dove typifies the ’
hope of the gospel, peace between nan and God. "
In cleansing the Temple-court our Lord came
upon them that sold doves for sacrifice. It is to
these dove-sellers that the words in Jn 216 are
addressed, ‘Take these things hence.’ The cattle ἡ
can be driven out: the doves must be carried out.
This detail, which is perfectly natural, is recorded ©
only in John, who consequently mentions ‘ doves’
twice (Jn 21" 16), while Matthew and Mark have :
only one reference each (Mt 21’*, Mk 11%).
The word περιστερά is used in the LXX where:
the EV reads ‘ pigeon’ as well as where it reads
‘dove.’ The same bird is probably meant by the
two English words. But in the directions for
sacrifice in Leviticus, the word ‘pigeon’ is regu-
larly used, and in Lk 2% περιστερά is translated
‘pigeon,’ though elsewhere in the Gospels it is
rendered ‘dove.’ In Ly 125 a poor woman, ‘if 586
be not able to bring a lamb, shall bring two turtles
or two young pigeons.’ The mother of Jesus
brings the poor woman’s sacrifice.
To the ancients the dove symbolized purity
(Aristotle mentions the chastity of the dove), and
this fact perhaps made birds of this class suitable
for sacrifice. The only other reference to the dove
in the Gospels is found in Mt 10'*, where the dis-
ciples are bidden to be as pure (ἀκέραιοι) as doves,
a command which St. Paul echoes in Ro 16% and
Ph:
The turtle-dove (τρυγών) is mentioned only in
the quotation from Lv 195 in Lk 2%. There are.
three species of turtle-doves in Palestine. The col-
lared turtle (7. risorius) is the largest, and fre--
quents the shores of the Dead Sea. The palm:
turtle (7. Senegalensis) ‘resorts much to the’
gardens and enclosures of Jerusalem.’ ‘It is
very familiar and confiding in man, and is never
molested.’ The common turtle (7. auritus) is the’
most abundant of the three species.
The eagle (ἀετός) is the subject of a proverbial
saying recorded in Mt 24*||Lk 17” ‘where the
carcass is, there shall the eagles be gathered
together.’ According to Post, there are four kinds
of vultures and eight kinds of eagles to be found
in the Holy Land. Here the term ‘eagle’ is
generic. Thomson describes the eagles’ flight as
majestic, and their eyesight and, apparently, sense
of smell, are both extremely keen.
The exact force of the above saying is hard to determine.
Some old commentators, following the Fathers, take it to refer
to ‘the conflux of the godly to the light and liberty of the
Gospel’ (Master Trapp). More modern exegesis regards the’
passage as hinting at the gathering of the Roman eagles round
the moribund Jewish nation. But Bengel rightly observes that
in Mt 24 the reference of v.24 goes back to the false prophets
and false Christs of v.2. In the decay of Judaism as a religious.
faith, such men will find their opportunity, and will turn popu-
lar fanaticism to their own profit. In Matthew the proverb is
perfectly general in form, and is capable of wider application.
National ruin and feverish religiosity go hand in hand. False
Messianism marked the final overthrow of the Jews in A.D. 135 ;
and when the barbarians laid siege to Rome in 408, even a Pope
consented to resort to Etruscan magic rites! (Milman, Latin
66
ANIMALS
ANIMALS
Christianity, i. 126). In Lk 1737 the ‘wheresoever’ becomes
‘where,’ and the saying is in answer to a definite question
regarding the signs that are to mark the sudden return of the
Son of Man. Here it is difficult not to interpret the eagles of
the Roman standards. For St. Luke evidently does not take
the saying as a statement of a general law. The Matthean
form and position give the more attractive interpretation.
The rayen (κόραξ) is mentioned only in Lk 12%,
‘Consider the ravens how they neither sow nor
reap.’ The parallel Mt 6° reads, ‘birds.’ The
whole passage and the force of Luke’s change will
be considered in § iv. The term ‘raven’ includes
the numerous tribes of crows. ‘Tristram mentions
eight different species as common.in Palestine.
God’s care for the ravens is twice mentioned in
OT (Job 3841, Ps 147°). These passages may have
influenced Luke, if he changed ‘birds’ into
‘ravens.’ Again, they may have been in the
mind of our Lord, if Luke gives the original form
of the saying.
The sparrow (στρουθίον) is twice mentioned in
sayings recorded both in Matthew and Luke. In
Mt 10” we read, ‘ Are not two sparrows sold for a
farthing?’ and in Lk 12° ‘Are not five sparrows
sold for two farthings?’ In Tatian’s Diatessaron
the words in taberna, ‘in the cookshop,’ are added.
Doubtless we have here the prices current in
popular eating-houses in the time of our Lord.
‘Sparrows, two a farthing; five a halfpenny.’ In
Mt 102 and Lk 127 our Lord adds, ‘Ye are much
more worth than many sparrows.’ For a dis-
cussion of these references to sparrows and of
their bearing on our Lord’s teaching, we must
again refer our readers to § iv.
3. For jish, three words are used, ἰχθύς, ἰχθύδιον,
and ὀψάριον. The latter term is confined to John.
In the feeding of the five thousand, the Synoptics
speak of ‘two fishes’ (δύο ἐχθύας, Mt 14}7:19. Mk
6%: 41. 40. Lk 91-16), The parallel narrative in John
reads δύο ὀψάρια, which is also translated ‘two
fishes’ (Jn 6). But while the Syn. ἰχθύς is a
general term, ὀψάριον, says Edersheim, ‘ refers, no
doubt, to those small fishes (probably a kind of
sardine) of which millions were caught in the lake,
and which, dried and salted, would form the most
common savoury, with bread, for the fisher-popula-
tion along the shore’ (Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah, i. 682). The parable of the Drag-net (Mt
13*7-°) is taken from the life of the Galilean fisher-
folk. But this definite meaning of ὀψάριον cannot
always be maintained: for in John’s narrative of
the miraculous draught of fishes, ὀψάριον and
ἰχθύς are interchanged as equivalents (ὀψάριον, Jn
21% 10.135 ἰχθύς, vv.68 11), Jesus says to the dis-
ciples, ‘ Bring of the fish (ὀψαρίων) which ye have
now caught. Simon Peter went up, and dragged
the net to shore full of great fishes’ (ἰχθύων).. Both
in the narratives of the miraculous multiplication
of loaves and fishes and in His post-resurrection
appearance by the lake, our Lord makes use of the
disciples’ own resources, while adding to them
something of His own. In the similar miracle
recorded in Lk 5, ἰχθύς is the word used (vv.® 9).
When narrating the feeding of the four thousand,
both Matthew and Mark speak of a few small
fishes (ὀλίγα ἰχθύδια, Mt 154, Mk 87). These are
probably the same as the ὀψάρια of Jn 6. In Mt
15° ἐχθύς reappears. The remaining references to
fish do not require much comment. Mt 1727 is
concerned with the stater in the fish’s mouth.
This passage contains the only reference to line-
fishing in the Gospels: ‘Cast a hook and take the
first fish (ἰχθύν) that cometh up.’ In Lk 244? we
read that our Lord convinced the disciples of the
reality of His resurrection by eating before them a
piece of cooked fish (ἰχθύος ὀπτοῦ μέρος). In Mt
7|| Lk 117 the word ἐχθύς, ‘fish,’ is found in the
teaching of Jesus. In Matthew the passage runs
thus : ‘What man is there among you who, if his
son ask for bread, will give him a stone? or if he
ask for fish, will give him aserpent?’ Here fishand
bread are the subject of joint reference, as in the
narratives of the feeding of the five and four
thousands. Bread and fish are clearly the custo-
mary diet of the common people of Galilee, and in
the form of these questions, as in so many other
details, the teaching of Jesus closely reflects the
daily life of His countrymen.
In the Catacombs the figure of a fish was often
used as a symbol of Christ. The letters which
make up ἰχθύς form the initial letters of ᾿Ιησοῦς
Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς Σωτήρ, so that the word served as
a summary of the faith. See art. CHRIST IN ART.
4. The general word for serpent (ὄφις) occurs
7 times in the Gospels. No human father will
give his son a serpent as a substitute for fish (Mt
7°, Lk 11!!). Some small reptile as common as the
scorpion must be meant, as Luke twice (10' 11!%)
couples scorpions and serpents (ὄφεις). The dis-
ciples are to be as wise as serpents [or ‘as the
serpent,’ reading ὁ ὄφις for οἱ ὄφεις : the sense is
the same in either case) (Mt 1016). The ideal of
discipleship is a combination of the prudence of the
serpent with the guilelessness of doves. As in the
saying about not casting one’s pearls before swine,
our Lord here condemns recklessness and tactless-
ness in religious work. ‘ Religion without policy
is too simple to be safe: Policy without religion
is too subtle to be good’ (Trapp). In Mt 23 the
word ‘serpents’ is applied to the Pharisees.
In the later appendix to Mark’s Gospel, power to take up
serpents is numbered among the signs that are to follow faith
in Christ (1618). The passage is paralleled in Lk 1019 ‘ Behold,
I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions,
and upon all the might of the evil one.” WH here note a refer-
ence to Ps 9113 ‘ Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder.’
Possibly the passage is to be interpreted metaphorically, and
the ‘serpents’ are to be explained by the might of the Evil
One. The words, however, find a more literal fulfilment in St.
Paul’s experience at Melita (Ac 289. 6),
The viper (ἔχιδνα) is referred to only in the
phrase γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν, ‘ottspring of vipers,’ and
the phrase is applied only to scribes and Pharisees.
John the Baptist thus addressed the Pharisees that
came to his baptism, ‘O offspring of vipers, who
hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’
(Mt 81, Lk 3’). According to Mt., our Lord on
two occasions adopted the same mode of address
(Mt 1224 23%), Sand-vipers about 1 foot long are
common in Palestine. The young are said to feed
upon the mother. But the force of the phrase,
Bochart observes, is not to be derived from any
such special characteristic; the sense implied 15
simply ‘bad sons of bad fathers.’ This comment
satisfactorily interprets Mt 23°: but perhaps we
may read a little more into the phrase. The words
of John the Baptist suggest the familiar picture of
vipers roused from torpor into activity by the ap-
proach of heat (cf. Ac 28’). In Mt 12* the phrase
receives added point from the fact that the Phari-
sees have just been attempting to poison the popular
mind against Christ by suggesting that the miracles
were the work of Beelzebub ; there is something
spiteful and venomous about their attacks on our
Lord.
5. Scorpions (σκορπίος), which we are told may be
found under every third stone in Palestine, are
twice mentioned in Luke. The disciples are to
tread on scorpions with impunity (Lk 10"). How-
ever we interpret the passage, the addition of
‘scorpion’ seems to imply that the disciples are to
be protected against some small, frequent, and at
the same time serious danger. The other refer-
ence is in Lk 112. If a son asks for an egg, the
father will not give him a scorpion. In both
passages the scorpion and the lies: are men-
tioned together, being common objects of the
country in Palestine. The scorpion at rest is said
closely to resemble an egg in appearance.
ANIMALS
ANIMALS 67
6. The worm (σκώληξ) is mentioned only in Mk
948 in the phrase ‘where their worm dieth not,’ a
description of Gehenna based on the last verse of
Isaiah (6674).
In the TR the verse appears 3 times, Mk 944. 46.48 and there
is something impressive in the repetition: WH, however, retain
only 943. Whether literally or metaphorically understood, the
phrase must not be taken as the basis of a Christian doctrine of
future retribution. The worm does not stand for remorse : it is
simply part of a picture of complete physical corruption. A
man has sometimes to choose between losing a limb and losing
his life : the part has to be sacrificed to save the whole. The
eerie law of sacrifice, says Christ, holds good in the spiritual
world.
7. Of insects the bee is indirectly referred to,
while the gnat, the locust, and the moth are all
mentioned. In Lk 24, the Western Text says the
disciples gave our Lord part of a bees’ honeycomb
(ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου), t.e. the product of hived bees.
Jolin the Baptist, on the other hand, lived on wild
rock honey, i.e. honey deposited in clefts of the
rock by wild bees; this honey was often very
difficult to get.
Bees, wild and hived, are very common in Pales-
tine. Tristram (Nat. Hist. p. 325) says: ‘Many
of the Bedouin obtain their subsistence by bee-
hunting, bringing into Jerusalem skins and Jars of
the wild honey on which John the Baptist fed.’
Bee-keeping is much practised, especially in Galilee.
The hives are very simple in construction ; being
‘large tubes of sun-dried mud, about 8 inches in
diameter and 4 feet long, closed with mud at each
end, having only a small aperture in the centre.’
The gnat (κώνωψ) is mentioned in Mt 23%, As
one of the smallest animals, it is contrasted with
the camel, one of the largest. The Pharisees strain
out a gnat with scrupulous care, while they will
swallow a camel. They are careful to tithe mint,
but they fail to do justice. The Pharisees may
have adopted a practice which is still in use among
the Brahmans, viz. of drinking through muslin in
order to avoid swallowing any fly or insect present
in the water.
Locusts (ἀκρίδες) formed part of the food of John
the Baptist (Mt 34, Mk 1°). The LXX uses ἀκρίς
for the third of the four kinds of edible locusts
mentioned in Ly 11%. They formed a common
article of diet in Palestine, and there is no need to
alter the text, as one or two MSS have done, read-
ing ἐγκρίδες, ‘cakes.’
The moth (7s) is mentioned as disfiguring earthly
treasures (Mt 619: 2°, Lk 12"). The common clothes-
moth is meant, of which there are many species in
Palestine. ‘In this warm climate it is almost im-
possible to guard against their ravages’ (Post).
There is an indirect reference to the saying of
Jesus in Ja δ".
8. A sponge (σπόγγος) full of vinegar was offered
to our Lord on the cross (Mt 274). Of sponges, the
finest in texture and the most valued is the Turkish
or Levant sponge. The sponge-fisheries of the
Mediterranean have always been and still are very
considerable. For the method of diving for sponges
see Post in Hastings’ DB iv. 612».
ili. THE PLACE OF ANIMALS IN THE LIFE OF OUR
Lorp.—In this connexion it may be worth while
to point out that the part played by animals in
many of the incidents in which their presence is
recorded, serves to emphasize the humility of Jesus.
The two young pigeons which Mary brings as an
oflering when she presents Jesus in the Temple (Lk
2"), are a mark of her poverty. Jesus belonged to
a poor family. The peaceful character of Christ’s
teaching, which is marked at the outset by the
descent of the dove at His baptism, is confirmed at
the close by the fact that He rode into Jerusalem
(Mt 21*-7\!) not on the warrior’s horse, but on the
ass, which, as prophecy foretold, was to be a sign
of the lowliness of the coming Messiah.
_ ἦν. THE PLACE OF ANIMALS IN THE TEACHING OF
ouR LorD.—We have reseryed for discussion under
this head the imagery drawn from pastoral life in
which Jesus described His own mission, and the
doctrine of providence unfolded more especially in
His sayings about the birds of the air.
1. Our Lord’s mission illustrated.—(a) Jesus con-
fined His earthly ministry to ‘the lost sheep of the
house of Israel’ (Mt 15%). When He sent forth
the Twelve on a preaching tour, He bade them
observe the same limits (Mt 106). We need not
suppose from this phrase that the work of Jesus
embraced only the outcasts of Israel. ‘The lost
sheep of the house of Israel’ describes the nation
as a whole [grammatically the words ‘ of the house
of Israel’ (οἴκου ’I.) are best taken as a defining
genitive, 1.6. ‘the lost sheep who are the house of
Israel’]. The very sight of a Galilean crowd
touched the heart of Jesus, for they were like
worried and scattered sheep that have no shepherd
(Mt 955. Mk 6*). Τὰ the eyes of Jesus, the spiritual
condition of His countrymen agreed with the de-
scription of the shepherdless people given in Ezk
34. More particularly the Jews needed guidance
in their national and religious aspirations. They
had mistaken alike the character of the coming
Messiah and the nature of the coming kingdom.
The hope to re-establish by force the throne of
David made the people the helpless victims of
political agitators like Judas the Gaulonite (Ac
5°”), and led at leneth to the chastisement inflicted
on the nation by the Roman power.
The exact interpretation of Jn 10 is exceedingly
dificult, but it may in part be understood, in rela-
tion to this view given in Matthew and Mark, of
the nation as a shepherdless flock. Jesus speaks of
Himself as the door of the sheep, through which if
aman enters, he shall be saved (νν. 7.3). The only
hope of salvation for the Jews lay in their realizing,
through the teaching of Jesus, that God’s kingdom
was not of this world. Those who offered them-
selves as leaders before Christ, and who proposed
to subdue Rome by arms, were thieves and robbers
who came only to steal and destroy (νν. δ: 10). The
best comment on these thieves and robbers, and
their treatment of those helpless sheep, the house
of Israel, is perhaps Josephus’ account of the Judas
above mentioned—
‘There was one Judas a Gaulonite, . . . who, taking with him
Sadduc, a Pharisee, became zealous to draw (the people) to a
revolt; who both said that this taxation (under Cyrenius) was
no better than an introduction of slavery, and exhorted the
nation to assert their liberty ; as if they could procure them
happiness and security for what they possessed, and an assured
enjoyment of a still greater good, which was that of the honour
and glory they would thereby acquire for magnanimity. .. .
All sorts of misfortunes also sprang from these men, and the
nation was infected with this doctrine to an incredible degree:
one violent war came upon us after another, and we lost our
friends, who used to alieviate our pains; there were also very
great robberies and murders of cur principal men. This was
done in pretence of the public welfare, but in reality from the
hopes of gain to themselves’ (Jos. Ant. xvill. i. 1).
If Barabbas was one of these robbers (cf. Jn 189
with 108), the fact that the Jews chose Barabbas
in preference to the Good Shepherd shows the be-
wilderment of the popular mind, which led Jesus
to compare the house of Israel to lost sheep. Jesus
further describes Himself as the Good Shepherd in
contrast to the hirelings, who care nothing for the
sheep (Jn 104-5). If the thieves and robbers be-
token political agitators like Barabbas and Judas,
‘the hirelings’ are probably the Pharisees and
Sadducees, the shepherds who, in the words of
Ezekiel, ‘fed themselves and did not feed the
sheep.’
The interpretation here suggested is not usually
adopted. Godet, for example, understands the
thieves and robbers to be the Pharisees. The wolf
(v.!*) he takes as a further symbol of the same
party, the hirelings being the scribes and priests,
whom cowardice kept from opposing Pharisaic
ee
68 ANIMALS
ANIMALS
domination: . This latter interpretation fits in well
with the context, i.e. with ch. 9 (see Godet, Sé.
John, vol. ii. pp. 375-397).
But without attempting to decide questions of
exposition, it is suflicient for us to point out that
the imagery of the parable is true to life.
‘A sheep-fold in the East is not a covered building like our
stables, but a mere enclosure surrounded by a wall or palisade.
The sheep are brought into it in the evening, several flocks
being generally assembled within it. The shepherds, after com-
mitting them to the care of a common keeper, a porter, who is
charged with their safe keeping during the night, retire to their
homes. In the morning they return, and knock at the closely
barred door of the enclosure, which the porter opens. They
then separate each his own sheep, by calling them: and after
having thus collected their flocks, lead them to the pastures.
As to robbers, it is by scaling the wall that they penetrate into
the fold (Godet, ἐ.6. p. 378).
The details are confirmed by all Eastern travel-
lers. Thus, speaking of the power of the sheep in
distinguishing between the voice of the shepherd
and that of a stranger, Thomson tells us that, if a
stranger calls, they stop, lift up their heads in
alarm ; and if the call is repeated, they turn and
flee from him. ‘This is not the fanciful costume
of a parable, but a simple fact. I have made the
experiment often’ (‘Central Palestine,’ p. 594).
Godet cites ‘the well-known anecdote of a Scotch traveller,
who, meeting under the walls of Jerusalem a shepherd bringing
home his flock, changed garments with him, and thus disguised
proceeded to call the sheep. They, however, remained motion-
less. The true shepherd then raised his voice, when they all
τ towards him, in spite of his strange garments ’ (/.c.
p. 382).
All the sheep distinguish the voice of a shepherd
from that of a stranger: a shepherd’s own sheep
distinguish his voice from that of any other shep-
herd (v.°). The practice of naming sheep (φωνεῖ
κατ᾽ ὄνομα, V.*) is common in the East. The picture
of the shepherd thrusting his sheep out of the en-
closure (ἐκβάλῃ, v.4, implies the use of a certain
amount of force) and then placing himself at the
head of the flock, is likewise a simple fact, and not
fanciful imagery.
Though the historical application of the parable
in Jn.10 is not easy to determine, yet it is clear
that the chapter deals with the relation of Christ
to the Church and to the individual Christian, and
it is unnecessary to draw out in detail the lessons
that follow from the fact that Christ is for us the
door of the sheep and the Good Shepherd. It is,
however, important to notice that in Jn 10 our
Lord speaks of the Jewish nation as a whole and
of His disciples alike as sheep (‘ his own sheep,’ 2.6.
the disciples, are distinguished from the other
flocks in the fold, z.c. the Jewish people), and that
He compares His mission towards both to the
work of ashepherd. These ideas are common to
St. John and the Synoptists, and the pastoral
imagery we are considering links the Fourth
Gospel to the other three.
(6) We have seen that in the Synoptics our Lord
spoke of the people as lost sheep. But though the
Matthean phrase ‘the lost sheep of the house of
Israel’ apples to the nation asa whole, the parable
of the Lost Sheep in Mt 18 is a defence of
Christ’s view of children, and in Lk 15° (where
alone in Luke the word πρόβατον is used) a similar
ΕΠ forms an answer to the criticism of the
-*harisees, who could not understand our Lord’s
eating with publicans and sinners. In a sense all
the Jews were like lost sheep; in a very special
sense the comparison applied to these seul out-
casts. ‘No animals are more helpless than sheep
that have strayed from the flock: they become
utterly bewildered, for sheep are singularly desti-
tute of the bump of locality. They have to be
‘brought back’ {Π] αἰδοῖ, The figure of the lost
sheep illustrates to some extent the eharacter of
the publicans and sinners. In the East, says
Thomson, the sheep have to be taught to follow
the shepherd: they would otherwise leave the
pasture. lands and stray into the corn-fields,
Naturally some sheep follow the shepherd closely,
while others straggle and have to be recalled to
the path by means of the crook. So a lost and
wandering sheep is an ill-trained and troublesome
one. But the main point of the parable is the
action of the shepherd, who would regard it as
part of his ordinary duty to seek the lost. Though
Jesus does not call Himself the Good Shepherd in
the ὝΠΟ, yet the parable recorded in Mt. and
Lk. shows us how naturally He came to compare
His ministry to the work of a shepherd, and how
He used the comparison to justify His friendly
attitude to publicans and sinners. According to
Mt 12", our Lord also adduced an owner’s care for
a single sheep as a defence of His healing a man
with a withered hand on the Sabbath-day.
(c) If the weakness and the helplessness of sheep
supplied Jesus with similes whereby to describe
the Jewish people as a whole, the purity symbol-
ized by their white wool, their harmlessness and
patience, led Him to speak of His own disciples in
similar terms. The disciples are sent forth as
sheep (or as lambs) into the midst of wolves (Mt
1016, Lk 10%; Clem. Rom. Ὁ. ii. 5). Christians are
to be ready even to suffer death without resist-
ance, so at least the epistle attributed to Clement
interprets the saying (see above under ‘ lamb’).
(α) In the Synoptics the few other passages
where the disciples are described as sheep throw
little light on the subject. In Mt 25 the righteous
and the wicked are contrasted as sheep and goats ;
but, as has already been pointed out, the character
of the animals concerned has little to do with the
comparison. The words ‘I will smite the shep-
herd, and the sheep shall be scattered’ (quoted
from Zee 137 in Mt 961, Mk 14°), serve only to
show that the death of Christ would place the dis-
ciples in the same leaderless bewilderment which,
in the eyes of our Lord, marked the nation as a
whole. But in a somewhat different connexion
(Lk 12%) our Lord spoke of His disciples as a little
flock. After bidding them forego anxiety about
earthly goods and seek the kingdom, our Lord
adds, ‘ Fear not, little flock : for it is your Father's
good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’ ‘The re-
assuring words were needed, no doubt, because the
disciples were but a little feeble band. But surely
the little flock implies something as to character
as well as number. It is the duty of the shepherd
at all times to find suitable pasture, and in the
autumn and winter he has to provide fodder.
Sheep cannot fend for themselves. Similarly the
disciples, intrusting to God the care of their
earthly interests, will appear to the world at once
foolish and ineffectual ; yet this little flock is to
inherit the kingdom. God chooses the weak things
of this world (1 Co 157).
Further references to sheep in the Gospels are
less important. Mt 7! speaks of the false pro-
phets who are sheep in appearance and wolves in
reality, a saying which also appears in Justin,
Dial. 35. In Jn 2110 Peter is bidden to tend
(ποιμαίνειν) Christ’s sheep (προβάτια, ‘lambs,’ is
given as a variant in WH). Here we have in
germ the pastoral view of the ministerial office.
See art. SHEPHERD.
Jesus’ description of Himself as the Good Shep-
herd laid hold from the first of the Christian
imagination. In the NT Jesus is twice spoken of
as the Shepherd (He 137°, 1 P 2%). In the Cata-
combs no symbol of Christ is more frequent than
ες picture of the Good Shepherd. See CHRIST IN
RT.
2. Our Lord illustrates His teaching concerning
God’s providence by one or two sayings about the
birds. He bids His disciples ‘ consider the birds of
| | ἢ
ANIMALS
ANISE 69
the air: for they neither sow nor reap nor gather
into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth
them. Are yenot much better than they ?’ (Mt 656).
In conjunction with this passage, we must ex-
amine the reference to sparrows in Mt 10? *!, Lk
12°-, «Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?
yet not one of them shall fall to the earth without
your Father. . . . Fear not then: ye are of more
value than many sparrows.’ Bochart well brings
out the force of Luke’s mention of ‘ ravens’ instead
of ‘birds of the air,’ and he rightly discerns the
bearing of the reference to the sparrows, when he
says, ‘ Express mention is made of ravens and spar-
rows among the other birds, to make it clear that
God’s providence is not only concerned with birds
in general, but even extends to the most worthless
and the most despised among birds: so that men,
especially those that believe, may the more cer-
tainly draw from this fact the conclusion that God
cares for them, since He will not deny to those
who worship Him and call upon Him, the care
which He so graciously bestows on animals of the
lowest order.’ Bochart further dwells on the harsh
grating voice, the ugly black colour, and the awk-
ward movements of the raven, which make him a
despicable bird. Concerning the sparrows, Thom-
son says they are ‘a tame, troublesome, vivacious
and Bm porunent generation: they nestle just
where they are not wanted. Their nests stop up
stove-pipes and water-gutters. They are destroyed
eagerly as a worthless nuisance’ (‘ Lebanon,’ ete.,
p. 59). Jesus then insists that the birds which
men hold cheap are not unthought of by God:
‘our Lord has taught us that God providently
caters for the sparrow, and Himself conducts its
obsequies.’
By taking the references to sparrows and ravens
closely together, we may save ourselves from a
onesided interpretation of Mt 6° which has found
favour with many. Thus O. Holtzmann (Life of
Jesus, p. 102) says: ‘ With the drudgery and toil
of human labour, Jesus contrasts the toilless life
of nature, in which God feeds the raven and clothes
the lilies.” A parallel saying from the Talmud is
cited in Delitzsch’s Jewish Artisan Life, which
suggests the same view of our Lord’s teaching.
‘Didst thou ever see in all thy life,’ says Rabbi
Simeon, son of Eleazar, ‘a bird or an animal
working at a craft? And yet these creatures,
made simply for the purpose of serving me, gain
their living without difficulty. But I am created
to serve my Creator: and if those who are created
to serve can gain their livelihood without difli-
culty, shall not I, who am made to serve my
Creator, earn my living without trouble?’ If this
saying is Ὁ ΟΝ on Mt 6%, then Rabbi Simeon
and Ὁ. Holtzmann seem to agree in interpreting our
Lord's teaching to the effect that ‘the birds are
fed, without working: surely we may expect God
to feed us too, without our toil.’ Such an inter-
pretation makes Mt 6° the magna charta of idle-
ness. But the superiority of the birds does not lie
in their not working, but in their not worrying.
If we may paraphrase the passage, ‘the birds do
not engage in any methodical toil : yet they trust
God for daily food, and praise Him for His care :
men are better than birds, a superiority shown in
the fact that men work in an orderly manner :
now, if God feeds the birds, which live a hap-
hazard kind of life, how much more will He re-
ward men’s patient labour without their needing
to be anxious?’ This section of the Sermon on
the Mount is best interpreted by St. Peter’s words,
‘casting all your care (i.e. your worries and
anxieties) on him; for he careth for you’ (1 Ρ δ),
or by St. Paul’s lesson of contentment under all cir-
cumstances (Ph 411-18), Our daily wants are the
care of God. The saying about the sparrows for-
bids us to assume that daily needs will be met
exactly in the way we expect. We are not to
assume that food and raiment will be provided
amply and at all times. Privation and suffering
may fall to men’s lot; but suffering even unto
death is not to be feared, because the very death
of a sparrow is not forgotten before God.
Our Lord’s teaching as to the trust in God’s providence,
which may be learnt from the animals, appears to be summed
up in the second of the five new Sayings recently discovered by
Grenfell and Hunt. They restore this logion as follows : ‘Jesus
saith (ye ask? who are those) that draw us (to the kingdom, if)
the kingdom is in Heaven? .. . The fowls of the air, and all
beasts that are under the earth or upon the earth, and the fishes
of the sea (these are they which draw) you, and the kingdom of
Heaven is within you; and whoever shall know himself shall
find it. (Strive therefore?) to know yourselves and ye shall be
aware that ye are the sons of the (almighty?) Father ; (and ?)
ye shall know that ye are in (the city of God?) and ye are (the
city ?).’ The restoration of the saying is highly conjectural, but
it seems to be based in part on Job 127-8.‘ Ask now the beasts
and they shall teach thee ; and the fowls of the air and they
shall tell thee. Or speak to the earth and it shall teach thee ;,
and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.’ And the con-
clusion which the saying is intended apparently to enforce may
be stated in the following verses taken from the same passage
in Job. ‘Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the
Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every
living thing and the breath of all mankind’ (v.9f). In effect we
are taught that converse with nature should produce a calm
trust in God.
It does not fall within the scope of this article to
discuss the wider aspects of our Lord’s attitude
towards Nature. But the place taken by animals
in His teaching bears out the truth of the follow-
ing words of a recent writer. ‘Jesus loved Nature
as Nature: here as everywhere He was in touch
with the actual. Plenty of people—from A¢sop to
Mrs. Gatty—have made or drawn parables trom
Nature, but not like His. His lost sheep have no
proverbs: His lilies may be dressed more charm-
ingly than Solomon, but they have not Solomon’s
wisdom : and His sparrows are neither moralists
nor theologians, but sparrows,—two for a farthing,
sparrows chirping and flying about and building
their nests,—just sparrows! But the least motion
which they made seemed a thrill of pleasure... .
Sparrows, lilies, lost sheep, hens and chickens,
midnight stars and mountain winds, — they all
entered: into His mind and heart, and spoke to Him
of the character of God, of His delight in beauty,
and His love’ (T. R. Glover).
LITERATURE. — Without attempting to provide a complete
bibliography, it may be worth while to give a list of books that
the present writer has found helpful. Bochart’s Hierozoicon
(ed. Rosenmiiller) is encyclopedic. Tristram’s Natural History
of the Bible isa most handy manual of compact and accessible
information. References to animals are frequent in books of
Oriental travel: e.g. Stanley’s Sinat and Palestine ; Robinson’s
BRP; and 'fThomson’s Land and the Book {the latest edition
of Thomson’s work in 3 vols. is especially valuable, though
the information is widely scattered and is not always easy
to find]. The articles on natural history and on particular
animals in Hastings’ DB and the Eneyc. Bibl. may be consulted
with advantage. The standard ‘ Lives of Jesus’ deal with the
references to animals incidentally ; Edersheim is perhaps the
fullest and most reliable. There are some fresh, though not
always accurate, observations on the subject in the Life of
Jesus by O. Holtzmann. Of the many commentaries that ex-
pound the passages in the Gospels which concern our subject,
the present writer has found vol. i. of the Hapositoi’s Greek
Testament (‘ Synoptics’ by A. B. Bruce, ‘St. John’ by M. Dods)
most useful. H. G. Woop.
ANISE.—‘ Anise’ is the translation given in AV.
and RV of ἄνηθον (Mt 2373): the marginal render.
ing ‘dill’ is the correct one. The true anise is the
plant Pimpinella anisum, which is quite distinct
trom Anethum graveolens, the anise of the Bible.
By the Jews dill was cultivated as a garden,
plant, but in Egypt and Southern Europe, to which
"αὖ was indigenous, it is often found growing wild
in the cornfields. It possesses valuable carmina-
tive properties, and in the East the seeds are eaten,
with great relish as a condiment. It is a hardy
annual or biennial umbellifer, and grows to a
height of one, two, or even three feet, The stem
70
ANNA
is round, jointed, and striated; the leaves are
finely aca the flowers, which are small, are
yellow ; the fruits are brown, oval, and flat.
In Mt 23% dill is represented as subject to tithe.
That is in strict accord with the provision of the
Law (Lv 27°, Dt 1433), and is corroborated by the
express statement of the Mishna (Ma'aseroth.v. 5).
See, further, art. RUE; and cf. note by Nestle
in Expos. Times, Aug. 1904, p. 528°.
HuGH DUNCAN.
ANNA (Ἄννα, Heb. 737).—When His parents
brought the infant Jesus to the temple to present
Him to the Lord, two aged representatives of the
OT Church received Him with songs of praise,
Simeon and Anna (Lk 2”), Anna was the
daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher (v.*),
which, though one of the Ten Tribes of the Dis-
persion, was still represented in Palestine. From
it some beautiful women are said to have been
chosen as wives for the priests (Edersheim, Life
and Times of Jesus the Messiah, i. p. 200). Anna
was a widow 84 years of age (AV), or more prob-
ably (RV) about 105, as 7 years of married life
followed by 84 years of widowhood would make
her to be. She was a devout and saintly woman,
worshipping constantly in the temple, with fast-
ings and supplications, night and day; and, like
Deborah and Huldah of the OT, she had prophetic
gifts. Her desire, like the Psalmist’s (Ps 274), was
to dwell always in the house of God, though it is
hardly likely that a woman would be allowed
literally to dwell within the sacred precincts.
Having entered the temple at the same time as
Jesus was brought in, she followed up the song of
Simeon in similar strains, and spake of the Holy
Child ‘to all them that were looking for the re-
demption of Jerusalem’ (v.*8), Anna would seem
to later times an ideal saint of the cloister, as such
stress is laid on her virginity, her long life of
widowhood, and her ceaseless devotions. Possibly
her name may have had to do with the name
Anna, given to the mother of the Virgin Mary, in
the Protevangelium of James.
Davip M. W. LAIRD.
ANNAS ("Avvas, Heb. j:n, Hanan, Jos. “Avavos,
Ananos).—High priest of the Jews from A.D. 6 to
15, and thereafter exercising commanding influ-
ence through his high priestly rank and his family
connexions. Theson of one named Sethi, who is
otherwise unknown, he was appointed high priest
by Quirinius, probably in A.D. 6, and exercised
that office, which involved political as well as re-
ligiousheadshipof the nation, until he was deposed
by the procurator Valerius Gratus in A.D. 15 (Jos.
Ant, XVIII. ii. 2). The duration of his rule, and
the fact that of his sons no fewer than five suc-
ceeded him at intervals in the high priesthood
(‘which has never happened to any Bther of our
high priests’), caused him to be regarded by his
contemporaries as a specially successful man (Ané.
XX. ix. 1). On the other hand, he incurred in an
unusual degree the unpopularity for which the
high priests were proverbial. In addition to their
common faults of arrogance and injustice, Annas
was notorious for his avarice, which found oppor-
tunity in the necessities of the Temple worshippers.
It was he, probably, who established the ‘bazaars
of the sons of Annas’ (hdnniiyéth béné Handn), a
Temple market for the sale of materials requisite
for sacrifices, either within the Temple precinct
(Keim, Jesus of Nazara, v. 116) or on the Mount of
Olives (Derenbourg), the profits of which enriched
the high priestly family. Beyond this, the house
of Annas 15 charged with the special sin of ‘ whis-
pering’ or hissing like vipers, ‘which seems to
refer to private influence on the judges, whereby
‘‘morals were corrupted, judgment perverted, and
the Shekinah withdrawn from Israel”’ (Eders-
ANNOUNCEMENTS OF DEATH
heim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, i,
263).
Annas is referred to by St. Luke and by St.
John. In Lk 3? (‘in the high priesthood of Annag
and Caiaphas’) he is linked with Caiaphas, whe
alone was actually high priest at the time (A.D. 26).
The explanation of this is found partly in the
fact that the office having become to some extent
the prerogative of a few families, it had acquired
some degree of hereditary and indelible quality,
and partly in the unusual personal authority exer-
cised by Annas. The result was that even after
his deposition he continued to enjoy much of the
influence, and even to receive the title, of his
former office (Schiirer, HJP τι. 1. 195 ff. ; against
this Keim, é.c. vi. 36 ff. ; H. Holtzmann, Hdcom. ad
Lk 3°). Τὴ like manner in Ac 4° Annas appears at
the head of the chiefs of the Sanhedrin in its action
against the Apostles, though the actual president
was the high priest. See CHIEF PRIESTS.
The only other passage in which Annas is re-
ferred to is in the narrative of the trial of Jesus
in the Fourth Gospel (Jn 18!°-*4). The Evangelist,
speaking with technical accuracy, refrains from
calling him high priest, and assigns as a reason for
Jesus being led before Annas the relationship be-
tween Annas and Caiaphas. The ex-highpriest
had probably been the chief instigator of the plot
against Jesus, and before him He was brought not
for trial, but only for an informal and _ private
examination (so Schiirer, Z.c. p. 182). ‘The Lord
Himself is questioned, but there is no mention of
witnesses, no adjuration, no sentence, no sign of
any legal process’ (Westcott, ad Loc.).
C. A. Scort.
ANNOUNCEMENTS OF DEATH.— It is certain
that we have words from Jesus concerning His
death; for such ruthless criticism as that of
Schmiedel (Encye. Bibl. ‘Gospels’), who admits
only nine genuine sayings of the Master, is un-
critical atl unscientific. These words appear in
the Synoptics as well as in the Fourth Gospel. The
genuineness of the latter is here assumed, though
there is a wide difference in character between it
and the Synopties. b
The main point in the announcements of His
death by Jesus rests on the time of their utter-
ance. Hence the chronological grouping of these
sayings of Jesus must be followed. If He spoke
of His death ouly as a disappointed man after He
saw the manifest hate of the rulers, there would
be little ground for claiming Messianic conscious-
ness concerning His death as an atonement for sin.
And the heart of the whole problem turns on the
Messianic consciousness. hen did He become
conscious of His death? Why did He expect a
violent death? What did He think was to be
accomplished by His death? Was His death a
voluntary sacrifice, or merely a martyrs crown?
These and similar questions can be answered only
by a careful and comprehensive survey of Christ's
own words upon the subject. It is noteworthy
that Jesus put the emphasis in His career on His
death rather than on His incarnation. That is so
out of the ordinary as at once to challenge atten-
tion. Here is One who came to give life by dying.
That is in deepest harmony with nature, but not
in harmony with man’s view of his own life.
1. The first foreshadowings.—(a) Jesus first ex-
hibits knowledge of His death at the time of the
Temptation, immediately after the Baptism and
the formal entrance upon the Messianic ministry.
The word ‘death’ or ‘cross’ is not mentioned
between Jesus and Satan, but the point at issue
was the easy or the hard road to conquest of the
world. It isthe unexpressed idea in this struggle
for the mastery of men. Hence, before Jesus
began to teach men, He had already wrestled with
ANNOUNCEMENTS OF DEATH
ANNOUNCEMENTS OF DEATH Τὶ
His Messianic destiny and chosen the path that
led to the cross. This tone of high moral conflict
is never absent from Jesus till the end. ‘The
Synoptic Gospels thus give the first account of
Christ’s consciousness of His struggle to the death
for the spiritual mastery of men.
j (6) Another* occasion for the mention of His
death by our Lord grew out of the failure of Nico-
demus to understand the new birth and the spiritual
nature of the kingdom of God (Jn 3°). Ifthe teacher
of Israel could not apprehend these aspects of what
took place in the kingdom on earth, how could he
lay hold of the purposes of God in heaven (ν. 3)
about the work of the kingdom? One of the chief
of these ‘heavenly things’ is the necessity of the
deatli of Christ for the sin of the world. The
brazen serpent of the older history serves as an
illustration (v.4), but ‘das goéttliche ‘‘ de?” Todes-
schicksals’ (Schwartzkopff, Die Weissagungen Jesu
Christi, p. 20) is grounded in the eternal love of
God for the world (Jn 316. The Son of Man (Jn
34) who ‘must’ be lifted up is the Son of God (318).
It is not perfectly certain that 8:6 is a word of
Jesus and not of the Evangelist, but at any rate
it is a correct interpretation of the preceding
argument. The high religious necessity for His
death, of which Jesus is here conscious, could come
to Him by revelation from the Father (Schwartz-
koptt, 1.6. p. 29). The consciousness of Jesus is
clear, but He finds in Nicodemus an inability to
grasp this great truth. The word ‘lifted up’
(ὑψωθῆναι) refers to the cross, as is made plain
afterwards (Jn 878 12%f), Even when the multi-
tudes heard Jesus use the word just before His
death, they did not understand it (Jn 1993), though
the Evangelist gives the correct interpretation in
the light of the after history (12°). In itself the
word could refer to spiritual glory (Paulus) or
heavenly glory (Bleek), but not in view of the
later developments. So then the cross is con-
sciously before Jesus from the very beginning of
His ministry.
(c) It is possibly nearly a year before we have
the next allusion by the Master to His death.
Again in parabolic phrase Jesus calls Himself the
bridegroom who will be taken away from the
disciples (Mk 2”, Mt 9%, Lk 5%). The Pharisees
from Jerusalem (Lk 817) are now in Galilee watch-
ing the movements of Jesus, so as to gain a case
against Him. On this occasion they are finding
fault because the disciples of Jesus do not ob-
serve stated seasons of fasting. The answer of
Jesus is luminous in marking off the wide differ-
ence in spirit between a ceremonial system like
Judaism and a vital personal spiritual religion like
Christianity. There is a time tu fast, but it isa
time of real, not perfunctory, sorrow. Such a
time will come to the disciples of Jesus when He
is taken away. By itself this reference might
allude merely to the death that would come to
Christ as to other men, but the numerous other
clear passages of a different nature preclude that
idea here. Gould is right (Internat. Crit. Com.
on Mk 2”) in saying that ‘even as a premonition
it is not premature,’ though there is more in it
than this, for Jesus understood the significance of
His death. Soon the historical developments con-
firm the prejudgment of Jesus, for the enmity of
the historical conspiracy grows apace. At the
next feast at which Jesus appears in Jerusalem
(Jn 51) the rulers make a definite attempt to kill
Him as a Sabbath-breaker and blasphemer, also
for claiming equality with God the Father (Jn
5'8). This decision to kill Jesus soon reappears in
* Jn 229 and Mt 1239 are passed over because of doubts (not
shared by the present writer) as to their interpretation or
genuineness. The case is strong enough without these dis-
puted passages.
Galilee (Mk 3°), and often in Jerusalem during
the closing six months of the ministry.
(d) The use of the cross as a metaphor, as in Mt
1038 (see also Mk 874, Mt 1653, Lk 1427), would not of
itself constitute an allusion to the death of Jesus,
since death on the cross was so common at this
time. But in the light of the many allusions by
Jesus Himself to His death, the background of
the metaphor would seem to be personal, and so
to imply His own actual cross. He is Himself the
supreme example of saving life by losing it. Meyer,
in loco, considers that this verse was transferred
from the later period ; but this is unnecessary ; for
it is eminently pertinent that in the directions to
the Twelve, who are now sent out on their first
mission, they should be urged to self-sacrifice by
the figure of His own death on the cross. In this
same address occurs an apocalyptic saying that pre-
supposes the death of Christ (Mt 10%). It is not
an anachronism (J. Weiss) to find self-sacrifice and
self-realization in the words of Jesus about losing
life and finding it (Mt 1039), for Jesus Himself
gives the historical background of this image in
the sublime justification of His own death in His
resurrection (Jn 1274),
(6) It is just a year (Jn 64) before the death of
Jesus that He is addressing the Galilzean populace
in the synagogue at Capernaum. He explains
that He is the bread of heaven, the true manna,
the spiritual Messiah. It is the climax of the
Galilzan ministry, for but yesterday they had tried
to make Him king (v.¥). To-day Jesus tests their
enthusiasm by the supreme revelation of His gift
of Himself ‘ for the life of the world’ (v.*!), a clear
allusion to His atoning death on the cross. Thus
will it be possible for men to make spiritual appro-
priation ot Christ as the living bread. The people
and many of the so-called disciples fall back at
this saying (v.®), and thus justify the wisdom of
Jesus in having said no more as yet concerning
His death, and life by His death. For at the first
dim apprehension of this basal truth the people
left Him. But it was time for the truth to be told
to the flippant multitudes. Here Jesus reveals
His consciousness of the character and work of
Judas as the betrayer, a very devil (1 010). The
bald. truth of the betrayal is not at this point told
to the Twelve, for John’s comment is made after-
wards ; but Jesus expressly says that one of them
is a devil. Jesus clearly knows more than He
tells. There is this bitterness in His cup at the
very time that the people desert Him. The
shadow of the cross is growing closer and darker,
but Christ will go on to meet His hour.
2. Lhe definite announcements. —(a) The new
departure at Cresarea Philippi. Just after the
renewed confession by Peter that Jesus is the
Messiah, St. Matthew says that ‘from that time
began Jesus to show unto his disciples how that
he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many
things of the elders and chief priests and scribes,
and be killed, and the third day be raised up’
(Mt 105). St. Mark (851) also says that ‘he began
to teach them.’ Clearly, then, this was an epoch
in the teaching of Jesus concerning His death.
When He withdrew from Galilee this last summer,
he devoted Himself chiefly to the disciples, and
especially to preparing them for His departure.
The specific teaching concerning His death follows,
therefore, the searching test of their fidelity to
Him as the Messiah. This is not a new idea to
Jesus, as we have already seen. It has been the
keynote of His mission all the time, but He had
to speak of it in veiled and restrained language
till now, when ‘he spake the saying openly’ (Mk
89:2), Now Jesus told the details of His death, the
place and the persecutors. He repeats the neces-
sity (δεῖ) of His death as He had proclaimed it in
72 ANNOUNCEMENTS OF DEATH
Jn 3'4. The disciples are still unprepared for this
plain truth, and Peter even dares to rebuke Jesus
for such despondency (Mt 167"). The sharp rebuke
of Peter by Jesus (v.“) shows how strong a hold
the purpose to die had on His very nature. Peter
had renewed the attack of Satan in the Tempta-
tion. The Gospels record the dulness of the dis-
ciples, thus disproving the late invention of these
sayings attributed to Jesus. The principle of
self-giving is a basal one for Jesus and for all
His followers (Lk 9-25). The disciples could not
yet, any more than Nicodemus, grasp the moral
necessity of the death of Jesus. They recoiled at
the bare fact.
“ (Ὁ) On the Mount of Transfiguration a week
later, somewhere on the spurs of Hermon, Peter,
James, and John get a fresh word from Jesus
about His death (Mk 9°). It is not necessary to
suppose that they understood or even heard the
conversation of Jesus with Moses and Elijah
about ‘his decease which he was about to
accomplish at Jerusalem’ (Lk 95, Most likely
they did not, if Peter’s remarks are a criterion
(Lk 953). There is a fitness both from the manner
of the deaths of Moses and Elijah, and from their
respective positions in law and prophecy, that these
two should talk with Jesus about His atoning and
predicted sacrificial death. This exalted scene lifts
the curtain a little for us, so that we catch some
glimpse of the consciousness of Jesus concerning
His death, as He held high converse with Moses
and Elijah. But the remark of Jesus (Mt 17°) was
a caution to the three disciples to keep to them-
selves what they had seen till His resurrection,
when they would need it. But the lesson of
strength was lost on them for the present. Even
the chosen three questioned helplessly with each
other about the rising from the dead (Mk 9!%).
They could not understand a dying Messiah
ἫΝ or later till the risen Christ had made it
clear.
(c) In Galilee Jesus renewed His earnest words
about the certainty of His death (Mk 951, Mt 1776,
Lk 94). He concealed His presence in Galilee as
far as possible (Mk 950), but He was very insistent
in urging, ‘ Let these words sink into your ears:
for the Son of Man shall be delivered up into the
hands of men’ (Lk 9#). But it was to no purpose,
for they understood it not (Mk 9). St. Luke
(9%), in fact, says that it was concealed from them,
thus raising a problem of God’s purpose and their
responsibility. They were sorry (Mt 17%), but
afraid to ask Jesus (Lk 9%). Hence Jesus has not
yet succeeded in making the disciples understand
His purpose to die for men. So then He will have
no human sympathy, and will have to tread the
path to Calvary alone.
(d) At the feast of Tabernacles, or a few days
afterwards, just six months before the end, in the
midst of the hostile atmosphere of Jerusalem, Jesus
emphasizes the voluntary character of His death
for His sheep (Jn 10!°). He does this to distinguish
between Hiinself and the Pharisees, who have been
vehemently attacking Him. They are robbers,
wolves, and hirelings, while Jesus is the Good
Shepherd. He is not merely eaught in the mael-
strom of historic forces, nor is He the victim of time
and circumstance, for He has voluntarily put Him-
self into the vortex of sin (Jn 10). The Father
has given the Son the power or right (ἐξουσία) to lay
down and to take up His lifeagain. It was a ‘com-
mandment’ from the Father, but not to the ex-
elusion of the voluntary nature of His death ; just
as the necessity of His death was an inward neces-
sity of love, not an outward compulsion of law.
It isin the realm of spirit that we find the true
value of the death of Jesus for our sins (He 94),
and the moral grandeur of it is seen in the fact
ANNOUNCEMENTS OF DEATH
that He made a voluntary offering of His life for
those who hated Him (Ro 58).
(e) As the time draws nearer, Jesus even mani-
fests eagerness to meet His death (Lk 12"). Tt js
only some three months till the end. However we
take τί, whether as interrogative or exclamation,
we see clearly the mingled eagerness and dread
with which Jesus contemplated His death. It 15
a fire that will burn, but also attracts. He had
come just for this purpose, to make this fire,
It will be a relief when it is kindled. It is a
baptism of death that presses as a Divine com-
pulsion upon Him, like the ‘must’ of the earlier
time (Jn 34, Mk 83). Here we feel the inward
glow of the heart of Christ as it bursts out for a
moment like a flame from the crater, unable to be
longer restrained. So Jesus had a double point of
view about His death, one of joy and one of shrink-
ing, but He did not go now one way and now the
other. He will pursue His way steadily, and as
the time draws nigh, His view of His death will
amount to rapture (Jn 17}: 33). But Jesus was
never more conscious and sane than when He
spoke thus about His death. It was, in fact, His
inner self speaking out. He thus gave us not only
a new view of His own death, but a new view of
death itself.
(f) Jesus even tells His enemies that He expects
to be put to death in Jerusalem (Lk 13%). They
were posing as His friends, but were either repre-
sentatives of Herod Antipas or of the Jerusalem
Pharisees. Jesus asserted His independence of
‘that fox’ and of them, but announced the inward
necessity (‘I must’) that He should ultimately at
the right time meet the fate of other prophets in
Jerusalem. His lament over Jerusalem reveals
the depth of His love for that city, and demands a
Judean ministry such as that described by John.
(g) It is not till the death of Lazarus that the
disciples realize that Jesus may be put to death
(Jn 118); and then as a dread growing out of the
last attempt of the Jews to kill Him at the feast
of Dedication (1039). Thomas has the courage of
despair (1116) in the gloomy situation, but Jesus
speaks of His own glorification (114%). _ One item
in this glorification was the formal decision of the
Sanhedrin to put Jesus to death (11). With this
formal decision resting over Him, Jesus withdrew
to the hills of Ephraim, near where in the begin-
ning He had refused Satan’s offer of a compromise,
and had chosen His own way and the Father's.
Had He made a mistake?
3. Facing the end.—(a) The relation between the
death of Christ and the consummation of the king-
dom. It is in the last journey to Jerusalem that
the Pharisees ask when the kingdom of God comes
(Lk 17”). They are thinking of the apocalyptic
conception current in their literature. ‘There are
two difficulties thus raised. One is their utter
failure to understand the nature of the kingdom,
for it is inner and spiritual, not external (the Papyri
show that ἐντός means ‘within,’ not ‘among ).*
But, though the kingdom had already come in this
sense, there would be in the end a fuller and com-
pleter realization of the work of the kingdom. It
is in this sense that Jesus addresses the disciples
in Lk 17%. The day when the Son of Man shall
be revealed (Lk 17°) will be the end. ‘ But_ first
must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this
generation.’ Thus Jesus separates His own death
from the final stage of the Messianie work on earth.
The other difficulty is raised by the disciples, and
concerns the place where the Son will manifest
Himself (Lk 1737). He will come when there are
people for Him to come for.
(6) Jesus uses the word ‘crucify’ before He
reaches Jericho on this last journey to Jerusalem
* Cf., however, Expos. Times, xv. [1904], 387.
ANNOUNCEMENTS OF DEATH
(Mt 20). Stapfer scouts this item as put in post
eventum (Jesus Christ during His Ministry, p. 202),
because it is expressly used by Christ only twice
before His death (see also Mt 267) ; but the Master
particularizes beforehand other details, such as
the mocking, scourging, spitting, delivering to the
Gentiles (these all now mentioned for the first time,
Mk 104, Mt 9019, Lk 18%). Besides, now for the
first time also Jesus claims that His death will be
in fulfilment of the prophetic writings concerning
the Son of Man (Lk 1835). See later Mt 21%, Jn
1318, Mk 1427, Lk 2237 947, Jesus is not, however,
playing a part just to fulfil the Scripture, but He
sees this objective confirmation of the inner witness
of His spirit to the Father’s will concerning His
death. Besides, on this occasion Jesus had made
a special point of talking about His coming death,
taking the T'welve apart (Mt 20%), and explaining
that He does so now because they are near Jeru-
salem. There was an unusual look on the Master’s
face, so much so that the disciples were amazed and
afraid (Mk 1033. But with all this pain, they were
hopelessly dull on this subject (Lk 1852),
(c) There is strange pathos in the next occasion
Jesus had for speaking concerning His death.
James and John and their mother (Mt 20”, Mk
1035) seem hardly able to wait for the Master to
cease telling about His death before they come and
ask for the chief positions in the temporal kingdom
for which they are still looking. It wasa shock
to Jesus. Waiving their ignorance, He asked if |
they could drink His cup of death and take His
baptism of blood (Mt 20”, Mk 1055). They actually
said that they were able. And James was thie first
of the Twelve to die a martyr’s death, and John
the last ; for Jesus had said that they would have
His cup and baptism (Mk 1039).
(¢) It was on the same occasion, as Jesus pro-
ceeded to give the disciples a needed lesson in true
greatness and taught the dignity of service, that
He set forth in plain speech the purpose of His death
(Mt 20, Mk 10%). Certainly Jesus had the right to
tell the purpose of His voluntary death. Λύτρον is
obviously ‘ransom,’ but it need not be said that
this word exhausts all the content in the death of
Christ Jesus Himself elsewhere spoke of the
vital connexion between Himself and the believer
(Jn 15'*-), This view of the redemptive death of
Christ is further emphasized by the symbol of
Baptism and also of the Supper, in both of which
the vital aspect of mystic union is expressed. ᾿Αντί
is here used to express the idea οἱ substitution,
though ὑπέρ is more common in this sense in the
NT (Jn 1159) and in the earlier Greek (Alcestis, for
instance). It is a ransom instead of many.
A distinction needs to be made between the atoning death of
Christ as a basis for reconciliation and the consummation of
reconciliation in the individual case by the Holy Spirit's work
in the heart. The doctrine of the substitutionary atoning death
of Jesus, with vital and mystic union of the believer with Him,
15 not a rabbinic and legal refinement of St. Paul. He simply
echoes the words of the Master more at length, while true to
the heart of the matter.
(e) The request of the Greeks during the last
week brought forth one of the deepest words of
Jesus concerning the necessity of His death (Jn
12°). He gives, in fact, the philosophy of grace
about His death, which is, in truth, the same as
the law of nature. It is the law of self-giving.
Thus the wheat grows, and thus will Jesus estab-
lish the kingdom. By His death the middle wall
of partition between Jew and Gentile, and between
both and God, will be broken down (Eph 2%),
The agitation of Jesus on this occasion is sur-
passed only by that in the Garden of Gethsemane,
and the cause is the same. In facing His death He
shrinks from it, but instantly submits to the
Father (Jn 12°), and is comforted by the Father’s
voice. To the multitude Jesus boldly announces
ANNOUNCEMENTS OF DEATH 73
that His lifting up (on the cross) will be the means
of drawing all men (Gentile as well as Jew) to Him
(v.**). Andit has been so. Jesus gloried in His
own cross as the means of saving the lost world.
(7) In the famous controversy with the Jewish
rulers in the temple on the last Tuesday, Jesus
identified Himself as the rejected Stone in the
Messianic prophecy in Ps 118%, and pronounced
condemnation on those who collided with the re-
jected Stone (Mt 21%). At every turn during
these last days the death of Jesus is in the back-
ground of His words and deeds ; especially is this
true of the great eschatological discourse (Mt 24 f.),
as well as of the third lament over Jerusalem (Mt
23°7-*°), and the previous defiance of His enemies
(Mt 23%).
(g) It is on Tuesday night (beginning of Jewish
Wednesday) that Jesus detinitely foretells the time
of His death (Mt 267). It will be at the feast of the
Passover, which begins after two days. Strangely
enough, on this very night the rulers were in con-
ference, and had decided, owing to the popularity
of Jesus with the multitude at the feast, as shown
by the triumphal entry and the temple teaching, to
postpone the effort to kill Him till after the teast
(Mt 26*°). And so it would have been but for the
treachery of one of Christ’s own disciples, who this
very night, after the doleful announcement by
Jesus of His near death, and after a stern rebuke
for his covetous stinginess (Jn 12°), went in dis-
gust and showed the Sanhedrin how to seize Him
during the feast (Lk 22°). But Jesus saw in the
beautiful act of Mary a prophecy of His burial (Jn
12%)
(A) Jesus is fully conscious that the Paschal
meal which He is celebrating is His last, is, in
fact, taking place on the very day of His death
(Jn 13%-*8-3), The material is now so rich and
full, as the great tragedy draws near, that it can
only be alluded to brietly. He is eager to eat this
meal before He sutters (Lk 22!*'-), He knows that
now at last His hour has come (Jn 13'), and that
He will conquer death (v.*). The contentious spirit
of the Twelve at such a time occasions the object-
lesson in humility. Jesus points out the betrayer,
who leaves the room; comforts the disciples, and
warns them of their peril, though all fail to grasp
the solemn fact or the moral greatness of the tragedy
that is coming swiitly on them, actually producing
two swords tor a fight under the new policy ot
resistance now announced by Jesus (Lk 2z%°*),
Pfleiderer (Evolution and Theology, p. 179) seeks to reconstruct
the whole story of Jesus’ attitude towards His death by the
answer of Jesus, ‘It is enough.’ He forgets that this answer
may be neither irony nor sober earnest, but rather an in-
ability to make the disciples understand more about the matter
before the time. It is chimerical for Ptleiderer to set up his
view of this one passage against all the clear words of Jesus,
and say that Jesus did not expect to die.
(ἢ When Jesus introduces the Supper just after
the Passover meal, He speaks a strong word about
His death. He calls the cup of this new ordinance
‘my blood of the covenant’ (Mk 144, Mt 26%) ; and
it is the ‘new’ covenant, 1.6. of grace (1 Co 1155,
Lk 22°). Not only so, but the blood of Jesus is
shed for many (Mk 14*4, Mt 2675), as He had pre-
viously said (Mt 20, Lk 18); and St. Matthew
has the further clause ‘unto remission of sins’
(Mt 26%).
H. Holtzmann (Hand-Com., in loco) would expunge this
phrase, while Spitta (Urchristentum, p. 266 ff.) denies that Jesus
made any reference to His death on this occasion. Hollmann
admits that He spoke of His death, but rejects the liturgical
observance commanded in 1 Co 11“f. Bruce (Kingdom of God,
p- 247) bluntly calls all this ‘ criticism carried to an extreme in
the interest of a theory.’
There is just doubt as to the true text of Lk
22). but this in no way affects any of the points
above mentioned. Certainly expiation of sin by
the shedding of His blood is the idea of Jesus here.
!
!
[
}
——
74 ANNOUNCEMENTS OF DEATH
The world had long been familiar with blood sacri-
fice,-but the new thing in His vicarious sacrifice is
that it has real efficacy and is not mere type and
shadow. The blood is the life, and Jesus gave
Himself, a sinless and free self, the representative
Man and God’s own Son. The moral value of this
voluntary and vicarious blood-offering comes from
the worth of the spiritual self of Jesus. Jesus
could see that this atoning sacrifice was in Is 5319,
but it was also inwrought in His very conscious-
ness.
(j) The very heart of Jesus is laid bare in Jn
14-17. The Master tries once more to prepare the
Eleven for the tremendous fact of His death.
Nothing in life or literature approaches the touch
of Christ as He makes plain the awful truth of His
separation, silences the doubt of Thomas, Philip,
Judas, cheers them with the promise of another
Paraclete, reminds them of their high dignity
as His friends, exhorts them to courage against
the world, and promises victory in spite of tribula-
tion. In the prayer that follows, a halo is around
the cross in the mind of Christ, for He asks for His
glorification in death (Jn 171-°). He had already
sanctified Himself to this mission (vv.17- 19), and
now the hour is at hand.
(k) And yet in Gethsemane Jesus Himself is
‘oreatly amazed’ at His own agitation of spirit
(Mk 1433). He needs the Father’s help, and for
the moment has difficulty in finding Him fully,
for Satan has renewed his temptation with fresa
energy. For a moment Satan seemed indeed to
triumph, but Jesus quickly surrendered to the
Father’s will and won supreme mastery over Him-
self (Mk 1435), But Ritschl is in error in saying
that Jesus ‘is first of all a priest in His own
behalf’? (Justification and Reconciliation, p. 474).
What broke the heart of Christ in Gethsemane
was no thought of His own sin, but the sin of the
world. Here in Gethsemane the heart of Jesus was
touched to the quick by the essence of the redemp-
tive sacrifice. ‘The disciples gave Him no human
sympathy, and Satan even sought to poison His
heart toward the Father. The picture in Hebrews
579) of the strong Son of God, having learned
obedience through suffering, crying out to the
Father for help, is the acme of soul.agony. Jesus
won the power to drink the cup, and in the dregs
of the cup was the kiss of Judas. His hour has
come at last, and His enemies take Him now only
because He allows them, It is the hour and the
power of darkness (Lk 225°), The hour and the
power of light will come later. Once again He
speaks of the necessity of His death that the Scrip-
tures may be fulfiiled (Mt 26°24),
(1) In the trial it is a foregone conclusion that
Jesus will be condemned, and on the cross He ‘ sees
what He foresaw.’ He knows that His public con-
fession of His Messiahship means His death, but
He asserts His ultimate triumph over His enemies
(Mt 2666). He claims superiority over the world,
and that He is now fulfilling His destiny (Jn 18*6f-),
On the cross itself He practises the forgiveness of
enemies which He had preached (Lk 23%), exercises
saving power though dying (v.48), is in some sense
forsaken by the Father (Mk 153), is conscious to
the last of what He is performing (Jn 19%8), and
proclaims the completion of His Messianic work
(Jn 199) as He dies with submission to the Father
(Lk 23%).
After the resurrection Jesus had a new stand-
point from which to teach the disciples the signifi-
cance of His death (Lk 2455: 7. 82.45), But it is not
till they receive the new light from the Holy Spirit
at Pentecost that the disciples fully appreciate the
moral greatness of the death of Christ, and see the
glory of the cross, with something of the dignity
with which Jesus Himself went into the shadow.
** Copyright, 1906, by Charles Scribner’s Sons
ANNUNCIATION, THE
LITERATURE. —Schwartzkopff, Die Weissagungen
Christi von seinem Tode, seiner Ariferatehiing ae Wichan
kunft (1895); Babut, La Pensée de Jésu sur la Mort (1897) ;
Smeaton, Our Lord’s Doctrine of the Atonement (1871) :
Fairbairn, * Christ’s Attitude to His Own Death,’ Expositor
(Oct. Dec. 1896 ; Jan. Feb. 1897) ; Denney, The Death of Christ
(1902) ; Hollmann, Die Bedeutung des Todes Jesu; Dale, The
Atonement (1581) ; Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation
(1900) ; Belser, Die Geschichte des Leidens und Sterbens, der
Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt des Herrn (1903) ; Barth
Die Hauptprobleme des Lebens Jesu (1903) ; Baldensperger,
Das Selbsthewusstsein Jesw (1892); Schirer, Das Messian.
ische Selbstbewusstsein (1903) ; Hoffmann, Das Selbsthewusst-
sein Jesu nach den drei ersten Evangelien (1904): Appel, Die
Selbstbezeichnung Jesu (1896); Bruce, Training of the Twelve
pp. 167 ff., 273 ff., 289 fF., 346 ff. A. Τὶ ROBERTSON. ”
**ANNUNCIATION, THE (Annuntiatio, Etayyen-
tou.ds, Χαριτισμός) .---- ΤῈ 6. announcement of the fect
that the Son of God was to be born of the Virgin
Mary, who at the time was espoused to Joseph,
the descendant and heir of David. St. Luke
(1°688) tells us that this announcement was made
to Mary by the angel Gabriel at Nazareth six
months after the same angel had told Zacharias
in the Temple at Jerusalem that his wife Elisabeth
should bear him a son, who was to be called John.
St. Luke is our sole authority for this announce-
ment by the angel to Mary. St. Mark and St,
John are silent ; and the narrative of St. Matthew,
who is our other authority for the fact that Jesus
was born of a virgin, is very different, being
written as entirely from Joseph’s point of view as
St. Luke’s is written from Mary’s point of view
(see below). Nevertheless there is no contradic-
tion between the accounts, and in some important
particulars they confirm one another. They are
wholly independent narratives, as their wide
differences show. Yet they agree, not only as to
the central fact of the virgin birth, but also as to
the manner of it, viz, that it took place through
the operation of the Holy Spirit. This agreement
is all the more remarkable when we remember
that there is nothing like this effect of the Spirit
of God upon a virgin in the Old Testament, and
that, prior to the New Testament, the very ex-
pression ‘Holy Spirit’ is rare (see the art. in
Hastings’ DB ii. p. 402 ff.) ; also that the fact of
the Incarnation is elsewhere indicated in quite
other terms, as by St. John (114). Moreover, the
two narratives agree as to four other points, which
are of some importance. Both state that at the
time of the announcement Mary was espoused to
Joseph, that the child was to be named ‘ Jesus,’
that He was born at Bethlehem in Judea, and
that the parents brought Him up at Nazareth.
It is well to remember that there are stories,
more or less analogous to what is told by the two
Evangelists, in heathen mythologies. The his-
torical probability of the Gospel narratives is not
weakened but strengthened by such comparisons.
St. Luke’s Gentile readers must have felt the un-
speakable difference between the coarse impurity
of imagined intercourse between mortals and
divinities, in the religious legends of paganism,
and the dignity and delicacy of the spiritual narra-
tive which St. Luke laid before them. And St.
Matthew’s Jewish readers, if they compared his
story with their own national ideas, as illustrated
in the Book of Enoch (6. 15. 69. 86. 106), would
find a similar contrast. Nor should the legendary
additions to the Gospel story, which are found in
the Apocryphal Gospels, be forgotten. These show
us what pitiful stuff the imagination of early
Christians could produce, even when the Canonical
Gospels were there as models. All these three
classes of fiction, heathen, Jewish, and Christian,
warn us that we must seek some source for the
Gospel narrative other than the fertile imagina-
tion of some Gentile or Jewish Christian whose
curiosity led him to speculate upon a mysterious
ANNUNCIATION, THE
subject. We should have had something very
different, both in details and in tone, if there had
been no better source than this. And this applies
even more strongly to St. Luke’s narrative than
to that of St. Matthew. It required more delicacy
to tell the story of the virgin birth from Mary’s
side than from Joseph’s; and this greater delicacy
isforthcoming. And itis all the more conspicuous
because St. Luke’s narrative is the richer in
details. We conclude, therefore, that St. Luke
had good authority for what he has told us, viz.
an authority well acquainted with the facts. For
if he was incapable of imagining what he has
related, equally incapable was his informant. ‘The
narrative which he has handed on to us is what
it is because in the main it sets forth what is true.
Then who was St. Luke’s authority ? Assuming
the truth of the narrative, it is obvious that, in
the last resort, the authority for it must have
been Mary herself. No one else could know what
St. Luke records. It does not follow from this
that he got the information from her directly,
although there is nothing incredible in the sup-
position that he and she had met. And the form
of the narrative leads one to think that there can-
not have been many persons between her and him.
By frequent transmission from mouth to mouth
details about the angel’s outward appearance, his
beauty and brightness, and about Mary’s attitude
and employment, would have crept in, and the
conversation would have been expanded ; all of
which corruptions are found in the Apocryphal
Gospels. Moreover, such touches as 219-51. would
be likely to drop out ; and they have dropped from
the Apocryphal Gospels.
We may go a step farther, and say that if St.
Luke did not get his information direct from
Mary herself, the person who passed on the mys-
terious story from her to the Evangelist was
almost certainly a woman. Mary would be much
more likely to tell it to a woman than to a man ;
and, in spite of her habitual reticence, she would,
after Joseph’s death, be likely to confide it to some
one. She would feel that such an astounding
fact, so much in harmony with the life and death
and resurrection of her Son, must not be allowed
to die with her; and she would therefore com-
municate it to some intimate friend, who may have
communicated it to St. Luke.
It is quite possible that this communication was
at its first stage, or had not even started, when St.
Mark composed his Gospel, so that when he wrote
he was ignorant of the virgin birth. But as the
plan of his Gospel excludes all that preceded the
preaching of the Baptist, St. Mark’s silence would
be natural even if he already knew it. Probably
most of the first generation of Christians were
ignorant of this mystery, for the Book of Acts
and the Epistles show us that what was preached
by the Apostles was not the miraculous birth, but
the death and resurrection of Christ (Ac 122 258. 24. 32
315 410 10,39. 40 1928-30 1731 etc. ).
That the Fourth Evangelist knew the Synoptic
Gospels, and sometimes silently corrects them, is
certain ; but he does not correct the story of the
Virgin birth, On the contrary, what he says
about the Incarnation and about the pre-existence
of the Son of Man and His oneness with the
Father, is in harmony with it. Such passages as
ju 315 633. 44. 51. 62 838. 45. 58 10:0 1129 9()28- 81 are more
intelligible if written by one who believed the
Virgin birth, than if written by one who knew the
doctrine and rejected it. It is indeed urged that
this Evangelist’s beliefs about the Christ are such,
that he must have stated the virgin birth, if he
believed it. But, as the story had already been
twice told, there was no need to repeat it. And
the whole of his Gospel shows that he is reserved
2
ANNUNCIATION, THE 75
about the Virgin Mother, whose name he alone
among the Evangelists never mentions. She had
become his mother (1957), and he is reticent about
all things connected with himself. He nowhere
names his own brother.
Nevertheless, when the mystery became known
through the diffusion of the First and Third
Gospels, its importance as a completion and con-
firmation of the faith was recognized. Ignatius
(6. A.D. 110), in a passage (Zph. 19) which is fre-
quently quoted by later Fathers (Origen, Euse-
bius, Basil, Jerome, etc.), places the virgin birth
in the front rank among Gospel truths; and we
find it as an article of faith in the Old Roman
Creed, which can be traced almost to the beginning
of the second century, τὸν γεννηθέντα ἐκ πνεύματος
ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου : qui natus est de S.S.
en Ms Ve
The antecedent probability that St. Luke de-
rived the information respecting Mary either from
herself, or from a woman to whom she had con-
fided it, is confirmed by the characteristics of these
first two chapters of his Gospel. The notes of time
(1°6- 6.56) are specially feminine; and competent
critics finda feminine touch throughout (174 2. 41-48. 57
251.19. 85.48.51). Lange (Life of Christ [ed. 1872], i.
p. 258) says: ‘ The colouring of a woman’s memory
anda woman’s view is unmistakable in the separate
features of this history. When it is once ascribed
toa female narrator . .. we comprehend the in-
describable grace, the quiet loveliness and sacred-
ness of this narrative.’ Ramsay (Was Christ born
at Bethlehem ? p. 88) says: ‘There is a womanly
spirit in the whole narrative which seems incon-
sistent with the transition from man to man.’
Sanday (Expository Times, April 1903, p. 297)
agrees that the narrative came not only from a
woman, but through a woman, and he thinks that
Joanna, the wife of Chuza, steward to Herod
Antipas (Lk 82-3 2410. cf. 2319, Ac 114), may have
been the person through whom the information
passed from Mary to St. Luke. Both Lange (con-
tidently) and Sanday (less confidently) believe that
St. Luke received the information in writing, and
that he wrote the first two chapters with a docu-
ment before him. On the whole, this is probable.
It is quite true that the peculiarities and character-
istics of St. Luke’s very marked style are specially
frequent in these two chapters (Plummer, St. Luke,
p. lxx) ; but they are also very frequent in other
places where he was working from a document.
St. Luke seems never to have simply copied his
authority. In using written material he freely
altered the wording to expressions which were
more natural to himself: so that mere frequency
of marks of his style is no proof that he was not
using what was already in writing. And, of
course, when he was translating from an Aramaic
document his own favourite words and construc-
tions would come spontaneously.
But, while this is admitted because it admits of
something like proof, we are not compelled to
admit the unproved assertion that the hymns of
praise with which these chapters are enriched have
been composed by St. Luke himself, and have no
more basis in fact than the speechesin Livy. Each
of these canticles suits the time at which it is sup-
posed to have been uttered better than the time at
which St. Luke wrote, and it may be doubted
whether he could in imagination have thrown
himself back to the surroundings and anticipations
of Zacharias and Mary and Simeon. ‘There may
have been on his part ‘a free literary remodelling
of material’ (B. Weiss). Before anything was
written down there may have been some modifica-
tion in the wording as the result of reflexion upon
what had been uttered and done. ‘There may even
have been conscious elaboration. But it is reason-
u
76 ANNUNCIATION, THE
able to believe that these exquisite and appropriate
songs represent fairly accurately what was said
and felt on each occasion. What was said and
felt would be remembered, and perhaps was com-
mitted to writing long before St. Luke obtained
the precious record, although not till many years
after the events. And there is nothing extrava-
gant in the belief that Mary herself may at last
have thought it best to commit her recollections
and meditations to writing. The feeling, meum
secretum mihi, would prevail for a long time:
‘she pondered these things in her heart.’ Then,
as the end of her life drew nearer, she might put
on record what ought not to be lost. Finally, she
committed the sacred mystery to another woman,
or to asmall group of women; and from them it
passed to St. Luke. But we must be content to
remain in ignorance as to whether Mary, or some
confidante, or St. Luke himself, was the first to
put the story in writing.
That St. Luke should be the Evangelist to
receive this womanly story of women is not sur-
prising. The rest of his Gospel shows a marked
sympathy with the sex which was so commonly
looked down upon by both Jews and Gentiles. To
this day, in the public service of the synagogue,
the men thank God that they have not been made
women. No other Evangelist gives us so many
types of women. Besides those in the first two
chapters, we have the widow at Nain, the sinner
in Simon’s house, Mary Magdalene, Joanna,
Susanna, the woman with the issue, Martha and
Mary, the woman bowed down for eighteen years,
the widow with her two mites, the daughters of
Jerusalem, and the women at the tomb. And he
alone gives us the parable of the Woman and the
Lost Coin. We may believe that he was one in
whom a woman might naturally confide.
While in St. Luke everything is grouped round
Mary and her kinswoman Elisabeth, in St.
Matthew everything is grouped round Joseph.
Joseph’s genealogy is given by way of preface.
‘The Annunciation is made to him; and all revela-
tions about the name of the Child, and the provi-
sions to be taken for His safety, are made also to
him. Obviously, if the story is true, Joseph must
have been the ultimate source of a great deal of it ;
but it may have passed through many mouths
before it took the form in which it appears in the
First Gospel.
Doubt has been thrown upon the two narratives,
because in the First Gospel the revelations are
made by the angel of the Lord in dreams, whereas
in the Third they are made by angels to persons
in their waking moments. It is argued that in
each case the miraculous agency is due to the ima-
gination of the writer. This is possible. But it is
also reasonable to believe that the special method
of communication was in each case adapted to the
character of the recipients. It cannot be said that
St. Matthew always gives us dreams, or that St.
Luke objects to such things. St. Matthew men-
tions the ministry of angels (41), and communica-
tions made by means of them (28*7); and St. Luke
mentions communications made by means of visions
in the night (Ac 109 1819), And if the writers
had imagined the substance of the heavenly
message, would not St. Matthew have given the
promise of the Kingdom, and St. Luke the pro-
mise of Salvation? But it is St. Matthew who
has the latter (171), while St. Luke has the former
(182: 33). It is worth noting that in the New Testa-
ment we do not read of dreams or visions in the
night anywhere but in St. Matthew and in Acts;
ch 2-Corl2"
Again, doubts have been raised about the two
narratives, because in the one the revelation of the
miraculous conception is made to Mary, in the
ANNUNCIATION, THE
other to Joseph ; and either revelation, it is urged
would render the other unnecessary. On the con-
trary, both are necessary. If the virgin birth was
to take place, God in His mercy would not leave
Mary in ignorance of the mysterious manner in
which He was about. to deal with her. We may
reverently say that the Annunciation to Mary was
a necessity in order to save her from dreadful
perplexity and suffering. And this rendered a
revelation to Joseph also necessary. On the mere
testimony of Mary he could not have accepted so
extraordinary a story. The fact that, in spite of
his inevitable suspicions, he took her in marriage,
requires us to believe that to him also had been
revealed God’s purposes respecting his betrothed.
It is evident that St. Matthew and St. Luke
give the narratives as historical. Each believed
his own story, and expected that others would
believe it also (Lk 14). Indeed, the isolation in
which these two very different intimations of the
virgin birth stand in the New Testament makes
the explanation of them very difficult unless there
is an historical basis. They are not needed to
explain anything else. They are intensely Jewish
in tone; but we may be sure that Judaism, with
its enthusiastic estimate of the blessings of mar-
riage, would not have invented them. Moreover,
at the time when these Gospels were written,
Judaism was antagonistic to the new faith, and
would not have tolerated such a glorifying of its
Founder.
In the Annunciation to Mary we are not told
that she saw anything, for the ἰδοῦσα read by A C
in Lk 129 is almost certainly not genuine. Gabriel
was sent, and entered some building in which she
was living at Nazareth, and there delivered his
message. The εἰσελθών is against the later tradi-
tion that she was at the fountain drawing water
(Protevangelium of James, 11; Gospel of pseudo-
Matthew, 9). The angelic message is given ‘in
three little pieces of trimeter poetry, which have
become somewhat obscured by the Greek transla-
tion’ (Briggs, The Messiah of the Gospels, p.
45 ff.), the first of which is the Ave Maria ‘in the
form of a distich ’—-
‘Hail, thou that art endued with grace,
The Lord is with thee.’
The much discussed κεχαριτωμένη must mean
‘endued with grace’ (Sir 1517); πίστιν καὶ χάριν
λαβοῦσα Μαρία (Justin Martyr, Try. 100); and
both here and in 1® the usual translation ‘ grace’
should be retained for χάρις. ‘The Lord is with
thee’ is frequent in the Old Testament (Jos 19
627, Jg 612, Is 435). The RV is probably right
in omitting ‘Blessed (art) thou among women,’
which may have come from 142: δὶ Β L, with the
Egyptian and Armenian Versions, omit. ;
By the first words of the angel, Mary was
greatly disturbed (διεταράχθη) both in mind and
heart: then her perplexity and emotion gave place
to thought (διελογίζετο). But, although ποταπός
originally meant ‘from what country or nation,’
she was not deliberating, like Hamlet about the
ghost, whether the message came from heaven or
hell, i.e. whether it was Divine or diabolical. The
Latin Versions rightly have qualis, not cuwjas, as
an equivalent. Nowhere in the New Testament
has rorarés a local signification, but means simply
‘of what kind or quality’ (ποῖος), and implies
astonishment (Lk 739, Mt 851, Mk 13!, 2 P 34,
1 Jn 31). :
In his second address Gabriel calms the Virgin’s
fears and explains the purpose of his mission.
‘Thou hast found grace with God’ is another
Old Testament expression (Gn 6° 183 1919 394, Ex
3312 13-16-17), This ‘ grace’ is manifested in making
her the mother of the longed-for Messiah, an un-
speakable joy to a Jewish mother. In the promise
ANNUNCIATION, THE
ANNUNCIATION, THE
which follows there are allusions to two prophecies. | not have belonged to the same race as those whom
‘Son of the Most High’ recalls Ps. 27, and ‘the
throne of his father David’ recalls the great
Messianic prediction in Is 95: 7,
By the second utterance of Gabriel, which con-
tains the substance of the Annunciation, Mary is
astounded. Yet she does not, like Zacharias, ask
for proof (118). Nor is her ‘How?’ a request for
an explanation. Rather it is an exclamation of
amazement. She is not married: how can she
have ason? And how can a humble maiden like
herself have such a son? ‘This seems to be the
natural import of her words. It is unlikely that
(1 know not a man’ means that she has already
taken, or there and then takes, or intends to take,
a vow of perpetual virginity. And can Mt 1°,
with its Imperfect tense (not Aorist, as in Gn 198),
be reconciled with any such vow? Mary’s ἄνδρα
οὐ γινώσκω is a confession of conscious purity,
drawn from her by the surprising promise that
she is to have a son before she is married (see
Sadler, ad loc.).
Although Mary does not ask for an explanation
or a sign, Gabriel gives both in a third utterance.
As to the explanation, it is an influence that is
spiritual and not carnal, that is holy and not
sinful, that is to come upon her and enable her to
become a mother, and the mother of the Messiah.
‘Wherefore also the holy thing which shall be born
Shall be called the Son of God.’
‘Son of God’ was a recognized title of the
Messiah. Both in the Book of Enoch and fre-
quently in 4 Ezra the Almighty speaks of the
Messiah as His Son. Jesus rarely uses this title
of Himself (Mt 2743, Jn 1035), But we have it in
the voices from heaven (Lk 3522 9%) and in the
devil’s challenge (43:9), in St. Peter’s confession
_ (Mt 1615), in the cries of the demoniacs (Mk 911 5"),
and in the centurion’s exclamation (1039). The
primitive Church adopted it as a concise statement
of the Divinity of Jesus Christ (Swete, Apostles’
Creed, p. 24). It is worth noting, in connexion
with the part assigned to the Holy Spirit in the
‘virgin birth, that in a fragment of the Gospel
according to the Hebrews quoted by Origen
(Com. in Johan. iii. § 63) the words, ‘My
mother, the Holy Spirit, took Me,’ are put into
the mouth of Christ.
As to the sign, which was granted unasked,
Mary receives one which is as convincing as the
one given to Zacharias, but much more gracious.
Another wonderful birth is about to take place,
and by the mention of ‘the sixth month’ the angel
assures Mary that all is known to him. Mary can
verify his words respecting Elisabeth, and thereby
know that this message to herself is true. He
intimates that there is to be close relationship
between Elisabeth’s son and her own, and directs
her to her kinswoman for confirmation and sym-
pathy.
Mary’s final response to the angel is not a prayer
that what he has promised may be fulfilled, but
an expression of absolute submission. She fore-
sees the difficulty with Joseph and with all who
know her. But she accepts, without reserve,
God’s decree respecting her, as made known to
her by His messenger, and leaves the issue in His
hands. She is the Lord’s bondmaid, and His will
must be done.
_ There is perhaps more irreverence than wisdom
in speculating whether God could have redeemed
mankind by one who was produced without human
parent ; or, again, by one who had a human father
as well as a human mother. But suggestions of
this kind have been made, and perhaps call for
comment. It may be pointed out that a new act
of creation would have left no nexus between the
Redeemer and those to be redeemed. He would
He came to save. He would not have taken their
flesh, and His life would have had little relation to
theirs. It is difficult to see how the death and
resurrection of such a being would have aided the
human race. But the virgin birth avoided all
violent breach with humanity. Just as the pro-
phet (John the Baptist) who was to renovate
Israel was taken from the old priesthood, so the
Christ who was to redeem the whole of mankind
was not created out of nothing, but ‘born of a
woman.’
Again, if the Christ had had two human parents,
it is difficult to see how the hereditary contamina-
tion of the race could have been excluded. It may
be said that such contamination remains even with
only one human parent, and that the choice lies
between admitting the contamination and sever-
ing the nexus with the human race altogether.
But, in truth, there is no such dilemma. The
choice is not between creation on the one hand
and human parentage (whether with one or two
parents) on the other. There is also the possi-
bility of the substitution of Divine agency for the
human father. It is conceivable that the presence
of this Divine element would entirely exclude
the possibility of contamination from the human
mother. Indeed it is difficult to conceive that the
Divine element could in any way receive con-
tamination. But it is wiser to accept with
reverent thankfulness what has been revealed to
us respecting this mystery than to speculate need-
lessly, and perhaps fruitlessly, about what has not
been revealed.
Tt has been pointed out already that the beauty,
dignity, and delicacy of the story of the Annun-
ciation are tokens of historic reality; for the
fictions about similar subjects in pagan, Jewish,
and Christian literature are, in these respects,
so very different. There is yet another mark. of
historic truth to be noted, viz. the extreme
simplicity of the Christology. New Testament
doctrine about the Christ is here found at a very
early stage, earlier even than that in the Epistles
to the Corinthians; for there we have Christ’s
pre-existence implied as ‘the second man from
heaven’ (1 Co 1547), who ‘became poor’ when He
became man for us (2 Co 8°, cf. 456); and there-
fore much earlier than the more developed Chris-
tology of Colossians (115) and Ephesians 1571 418),
and than that of the writer to the Hebrews (1%), or
that of the Fourth Gospel (115 313175). ‘The power
of the Most High shall overshadow thee’ reminds
us rather of the manifestations of the Divine pre-
sence in the Old Testament, especially the ‘ pillar
of cloud’ (Ex 132! 40338, 1 K 81-11), If St. Luke
had invented the story of the Annunciation, would
he not have given us more of Pauline Christology,
and that in its fullest form? That he has given
us what is so rudimentary is evidence that he
gives a record of what was revealed to Mary at
the time, rather than what he himself knew and
believed.
The couplet with which the narrative ends (158)
balances that with which it opens (138), and it is
one of deep spiritual significance to every believer.
By her absolute submission to the will of God, in
spite of the agony of shame and distress which
this involved, Mary entered into an intimacy of
relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
such as even angels cannot know. And yet it 1s
precisely here that the humblest Christian may,
by similar obedience, follow her. ‘ Blessed. is the
womb that bare thee,’ said one to the Lord, ‘and
the breasts which thou didst suck. But he said,
Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word
of God, and keep it’ (Lk 117-8).
It was natural that a special day should be set
78 ANOINTING
ANOINTING
apart to commemorate this mystery, but we do
not know when this was first done. The earliest
mention of such a festival is in the Acts of the
Tenth Synod of Toledo (a.p. 656) ; and the next
is in those of the second Synod in Trullo (a.p.
692). But, just as the Purification was origin-
ally a feast in honour of our Lord rather than of
the Virgin Mary, viz. of His presentation in the
Temple and meeting with Simeon and Anna, so also
this festival originally commemorated His miracu-
lous conception rather than the announcement
made to her. In the Ethiopian Calendar it is not
called ‘the Annunciation of the blessed Virgin
Mary,’ but ‘the Conception of Christ’: elsewhere
the later name of the feast has driven out the
original title, not only in the West, but also in the
astern Churches.
LitErRATuRE.—Briggs, The Messiah of the Gospels, p. 41 ff.,
New Light onthe Life of Jesus, 1904, p. 160 ff.; Ramsay, Was
Christ born at Bethlehem ?; Sanday, art. ‘Jesus Christ’ in
Hastings’ DB ii. p. 643 ff., also Hxpository Times, April 1903;
Pearson, On the Creed, art. iii.; Swete, The Apostles’ Creed,
p. 41 ff., also Hepos. Times, 1893; Westcott, The Historie Faith,
. 59 ff.; B. Weiss, Leben Jesu, ii. ὃ 2 [Eng. tr. i. p. 222 ff.];
oofs, Leitfaden 2. Studiwm d. Dogmengeschichte ; Soltau,
Geburtsgeschichte Jesu Christi, 1902; J. A. Robinson, Some
Thoughts on the Incarnation, 1903; Knowling, Our Lord’s
Virgin Birth ; Ch. Quart. Rev., July and Oct. 1904; Gore, The
Incarnation, 77 ff., 251 f. ; Garvie, Kxpositor, Feb. 1902. On
the sceptical side: Keim, Jesws of Nazara, ii. p. 38 ff. ; Hase,
Geschichte Jesu, § 22 ff.; O. Holtzmann, Leben Jesu, cap. iv.
[Eng. tr. p. 81 8.1: P. Lobstein, The Virgin-Birth of Christ,
1903; Cheyne, Bible Problems, 1904. A. PLUMMER.
ANOINTING.—I. In the ancient world, Jewish
and pagan alike, it was customary to refresh guests
at banquets by pouring cool and fragrant ointment
on their heads. Cf. Mart. iii. 12; Ps 235, where
Cheyne gives an Egyptian illustration : ‘ Every rich
man had in his household an anointer, who had to
place a cone of ointment on the head of his master,
where it remained during the feast.” There are
two instances of the usage in the Gospel history :
1. The anointing in the house of Simon the
Pharisee (Lk 7%-°°)—Impressed by the fame of
Jesus and desirous of closer acquaintance with
one who was certainly a prophet, perhaps more,*
Simon bade Him to his table, inviting also a party
of his friends. He was a Pharisee of the better
sort, yet he shared the pride of his order and put
a difference betwixt Jesus and the other guests,
withholding from Him the customary courtesies :
the kiss of welcome, the ablution of the feet, the
anointing of the head. In the course of the meal
a woman appeared in the room, wearing her hair
loose, which in Jewish society was the token of a
harlot.t What did she in a Pharisee’s house ὃ
She had come, a sorrowful penitent, in quest of
Jesus ; and she brought an offering, an alabaster
vase of ointment. As He reclined at table, she
stole to His couch and, stooping over His feet,
rained hot tears upon them, wiped them with her
flowing tresses, kissed them, and anointed them
with the ointment. She should have poured it on
His head, but she durst not.t
2. The anointing inthe house of Simon the Leper
(Jn 121+ = Mk 1439 = Mt 26613).—On His way up
to the last Passover, Jesus stopped at the village
of Bethany, where, a few weeks before, He had
raised Lazarus ; and, in defiance of the Sanhedrin’s
edict (Jn 115"), He was received with grateful rever-
ence. One of the principal men of the village,
named Simon, made a banquet in His honour.
He had been a leper, and, if he had been healed
by Jesus, it was fitting that his house should be
*According to the w.1. ὁ προφήτης in v.29, Simon thought Jesus
might be the prophet who should arise and herald the Messiah.
Cf. Jn 1531. 25 614 740,
t+ See Lightfoot on Jn 198,
t Orig. in Matth. Comm. Ser. § 77: ‘Non fuit ausa ad caput
Christi venire sed lacrymis pedes ejus layit, quasi vix etiam
ipsis pedibus ejus digna.’
the scene of the banquet.* But it was a public
tribute, and others bore a part in it. Lazarus was
present, and the good housewife Martha managed
the entertainment. And what part did Mary
take? She entered the room with her hair loose
and an alabaster vase of precious ointment in her
hand, and, approaching the Lord’s couch, poured
the ointment over His feet and wiped them with
her hair. See MARY.
There are several points of difference between John’s and
Matthew-Mark’s accounts of the anointing: (1) Matthew and
Mark say that it happened in the house of Simon the Leper
and make no mention of Lazarus and his sisters. They simply
say that the ‘ beautiful work ’ was wrought by ‘a woman.’ (2)
They seem to put the incident two days (Mt 262=Mk 141), whereas
John puts it six days before the Passover (121). (3) They repre-
sent the nameless woman as pouring the ointment not on the
Lord’s feet but on His head, and say nothing of her wiping His
feet with her jhair. On the ground of these discrepancies it
was generally maintained by the Fathers that there were two
anointings at Bethany, the incidents recorded by Matthew-
Mark and John being distinet. So Chrysostom (in Matth. |xxxi),
who apparently identified the anointing in the house of Simon
the Leper (Mt.-Mk.) with that in the house of Simon the Pharisee
(Lk.). Origen (in Matth. Comm. Ser. § 77) held that there were
in all three anointings: (a) in the house of Simon the Leper
(Mt.-Mk.) ; (2) in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Lk.) ; (¢) at
bethany by Mary (Jn.) ; mentioning also the opinion that there
were four, Matthew and Mark recording distinct incidents.
Nowadays the tendency is rather to ignore the differences
and identify all the narratives, reducing them to one. The
Matthew-Mark narrative is regarded as authentic, the Lukan
and Johannine narratives being adaptations thereof (Strauss,
Ewald, Keim). Even in Origen’s day a similar view prevailed :
‘multi ‘quidem existimant de una eademque muliere quatuor
Evangelistas exposuisse.’
It hardly admits of reasonable doubt that there were two
anointings, one in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and the
other by Mary in the house of Simon the Leper at Bethany.t
The discrepancies in the triple account of the latter are not
inexplicable. (1) Matthew-Mark’s omission of the names of
Lazarus and his sisters belongs to the larger question of the
Synoptic silence regarding the family at Bethany. (2) The
position of the incident in Matthew-Mark is merely an example
of the freedom wherewith the Synoptic editors were wont to
handle the material of the Evangelic tradition, arranging it
topically rather than chronologically. They have brought the .
story into juxtaposition with the betrayal (Mt 2613--- Mk
1410-11), evidently by way of casting light on the traitor’s action.
The Lord’s rebuke at the feast angered him, and, burning for
revenge, he went and made his bargain with the high priests.
Cf. Aug. de. Cons. Ev. ii. § 153. (8) The difference regarding the
manner of the anointing is an instance of John’s babit of tacitly
correcting his predecessors. His account is historical, and it
would stand so in the Apostolic tradition; but the Synoptic
editors or, more probably, the catechisers in their oral repetition
of the tradition, wondering, since they did not know who the
woman was, at the strangeness of her action, substituted ‘ head ”
for ‘feet,’ and then omitted the unintelligible circumstance of
her wiping His feet with her hair. See Mary.
Lirerature.— Andrews, Life of our Lord, pp. 281-283; Ram-
say, Was Christ Born at Bethlehem? pp. 91-92; Hastings’ DB,
articles ‘ Anointing ’ and * Mary’ ; Hxposttor, 1st ser. vi. [1877]
pp. 214-229; Hece Homo 15, p. 232 ff.; Bruce, Training of the
Twelve ®, pp. 289-308; Ker, Sermons, Ist ser, p. 16 ff. ; Vinet,
Vital Christianity, p. 294 ff. Reference may also be made to
Bunyan, Jerus. Sinner Saved (ed. 1765), pp. 58-62 ; Herbert,
Marie Magdalene ; Hartley Coleridge’s fine sonnet on ΓΚ τῆ,
DAVID SMITH.
II. Besides the two special incidents already
described, some other references to ‘anointing’
may be briefly dealt with.
1. In Mt 617 Jesus tells His disciples that when
they fast they are to anoint (ἀλείφω) the head as
usual. The allusion is to that daily use of oil,
as an application soothing and refreshing to the
skin, which is common in hot countries, and was
regularly practised by the Jews. ‘The meaning of
Jesus is that His disciples, when they feel it right
to fast, should undertake the observance as In the
sight of God, and not ostentatiously parade their
performance of it before the eyes of men. They
should wash and anoint themselves as usual, and
not draw attention by any peculiarities of outward
appearance to a matter lying between themselves
and their heavenly Father.
* Lazarus was not the host, but one of the guests (Jn 122).
The notion that his house was the scene of the banquet has
occasioned speculations about Simon, Theophylact mentions
the opinion that he was Lazarus’ father, lately deceased (Ewald).
¢ So Aug. de Cons. Ev. ii. § 154.
ANSWERS
2. In Mk 613 we read of the Twelve on their
evangelistic mission, that they ‘anointed (ἀλείφω)
with oil many that were sick, and healed them.’
The employment of oil as a medicinal agent was
familiar in the time of Christ (cf. Lk 1055, Ja 614),
and is doubtless referred to here; though the
natural virtues of the oil were accompanied in this
case by miraculous powers of healing. In Jn 9% 1
Jesus, before working the miracle upon the blind
man, anoints (ἐπιχρίω) his eyes with clay which He
had made by spitting on the ground. Here, also,
the anointing may have had a medicinal aspect
(see Meyer and Expositor’s Gr. Test. in loc. on the
ancient belief that both spittle and clay were
beneficial to the eyes) ; though, of course, it is the
miraculous agency of Jesus that is paramount in
the narrative. In Rev 918 Jesus says to the Church
of the Laodiceans, ‘. .. and anoint thine eyes
with eyesalve, that thou mayest see,’ where the
effect of the application of collyrium is used as a
figure of the healing and enlightenment which are
found in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. In Mk 148 Jesus says of the gracious act of
Mary of Bethany in anointing Him at the feast,
‘She hath anointed (μυρίζω fr. μύρον = ‘ ointment’ ;
probably akin to μύρρα = ‘ myrrh’) my body afore-
hand for the burying’ (cf. Jn 1217). And in Mk 16!
we read how Mary Magdalene and the other women
went to the sepulchre to anoint (ἀλείφω) the dead
body of the Saviour (cf. Lk 23°, Jn 19%). This
application of ointments and spices (cf. Lk 24!)
was an expression of reverence and affection for
the departed, and may be compared with the
modern custom of surrounding the beloved dead
with fragrant and beautiful flowers. These un-
guents were not used for the purpose of embalming
the dead, as among the Egyptians, but were only
outwardly applied, and did not prevent decomposi-
tion (cf. Jn 1139),
4, When Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth
read from Is 61 the prophetic words, ‘ The Spirit οἵ
the Lord is upon me, because he anointed (xpiw) me
to preach good tidings to the poor. . .᾽ (Lk 415),
and went on to say, after closing the book, ‘ To-
day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears’
(v.21), He definitely claimed to be set apart to the
Messianic calling. In the OT anointing was the
symbol of consecration alike in the case of prophet
(1 Καὶ 1916), priest (Lv 813), and king (1 5.101). And
in the case of Jesus, who to His people is at once
prophet, priest, and king, a spiritual anointing is
distinctly affirmed by His Evangelists and Apostles
as well as claimed by Himself (cf. Ac 4% 10%, He
19). The Hebrew word ‘ Messiah’ (Ὁ from OV?
‘to anoint’) means ‘the anointed one’ ; and of this
word ‘Christ’ is the Greek equivalent (χριστός,
from χρίω, ‘to anoint,’ being employed in LXX to
render MW),
5. In 1 Jn 229 the Apostle writes, ‘ And ye have
an anointing (χρίσμα) from the Holy One, and ye
know all things’ (so RV; AV renders ‘ unction ’).
Again, in v.27 he says, ‘ And as for you, the anoint-
ing (xploua) which ye received of him abideth in
you... .’ (here AV as well as RV gives ‘ anoint-
ing’). That the ‘Holy One’ of this passage is
Christ Himself, and that the ‘anointing’ He dis-
penses is the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, is held
by nearly all commentators. Being Himself an-
ointed with the Holy Ghost (Ac 10%), the Christ
has power to impart the same gift to His disciples.
Indeed, the bestowal of this gift is constantly
represented as His peculiar function (cf. Jn 15”
167. 13:15, Ac 233),
Liverature.—i. B. Swete, E. P. Gould, A. F. Hort, and esp.
E. H. Plumptre on Mk 613; also A. Plummer, and C, Watson on
1 Jn 220, J. C. LAMBERT.
ANSWERS.—See Questions AnD ANSWERS.
*k Copyright, 1906, by Charles Scribner’s Sons
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE 79
ANTIPAS.
ANTONIA (Tower or).—See TEMPLE.
ANXIETY.—See Care.
**KAPOCALYPTIC LITERATURE.—
i. Name and Nature.
ii. Origin and History.
iii. The A pocalypses.
1. The Ethiopie Enoch.
2. The Slavonic Enoch.
3. The Sibylline Oracles.
4, The Assumption of Moses.
5. Fourth Esdras.
6
7
8
See Heron, No. 2.
. The Syriac Baruch.
. The Greek Baruch.
. The Psalter of S6lomon.
9. The Testaments of the XII Patriarchs.
10. The Book of Jubilees.
11. The Ascension of Isaiah.
12. The Histories of Adam and Eve.
13. The Apocalypse of Abrahain.
14. The Apocalypse of Elias.
15. The Apocalypse of Zephaniah.
16. Anonymous Apocalypse.
17. The Prayer of Joseph.
18. The Book of Eldad and Modad.
iv. General Characteristics.
1. The Vision Form,
2. Dualism.
8. Symbolism.
4, Angelology.
5. The Unknown as subject-matter.
6. Pseudonymity.
7. Optimism.
vy. Theological Ideas.
1. The Doctrine of the two Eons.
2. The Impending Crisis.
8. The Conception of God.
4. Complex Cosmology.
5. Arch-enemy of God.
6. Doctrine of Man.
7. Doctrine of Sin.
8. The coming Messiah.
9. The Resurrection.
10. The Judgment.
11. Punishment of the Wicked.
12. The Reward of the Righteous.
13. The Renovation of the World.
14. Predestination.
vi. Contact with the New Testament.
. Apocalyptic Forms in the New Testament.
2. Current Phraseology: Son of Man, ete.
8. Quotations.
4, Influence of Ideas.
5. Treatment of Common Questions.
Literature.
_
i. Name anp Nature.—The term ‘apocalypse’
(ἀποκάλυψις from ἀποκαλύπτω, to uncover) signifies
in the first place the act of uncovering, and thus
bringing into sight that which was before unseen,
hence ‘ revelation.’ It is predominantly a N’'T word.
It occurs rather rarely in extra-biblical Greek, is
used only once in the canonical portion of the LXX
(1 S 20°), and thrice in Sirach (117 227? 421 [4173]).
In the NT it is used to designate the disclosing or
communicating of knowledge by direct Divine act.
The gospel is an apocalypse to the nations (Lk 2”,
Ro 1625-26), St. Paul received it as an apocalypse
(Gal 113). The manifestation of Jesus Christ in
glory is an apocalypse (Gal 27, 2 Co 121.7, 2 Th 1.
1 P 17 18 433),
An apocalypse is thus primarily the act of revela-
tion ; in the second place it is the subject-matter
revealed ; and in the third place a book or literary
production which gives an account of revelation,
whether real or alleged (e.g. ‘The Apocalypse of
St. John the Divine’). As a matter of history, the
form in which the revelation purports to come is
of the utmost importance in determining the ques-
tion whether a writing should be called an apoca-
lypse or not. In general, the form is like the
drawing of the veil from before a picture, the
result of which action presents to the eye a definite
image. All imparting of Divine truth is revela-
tion; but it is not all given in the apocalyptic
form, 1.6. it does not all come in grand imagery, as
if portrayed on canvas or enacted in scenic repre-
————E
80 APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
mre ee es eee ee
sentation. Some revelations come in sub-conscious
convictions. ‘Those who receive them do not feel
called upon to give an account of the way in
which they have received them. In fact they seem
ignorant of the method of communication ; they
only know that they have received knowledge
not previously possessed. Apocalypse and revela-
tion thus, though primarily the same thing, come
to be distinguished from each other.
The term ‘apocalypse’ is also sometimes used,
with an effort at greater precision, to designate
the pictorial portraiture of the future as fore-
shadowed by the seer. When so employed it
becomes appropriate only as the title of certain pas-
sages in books otherwise not to be called apoca-
lypses (so Bousset in Herzog-Hauck, PRE, s.v., who
enumerates the following passages: Dn 27/2; Eth.
En 85-91. 37-71; Ps-Sol 2. 17. 18 ; the Assumption
of Moses; Slav. En.; 4 Ezra; Syr. Bar.; Sibyl.
Orac. iii. 286 to the end, iii. 386-92, iv., the Jewish
source of i. and ii.; also certain sections of the
Apoc. John and 2 Th 2512; Mt 24 with parallels).
To constitute a writing an apocalypse, it is not
necessary that the author should have actually
seen or experienced what he portrays. Itis enough
that he write as one who has had a vision and is
describing it. Thus apocalypse becomes a form
of literature precisely in the same manner as an
epistle. Strictly an epistle is simply a letter from
one person, or many persons, to another, or others.
But, as a matter of usage, it has often been
adopted as a form into which men have chosen to
cast their thoughts for the public. The same is
true of the dialogue, of fiction, and many other
species of literature. Such forms become favourites
in certain ages, usually after some outstanding
character has made successful use of them. The
dialogue became fashionable when Plato made it
such a telling medium for the teaching of his philo-
sophical system. The epistle was used by Horace,
and later by Seneca. The apocalypse form appears
as a favourite about the beginning of the 2nd
cent. B.c. The most illustrious specimen, and
perhaps the prototype of later apocalyptic litera-
ture, is the Book of Daniel.
ii, Ortciy anp Huisrory.—The question has
been mooted as to the earlier antecedents of the
apocalyptic form. Its ultimate source has been
traced variously to Egypt, Greece, Babylonia, and
Persia. In view of the fact, however, that the
Hebrew prophets frequently incorporate visions
into their writings (Is 6, Jer 2413, Ezk 137, Is 24-27),
it is scarcely necessary to go outside of Israel to
search for its origins. Nevertheless, the Persians,
the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks
had their apocalyptics. And it would be a mistake
to ignore the influence especially of Persian forms
during the period of the formation of Jewish apoca-
lyptics. This was the very period when Jewish
forms came most directly into touch with Persian.
In any case, much of the material of the Jewish
apocalypse has been adopted and naturalized from
Persia (οἵ. Bousset, Die Jiid. Apokalyptik, 1903 ;
Gunkel, Schiépfung u. Chaos, 1895). Apocalyptic
literature in general begins before Christ. Soon
after the Christian era it develops into the two
naturally distinct forms of Christian and neo-
Hebraic. Hence we may distinguish three classes
of apocalypses :—(1) ‘The earlier Jewish ones, or
those which were published from B.c. 200 to a.p.100.
Within this class, however, may be included also
such writings as proceed from Jewish sources
purely, though not written until half a century,
more or less, later than the last limit of the period.
(2) Christian apocalypses, including the canonical
book known as the Apocalypse (Revelation of St.
John), and a series of apocryphal. imitations.
These are mostly pseudonymous, but include an | to tell him that He has determined to destroy ths
occasional work in which the author does not con-
ceal his name behind that of an apostle or older
prophet (The Shepherd of Hermas). Apocalypses
of this class pass into Patristics and culminate in
Dante’simmortal Commedia. (8) The neo-Hebraic
apocalypses, beginning with the predominance of
the Talmud (especially the Babylonian) and in-
cluding a series of revelations to the great Rabbis
(The Revelation of R. Joshua b. Levi, The Alpha-
bets of R. Akiba, The Hebrew Elijah Apocalypse,
The Apocalypse of Zerubbabel, The Wars of King
Messiah, The Revelations of R. Simon ἢ. Yohai,
The Prayer of R. Simon b. Yohai, and the Persian
Apocalypse of Daniel).
It would be somewhat beside the purpose of this
article to do more than sketch the first of these
three classes of apocalypses. On the other hand,
as Christ emerged in history at a definite period
and in a definite environment, and as in this en-
vironment nothing is more conspicuous and potent
than the early Jewish apocalyptic literature, the
importance of this literature cannot be overesti-
mated. <A flood of light is shed by the form and
content of these writings upon His life, teaching,
and work. Happily, considerable attention has
been given in recent years to this as a field of
investigation, and some definite results may be
registered.
iii. Tue Apocatyprses.—Of the earlier Jewish
apocalypse, the canonical Daniel forms the proto-
type. The proper place, however, for a particular
treatment of Daniel is conventionally the sphere
of Old Testament Introduction (see art. ‘ Daniel’
in Hastings’ DB vol.i.). Our list will begin with
the Books of Enoch.
4. The Ethiopic Enoch.—The adjective ‘ Ethiopic’
has been attached to the title of this work because
of another Book of Enoch discovered in a Slavonic
version. Outside the canonical Daniel, this is the
best known of the apocalypses, because of the quo-
tation from it in Jude #f. Tertullian knows it,
believes in its genuineness, and attempts to account
for its transmission through and survival under the
vicissitudes of the Flood. It appears to have been
neglected, however, through the Middle Ages, and
lost until 1775, when two MS copies of an Ethiopic
version of it were brought from Abyssinia by
J. Bruce. A translation of one of these was made
by Lawrence, and published in 1821. But its full
importance and significance came to be realized
only with Dillmann’s critical edition of the Ethiopic
text in 1851, which was followed in 1853 by a
thorough German translation and commentary.
A portion of the Greek text was discovered in
1886-7, and edited by H. B. Swete.
Contents.—As it stands to-day, the Book of
Enoch can be subdivided into five main parts with
an introduction and a conclusion, as follows: Jn-
troductory Discourse, in which the author an-
nounces his parable, and formally asks attention
to the important matters which he is about to
divulge (1-5).
(a) The first section is concerned with Angelology
(6-86), beginning with the report of the fall of two
hundred angels who were enticed by the beauty of
the daughters of men, and left heaven in order to
take them for wives. Out of these unions sprang
giants 3000 cubits in height. The fallen angels,
moreover, taught men all manner of secrets where-
by they were led into sin. When the giants had
consumed all the possessions of men, they turned
against the men themselves and smote them until
their cry went up to heaven. Ringleaders of the
angels are Azazel. and Semjaza (6-9). ‘Through the
intercession of the four archangels, Michael, Uriel,
Raphael, and Gabriel, God is moved to arrest
bloodshed upon earth. He sends Uriel to Noah
eS
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
world. He commands Raphael to bind Azazel and
throw him into a pit in the wilderness, where he
shall remain until the day of the great judgment,
and then be cast into the fire. He commands
Gabriel to rouse the giants against each other;
and, finally, he commands Michael to announce to
Semjaza the sentence of punishment, which is,
that the fallen angels shall be kept enchained and
imprisoned under the hills of the earth, waiting
the last judgment, when they shall be cast into
the fire (10). After the destruction of all impiety
upon earth, the righteous shall flourish and live
long, the earth shall yield abundantly, all people
shall pray to God, and all evil shall be banished
from the earth (11). The sentence upon the fallen
angels is communicated to Enoch (12), and he
reveals it to them; but, at their urgent request,
he composes a petition on their behalf, that they
might obtain forgiveness; while rehearsing this,
preparatory to presenting it, he falls asleep and is
informed in a dream that their request for forgive-
ness will not be granted, and once more makes
known to the angels their impending doom (13-16).
Enoch tells of a journey in which he learned of the
places where thunders and lightnings originate,
and saw the stream of Hades, the corner-stone and
the pillars of the world, the seven mountains of
precious stones, andthe places of punishment of
the disobedient angels, t.e. the stars (17-19). He
gives the names and functions of the six (seven)
archangels (20). He once more visits the place of
punishment of the condemned angels, and the
nether world (21), consisting of four parts (22).
He travels to the West (25-25). From there he
returns to the city of Jerusalem, which is the
centre of the earth (26. 27); then he travels to
the East (28-33), to the North (84. 35), and, lastly,
to the South (36).
(δ) The second section is Christological, and con-
sists of chs. 37-71, subdivided into three Simili-
tudes. <A short introductory discourse (37) is fol-
lowed by the first Similitude, including chs, 38-44.
The appearance of the Messiah, the righteous One,
brings an end of sinners upon earth (38). Enoch
is carried by storm-clouds to the end of heaven,
and there beholds the pre-existing Kingdom of
God, the dwellings of the righteous and the elect,
and of angels and archangels -(39. 40). He then
sees the weighing of men’s actions in the balance,
the rejection of sinners, the places prepared for the
righteous, and certain physical mysteries (light-
nings, thunders, winds, hail, mist, clouds, sun and
moon, 41), also the place of Wisdom in heaven (42),
and, finally, some more physical mysteries (43. 44).
The second Similitude includes chs. 45-57. [Ὁ
begins with the Messianic Judgment (45). Enoch
sees the Son of Man beside the Head of Days (46).
An angel explains the vision (47, the Son of Man
will overthrow and judge the kings and mighty
ones of the ungodly). The task of the pre-existing
Son of Man is outlined (48. 49), and the happy con-
sequences of the judgment for the pious, together
with the punishments of the wicked, and the resur-
rection of those who have died in righteousness
(50, 51). In a vision of six mountains of metal
which pass away, the destruction of the heathen
world by the Messiah is portrayed. The heathen
world endeavours through offerings to propitiate
God, but fails. The angels of punishment go forth
to do their work. The synagogue service may now
be carried on unhindered (52-54%). An account of
the coming flood and its oceasion is inserted (547
552), and is followed by the final assault of the
heathen world-power (55°56) and the return of the
dispersed Jews (57). The third Similitude com-
prises chs. 58-69, to which chs. 70 and 71 are added
by way of an appendix. It begins with the picture
of the blessedness of the righteous in heaven (58) ;
VOL. I.—6
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
81
an account of the mystery of lightning and thunder
follows (59). A vision of Noah, an account of
Leviathan and Behemoth, and various nature-
elements which take part in the Flood are then given
(60). The judgment of the Son of Man over the
angels in heaven, and the sentence of kings by Him,
followed by vain pleas on their part for mercy, are
given next (61-64). Then comes the revelation to
Noah of the fall of the angels, the Flood, his own
preservation, the punishment of the angels, and
the judgment of men by the Son of Man (65-69),
Enoch’s translation to Paradise, his ascension to
heaven, and his acceptance by the Son of Man, are
then given in the appendix (70, 71).
(c) The third section is Cosmological, and consists
of chs. 72-82. It has been called the ‘ Book of the
Luminaries of Heaven.’ It contains a revelation
given by the angel Uriel on all sorts of astronomi-
cal and geographical matters, among others on the
convulsions that will occur during the period of
the wicked upon earth. ‘The course of the sun is
first described (72), next the course of the moon
(73. 74) ; untoward days (75) ; the winds (76) ; the
four quarters of heaven (77); further details re-
garding the rising and setting of the sun (78. 79),
changes in the order of things to come in the last
days (80), and the return of Enoch to the earth ;
and the committal of these matters to Methusaleh
(81. 82).
(d) The fourth section is a Historical forecast.
Enoch narrates to his son Methusaleh two visions
which he saw before he had taken a wife to him-
self. The first of these (83. 84) came to him as he
was learning to write. It placed before his eyes
the picture of the Deluge. The second vision
(85-90) unfolded before him the whole history of
Israel from the creation of man to the end of time.
The children of Israel appeared in this vision in
the forms of the clean animals (bulls, sheep, lambs,
and goats). Their enemies were in the form of
dogs, foxes, swine, and all manner of birds of prey.
In the conflict between the clean and unclean, the
struggle of Israe] against her enemies was por-
trayed. The chosen people were delivered into
the hands of lions, tigers, wolves, and jackals
(the Assyrians and Babylonians) ; then they were
put under the care of seventy shepherds (angels).
(From this fact this section of the book takes the
title of ‘ Vision of the Seventy Shepherds’). The
shepherds allowed more of the faithful to perish
than was the will of God, but at the critical
moment there appeared a white lamb in their
midst and entered into a fierce combat with the
birds of prey, while a heavenly being gave him
assistance. ‘Then the Lord Himself burst forth
from heaven, the enemies of Israel were over-
thrown and exterminated, the judgment ensued,
and the universal restoration; and the Messiah
was born as a white bull.
(e) The fifth section (91-105) is a Book of
Exhortations. Enoch commands his son Methu-
saleh to summon to his side all his other sons,
and when they have come he delivers to them
an address on righteousness, which is especially
designed to instruct the righteous of all ages
(911). In this first discourse is inserted the
prediction of the Ten Weeks (91171793). The
remainder of the book (92. 94. 105) is taken up with
final encouragements and messages of hope.
The conclusion of the whole Book of Enoch
(106-108) contains an account of the marvels
destined to accompany the birth of Noah (106, 107),
and a new description of the fiery tribulations
reserved for the wicked and of the blessings that
await those who ‘loved eternal heaven better
than their own lives’ (108).
Literary features.—Thus far the Book of Enoch has been
treated as itis extant. A closer inspection reveals the fact that
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
it is composite. Criticism is still in a considerable state of flux
as to the currect analysis of it. Charles believes it to consist of
five primary documents. Clemen finds in it seven separate
-Enoch traditions or legends worked together by a redactor.
The weight of probability, however, is rather in favour of three
primitive documents: (1) A Book of Enoch, consisting of chs.
1-36 and 72-105; (2) A Book of Similitudes, including chs. 36-71;
and (3) a Noachic document, broken up and inserted in various
parts within the preceding two. The work of redaction appears
to have been done after the two primary documents had under-
gone some modification, possibly accidental. The redactor used
the lost Apocalypse of Noah, alluded to in Jubilees (1018 2119),
supplementing what he deemed to be lacune, The passages in-
serted from the Book of Noah are the following: 547-55? 60.
651-6925, and 106. 107. To these some wouid add several other
passages.
The date of the first of these documents is the first quarter of
the 2nd cent. 5.0. (200 to 175); that of the Book of Similitudes
offers an as yet unsolved problem whose difliculty is somewhat
enhanced by the importance of the issue involved, ¢.e. the rela-
tion the book sustains to the NT. The fact that this relation
is undoubted and intimate has quickened interest and led to the
perception of slight considerations otherwise easily left out of
view. The weight of these considerations is, moreover, 80 well
balanced that criticism seems unable to reach a general con-
sensus on the subject. The views that divide the field are (1)
that the book was composed in the Maccabwan period (Ewald,
B.0. 144); (2) that it was produced between B.c. 95 and 64 (Dill-
mann, Sieffert, Charles) ; (3) thatit was written during the days
of Herod (Liicke, Hausrath, Lipsius, Schodde, Schirer, Balden-
sperger, Beer) ; (4) that it isa product of the 2nd cent., and
written by a Christian who has used an older Jewish apocalypse
as a basis (Hoffmann, Weisse, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Tideman);
(5) that thougha Jewish apocalypse and possibly written before
the beginning of the Christian era, it was interpolated by a
Christian through the insertion of the ‘Son of Man’ passages
(Drummond, Stalker). That the book should have been com-
posed as a Jewish apocalypse and as such adopted the Messianic
title ‘Son of Man’ from the Christian Gospels, is not to be
thought of. That it should have been originally a Jewish
apocalypse and modified by a Christian, either with a free
hand or by the mechanical interpolation of the ‘Son of Man’
passages, is credible. But a more natural hypothesis is that it
was a pre-Christian work, inclusive of the ‘Son of Man’ passages.
It has been demonstrated by Baldensperger and Dalman that
the title ‘Son of Man’ occurs in Jewish rabbinical writings as
the name of the Messiah (Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu*, p. 90;
Words of Jesus, p. 284 f.); and there is therefore nothing in the
occurrence of this phrase to lead to its being considered due to
a Christian author. Upon the whole it is probable that the
book was produced in the 1st cent. B.c. The redaction is diffi-
cult to locate with precision and may be post-Christian.
The originals of the book were undoubtedly Semitic (Hebrew
or Aramaic), The fragment of the Greek version recently dis-
covered shows clear evidences of being the translation of a
Semitic original (the case is argued conclusively by Charles,
Book of Enoch, pp. 21, 22, 325, and Halévy, Journal Asiat, 1887,
pp- 352-395).
Editions.—(1) Ethiopie Text: Lawrence (1838), Dillmann
(1851), Flemming ( 7exte w. Untersuch., Neue Folge, vii. 1, 1902).
(2) Greek Fragments: Bouriant (1892), Lods (1892), Charles
(1893), Swete (1897).
(3) Trans/ations.—English: Lawrence (partial, 1821), Schodde
(1582), Charles(1893).—German: Hoffmann (1833-1838), Dillmann
(1553), Flemming and Radermacher (1901).— French: Lods (the
Greek Fragments only, 1892).
LireratuRE.—(See Charles, Book of Enoch, pp.9-21); Liicke,
Bint.ind. Offenb. Johan. (1852); Ewald, Abhandl.iib.d. Eth. B.
Henoch(1855); Hoffmann, ‘Wb. 4. Entstehungszeit d. B. Henoch,
in ZDMG, 1852, pp. 87-91; Késtlin, ‘Wb. ἃ. Entstehung. ἃ. B.
Henoch’ in Theol. Jahrb. 1856, pp. 240-279, 870-886; Geb-
hardt, ‘Die τὸ Hirten ἃ. B. Henoch’ in Merx’ Archiv, vol. ii.
1572, pp. 163-246 ; Wieseler, ‘ Zur Abfassungszeit ἃ. B. Henoch’
in ZDMG, 1882, pp. 185-195 ; Lawlor in Jowrn. of Philol. 1897,
pp. 164 225 5 Clemen, ‘Die Zusammensetzung ἃ, B. Henoch,
etc.’ in SA, 1898, pp. 210-227; Stalker, Tie Christology of Jesus,
1899, App. B, pp. 269-294,
2. The Slavonic Enoch.—This is one of the most
recent additions to our group of apocalypses. Its
existence was not indeed suspected before its dis-
covery. But this was due to the fact that a num-
ber of books were attributed to Enoch. Τὴ this
very work Enoch is said to have written 366: cf,
25° 68'. And because some of those were extant
in the Ethiopic book no one thought of seeking for
more. Nevertheless, it was no source of surprise
when it was announced that a new Enoch had
been found. This came first as an intimation that
a copy of a Slavonic version of the Ethiopie Enoch
Ἐπ in existence (Kozak in Jahrb. f. Prot. Theol.
892). Prof. Charles started to investigate t
matter, and with the assistance of Mee Morfil
procured and examined printed copies of the
Slavonic text in question. The result was the
publication of the altogether independent and
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
hitherto unknown pseudepigraph (1896). Prof.
Charles’ title for the book is The Book of the
Secrets of Enoch, but it is likely to be known in
the future by the more convenient title, The
Slavonic Enoch,* which distinguishes it from the
better known and older Ethiopic work.
Contents.—The book may be divided into three
parts, viz, (1) The Ascension of Enoch and his
travelsin the Seven Heavens (1-38). (2) The Return
and Instructions to his children (59-56). (3) Second
Series of Instructions, including in his audience an
assemblage of 2000 people, and final assumption
(57-68).
(a) Chs. 1-38. The book opens with a short pro-
logue, introducing the personality of Enoch, and
giving the time and place of a dream he saw (1).
Enoch then warns his children of his impending
absence from them for a time (2) ; he is taken by
two angels up to the first heaven (3), where he sees
200 angels who guard the treasuries of the snow,
the dew, and the oil (4-6). He is next taken up
into the second heaven, and beholds and converses
with the fallen angels (7). In the third heaven, the
paradise prepared for the righteous (8. 9), he is led
to the northern region, where he sees the places of
torture (10). From thence he is taken up into the
fourth heaven, the habitation of the sun and moon,
and there sees the phoenixes and chalkadvis (chalky-
dries), mysterious composite beings with heads of
crocodiles and bodies of serpents (11. 12). In the
eastern portion of the fourth heaven he comes to
the gates of the sun (15); thence he is led to the
western regions, and hears a song by the phoenixes
and chalkydries (14. 15). He is then taken to the
eastern course, and hears indescribable music by
angels (16.17). Here his visit to the fourth heaven
ends; he is carried to the fifth heaven, where he
sees the Grigori or Watchers (18). In the sixth
heaven he delays only a short time, and thence
passes to the seventh (19. 20), where the Lord is
seated on a high throne. Here the ministering
angels who have brought him take their departure ;
Enoch falls down and worships the Lord; he is
stripped of his earthly clothing, anointed, and
robed in suitable apparel; he is given over to
Vretil, the archangel (patron of literature), to be
instructed (21. 22). Under the guidance of this
archangel he writes 866 books (23). He returns
into the presence of the Lord, and holds direct con-
verse with Him, learning the secrets of creation
(24-292), and of the formation of 10,000 angels and
the fall of Satanail (298°); also of the creation
of man, 7.e. Adam and Eve (80), his being placed
in paradise, his fall and judgment (91. 32). God
then declares His purposes for the future (99. 54),
and sends him back to the earth to stay thirty days
longer and teach his children the true knowledge
of God (35-38)
(b) Chs. 89-56. Enoch now begins his admoni-
tions and instructions to his children (89); he tells
of the manner in which he was given his visions,
and of how he wrote them down (40) ; of how he
wept for the sins of Adam (41) ; of his visit to the
gates of hell, and the impression produced upon
him (42); of the judgment of the Lord (43); of the
duty of charity (44); of the superiority of a contrite
and broken heart to sacrifice as a means of pleas-
ing God (45) ; of God’s love of purity in heart and
His rejection of the sacrifices of the impure (46) ;
and commends his writing to them as a permanent
means of knowing God’s will (47. 48). He further
instructs them not to swear by heaven or the
earth, and deprecates vengeance (49. 50); he urges
them to be generous to the poor, not to hoard up
treasures on earth (51), to praise God, and to be at
peace with men (52). He enjoins them not to
_* Bonsset quotes these two works as I and II Enoch respec-
tively (Die Religion des Judenthums, 1903).
———
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
trust in his own intercession with God, but to give
heed to his writings and be wise (53); and closes
his address with an exhortation to circulate his
writings, announcing at the same time that the
hour for his ascension to heaven has come (54, 55).
(6) Chs. 56-67. The second series of Exhorta-
tions opens with a request by Methosalem for a
blessing over the houses and children of Enoch
(58); Enoch asks Methosalem to call his brothers
together (57), and gives them his instructions (58),
especially that they should not eat the flesh of
cattle (59), nor kill any man through ‘net,’
‘weapon,’ or ‘tongue’ (60); but practise right-
eousness, and trust in repentance for the future
(61. 62), and not despise the humble and thus
incur God’s curse (65). At this point God calls
Enoch with a loud voice, and 2000 persons come
together to give him their greetings (64); he
delivers his final exhortations to them, which are
to the effect that they should fear and serve the
Lord (65. 66). A thick darkness covers the earth,
and while it lasts Enoch is taken up, but no one
knows how (67). The book concludes with a
summary of Enoch’s life and work, and an account
of Methosalem’s building an altar upon the spot
where his father was last seen before his ascension.
Literary questions.—The author of the work was an Alex-
andrian Jew. This is made clear by the affinities of his style
and thought with those of Philo, his use of the LXX, his por-
traiture of phenixes and chalkadris (chalkydries), and his
syncretistic cosmogony. The date of composition cannot be
later than a.p. 70. The temple was evidently still standing, and
sacrifice was offered (592). But the Ethiopic Enoch was also in
existence (405-9, cf. also 432-3 528 61?- 4).
The original language was undoubtedly Greek. This is proved
by the explanation of the name Adam, which is made upon
the basis of the Greek form ASAM, each letter representing one
of the cardinal points of the compass (ANATOAH, ΔΥΣΙΣ,
APKTOS, MEZHMBPIA). The book was known and used by
Barnabas, by the author of the Ascension of Isaiah, by the
author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, by some
of the many Sibyls, and by Irenzus.
Editions.—The Slavonic text has been published from different
manuscripts, varying more or less from one another, and not as
yet fully collated (Popoff, 1880).
Translations.—English: Charles and Morfill, The Book of the
Secrets of Enoch, 1896.—German: Bonwetsch, ‘Das Slavische
Henochbuch’ in Abhandl. ἃ. Gott. Ges. d. Wiss. (Phil.-hist.
Klasse, Neue Folg. 1-3, 1596).
Lirerature.—Harnack, Gesch. ἃ. Altchrist. Litt. ii. 1, 1897,
p. 564; Charles in Hastings’ DB, 1898; Volz, Jiid. Eschato-
logie, 1903, pp. 29, 30.
3. The Sibylline Oracles.—The name ‘sibyl” is
of uncertain derivation. Even the spelling of the
word varies in the earliest period. It is, however,
avery ancient one, and occurs as early as in the
works of Heraclitus. By the Romans a number
(ten) of sibyls were distinguished. The one of
Erythre in Tonia is reckoned the oldest. The
sibyl of Cumz (Kyme) became the most famous.
Large collections of verses were circulated under
her name during the latter years of the common-
wealth and the early empire. Sibylline verses
became common in Egypt, and there arose a so-
called Jewish sibyl simultaneously with the ap-
pearance of the spirit of proselytism among the
Jews. Finally, a Christian sibyl came into ex-
istence in succession to and imitation of the Jewish
one. The productions of the Jewish and Christian
sibyls are for the most part blended into one body.
They constitute a compilation of hexameters in
twelve Books, besides some fragments. Each of
these is evidently independent of the others, and
may have circulated separately.
Contents. —Book I. opens with an account of the
Creation, based upon Genesis. This is followed by
the story of the Fall, the multiplication of man-
kind, the appearance of four successive races down
to the days of the giants, the story of Noah and
the Flood, a sixth race and the Titans from whom
the transition is made to Christ, and the dispersion
of the Jews.—Book II. predicts a time of plagues
and wickedness, which is succeeded by the tenth
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE 83
race (the Romans), and a period of peace. After
an interpolation of a group of proverbs, the woes
of the last generations are portrayed, and the
events of the last day of judgment and resurrection
are foretold. Then follows a picture of the punish-
ment of the wicked and the blessedness of the
righteous.—Book III. extols the unity and power
of God, denounces idolatry, proclaims the coming
of the Great King, and of his opponent Beliar,
foreshadows the reign of a woman (Cleopatra), and
the subjection of the world to Christ. At this
point the sibyl returns to the origin of man, and
beginning with the Tower of Babel recounts the
story as given in the OT down to Roman days.
She foretells the doom of Rome, and of many
Asiatic cities, as well as of the islands of the
/Egean. A general judgment and millennium
(Messianic Day) closes the book.—Book IV. de-
clares the blessedness of the righteous, sketches
successively the Assyrian and Medo-Persian domi-
nations, announcing the Greek conquest, which
will bring woes on Phrygia, Asia, and Fgypt; one
great king especially will cause calamities to fall
on Sicily and Greece. After the Macedonian will
come a Roman conquest. The impious will suffer
many evils, and a general resurrection, judgment
and retribution will follow.—Book V. opens with
a prophecy of the reign of the Roman emperors ;
it then passes in review the calamities impending
on Egypt and Asia Minor; it breaks out into a
felicitation of the Jews and Juda, and of the
heavenly Joshua, and once more returns to further
details of judgment, such as the destruction of
Serapis, Isis, and the Ethiopians.—Book VI. de-
scribes the pre-existence, incarnation, and baptism
of the Son of God, His teaching and miracles,
the miseries in store for the guilty land, and the
glories of the Cross. —Book VII. is an account of
the woes impending upon various lands and cities
of Greece, Asia Mincr, and Egypt, in which just
one prediction of the signs of the Messiah is incor-
porated.—Book VIII. is a history of the world
under five monarchies. The fifth of these furnishes
the subject for a prophecy of misery, judgment,
and destruction. From this the sibyl passes to the
denunciation of woes upon Egypt, the islands of
the Mediterranean, and Persia, and closes with a
picture of the Messiah.—Books IX. and X. are in
fragments.—Book XI. is an orderly story of the
world-powers from the time of the Tower of Batel
to the subjection of Egypt under Cleopatra.—
Book XII. pictures the fortunes of the Ceesars,
beginning with Augustus and closing with Alex-
ander Severus.—Book XIII. concerns the times of
the emperors of the Ist cent., beginning with
Maximin. It touches more especially upon their
relations with the Persians and Syrians, closing
with an allegory of a bull, a stag, a lion, and a
goat.—Book XIV. is the most obscure of the
Sibylline productions. The writer evidently in-
tends to unfold the fortunes of a long succession
of emperors and conquerors. He gives the initial
letter of the name of each, and suggests other
ways of identification. But his descriptions are
so wide of the historical figures that they cannot
be safely identitied. The period portrayed is
generally the late Roman and possibly the early
Byzantine.
Literary questions.—The above division into books was
made in the 6th cent. of the Christian era (during the reign of
Justinian), Whoever made it is also responsible for the collection
of the oracles from various sources, and the insertion of certain
verses of his own among them. It has been conjectured that
he was a literary monastic and expert transcriber of manu-
scripts. Before his time the verses were circulated in a rude,
undigested mass. The task of unravelling the confusion, which
does not seem to have disturbed him, and of rearranging the
material according to authorship and date of origin, is a very
complex one, and not as yet fully accomplished. This much is
evident, however, that there are four classes of utterances in the
84 APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
oracles: (1) those which issue from a Jewish source ; (2) those
which come trom a Christian; (3) those which are of heathen
origin ; and (4) neutral elements. ‘The last of these adds very
much to the difficulty of the critical problem. The heathen
elements are not very extensive, and attach themselves in
general to the Jewish. For the rest, the analysis which results
from the labours of Ewald and Alexandre may be safely adopted
as workable, and is as follows : — ,
The Sibylline Oracles may be grouped into eight parts, each
by a different author and from a different age, as follows—(1)
The Prologue of Book I, and Book IIL., 97-828, belong to the age
of Ptolemy Physcon (8.0. 140). They were therefore written by
an Alexandrian Jew. They constitute the pith and kernel of
the whole collection in point of value for the study of inter-
Testamental conditions and modes of thought, and for the
times of Jesus. (2) Book LV. was written about A.D. 80. Its
author may have been either a Christian or a Jew, with the
probability largely in favour of the former alternative. (3)
Book V., with the possible exception of the first part, issued
from the Ist cent. A.p., and is a mixture of Jewish and Christian
fragments impossible to disentangle from each other. (4) Books
VI. and VIL. (to which Ewald adds the first part of Book VY.) date
from the early part of the 3rd century. The author was a
heretical Christian. (5) Book VIII., 1-360, is also by a Christian,
but not a heretic, probably of the middle of the 8rd century.
(6) Book VIIL., 361-501, is also by an orthodox Christian of the
8rd century. (7) Book I. (without the Prologue), Book II., and
Book III., 1-85, come from the middle of the 3rd cent., and are
of Christian origin. (8) Books XI., XIL, XIIL., and XIV. were
written by a Jew resident in Egypt, who, however, lived in
Christian times, and is acquainted with some Christian prac-
tices. According to this analysis, these oracles cover a period
of more than 400 years in their production, and represent a wide
variety of types of thought.
Editions.—The first eight books in the original Greek text
were published in 1545 at Basel, and subsequently by others up
to Angelo Mai (1819 and 1828, Milan). The first complete edition
is that of Alexandre (1841, and again 1869). Recent critical
editions by Rzach (1891), Getfeken (1902), and Heitz (1908):
Translations.—Latin : Sebastian Castalio (1546), Angelo Mai
(1817).—English : Floyer (prose, 1731), M. 8. Terry (metrical,
1899).—French: Bouché-Leclereq in Revue de l Histoire des
Religions, vols. vii. 1833, pp. 236-248; viii. 1883, pp. 619-635 ;
ix. 1584, pp. 220-233 (left incomplete).—German : Friedlieb
(1852), Blass (of III. IV. and V. in Kautzsch’s Pseudepigr.
1900).
Lirerature.—(See Englemann, Bibliotheca Scriptorwmn
Classicorum, 1880, i. p. 528); Bleek, ‘Ub. d. Entstehung u.
Zusammensetz. d. Sibyl. Or.’ in Theol. Zeitschr., herausg. v.
Schleiermacher, de Wette, u. Liicke, i. 1819, pp. 120-246; ii.
1820, pp. 172-239; Hilgenfeld, ‘Die Jiidische Sibyllen-Weissa-
gung’in ZWT7h, 1860, pp. 818-819 ; also 1871, pp. 80-50; Ewald,
Abhandlung tb. Entstehung, Inhalt wu. Wert. d. Sibyl.
Biicher, 1858; Laroque, ‘Sur la date du troisiéme Livre Sib.’
in Revue Archéolog., 1869, pp. 269-270; Bernhardy, Grundriss
der Griech. Litt., iii. (ii. 1, pp. 441-458, 1867); Buresch, ‘* Die
Pseudosib. Or.’ in Jahrbb. f. Class. Phil. 1891, pp. 529-555 ;
1892, pp. 278-308 ; Friedlinder, ‘ La Sibylle Juive’ in RE, 1894,
pp. 188-196; Harnack, Gesch. d. Altchrist. Litt. i. 762, 861-
863; ii. 581-589; Schiirer, W/P τι. iii. 271-292.
4. The Assumption of Moses.—There is some
yagueness in the early Patristic references to the
Assumption of Moses. Syncellus (ed. Dind. i. 48)
mentions an Apocalypse of Moses. Clement of
Alexandria (Adumb. in Epist. Jud. [ap. Zahn,
Supplementum Clementinum, 841) and Didymus
(Epist. Jude Enarratio [in Gallandi, Bib. Patr.
vi. 5077) allude to an Assumptio Moysi. Origen
(de Princ. 11. ii. 1) refers to an Adscensio Mosis.
In the Acts of the Nicene Synod (Mansi, Sacror.
Concil. Nova Collectio, ii. 18, 20) there is mention
again of an Assumption of Moses. In other lists
of apocrypha, a Testament (Διαθήκη) of Moses is
mentioned ( Stichometry of Nicephorus and Synopsis
of pseudo-Athanasius). It has been argued (by
Schiirer, followed by Charles) that these two titles
represent two separate divisions of one and the
same book, or two books fused together in one.
The work was lost during the Middle Ages, and
recovered by Ceriani in an old Latin version in the
Ambrosian Library at Milan in 1861.
Contents—Moses calls to himself Joshua, the
son of Nun, and directs him to preserve his writ-
ings (1). He then forecasts the apostasy and
distress of the twelve tribes of Israeli and their divi-
.Sions into the ten and two (2), their awakening to
consciousness of their sin, their repentance (3), the
restoration of the two tribes and the preservation
of the ten among the Gentiles (4), their repeated
backslidings (5), the tyranny of Herod (6), the pre-
valence of wicked leaders over them (7), the oppres-
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
sion by the Romans (8), the advent of the Levite
Taxo,* who was destined to restore a better state
of things among them (9). At this point the
author inserts a Psalm of Hope and adds a few
concluding words closing the discourse of Moses
(10). Joshua then laments over the course of
events revealed to him, and refuses to be com-
forted (11) ; but Moses urges him to take up his
work, and conquer and destroy the Gentiles (12).
At this point the book breaks off rather abruptly.
Literary questions.—The Patristic quotations from the As-
sumption of Moses identify the words of Jude ® as from this
book; but as the extant text does not contain the words, it
can only be that it is either (1) wrongly entitled, or (2) that
the quotation is made from the second part of it which is
lost (Schiirer), or (3) that two separate works entitled respec-
tively The Testament of Moses and the Assumption (Ascension)
of Moses were fused into one (Charles). The last position is
most convincingly supported by its advocate, and seems the
most probable. The present so-called Assumption of Moses is
then the Testament of Moses, bearing within it traces of the
addition to it of the original Assumption of Moses.
The text of the book exists in a single Latin manuscript of the
5th (6th) cent. A.p. This is undoubtedly a translation from a
Greek text. It has been further conjectured that the Greek
itself was a translation of a Hebrew or Aramaic original; but
though the advocates of each of these languages, as also of the
Greek, strenuously defend each his position, in the absence of
definite data nothing can be dogmatically asserted on the point.
Hilgenfeld and Drummond favour a Greek original; Ewald
argues for a Semitic (either Hebrew or Aramaic); Wieseler and
Langen, for a Hebrew; Hausrath, Schmidt-Merx, Dillmann,
Thompson, for an Aramaic.
The author of the work was probably a devout Jew, a
Pharisee, and a mystic who does not share but rather aims to
defeat the purposes of the Zealots (so Charles, but it has been
strenuously maintained that he was a Zealot). The date of the
composition is fixed by the allusion to Herod the Great. At the
earliest, it must be 44, but various dates down to 138 have been
advocated. The design of the author seems to be to teach the
lesson that God has foreseen and foreshadowed all things;
hence Israel should entertain no fear. A deliverer is to come.
Editions.
Fase. 1, pp. 55-64), Hilgenfeld (NT extra Canonem Receptum,
1876, pp. 107-135), Sechmidt-Merx (Archiv, τ. ii. 1868, p. 111 ff.),
Fritzsche (Lib. Apoc. Vet. Test. 1871, pp. 700 to 730), Charles
(Assumption of Moses, 1897, pp. 54-101). ,
Translations.—Greek: Hilgenfeld (attempted restoration
from the Latin, Messias Judeworum, 1869, pp. 485-468).—
English: Charles, Assumption of Moses (1897).—German:
Volkmar, Mose Prophetie und Himmelfahrt (1867), Clemen in
Kautzsch’s Pseudepigr. (1900).
Lirerature.—Colani, ‘ L’Assomption de Moise’ in Revue de
Théol. 1868, pp. 65-94; Wieseler, ‘Die jiingst aufgefundene
Aufnahme Moses,’ ete., in Juhrbb. f. deutsche Theol. 1508, pp.
622-648 ; Heidenheim, ‘ Beitrige z. besser. Versténdniss d. As-
censio Mosis’ in Vierteljahrschrift f. deutsche τι. englische
Theologie, 1874, pp. 216-218; Hilgenfeld, Z W7Zh, 1886, pp. 192-
139; Schirer, 7//P τι. iii. 73-83.
5. Fourth Ezra (Second Esdras ).—This pseudepi-
graph has been known from the earliest Christian
days, and widely circulated under the name of
Ezra as his second, third, fourth, or fifth book,
according to the various ways of grouping and
entitling the books that issue from the Restoration
generation. (See explanation of these names by.
Thackeray in Hastings’ DB, art. ‘ Esdras, First
Book of’). Fourth Ezra, however, has come to be
generally accepted as the name for it.
Contents.—This is given in seven visions. The
First Vision (31-5!9) is granted to Ezra in answer
to disturbing doubts arising in his mind. ‘These
concern the origin of sin and suffering in the world
(816), An angel gives him the answer: God’s
ways are inscrutable. The human spirit can com-
prehend but little (41:21), But as he pleads that it
is painful to be left in ignorance on such vital
matters, he is assured of a change of zon to take
place soon. Definite signs will mark the change.
He must fast for seven days, and receive another
revelation at the end of that time (422-519),
The Second Vision (57°68) is granted in answer
* After unsuccessful attempts by many others, a satisfactory
explanation of this name has been given by Burkitt (see
Hastings’ DB iii. 449>). Taxo is a copyist’s mistake for Taxok
--Ταξώκ: ἀπά this is to be read by Gematria as Eleazar.
MD2i= WIN. Eleazar the father of seven sons is the great
Levite (2 Mac 619),
Ceriani (Monumenta Sacra et Profana, vol. iv
—
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
to the question, Why has God given over His only
chosen people into the hands of the heathen ὃ
(5230), He receives the answer that God loves
His people, and the problem must be regarded as
not solvable for man: nevertheless deliverance is
- drawing near; the generations of men are passing ;
the world has become old; the signs of the end are
visible (531-634),
The Third Vision (69-975), like the second, is
given after a period of seven days’ fasting, and is
in answer to the question, Why does not Israel
possess the land which belongs to it? (0559), The
answer is not direct. An evil age must neces-
sarily precede the good that shall be in the future
(716), The doom of sinners is grievous but well-
deserved. The Son of God, the Christ, shall
appear in judgment (717-4). Few are chosen, but
all the greater is the honour conferred on them
(7474), A sevenfold suffering and a sevenfold joy
await men in the intermediate state (7710),
Intercession for the condemned will be of no avail
at the last judgment (71), they have deserved
their doom (716181), God’s mercy is consistent
with the sufferings of the condemned (71-819), At
this point Ezra interposes a prayer and receives an
answer (8745), The saved shall rejoice at their
own lot, and forget the sufferings of sinners (846 61),
It is certain that the end of the world is nigh.
The signs are not to be mistaken (8-915). There
are more of the lost than of the saved (91:55),
The Fourth Vision (96-10%) is given upon the
Plain of Ardath. It consists of a symbolic picture
of Zion’s sorrow, followed by glory. The vision
(925-1028) presents a woman in tattered garments,
weeping and wailing because of her lost son. The
explanation by the angel (10°8) identifies the
woman with Zion, and points out the lesson to the
seer.
The Fifth Vision (1060. 1251) presents the fourth
world-empire under the figure of an eagle coming
out of the sea, and like the fourth vision falls into
two parts, i.e. the Vision (108°-12*) and the inter-
pretation of it by the angel (124). This is fol-
lowed by a Conclusion in story form. The people
come out to seek for Ezra, they find him in the
* plain, and he sends them back into the city (121).
The Sixth Vision (191-58) portrays a man emerg-
ing out of a stormy sea and floating on a cloudless
heaven (13!4). A countless multitude comes to
wage war against him; but by a stream of fire
proceeding from his mouth he overcomes his
enemies (13°), Then another host of friendly
men flock around him (13!2-18), The question is
raised, Is it better to survive to the end of the
world or to die beforehand? It is answered in
favour of the former alternative (151**4). The ex-
planation of the vision follows. The man in the
cloud is the Son of God, the events are those of the
Messianic age (15758),
The Seventh Vision (141) is given three days
after the sixth, under an oak. This is the familiar
legend of Ezra’s restoring the lost Scriptures. But
it begins with a command to keep his present
vision secret (1417). A prayer of Ezra follows, in
which he beseeches the Lord for the privilege of
rewriting the lost Scriptures (141-6), The prayer
is answered, and Ezra reproduces the lost books
together with seventy others (142748), The book
concludes with an account of Ezra’s decease.
The above does not include chs. 1. 2 and 15. 16,
found in the Latin Version, which is the basis of
the chapter divisions of the book. ‘The Latin
Version has also served as the basis of some
current translations into English (The Variorum
Apocrypha, by C. J. Ball, and in Wace’s Holy
Bible, ‘Apocrypha,’ by Lupton). These four
chapters are universally regarded as later addi-
tions by a strongly anti-Jewish Christian author,
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE 85
appended respectively to the beginning and end of
the Latin Version. The other versions do not
contain them. They have been detached and pub-
lished together as 5th Esdras by Fritzsche (Lib.
Apocr. Vet. Test. ‘Liber Esdrz Quintus,’ pp. 640-
653).
Literary questions.—The book is a unity, and compara-
tively free from interpolations and editorial tampering. The
author was a devout man for whom problems of theodicy
especially had a considerable fascination, but he is also inter-
ested in the broader and more constant questions which recur
in the religious sphere with every generation. He naturally
looks into his own age, and finds no sign of a restoration to
righteousness and recognition of God in the forces that work
there. He accordingly plants his hopes in the world to come.
Kabisch has indeed analyzed the work into four different pro-
ductions fused together into unity by clumsy redactors (Das
Vierte Buch Esra, 1889), and his theory has been substantially
accepted by de Faye, but his observations would lead rather to
the composition of the book from pre-existing sources than to
the bringing together of independent books of documents by a
redactor. The impression of unity is too strong to be destroyed
by such considerations as Kabisch alleges.
The date of the book cannot be earlier than the fall of Jeru-
salem, as that event is distinctly alluded to (3? 1048 1248), The
Temple is destroyed and the service in abeyance (1074). A still
later chronological starting-point is given in an allusion to the
death of Titus (115°); the author even expects the death of
Domitian (122.28). It is safe, therefore, to set down the year 90
as approximately the time of composition.
Editions.—The book exists in Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic,
Arabic (2), and Armenian versions. The original was in Greek.
This is made evident by the characteristic differences of the ver-
sions. They are all easily accounted for by an original Greek.
The Latin text was first edited critically by Volkmar (1863) ;
also by Fritzsche (Lib. Apocr. Vet. Test. 1871). The Syriac was
published in Ceriani’s Monwmenta Sacra, i. Fase. 2 (1866) ;
also in photolithographie reproduction, under the title Zrans-
latio Syro-Pescitto Veteris Testamenti, ete. (1876-1883) ;
again by R. Bensly, with an introd. by M. R. James ( Texts and
Studies, Camb. iii. 2, 1895). The Ethiopic was published by
Lawrence (1820), the Arabic by Gildemeister (1877), the Arme-
nian by the Mechitharists in Venice (1806).
Translations.—English: Bissell (Lange’s Commentary,
1880), Lupton (Wace’s ‘ Apocrypha,’ 1888).—German: Volkmar
(1863), Ewald (Abhandl. d. Gott. Geselisch. d. Wiss, xi. 1862-
1863), Zockler (Agf. Aom. 1891). A translation into Greek was
made and published by Hilgenfeld (Messias Jud@orum, 1869).
Lirerature.—Corrodi, Arit. Gesch. ἃ. Chiliasmus, 1731,
vol. i. pp. 179-230; Gudschmid, ‘Die Apoc. des Esra,’ ete., in
ZWTh, 1860; Volkmar, Handbuch d. Einleit. in die Apokr,
1893; Wieseler, ‘Das Vierte b. Ezra’ in SK, 1870, pp. 263-
304; Kabisch, Das Vierte B. Ezra, 1889; Schieffer, Die re-
ligidsen und ethischen Anschauungen des IV Ezra Buches,
1901; Clemen in SK, 1898, pp. 237-246; Schiirer, σύ ΕΓ iii.
232 ff. [JP I. 111. 93 ff.].
6. The Syriac Baruch.—Baruch is mentioned
as Jeremiah’s companion and helper during the try-
ing days which ended in the destruction of Jeru-
salem and the deportations under Jehoiakim and
Zedekiah (Jer 52!- 1336.45). The fact that he wrote
under Jeremiah’s direction seems to have stimu-
lated the tendency to publish alleged prophecies
and revelations in his name. ‘The first of these
was the book that passed into the group of OT
Apocrypha. One of Ceriani’s many contributions
to apocalyptics was the discovery, translation into
Latin (1866), and later publication of a Syriac text
of a Book of Baruch (Monumenta Sacra, vy. 1871,
pp. 11-18).
Contents.—The book is divided into two main
parts, 1.6. the Apocalypse proper (chs. 1-77) and the
Letter to the Nine Tribes and a Half (chs. 78-87).
Part I. may again be subdivided into seven sec-
tions. (1) The first section (1-12) begins with the
announcement of the impending fall of Jerusalem,
and the captivity of Judah; next comes the por-
traiture of the advancing Chaldeans, the hiding of
the treasures of the Temple, and the destruction
of the walls by angels, so that the Chaldeans might
not claim the glory of the capture of the city.
The next day the city is occupied by the enemy
(6-8). Baruch stays amid the ruins of the city,
while Jeremiah, by Divine command, accompanies
the exiles to Babylon (9-12).—(2) The second
section (13-20) contains a vision given to Baruch
while standing on Mount Zion. He is assured that
the calamity just fallen on the chosen people has
86 APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
been inflicted in mercy (13); he complains that
good men are no better than others, but is answered
that sin in one who possesses the Law is worthy of
being punished (14.15). He expresses other mis-
givings which are answered, He is then promised
a new revelation (16-20).—(8) The third section
(21-34) opens with Baruch’s appearance at the end
of seven days in the place appointed. Here he
expresses his thoughts in the form of a prayer (21) ;
he is shown that his knowledge is imperfect, that
the time is coming when God’s judgment will
mature (22-25) ; he wishes to know of the distresses
of the last days (26), and is given a revelation
concerning the order of the times. The tribula-
tion will come in twelve stages (27) ; the whole
earth will be affected, but those in the chosen
land will escape ; the Messiah will appear, first to
pring blessings to the righteous on the earth (28.
29), and then, as He returns'to His glory, to raise
from the dead both the righteous and the un-
righteous, and consign them respectively to happi-
ness and perdition (30). Baruch then summons
the elders of the people, and announces to them
that the ruined Zion shall be rebuilt and destroyed
again, and finally restored in glory to last for ever
(31-34).—(4) The fourth section (85-46) gives a
vision which Baruch saw as he slept amid the ruins
of the Holy Place. On one side there appeared
a great forest in a valley surrounded with moun-
tains; on the other side a vine with a gentle
spring streaming from beneath its roots, But the
spring grew into a mighty river, and overwhelmed
the forest, together with the mountains round
about. A solitary cedar was left. The stream
first addressed words of denunciation against the
cedar, and then annihilated it. In the place of
forest and mountains the vine grew, and the valley
was filled with blossoms (35-37). ‘The interpreta-
tion of the vision is given as requested by Baruch.
The kingdoms which have oppressed Zion shall be
overwhelmed by the Messiah. ‘The cedar is the
last king of the last kingdom ; he shall be slain by
the Messiah, who shall then begin His eternal
reign (38-40). Baruch is commanded to warn the
people and prepare himself for further visions (41-
43), which he accordingly does (44-46).—(5) ‘The
fifth section (47-52) also opens with a prayer of
Baruch’s offered seven days later (47-4874). In
answer Baruch receives a new revelation regarding
the distress of the last days (4875-9), and of the re-
surrection both of the evil and the good, together
with their punishment and reward (49-52).—(6) The
sixth section (53-76) is again in the form of a vision.
A cloud ascends from the sea, and pours forth upon
the earth black and white (dark and bright) waters.
Lightning illumines it, and twelve streams are put
in subjection under it (53). Baruch prays that it
may be explained to him (54), and the angel Ramael
is sent to him to interpret the vision (55). The
cloud pouring forth the waters represents mankind
in its historical unfolding; the dark waters stand
for evil ages, the bright for good. The course of
the world from Adam to the Exile is thus sym-
bolized, The twelve periods are identified with
the bright and dark streams (56-68), The twelfth
is the age of the rebuilding of Jerusalem and of
the restoration of the Temple service. These
twelve are followed by a last black stream, which
stands for the tribulation of the Messianic age.
Then shall the Messiah take charge of the few
saved ones (69-71). The lightning isthe Messiah,
and His eternal beneficent reign (72-74). Baruch
thanks God, and is informed that he will shortly
be taken from the earth, though not by death (75.
i6).—(7) The seventh section tells how Baruch
called the people together, told them of his im-
pending departure, wrote two letters, one to the
exiles in Babylon and the other to the nine and a
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
half tribes in the regions beyond, and how he sent
the first by messengers and entrusted the second
to an eagle (77).
Part 11. This part of the book is taken up with
the letter to the nine tribes and a half (78-87). In
it Baruch recalls to the minds of the tribes God’s
mercy, and assures them that their sufferings are
intended for their good (78-81). God has shown
Baruch in visions the meaning of their experiences
and the doom of their enemies (82-84) ; they should
therefore be undismayed, and expect speedy de-
liverance, for the end is near (85). The letter then
ends with formal instructions (86. 87).
Literary questions.—The extant text in Syriac is from an
original Greek. This is shown by the use of such forms as
Godolias Sedekias, ete., which could only have been made
from the Greek. The word for ‘ splendour’ in 37 is manifestly
atranslation of κόσμος. Butif the Syriac was made from a Greek
text, was this Greek the original language of the book? The
answer demanded by the facts seems to be negative. There
are traces of a Hebrew original behind the Greek. The most
distinct of these is the occurrence of Hebrew idioms suryiv-
ing through the two translations. Moreover, the quotations
agree in all cases with the Hebrew text as distinguished from
the LX X, which must have been used had the original been in
Greek. Certain obscurities, too, can be cleared up by retrans-
lation into Hebrew. (For the full argument see Charles, Ze
Apoc. of Baruch, pp. xliii-liii.)
The relation of this apocalypse to 4 Ezra is very striking.
Both books seem to be the products of the same environment.
They deal with the same questions and in similar fashion,
Their resemblances are indeed so marked that they have been
denominated ‘the twin apocalypses.’
The author of Baruch was evidently a Jew. The date when
he wrote is determined partly from his relation to the author
of 4 Ezra. There are other data in the case. Papias quotes one
sentence from it, though attributing the expression to Jesus.
This fixes the terminusad quem as a.p. 130. The terminus a
quo is an allusion to Eth. Enoch 561%: 18, hence B.c. 160. Charles,
however, following Kabisch, believes that it was put together
out of five or six independent writings, composed between A.D.
50 and 90, some time about the year 100.
Editions.—The Syriac Text: Ceriani (Monumenta Sacra, v.
fase. 11, 1871; also in photolithographie reproduction of the
entire MS of the Syriac OT, 1876).
Translations.—Latin: Ceriani (1866) ; Fritzsche, Zib. Apoer.
1861.—English: Charles, The Apocalypse of Baruch, 1596.—
German: Rothstein in Kautzsch’s Psewdepigr. 1900.
LiIrERATURE.—Langen, de Apocalypsi Baruch, 1867 ; Renan,
‘L’ Apocalypse de Baruch’ in Journal des Savants, 1877, pp.
292-931; Kneucker, Das Buch Bar. 1879; Hilgenfeld, ZWTh,
1588, pp. 257-278 ; Kabisch, ‘ Die Quellen Baruchs’ in Jahrb. 7.
Prot. Theol. 1892, pp. 66-107; Clemen, SA, 1898, pp. 227-237.
7. The Greek Baruch.—A hint as to the exist-
ence of another book bearing the name Baruch was
long known to exist in a passage of Origen (de
Prine. τι. iii. 6), in which he alludes to Baruclhi’s
account of the Seven Heavens. No such account is
to be found either in the OT apocryphon or in the
Syriac apocalypse bearing the name of Baruch.
But it was not until 1896 that the book alluded to
by Origen was discovered and published in Zezts
and Studies (Camb. vol. v. 1, pp. 84-94).
Contents.—The book opens with Baruch’s lamen-
tation and prayer over the fallen kingdom of Judah.
Forthwith an angel visits him and promises to show
him wonderful secrets (1). The promise is fulfilled.
He is taken up into the first heaven, where he sees
creatures with the faces of bulls, the horns of stags,
the feet of goats, and the haunches of lambs; he
then inquires as to the dimensions of this heaven,
and is given some astounding figures (2). In the
second heaven he sees men with the look of dogs
and the feet of deer. They are those who have
counselled the building of the tower [of Babel] (9).
In the third heaven he sees a dragon which lives
on the bodies of the wicked; it is Hades. He
further learns that the tree which caused Adam’s
fall was the vine, and therefore the abuse of the
fruit of the vine has ever since been the source of
fearful evils to men (4). He is told the nature of
Hades (5), and is shown the Phoenix, which pro-
tects the earth from the burning rays of the sun (6).
The approach of this monster terrifies him (7). He
learns that the renewing of the crown of the sun is
necessary, because the view of the sins of men daily
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
dims and weakens this luminary; it must be
cleansed and refreshed at the end of each day (8).
The chariot of the moon and the explanation of its
Stages, together with the reason for its shining
only at night, are then made known to Baruch (1).
In the fourth heaven he comes into view of a vast
plain and body of water which is the source of the
‘dew of heaven’ (10). The gates of the fifth heaven
are closed as he and his guide come to them ; but
upon being opened they admit the archangel
Michael, who receives the prayers and good works
of the righteous and presents them before God
(11, 12). The guardian angels of the unrighteous
petition to be released from their hated work, but
are told to wait (13). Michael departs, but returns
again bringing oil, which he gives to the angels
that had brought to him the virtues of men (14. 15).
He addresses the angels who had brought no good
works (16). The gate closes, and the propbet and
angel return to the earth.
Literary questions.—Thus far there are two recensions of
this apocalypse known, the Greek and the Slavonic. But
neither of them is believed to be the original. Their relations
to one another are those of a more and a less condensed version
of the same story. That the original must have been fuller and
larger is clear from Origen’s intimation that it gave an account
of seven heavens, whereas the Greek text before us stops with
the fifth heaven, and the Slavonic knows of only two.
The relation of the book to the Syriac Baruch is probably ex-
plained by referring to 76°- 4 of that work. Here God promises
to give Baruch, after the lapse of forty days, a further revelation
regarding the world of material elements (the cycle of the earth,
the summits of the mountains, the depths of the valleys and of
the seas, and the number of the rivers). The fulfilment of this
promise is not recorded in what follows, and the Greek apo-
calypse was composed to show not only that it was fulfilled,
but also in what way.
This dependence on the Syriac Baruch on the one side and
the allusion of Origen to the work on the other, fix the date of
its composition as between 100 and 175 a.p. It was written as
a Jewish apocalypse, but shows traces of interpolation by
Christians (ef. ch. 4, ‘The Vine’).
Editions.—Greek Text : James (Texts and Studies, Camb.
1897, v. 1, pp. 84-94).
Translations.—English : James (as above); the Slavonic text,
pub. by Novakovitch, is given in English translation by Morfill
in the same volume with the edition of the Greek text by James.
—German: Bonwetsch (Nachrichten von d. Konig. Gesell.
d. Wiss. zu Gott., Phil. Klasse, 1896, pp. 94-101); Ryssel in
Kautzsch’s Pseudepigr. 1900.
LiteratuRE.—This is limited almost altogether to the intro-
ductions accompanying the editions and translations. Of these,
however, that by Prof. James is quite ample and thorough.
8. The Psalter of Solomon.—The Psalter of
Solomon is placed in the Stichometry of Nice-
phorus among the Antilegomena of the OT, and
not among the Apocrypha; so also in pseudo-
Athanasius’ Synopsis 8. Scripture. It is a collec-
tion of lyrics, each one independent of every other.
Only the last two of these (the 17th and 18th),
strictly speaking, fall into the group of apocalyptic
writings. They were known and referred to as the
‘Odes of Solomon’ as early as the Pistis Sophia
ΓΝ to 250 a.p.), and frequently later than that
ate.
Contents.—Ps 17 is in general a prophecy of the
restoration of the glory to the desolated throne of
David. It opens with an expression of trust in the
Lord, the Eternal King of Israel, addressed directly
to Him (1-4). The Lord (still addressed in the
second person) has chosen David to be king over
Israel, and promised him and his seed perpetual
dominion ; but sinners have risen up against Israel
and have desolated the throne of David (5-8) ; yet
the Lord will cast these down and visit them ac-
cording to their sins (9-12). They have done
wickedly and acted proudly (13-17) ; the righteous
fled before them and wandered in desert places
(18-20) ; the sins of the wicked have abounded
(21, 22) ; the Lord is to raise the son of David, His
Servant, purge Jerusalem, cast down the unright-
eous and lawless nation, gather together His people,
and judge all the tribes of men (23-36). He will not
put confidence in human weapons of warfare, but
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE 8&7
in the Lord; and the Lord will bless him, will
strengthen and give him dominion (37-44). He»
shall rule righteously and wisely (45-49). Blessed
are they who shall live in his day (50. 51).
Ps 18 is on the Messianic Age. It begins with
an ascription of praise to the Lord for His favour to '
Israel and His love to the seed of Abraham (1-5). :
It foreshadows a blessed day in which God shall
purge Israel and raise His Messiah (6) ; it declares
the blessedness of those who shall live in the days
of the Anointed (7-10) and closes with a doxology
for the constancy and perpetuity of the heavenly
luminary (11-14).
Literary questions.—Though the Psalter of Solomon is a col-
lection of independent compositions, these apparently issue
from the same historical conditions and are pervaded by the
same spirit and tone. They nowhere claim to be Solomon’s
composition. This claim was made for them by later copyists.
In general, the conditions under which they were written are
those of the period of thirty years between 70 and 40 u.c. Pom-
pey is alluded to as ‘the mighty striker’ who comes ‘from the
ends of the earth’ (518), Certain princes of the land go forth to
meet him and welcome him (518). These are Aristobulus 11.
and Hyreanusit. The Gentiles tread Jerusalem under foot
(270 8538. 24): but he who has conquered it and inflicted severe
sufferings on it is finally overtaken and suffers a shameful death
in Egypt (239. 8°). All this points directly to the Roman con-
quest under Pompey.
Some older critics read the allusions above indicated as having
reference to Herod and his days (Movers, Keim) ; Ewald saw in
them Antiochus Epiphanes and his times ; but these identifica-
tions are manifestly far-fetched. The consensus of critics is
now against them. But there are exceptions, such as Franken-
berg, who advocates the age of Antiochus.
The original language of the Psalter was Hebrew. The radical
difference between the type of Messianism held up in 17 and 18
and the eschatology of the rest of the collection points to a
separate authorship of these two psalms. But apart from this,
and the antecedent probability that lyrics of this class are apt to
be independent contributions, there are no clear grounds for
ascribing particular psalms to different authors, The author (or
authors) belonged to the Pharisaic sect.
Editions.—Hilgenfeld, ZWT7h, 1868; Geiger, Der Psalter
Salomos, 1871; Fritzsche, Libri Apocr. Gr. 1871, pp. 569, 589 ;
Pick, ‘ The Psalter of Solomon’ in Presb. Revw., 1888, pp. T1S-S12;
tyle and James, The Psalins of the Pharisees, 1891; O. von
Gebhardt, Die Psalinen Salomos, 1895; Swete, The Psalms of
Solomon,with the Greek Fragments of the Book of Enoch, 1599.
Translations. —English: Bissell in Lange’s Com.‘A pocery pha,’
1880; Pick (above cited), Kyle and James (above cited).—
German : Kittel in Kautzsch’s Pseudepigr. 1900.
LirerATuRE. —Ewald, GVZJ iv., p. 892 f.; Movers in Wetzer
τι, Weite’s Airchenlex.1 i. p. 340; Keim, Gesch. von Jesu Ὁ.
Nazara, i. p. 243; Carriere, de Psalterio Sulomonis, 1810;
Kaulen in Wetzer τι. Welte?, i. p. 1060 f.; O. Holtzmann in
Stade’s GVI; Jacquier, ‘Les Psaumes de Salomon’ in L’uni-
versité Catholique, Nouv. Série, xii. 1898, pp. 94-131, 251-275;
Frankenberg, Die Datirung d. Ps. Sulomonis, 1896,
9. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.
—This production was well known to the ancient
Patristic writers. It is quoted by Ireneus (Fragm.
17, ed. Harvey, ii. 487), Origen (Hom. in Jos. 16°),
and Tertullian (adv. Mare. v.1). It is named in
the Synopsis of Pseudo-Athanasius and in the
Stichometry of Nicephorus. In the 18th cent.
Bishop Grosseteste made a translation of it into
Latin. It has been very frequently translated
both in ancient and in modern times.
Contents.—The book extends the idea of Gn 49 to
the sons of Jacob. Just as the father had called
his sons together before his death and told them
his last thoughts, so each of the sons is made to
summon his own children to his deathbed and to
give them a retrospective and a prospective view.
Each, however, centres his discourse in a dominant
idea or topic. (1) Reuben, on Thoughts. This Testa-
ment begins with the confession by Reuben of his
sin and the penance he performed therefor (1).
Man has seven spirits given him to perform his work
in the world, 1.6. life, sight, hearing, smell, taste,
speech, reproduction (2); an eighth is added to
these; but Beliar has intermingled with these seven
misleading spirits, 1.6. fornication, gluttony, strife,
vanity, arrogance, lying, and injustice ; sleep is a
counterfeit eighth (3).
Women have always been seducers.
the Grigori, ‘watchers’ (5).
Beware of fornication (4).
They misled
Give heed to Levi,
88 APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
for he shall know the Law (6and 7).—(2) Simeon,
on Envy. ‘This also opens with a confession, but
the sin confessed is envy (1.2). The patriarch
warns his children against this sin (3), commends
Joseph, and urges them to imitate him (4-8).—
(3) Levi, on the Priesthood and Arrogance. ‘This
is the distinctively apocalyptic Testament. After
introducing himself, the patriarch recounts the
revelation given him of the seven heavens (1-4) ;
then tells of being ushered into the presence of the
Lord, who gave him the command to destroy the
Shechemites (5). Contrary to the desire of his
father, he executed the command (6. 7). He saw
a second vision, in which he was invested with
the priesthood and received instructions from his
grandfather Isaac (8. 9). He foreshadows the cor-
ruption of the priesthood by his family (11. 12),
instructs them in their duties and again warns
against corruption (13. 14); foretells the destruc-
tion of the Temple, and indicates from the Book of
Enoch that the Captivity will last seventy years
(15-17) ; he announces the Messiah, His rejection
and the dispersion of Israel, and closes with an
exhortation to choose well (18. 19).—(4) Judah, on
Fortitude, Avarice, and Fornication. After intro-
ducing himself, Judah gives a glowing account of
his physical strength and agility, with many illus-
trative incidents (1-9). He tells of how he chose
Tamar as the wife of his son Er, of the wickedness
of hissons and their death, and of his own relations
with Tamar (10-12). Ascribing his fall to drunken-
ness and covetousness, he warns his children against
these vices, as well as against fornication (13-17) ;
he foresees from the Books of Enoch the wickedness
into which they shall fall in the last days, and
warns them (18-21) ; he urges them to love Levi,
and predicts with sorrow their apostasies from the
Lord and the wars and commotions until the time
of Messias (22-24). This shall be followed by the
resurrection of the patriarchs (25).—(5) Issachar,
on Simplicity. Beginning with the circumstances
of his birth, this patriarch gives an account of his
early life and marriage (1-3), and points out his
simplicity and singleness of mind as virtues to be
imitated (4-7).—(6) Zebulun, on Compassion and
Mercy. After naming himself and the prosperous
circumstances in which he was born, he claims not
to have sinned except in thought. Only in the
affair of Joseph, which he describes at length, he
had conspired with his brothers, but with sorrow
and compassion for Joseph (1-5). He was the first
to construct a boat and go fishing. He used the
fish he caught in feeding the needy (6.7). He
urges his children to be compassionate (8) and
united in action (9. 10).—(7) Dan, on Anger and
Lying. This patriarch also begins with a confes-
sion. He had planned to slay Joseph out of envy,
but the Lord had withheld the opportunity Ci):
He warns his children against the spirit of lying
and anger (2-4); he predicts evil days in the
future, ef which he had learned from the Books
of Enoch (5), and exhorts them to stand firm in
righteousness (6. 7).—(8) Naphtali, on Natural
(oodness. This Testament opens with an account
of the mother of the patriarch, Bilhah (1). It pro-
ceeds with a description of his fleetness of foot,
Which gives occasion for a speech on the fitness of
the body to the character of the soul (2). He ex-
horts his children not to force the order of nature
(3. 4), and tells of a vision he saw when forty years
otage. It was on the Mount of Olives, to the east
of Jerusalem. The sun and moon stood still;
Jacob called his sons to go and seize them. Levi
took hold of the sun, Judah of the moon ; they
were lifted up. A bull with two horns on its head
and two wings on its back made iis appearance,
hey tried to capture it, and Joseph succeeded.
Finally, a holy writing appeared telling of the
ωο---.-.-ὄ--.......
a
---ττι-τις. το τ δ οὐ τ Σ υ
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
captivity of Israel (5). Seven months later bc
saw another vision. Jacob and his sons were
standing by the Sea of Jamnia. A vessel full of
dried fish appeared ; but it had no rudder or sails.
They embarked, and a storm arose. ‘They were
threatened with destruction; Levi prayed, and,
though the vessel was wrecked, they were saved
upon pieces of the wreckage (6). Naphtali told
his visions to his father, who saw in them a token
that Joseph was living (7). With the prediction of
the Messiah (8. 9) the ‘Testament closes.—(9) Gad,
on Hatred. After the customary account of him-
self, Gad (1) confesses that he hated Joseph and
brought about his sale to the Ishmaelites (2. 3).
He warns his children against hatred, points out
its evil, and urges them to cherish and exercise
love (4-8).—(10) Asher, on the Two Aspects of Vice
and Virtue. This patriarch begins with a por-
traiture of the two ways open before men, de-
scribing each carefully (1. 2). He commends sim-
plicity of heart and devotion to virtue (8), gives
reasons (4), and again commends the path of virtue
(5, 6), closing with warnings and predictions (7.8).
—(11) Joseph, on Chastity. Joseph begins with
the contrasts between his many-sided suffering
and God’s many-sided help and deliverance (1).
He then proceeds to narrate the circumstances of
his servitude in Egypt (2), his temptation (3-7),
his imprisonment (8. 9), and exhorts to brotherly
love (10) and the fear of God (11). He further goes
back to tell the story once more of the circum-
stances of the temptation (12-15), and concludes
with an exhortation to honour Levi and Judah,
predicting that from them should arise the Lamb
of God (17-20).—(12) Benjamin, on a Pure Mind.
Benjamin begins by telling of his birth (1) ; then of
the meeting with Joseph in Egypt (2). ‘This leads
to the exaltation of Joseph as the perfect man,
who should be imitated (8. 4). A pure mind will
be recognized by the wicked (5). Beliar himself
cannot mislead the pure-minded (6). There is a
sevenfold evil in wickedness, and a sevenfold pun-
ishment is to be measured out to those who practise
it (7). Flee wickedness, he urges, and concludes
with the prediction of corruption among his de-
scendants (8. 9), and of the resurrection and the
judgment which will follow.
Literary questions.—The book is extant in a Greek text, also
in a complete Armenian and fragmentary Syriac and Aramaic
versions. The Latin version, frequently reprinted from the
16th century onwards, is Grosseteste’s. An ancient Latin
translation is not known to exist. A Slavonic version of un-
certain origin is also published by Tichonravotf (Denkm. d.
altruss. Apocr. Litt., St. Petersb. 18638).
The original of the work was either Greek or Hebrew. Grabe
(Spicileg. Patr. 2, 1714, 129-144) argued for the Hebrew. All
other critics have fayoured Greek until Prof. Charles’ revival of
Grabe’s contention. Charles reasons mainly from the language
(cf. also Gaster, ‘The Heb, Text of One of the Twelve Testa-
ments of the Patriarchs’ in PSBA, Dec. 18938).
As it stands, the book presents the anomaly of a work in-
tensely Jewish upon the whole, but containing passages of quite
as intensely Christian colour. To explain the anomaly, it must
be assumed either that a Christian of late date adopted the
mask of a Jew of an earlier period, or that the work was origin-
ally that of a Jew, and the Christian passages are later interpola-
tions. The former of these alternatives is practically excluded
by the type of Judaism running through the work as a whole.
This is not such as one would assume for the sake of literary
effect. Accordingly the tendency of all later writers has been
towards the view that the main part of the Testaments was
composed in the Ist cent. B.c. It is found, however, that the
author incorporated into this work parts of an apocalyptic com-
position of the century preceding (B.c. 200-100). The whole was
later interpolated by a Christian, or rather 2 number of Chris-
tians, at least one of whom held Docetic views. These interpola-
tions were made during the first three centuries of the Christian
era,
Editions.—Grabe (Spicileg. Patr. 1714), Fabricius (Cod.
Pseudepignr. 1718), Gallandi (Bib. Vet. Pat. i. 1788), Migne
(Patrol. Grece.), Sinker (Test. XII Patr. 1869; Sinker also
published an Appendix containing collating of readings and
bibliographical notes, 1879).
Ltrerature.— Translations exist in English, French, German,
Dutch, Bohemian,and Icelandic.—English: Sinker (Ante- Nicene
Christian Library, vol. xxii. 1871).—French: Migne, Diction-
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
naire des Apocryphes, i. 1856.—German : Anonymous, Aechte
Apokryphische Bucher (Viibing. 1875) ; Schnapp and Kautzsch
in Kautzsch’s Pseuwdepigr. 1900; Nitzsch, Comm. Crit. de Test.
ATI Patr. 1810; Reuss, Gesch. d. Heil. Schrift. NT, 257;
Kayser, ‘ Die Test. der XII Patr.’ in Beitr. 2. d. Theol. Wis-
senschuften, herausg. vy. Reuss und Cunitz, 1851; Vorstmann,
Disquisitio de Test. Putr. 1857; Hilgenfeld, ZW7h, 1859, p.
395 ff., 1871, p. 302 ff. ; van Hengel, ‘ De Testamenten der twaalf
Patriarchen op nieuw ter sprake gebragt’ in Godgeleerde Bij-
dragen, 1860; Geiger, Jid. Zeit. 7. Wiss. wu. Leben, 1869, pp.
116-135, 1871, 123-125; Presb. Lev. 1880; Schnapp, Test. der
Zwolf Putr, 1354.
10. The Book of Jubilees——This book was
known and often alluded to by the ancient and
medizval ecclesiastical writers up to the days of
Theodorus Metochita (a.p. 1532). It was called
‘ Jubilees’ (‘The Book of Jubilees’), or ‘Little
Genesis’ (Parva Genesis, Λεπτογένεσις). Some time
after the middle of the 14th cent. it disappeared,
and was known only through the references to it
of the earlier writers. Its recovery in modern
times was accomplished by the African missionary
Krapf in 1844. Krapf found an Ethiopic version
of it in Abyssinia, which he sent to Europe. Here
it came into the hands of Dillmann, and was by
him translated and published first in German and
afterwards in Ethiopic.
Contents.—The general plan of this book follows
so closely that of the canonical Genesis that it will
suffice to designate some of its distinctive features
only. The book gives a haggadistic version of the
history contained in Genesis, including also Exodus
as far as ch. 14. The main events are identical in
all essential points, but very many additions and
embellishments are introduced, First of all, the
whole of time is represented as subdivided into
jubilee periods, these into sabbatical periods, and
these into years. ‘This, it is said, was the original
plan of God, and the knowledge of it was com-
municated to Moses by revelation. The account
of the manner and time of the revelation is given
in ch. 1, in which, further, the angelus interpres
(who is in this case the Angel of the Presence)
furnishes an outlook into the future and foretells
the apostasy of Israel and her restoration to God.
In the rest of the book the feasts and observances
of the Mosaic ritual are transferred to the days of
Noah and Abraham, and in general the events of
this earlier period are treated with much freedom
and illustrated by amplification and tradition. In
the account of the Creation, an addition is made
with reference to the creation of the angels. ‘The
luminaries created on the fourth day are said to
be for Sabbaths and festivals. Eve was created
during the second week. Therefore the command
‘that their defilement is to be seven days for a
male child and fourteen days for a female.’ Adam
is said to have been set to keep the garden from
the incursions of the beasts of the field. Before
the Fall animals could speak. It was between the
63rd and 70th year of Adam’s life that Cain was
born; between the 70th and 77th that Abel was
born; between the 77th and 84th that Awan his
only daughter was born. Adam and Eve had nine
other sons (making twelve children altogether).
The names of the wives of antediluvians are gener-
ally given. Enoch’s wife was Edna, the daughter
of Daniel. The corruption of mankind which led to
the Flood is said to have spread through the whole
creation, so that even animals were made subject to
it, for which reason they perished in the waters.
The Nephilim, who sprang from the union of the
sons of God with the daughters of men, were set at
enmity with one another, and ‘slew each man his
neighbour.’ After the Flood, Noah offered a sacri-
fice which is described as in every particular con-
forming to the Levitical law. ‘The feast of the
first-fruits was observed by Noah. The feast of
the New Moon also had its origin at this time.
The year consists of 13 months, each of 28 days, or
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE 89
altogether 364 days. After the Flood, Mastema
(Satan) led men to sin through the building of the
Tower of Babel and the worship of graven images.
Abraham did not fall into this sin. He tried to
convert his father from idolatry, and failing to do
so he burned the house of idols, in which his
brother Haran perished, and then was called to
leave his native land. When Abraham had estab-
lished himself in the Land of Canaan, and Ishmael
and Isaac were born, after Hagar and Ishmael had
been sent away, Mastema appeared before God
to move him to try Abraham by demanding the
offering of his son Isaac. Nine other events in
Abraham’s life were trials, thus making the com-
plete number ten. Before his death, Abraham
addressed his son Isaac, advising and warning him
against idolatry. When he was about to die, he
called Jacob his grandson and, taking his fingers,
closed his own eyes with them and stretched him-
self on his bed. Jacob fell asleep with his fingers
on his grandfather’s eyes. When he awoke, he
found that Abraham was cold and dead. The
affair of Jacob’s obtaining Esau’s blessing from
his father is narrated so as to eliminate direct
falsehood. When Isaac asks, ‘Who art thou ἢ"
Jacob answers simply, ‘I am thy son.’ The story
of the massacre of the Shechemites by Simeon and
Levi is also softened, so as to justify the deed.
The relations of Jacob and Esau are presented in a
light entirely unfavourable to Esau, who is made
to act the part of acowardly and cunning traitor.
In the story of Joseph, the elements of envy and
cruelty on the part of his brethren are left out.
The account of Jacob’s death is given without his
final addresses to his sons. It is simply said that
he blessed his sons. The death of Joseph gives
occasion for the mention of anew king who ruled
over Egypt after Memkeron, thus intimating the
end of the Shepherd dynasty. In the account
of Moses’ early life, Hebrew maidens are repre-
sented as serving Pharaoh’s daughter. ‘The last
chapter is occupied altogether with the Sabbath
law, which is given with great precision and
rigidity.
Literary questions.—The book is preserved as a whole in an
Ethiopic version, A fragment, containing about one-third of it,
is also found in Latin, probably made from a Greek copy. In
addition to these, some smaller Syriac and Greek fragments
are known to exist. The original was evidentally in a Semitic
language, but whether Hebrew or Aramaic is not absolutely
certain. Hebrew was more usually the language of such apoca-
lyptic books. Jerome, moreoyer, alludes to the ‘ Little Genesis’
as a book in Hebrew. But neither of these considerations is
quite decisive. In using the term ‘Hebrew,* Jerome did not
always keep in mind the distinction between that language and
Aramaic. He followed the NT habit of calling Aramaic Hebrew
(Jn 1913), In fayour of an Aramaie original, the use of the form
Mastema as the name of Satan may be adduced. Mastema is
the Aphel form from cuir ‘to accuse’ and cov is Aramaic for
yo.
Further, it is said that when Abraham left Mesopotamia
he took with him the books of his father (1228), ‘and they were
written in Hebrew,’ which would be uncalled for if the account
itself was in Hebrew.
The date of the book is approximately fixed by its relation to
Eth. Enoch on one side, and the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs on the other. The Ethiopic Enoch is undoubtedly
known and used by the author of Jubilees (ef. Jub 21 = Enoch
8: Jub T=Enoch 7; Jub 10= Enoch 1046; Jub 2= Enoch
6016-21), On the other hand, in all probability, the author of
the Testaments had used Jubilees (Jub 30. 83 = Test. Reub. 1.3;
Jub32= Test. Lev. 8; Jub32= Test. Lev. 5: Jub84=Test. Jud.
8-4; Jub 23= Test. Zeb. 9). 115 chronological place is therefore
after the end of the 2nd cent. B.c. and betore the end of the Ist
cent. A.D.
The author has been held to be an Essene (Jellinek), a
Hellenist (Frankel), or a Sadducee ; but there are strong reasons
against any of these views. He was more probably a Pharisee
(Dillmann, Rénsech, Drummond).
Editions.—Dillmann, Kufale, sive Liber Jubilworum, 1859 ;
Ceriani, Monumenta Sacra, i. fase. 1, 1861; Charles, Anecdota
Oxon. viii., 1895.
Translations.—English: Schodde in Biblioth. Sacra, 1885-
1887 ; Charles in JQR, 1893, pp. 703-708, 1894, pp. 184-217 and
710-745, 1895, pp. 297-328.—German: Dillmann (as above);
tonsch, Das Buch der Jubilden, 1874; Littmann in Kautzseh’s
Pseudepigr. 1900. A translation into Hebrew was made and
published with notes by Rubin (Vienna, 1870).
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
90
Liverature.—Jellinek, Ub. ἃ. Buch. d. Jub. v.das Noah-
Buch. 1885; Beer, d. Buch. εἰ. Jub. τι. sein Verhdltniss 2. d.
Midrasehim, 1856; Frankelin Monatsschriftf. Gesch. uw. Wiss.
ἃ. Jitd. 1856; Hilgenfeld, ZWTh, 1874, pp. 435-441.
41. The Ascension of Isaiah.—The ancients
allude to non-canonical literature associated with
the name of Isaiah under four different titles.
Origen speaks of the Martyrdom of Isaiah ; Epi-
phanius names an Anabatikon, and Jerome an
Ascension ; in the list of canonical and kindred
books published by Montfaucon (given by West-
cott, Canon of the New Testament, App. 1), xvii),
a Vision (ὅρασις) of Isaiah is included, Of these,
the Vision is again named by Euthymius Ziga-
benus in the 11th cent., and a Testament of Heze-
kiah is spoken of by Georgius Cedrenus in the 12th
century. Whatever the facts may have been as to
the identity of these writings or their relations to
one another, nothing was definitely known of them
until 1819, when Archbishop Lawrence accidentally
found an Ascension of Isaiah in a second-hand
bookstore in London. It was an Ethiopic text,
and Lawrence published it with a translation and
notes. Upon this, together with two other MSS.,
later brought to light, Dillmann based his edition
of the Ethiopic Ascension of Isaiah in 1877.
Contents.—The work consists of two parts.
Part I. (1-5). In the 26th year of Hezekiah,
Isaiah predicts that Manasseh would be led by
Satan to apostatize. Hezekiah wishes to slay his
son, but is prevented by the prophet (1). After
the death of Hezekiah, Manasseh does give him-
self up to the service of Satan and practises all
manner of wickedness. Isaiah takes refuge in the
desert (2). Balkira, a Samaritan, accuses the pro-
phet of uttering threats against Jerusalem and
raising himself above Moses in authority, where-
upon Manasseh, possessed by Satan, causes the
capture of Isaiah (31:12). The reason for this is
the wrath of Satan, roused by Isaiah’s disclosures
regarding the coming of Christ from the seventh
heaven, regarding His death, His resurrection, His
ascension, His second coming, the sending of the
twelve disciples, the persecutions of the Church,
the advent of Antichrist, and his destruction
(313_422), Manasseh causes Isaiah to be sawn
asunder, and the prophet endures the martyrdom
with steadfast calmness in spite of the derision of
Balkira and Satan (5).
Part 11. (6-11). In the twentieth year of Heze-
kiah, Isaiah saw a vision which he narrated to the
king and council of prominent men (6): an angel
took him through the firmament and through
the six lower heavens into the seventh. Here he
saw the departed patriarchs—Adam, Abel, and
Enoch—and God Himself. He learned that Christ
should come into the earth; and having received
this information, he was led by the same angel
back into the firmament (7-10). In the firma-
ment he saw the future birth, life, suffering,
death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus into
the seventh heaven. ‘The angel left him, and
Isaiah’s soul returned into his earthly body. It
was because of this vision, which he had related to
Hezekiah, that Manasseh caused Isaiah to be put
to death (11).
Literary questions.—The signs of the compositeness of the
book are too plain to require critical demonstration, The ques-
tion is simply whether it consists of two, three. or four inde-
\' ndent writings. The most obvious partition is intotwo, The
ision of Isaiah is complete in itself and distinet from the
Martyrdom. Even its being put after the Martyrdom, which it
would precede in historical sequence, is an evidence of inde-
pendence. But these two main sections have been enlarged by
the addition of a preface and two minor passages in the second
part. Thus the analy (1) the Martyrdoin of Isaiah (1-5
exc. Land 3™-51), (2) The Vision of Isainh (6-11, exe, 112-22 ὲ
(3) An introduction by a later hand (1). 1
later Christian writer (8-41, and 113-22)
analysis, and has been generally necepted,
The dates of these two sections are also widely apart. The
sis is:
(4) Additions by a
Phis is Dillmann’s
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
Vision belongs to the class and period of Christian apocalypses
which culminate in Dante’s Divina Commedia. It was probably
produced in the 2nd cent. a.p. The Martyrdom is the embodi-
ment of an ancient tradition regarding the death of the prophet,
and was probably composed just before the Christian era,
Editions.—Ethiopic Text: Lawrence (1819), Dillmann (1877).
Translations.—Latin (with both the above). A Greek trans-
lation of a late Patristie origin has been published by von
Gebhardt (ZW7h, 1878, pp. 830-353).—English: Luth. Quar.
Rev. 1878, p. 513 t.—Frenech: Migne in Dictionnaire des Apo-
cryphes, i., 1858; Basset, Les Apocryphes Ethiopiens, iii.,
1894.—German: Jolowicz (based on Lawrence’s text, 1854) ;
Clemen in Kautszeh’s Pseudepigr. 1900.
LITERATURE.—Gesenius, Com. ub. Jesaja, 1821; Stokes in
Smith and Wace’s Dict. of Christ. Biogr.; Warnack, Gesch. αἱ.
altchr. Litt. i. p. S54 f., ii. pp. 518-579, 714 ff.; Armitage Rob-
inson in Hastings’ DB ii. 499; Charles, Ascension of Isaiah.
12. The Histories of Adam and Eve.—This work
appears under two main forms, almost as distinct
as two works: one in Greek and one in Latin.
The Greek is entitled Narrative and Citizenship of
Adam and Eve (Διήγησις). It was published by
‘Tischendorf in 1866 (Apocal. Apoer. pp. 1-28) under
the misleading title of ‘The Apocalypse of Moses.’
The Latin version is entitled Vita Ade et Eve,
and was published by W. Meyer (Abhandl. d.
Miinchen. Akad. Phil.-Hist. Klasse xiv. 3, 1878,
pp. 185-250). A third slightly varying form exists
in Slavonic, and a fourth in Armenian. Both of
these are from the Greek narrative.
Contents.—The story opens with an account of the
deeds of Adam and Eve immediately following the
expulsion from the garden of Eden. Adam and
Eve seek for food, experience difficulties in obtain-
ing it, and perform penance in order to secure God’s
mercy (1-8). Satan once more tempts Eve (9-11),
and narrates at the request of Adam the circum-
stances of his own fall (12-17). Then follows an
account of the birth of Cain and Abel, and Adam
is taught how to cultivate the soil (18-22). Eve
dreams of Abel’s death, which presently occurs ;
but Seth and other children are born to Adam and
Eve (23. 24). Adam informs Seth of a vision given
him through the archangel Michael, after he and
Eve had been cast out of Eden. It was a chariot
similar to the wind, but with wheels of fire. ‘The
Lord sat upon it, and many thousand angels stood
on His right hand and on Hisleft. Adam addressed
a prayer to the Lord, and the Lord assured him
that those who should know and serve Himself
would not fail from the seed of Adam. Adam en-
joins Seth to receive this knowledge and keep it
(25-29). At the age of 980, Adam falls sick, and,
calling his sons together, once more tells them of
the circumstances of the Fall (80-34). He then
sends Eve and Seth to the vicinity of Paradise in
order that, putting dust upon their heads, they
might plead for him and receive some of the oil of
life to anoint him (35. 36). On the way they are
met by the Serpent, which bites Seth, but is per-
suaded by Eve to let him go (37-39). They reach
the gates of Paradise, present their petition, but,
instead of the oil for which they had asked, they
received the promise of a blessing in the distant
future (40-42). They return to Adam, and report
their experiences (43. 44). Adam then dies and is
buried (45-51).
The Diegesis gives a parallel account of the Fall
by Eve (15-80), of Adam’s last will and death (30,
ol), of the intercession of the entire angel host
in behalf of forgiveness for Adam (33-86), of the
acceptance of the prayer (37), of the burial of
Adam by the angel (38-42), and of Eve’s death and
burial (42, 43).
Literary questions.—This book (or couplet of books) is found
in three recensions, Greek, Latin, and Slavonic. It is based on
a Jewish original (Tischendorf, Conybeare, Spitta, Harnack,
Fuchs). Others, howeyer, do not believe in the Jewish original
(Schiirer, Gelzer).
The date of the composition is uncertain.
The author was a
Jew,
{Hort, however, finds traces of Christian influence, and
relegates the Adam story to post-Christian times. ]
Editions.—Greek Text; Tischendorf, Apocalypses Apocry
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE 91
phe, 1866; Wilh. Meyer, Vita Ade et Eve.—English trans-
lations :in Schatf and Wace’s Ante-Nicene Christian Library,
vol. xxii.; Conybeare in /Q/ vii. 1895, pp. 216-235.—German:
Litteratur-blatt. d. Orients, 1850, pp. 70d ff., 732 ff.; Fuchs
in Kautszsch’s Pseudepigr. 1900.
LirERATURE.—Hort, art. ‘ Adam Books’ in Smith and Wace’s
Dict. of Christ. Biog.; Gelzer, Julius Africanus, ii. 1, 1585.
13. The Apocalypse of Abraham.—This is a
work preserved only in a Slavonic translation. It
was published in that language (1863), but only
made known more widely through a German trans-
lation by Bonwetsch (1897). 10 tells of how Abra-
ham took offence at the idolatry of his father, how
he despised both the wooden image Barisat and
the stone statue Marumath, and was on that ground
made the subject of a special visit on the part of
the angel Jaoe!, who taught him to offer sacrifice,
and then took him into heaven on the wings of a
dove. Here Abraham received many revelations.
This work should not be mistaken for the Testa-
ment of Abraham, edited by James in the Cam-
bridge Texts and Studies (ii. 2, 1892).
44. The Apocalypse of Elixs.—Mention of this
work occurs in Origen’s Com. on Mt 219 (ed. de la
Rue, iii. 916; ed. Lommatzsch, v. 29). Here it is
said to be the source from which St. Paul quotes
1 Co 29 ‘Eye hath not seen,’ etc. Cf. also Epi-
phanius, Her. 42 [Dindorf, ii. 898]; and Jerome,
Epist. 57 ad Pammachium. Fragments of this
writing have been recovered in a Coptic manu-
script brought from Akhmim. Some of these frag-
ments were taken to Paris and some to Berlin.
Those in the former place have been edited and
published by Bouriant ; those in Berlin by Stein-
dorff (Texte τι. Unters., Neue Folge, ii. 5a). This
editor thinks that the original was a Jewish apoca-
lypse interpolated by a later Christian writer.
15. The Apocalypse of Zephaniah.—This was a
larger work than the preceding, and was known to
Clement of Alexandria (Strom. v.11. 77). Among
the Akhmim fragments published by Bouriant and
Steindorff there are portions of this apocalypse
also, but they are not extensive enough to serve
as a basis of any trustworthy judgment as to its
origin and nature. ‘The extracts recovered do not,
however, contain Christian interpolations.
16. An Anonymous Apocalypse.—The Akhmim
fragments contain, in addition to the above, por-
tions of a purely Jewish apocalypse, which cannot
be identitied or associated with any special name.
The author, speaking in the first person, names
Elias among other saints whom he has seen in
heaven (14). The fragments are published along
with Steindorff’s above-named edition of the Akh-
mim manuscripts.
17. The Prayer of Joseph.— Origen (ed. de la Rue,
iv. 84; Lommatzsch, i. 147) calls this ‘a writing
not to be despised, current among the Hebrews.’
Nothing, however, besides Origen’s quotations from
it, is known of the contents of the work.
18. The Book of Eldad and Modad.—These
names [EV Medad] occur in Nu 11°, A book
bearing this name is mentioned in Hermas’ Shep-
herd (Vis. ii. 3), but nothing more is known of it
with certainty.
iv. GeNERAL CHARACTERISTICS. —The general
characteristics of apocalyptic literature may not
all be found in ideal vividness in any single pro-
duction of the class. Nevertheless, in so-called
apocalypses, most of the following traits are pre-
dominant, and, with the majority of them, all
appear in some degree of clearness.
1. The Vision Form.—This is what gives the
name to the class, and, although not an indispens-
able feature, is quite determinative. The authors
put themselves in the place of seers, and throw
upon the canvas large, vivid, lifelike portraitures.
‘The imagery is in many cases fantastic and unreal
as compared with the actual world, but it is strik-
ing and clearly drawn. Conflicts and struggles,
judicial assizes, conversations and debates, as well
as cosmographical delineations, are placed before
the eyes of the seer, and by him described more or
less in detail.
2. Dualism.—The distinction between the world
of sense and the world of Divine or spiritual reali-
ties is always prominently in the mind. The other
world is, however, conceived as only imperceptible
to the bodily senses, not as different in kind. A
dualism as between matter and spirit underlies the
philosophy of the apocalypse, but is necessarily
ignored in the presentation of the realities of the
spiritual. ‘These are put before the bodily senses
as if a simple heightening of the powers of the
senses would bring them into view.
3. Synbolism.—The visions portrayed abound in
conventional symbolical figures. Mixed organisms,
partaking of the parts and characteristics of differ-
ent creatures (beasts), frequently recur. Gener-
ally the different parts that enter into these mixed
figures represent different abstract principles, and
the mixed figure as a whole stands for combina-
tions of powers. Mystic and symbolic numbers,
too, constantly appear (seven heavens, seven arch-
angels, ten shepherds). Sometimes this symbolism
is explained in minute terms, but sometimes it is
left for the seer to unravel. Sometimes the pur-
pose of the use of such symbolism seems to be
simply to harmonize the form of presentation to
the mysterious nature of the subject-matter; but
at other times it is evidently designed to conceal
the exact import of the revelation from the un-
initiated, and to keep it a secret within an esoteric
circle. The method of interpretation known as
Gematria is to this end frequently resorted to.
4. Angelology.—A system of mediators between
the two worlds is pictured as establishing their
connexion. In comparison with the angelology of
the OT (with the exception of Daniel), this media-
torial hierarchy is complex and definite. It is,
moreover, subdivided into two branches, the good
and the evil, which are at enmity with one another.
In some apocalypses one particular angel is com-
missioned to the task of acting as the companion
and friendly interpreter of the seer (angelus inter-
pres). Τὸ him the seer appeals in his ignorance of
the meaning of the mystic visions, and from him
he receives needed explanations. Here, too, a
difference must be noted between the apocalypses
and the early prophets (cf. Am 7-9), who see
visions, but speak directly with the Almighty in
person.
5. The Unknown as subject-matter.—The subject-
matter revealed concerns one of two spheres, viz.,
either the inscrutable mechanism of the other
world, or the purposes of God regarding the present
world: (a) Under the first head are portrayed the
characteristics, deeds, and destinies of angels, both
good and evil, the secret forces and courses of the
great nature-powers and elements, and the mode
of the Creation. (6) Under the second head natur-
ally two divisions are distinguishable, the historical
and the eschatological. Such great landmarks in
the history of the world as the entrance of sin, the
fortunes of the first human pair, the Flood, the
destinies of Israel, are given as known and decreed
of God. The whole eschatology, including the
final judgment, the Messianic Age, the fate of
mankind, the resurrection of the dead, and the de-
struction of the world, are of the utmost interest
to the apocalyptist. In fact, so prominent is this
part of the world of mystery in the apocalypses,
that some authorities have yielded to the tempta-
tion of making it the sole test of an apocalypse.
Apocalyptic is, according to this view, synonymous
with eschatological. (So Liicke, and, among more
recent scholars, Bousset.)
92 APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
6. Pseudonymity.—The author of an apocalypse
generally assumes the name of a very ancient
person, preferably of some one who is represented
in the canonical books as having enjoyed direct
communication with the spiritual world. Enoch,
Moses, and Elijah stand out as those who passed
from this world to the other in a preternatural
manner, and therefore were favoured even while
here with apocalyptic glimpses of the other. Others,
because of their exceptional holiness and nearness
to God, are easily put into the same place of favour.
Such are Isaiah, Ezra, Baruch, and Daniel. The
name of Ezekiel, however, quite singularly does
not seem to have drawn any of these writings to
itself. Jeremiah’s began to be used, but did not
become very popular. That of Solomon was
attached to a body of psalms for quite obvious
reasons. The Sibyl was probably drafted into the
service in order to gain the confidence of heathen
readers through the use of the voice of a trusted pro-
phetess of their own. It was intended to propagate
Jewish doctrines among the Gentiles (Schiirer).
This pseudonymity is accompanied by a not alto-
gether accidental tendency to tamper with the
apocalypses. More than any other class of writ-
ings they show signs of having been edited and
modified. Many of them are manifestly collec-
, tionsor compilations of smaller productions. Others
abound in interpolations and additions designed
to embellish, clarify, and expand their portraitures.
7. Optimism.—The design of the whole class is
predominantly that of encouraging and comfort-
ing the chosen people under persecution. Some,
of course, are more or less sectarian in their ten-
dency, i.e. they address their words of encourage-
ment and hope to a particular section of the
people, who are regarded as faithful or righteous
par excellence. The majority are meant to teach
and comfort the whole nation.
v. TuroLoaicat Ipeas.—The root of the apoca-
lyptic theology is the sense of need. Though it
may not be strictly accurate to call the apoca-
lypses ‘tracts for hard times,’ it is quite true that
they issue from a faith which looks to God for
deliverance from evil days. The eye is turned
into the future for the good which the God of the
Covenant has promised to Israel. The darker the
outlook, the brighter the hope which breaks
through it and sees ultimate victory. The rally-
ing point of thought is here furnished by the
conception of the ‘Day of Jahweh’ in the pro-
phets of the earlier period. But this hope for the
future is impatient. It cannot await the working
of the slow moral forces gradually evolving the
consummation. It rather sees the Golden Age
bursting forth in a sudden and supernatural mani-
festation of God’s power and favour to His chosen
people. Accordingly, the cardinal doctrines of the
apocalyptic theology must begin with the contrast
of the ages.
l. The doctrine of the two Aons (4 Ezr 75°),.—
This is developed from the older idea of the ‘latter
days’ (3 9. 9798) which the earlier prophets always
held up asa source of comfort and encouragement
whenever they were moved to denounce the exist-
ing evils of their day. <A great day of Jehovah
would bring about the righting of all that was
Wrong with the world. In the apocalypses, all
that precedes the critical day is summed up under
the conception of the present age (αἰὼν οὗτος, ony
me
); the future, with its ideally good conditions,
is the coming age (αἰὼν ὁ μέλλων, ἐρχόμενος, 2»
ΓΟ rr _ 5 ¥ τ u
827). The noteworthy feature about the concep-
tion of the ons is that each is a coherent unity,
and has a character of its own.
15. unpropitious, evil (4 Ezr 712) ;
good,
The present age
the future wili be
The past is the age of the world-kingdom.
portrayed under the symbolic figure of beasts ; the
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
future, the age of the Divine reign ; it has a human
aspect. All this is put forth as a source of com-
fort and encouragement to the faithful. The
duration of the evil age is variously computed.
Enoch makes it 10,000 years (Eth. Enoch 16! 1816
21°) ; in the Assumption of Moses it is 5000; at
any rate, it is definite and near its end. It is
soon to passaway. ‘The question is even pertinent
whether those living shall continue to the end of
it. This question, however, is not answered (4 Ezr
437 §50f. 620, Syr. Bar 449).
2. Theimpending Crisis.—The passing of theold
will be accompanied by great changes in nature.
The order of things will be reversed. ‘The moon
will alter her course, and not appear at her ap-
pointed times; the stars shall wander from their
orbits and be concealed (Eth. Enoch 807). Trees
will flow with blood, and stones will cry out (Syr.
Bar 27). In the heavens, dread signs of porten-
tous significance will appear (Sib. Or 3796-86),
Fountains will dry up, the earth will refuse to
yield; the heavens will be turned into brass ; the
rains will fail, and springs of waters will be dried
up. Among men, wars and rumours of wars will
prevail (Eth. Enoch 994, 4 Ezr 93), and private
feuds and recklessness of the life of men will be
the rule (Eth. Enoch 1002; Sib. Or 3632-647, Syr.
Bar 4832 703). Women will cease to be fruitful,
and miscarriages will occur (4 Ezr 58 621), These
are the ἀρχὴ ὠδίνων of Mt 248, Mk 138,
3. The Conception of God is more definitely
anthropomorphic than in the earlier period. He
is pictured by the apocalyptists as seated on the
highest heaven, and surrounded by a host of
attendants. In the Slavonic Enoch, in the Ascen-
sion of Isaiah, in the Greek Baruch, and in general
in all the apocalypses, God is regarded as a
monarch with an army to fight His battles, and
a retinue of servants to execute His orders.
Much of this is naturally a part of the drapery
of the vision, but it all tends to accentuate the
gulf which separates God from man. Especially
where the anthropomorphism is conscious of its
own inadequacy, and is combined with descrip-
tions of the fearfulness of God’s person, the idea of
transcendency is accentuated, and begins to domi-
nate the apocalyptists’ thought of Ged.
4. The cosmology is a corollary of the transcen-
dence of God. The distance between heaven, His
dwelling-place, and earth, the abode of man, is
enlarged and filled with six stages, making alto-
gether seven heavens. These are minutely de-
scribed in the Slavonic Enoch, the Ascension of
Isaiah, the Greek Baruch (cf. also Test. Lev. 2
and 38). The substance of which these heavens are
made is light, or rather luminous matter (Eth. En
148°), The language is not metaphorical. This
light becomes fuller and more intense as one
approaches the throne of God Himself. With God
are to be found in this sphere the forces and
persons that wage His warfare and serve to carry
out His plans. Besides the hierarchy of angels
(already spoken of), there are here the abodes of
the sun, moon, stars, and nature-powers ; also the
Messiah, ready to be manifested at the proper
time.
5. An arch-enemy called Beliar, Mastema, Aza-
zel (Satan), at every point undertakes to thwart
the purposes of God. It was he who tempted
and misled Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
(Life of Adam and Eve). As he takes on himself
a body and appears on earth in order to defeat
the Messiah, he is Antichrist. In this capacity he
is sometimes represented as taking the form of a
king (Antiochus Epiphanes, Nero, Caligula) and
sometimes that of a false prophet (Sib, Or 363if.),
6. Man.—There is a definite realization of the
unity of the human race. δίῃ, need, and death
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
are looked upon as affecting all men. They have
one cause for all. The world was created for the
sake of man (4 Ezr 8/4, Syr. Bar 1418), Similarly,
the plans of God have in view the welfare of men
as such. ‘The blessings of the Messianic Age come
to men in general, although with varying degrees
of fulness (Sib. Or 3%67ff. 767%). But the distinction
between those who please God by obeying His law
and those who do not is never lost sight of. Israel
is His chosen people, and He has given it the Law;
but the Israelite who transgresses the Law is
punished, whereas the Gentile who observes the
Sabbath shall be holy and blessed like ‘us,’ says
the author of Jubilees.
7. Sin.—All misery among men is the result of
sin, and the fall of the first pair in the Garden of
Eden is the cause of it. This is predominantly the
lesson of the Life of Adam and Eve; but it is also
clearly put in 4 Ezra and in the Syriac Baruch
(Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrine of the Fall
and Original Sin, 1905).
8. The coming Messiah.—The central develop-
ment of apocalyptic literature is the figure of the
Messiah ; but it is nowhere outlined so clearly as
in the Ethiopic Enoch. He is here designated as
the Son of Man; He is also called the Righteous
One, the Elect One, the Elect of Righteousness
and the Faithful One, and the Anointed One.
He is not a mere human being; He has His
home in heaven with the Ancient of Days (397
461). Enoch sees Him as pre-existing. This pre-
existence is also implied in the declaration that
His name was named by the Creator of spirits
before the creation of the sun and stars (48°), that
He was chosen and concealed before the foundation
of the world (48° 62°). He will become manifest
in the day of consummation, taking His seat
beside the Lord of the Spirits, and all creatures
shall fall down before Him (51% 4 611 093). Other
portraitures are to be found in 4 Ezr 13° (‘One in
the form of a man’), and in the Psalms of Solomon
(17 and 18).
9. The Resurrection.—The doctrine of Dn 12? is
that ‘many of them that sleep in the dust of the
earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and
some to shame and everlasting contempt.’ In the
Eth. Enoch (511) this is broadened into a universal
resurrection, the object of which is defined as
judgement for the deeds done in the body (Eth.
Enoch 22). This idea is also taught elsewhere
(4 Ezr 732 54 1435, Syr. Bar 427 502, Test. Benj.
10, almost in the words of Dn 122, Life of Adam,
41. 10. 13. 28. 51).
10. The Judgment.—This undoubtedly developed
from the prophetic conception of the Day of Jahweh.
It is to be distinguished from the judgment which
takes place during the course of the present age.
It is called the Great Judgment (μεγάλη κρίσις, Eth.
Enoch 10% 12 254 453: 6 489 501 589 60° 655 19 6719, Jub
510 32, Eth. En 917, Test. of Levi 3, Assump.
Mos 138); Eternal Judgment (Slav. Enoch 7! 40”,
4 Ezr 770-73, Syr. Bar 20+ 572 598 837 85128, Life of
Adam, 39). It consists ina spectacular revelation of
the wickedness of God’s opponents, and their con-
demnation and punishment for their enmity to
Him. The subjects of the judgment are both
heavenly and earthly powers. Satan and Anti-
christ (if these two be looked at as different), the
fallen angels, the world-powers, and wicked men
are all included. The judgment will be upon the
ground of books in which either the names or the
deeds of men have been inscribed according to
their good or evil. Sometimes the deeds are
represented as being weighed in the scales. Each
person judged must stand upon his own merits.
Intercession in his behalf by another is of no avail.
The judge is God Himself. He appears as the
Ancient of Days (one having a Head of Days),
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE 95
with white hair and beard. He is seated on a
glorious throne, and surrounded with myriads of
angels (Eth. En 14-9, Sib. Or 39! 9, Slav. En
201, Test. Levi 4, Assump. Mos 129). In some
representations it is the Messiah who acts as the
judge (uniformly in the Book of Similitudes, Eth.
Enoch 87-71, with the exception of 47%). His
sphere of judgment, however, includes the fallen
angels and demons, not men. For the most part,
the Messiah appears either before or after the
judgment (4 Ezr 7*8, before ; Eth. Enoch 90, after).
Again, Messiah is associated with God and acts
as the judge while God executes sentence (Eth.
En 62).
11. The Punishment of the Wicked.—The most
manifest effect of the judgment is the overthrow
of God’s enemies and the infliction of fit penalties
upon them. Of these enemies, three classes may
be distinguished: (@) Spirits, including Satan and
fallen angels (Test. Benj. 8, Sib. Or 373, Test. Sim.
6, Zeb. 9). (δὴ) Heathen world-powers, looked at
either in the abstract or as special individual kings
(4 Ezr 11. 123, Sib. Or 3350-380, Ps-Sol 1722, Eth.
En 51* 62° 537). (c¢) Sinners in general. But
special mention is made of Israelites who trans-
gressed the law (Syr. Bar 8515 5422), Satan
(Beliar) is cast into the fire (Test. Jud. 25), though
he rules in hell with his angels (Eth. En 53? 561),
The fallen angels pass at the judgment into a
permanent condition of damnation. The giants
who sprang from the union of the angels with
the daughters of men are also confined in eternal
torment. The heathen who have opposed God
and oppressed Israel are destroyed. Destruction
(ἀπώλεια), however, is not conceived as equivalent
to annihilation, but as involving existence in a
wretched state.
12. The Reward of the Righteous.——The works
of the pious are preserved as in a treasury in
heaven (4 Ezr 777 833, Syr. Bar 1412 241). When
they are raised from the dead, it is in order that
they may come into eternal life (Ps-Sol 816), This
they are said to inherit (Eth. En 374 409, Ps-Sol
9914.8), Kternal life is sometimes looked at
as simply a prolonged bodily life (Eth. En 59
1019. 17 6214, Jub 2327-29); but sometimes it appears
as a superior kind of life in another world (4 Ezr
858, Syr. Bar 2122, Test. Lev. 18).
13. The Renovation of the World.—This is the
natural corollary of the idea that the world as at
present constituted has been corrupted by rebellion
against God and sin, and therefore cannot stand.
Deutero-Isaiah (0611 6672) foreshadows the advent of
‘a new heaven and a new earth.’ The same world-
reconstruction is held in prospect by the apoca-
lyptists. The Ethiopic Enoch (911*f-) announces
that ‘the first heaven will vanish and pass away,
and a new heaven will appear.’ The present order
of the material heavens will last only until the new
eternal creation is brought into existence (Eth. En
72!), Time distinctions will cease when the new
creation is accomplished (Jub 50°).
14. Predestination.—In the sense of the deter-
mination of the destiny of individuals beforehand,
as elect or non-elect, the idea of predestination
does not clearly appear in the apocalyptic litera-
ture. In the sense, however, that all the experi-
ences of God’s people are known and have always
been known by Him, and do not come to pass
without His consent, the doctrine is constant as the
undertone of thought. All the events unfolded in
the eschatological pictures are certain to come to
pass because God wills that they should. Cer-
tainty of blessedness for the righteous is not de-
pendent upon their own piety, but upon God’s
having foreordained it (Assump. Mos 128), The
age is as a whole fixed and measured (Book of
Jubilees). When its course has run, it comes to
94. APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE
APOCRYPHA
an end (4 Ezr 4% 714), A certain number of
righteous must be gathered in. Only when this
takes place can the consummation occur. It was
this doctrine that made the whole apocalyptic
theory a practical effective scheme, because It
enabled it to impart the assurance of the realiza-
tion of that good in the future which was missed
in the present.
VI. CONTACT WITIL THE NEW TESTAMENT.—
The significance of apocalyptic literature for the
NT’ is very large. In general, apocalyptic furnishes
the atmosphere of the NT. Its form, its language,
and its material are extensively used.* In par-
ticular, this is true of the following main lines:—
1. The apocalyptic form is used as such in the
literary composition of the NT. In the Apocalypse
of John this beconies the form of the whole book.
In other places it is introduced as a part of produc-
tions of a different literary type (cf. Mt 24 and
parallels). Whether these passages were origin-
ally separate works and the Gospel writers in-
corporated them, or whether they make up integral
parts of the plans of the Gospels, is a question for
historical criticism to deal with. In their inter-
pretation no satisfactory results will be reached if
their formal affinity to the apocalypses be ignored.
In 2 Th 2215 the case is clear. The Apostle evi-
dently weaves an apocalyptic passage of his own
construction into his Epistle. A firm base of
operations is thus furnished for the interpretation
of the apocalyptic portions of the NT. These must
be read as the apocalypses in general are read.
2. Some outstanding phrases in the NT termi-
nology deserve special mention. The expression
‘Son of Man’ occurs first in Daniel (718). From
here, if the now predominant pre-Christian dating
of the Book of Similitudes (Eth. En 37-71) be
correct, it is adopted into that work, and this
usage serves as the bridge of connexion between
Daniel and Jesus, who treats this term constantly
as His own title. Closely associated with this
title is the phrase ‘ Head of Days’ (Eth. En 473
482°), as applied to God. Other phrases of this
class are the ‘Day of Judgment,’ the ‘ Great Day
of Judgment’ (Eth. En 191 22411),
5. Quotations from apocalyptic books are not
very common in the NT. The most familiar is
that in Jude 4% from Eth. En 19. Jude is also a
quotation from the Assumption of Moses (Charles,
Testament of Moses). 'The book is not named here,
and the quotation is identified by ancient writers
to whom this apocalypse was familiar. But coin-
cidences of phraseology, suggesting quotations
either of one from the other or of both from a com-
mon source, are quite frequent (ef. Charles, Book
of Enoch, pp. 42-49; Apocalypse of Baruch, pp.
Ixxvi-Ixxix ; Book of the Secrets of Enoch, pp.
XXil, Xxlil; Assumption of Moses, pp. 113; also
Sinker, Testamenta XII Patriarcharum, pp. 209-
210). Some of these parallelisms must be ascribed
to the nature of the thought expressed, which
perhaps would not admit, or at least would not
easily lend itself to very different phraseology ;
but in a large number the coincidence can occur
only where literary affiliation of some kind exists.
_ 4. The most important point of contact, however,
is that in subject-matter. And here it is no mere
point of contact that we have to note, but a large
and free adoption of the forms worked out by the
apocalyptists. ΤῸ undertake a list would be to
repeat the summary given above of the apocalyptic
theology, The simplest way to describe the rela-
tion 1s to say that Jesus and the writers of the NT
found the forms of thought made use of in apo-
*This does not
mean, however, that there are not in the
fundamental matters sharp contrasts between the NT and the
apocalypses. ‘The New Testament is the New Testament. Its
originality is beyond question.
calyptie literature convenient vehicles, and have
cast the gospel of God’s redemptive love into these
as into moulds. The Messianism of the apo-
calyptists has thus become unfolded into the
Christology of the NT. The theocratic judgment
has passed into the universal ethical discrimination
between individuals according to the deeds done in
the body. Other doctrines, such as angelology and
demonology, have likewise been used as the vehicles
of great eternal verities.
5. Solutions of some questions which St. Paul
faced are proposed in some of the apocalypses
(notably 4 Ezr and Syr. Bar). These are often as
different as they can possibly be. Whether they
are meant to be a secret form of attack on Chris-
tianity or simply independent ways of approaching
the same subjects, they are of the utmost import-
ance. In the first case, they throw light on the
growth of Christian belief and the manner of
the polemic waged against it. In the latter, they
illustrate the nature of the setting in which the
gospel found itself as soon as preached.
Litrrature.—Besides the special works (referred to above) on
the individual apocalypses, the following comprehensive works
may be consulted:—Gfrorer, Das Jahrhundert d. Heils, 1838 ;
Hilgenfeld, Jiid. Apokal. 1857, and Messias Judworum, 1869 ;
Drummond, The Jewish Messiah, 1877; Smend, * Jiid. A pok.’ in
ZA TW,1885, pp. 222-250; Deane, Psewdepigrapha, 1891; Thom-
son, Books which Influenced Our Lord and His Apostles,1891;
de Faye, Les Apocalypses Jwives, 1592; Bousset, Der Antichrist
[Eng. tr. by Keane, 1596], and the same author’s Ofenbarung
Johannis, 1896, Die Rel. αἰ. Judentums, 1903, and “74. Apokatl.
1903; Charles, Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian,
1899 ; Schiirer, G/V%, 1898, iii; M. S. Terry, Biblical Apoca-
lyptics, 1898; Wellhausen, Stizzen wu. Vorarbeiten, 1899; Volz,
Jid, Exchatologie, 1903 ; Baldensperger, Die Messianisch-Apo-
kalyptischen Hoffnungen des Judentums, 1903 [this is the 3rd
ed. of his Sedbstbewusstsein Jesu1, 1858]; H. A. A. Kennedy,
The Eschatology of Paul, 1904; Muirhead, The Eschatology of
Jesus , 1904; articles by Charles in Hastings’ DB and in Eneye.
Biblica ; Porter, Messages of the Apocalypticul Writers, 19d.
A. C. ZENOS.
APOCRYPHA.—This term is here used for those
Jewish writings included in the Gr., Lat., and Eng.
Bibles to which the title is commonly applied, 1.6.
the Biblical Apocrypha. For the literary history
and characteristics of the Apocrypha see Hastings’
DB, vol. i. 8.0. ‘ Apocrypha.’ The relation of the
Apocrypha to Christ and Christianity, which is
the subject of this article, comes especially under
four heads—the Messianic idea, the doctrine of
Wisdom, the anticipation of Christian doctrines
other than that of the Person or mission of Christ,
the use of the Apocrypha in the Christian Church.
I. THE MESSIANIC IDEA.—While this idea is
luxuriantly developed in Apocalyptic literature, it
is singularly neglected in most of the Apocrypha.
The stream of prophecy which ran clear and strong
in the OT became turbid and obscure in those
degenerate successors of the prophets, the Apoca-
lyptic visionaries. But it was in the line of the
prophetic schools of teaching that the Messianic
idea was cherished. Accordingly the treatment of
the later stage of that teaching as erratic and un-
authoritative, not fit for inclusion in the Canon,
involved the result that the remaining more sober
literature, which was recognized as nearer to the
standard of Scripture, and in Egypt included in the
later canon (at all events as in one collection of
sacred books), was for the most part associated
with those schools in which the Messianic hope
was not cultivated. Therefore it is not just to
say that this hope had faded away or suffered
temporary obscurity during the period when the
Apocrypha was written, the truth being that it
was then more vigorous than ever in certain circles.
But these circles were not those of our Old Testa-
ment Apocrypha. Thus the question is literary
rather than historical. It concerns the editing of
certain books, not the actual life and thought of
Israel.
This will be evident if we compare the Book of
APOCRYPHA
Daniel with 1 Maccabees. These two books deal
with the same period. Yet the former, although
it does not know a personal Messiah, is the very
fount and spring of the Messianic conception of
the golden age in subsequent Apocalypses. On
the other hand, 1 Maccabees ignores the Messianic
hope, at all events in its usually accepted form.
Only two passages in this book can be pointed to as suggest-
ing the Messianic idea, and they will not bear the strain that is
sometimes put upon them. The first is 1 Mac 257 ‘ David for
being merciful inherited the throne of a kingdom for ever and
ever.’ We have here that very elementary form of the Messianic
idea, if we may so call it, the permanence of David’s throne.
But it is evident that David as the founder of the royal line, not
the Messiah, is here referred to, and that the permanence of the
throne is for the succession of his descendants, not for any one
person. Not only is this the most reasonable interpretation of
the passage, but it rests on OT promises to that effect, where
the family of David and not the personal Messiah is intended
(e.g. 2S 713. 16, ef. Ps 13212). Of this passage, however, as of the
earlier Scriptures on which it rests, we may say that the idea
contained in it is realized by the permanent reign of David’s
great Son, and in a much larger and higher way than had been
anticipated. The other passage is 1 Mac 44.46 ‘And there
came into their mind a good counsel, that they should pull it
[i.e. the sanctuary] down, lest it should be a reproach to them,
because the Gentiles had defiled it: and they pulled down the
altar, and laid up the stones in the mountain of the house in a
convenient place, until there should come a prcphet to give an
answer concerning them.’ This is not even a reference to ‘ the
prophet’ of whom we read in Jn 1°5. It is merely a case of
waiting for some prophet to come and say when the temple was
to be rebuilt, with no definite assurance that one specifically
anticipated prophet was thus destined to arise.
Nevertheless, though we cannot point to any
Messianic prophecy in 1 Mac., some of the Psalms
attributed to this period indicate a prevalence of
ideas that belong to the same circle of thought.
Passionate patriotism fired by martyrdom and
crowned with temporary success naturally painted
great hopes for the nation. The reason why these
were not connected with a coming Messiah may be
twofold. (1) Fora time it seemed likely that the
Maccabees themselves were realizing those hopes,
that this remarkable family of patriots was really
restoring the glory of Israel. (2) Since these men
were of the priestly line, the splendour of their
achievements eclipsed for the time being the
national dreams of the house of David.
The reaction of the later Hasidim, out of whom
the Pharisaic party emerged, against the worldly
methods of the Hasmonzean family and their identi-
fication of the mission of Israel with military
prowess, released the more spiritual religious hopes,
and so prepared for a revival of Messianic ideas.
This new movement, which saw the true good of
the nation to lie in her religion and looked for her
help from God, did not altogether coincide with
the hope of a personal Christ, for God Himself was
the Supreme King whose coming was to be ex-
pected by His people.
The book of Judith is a romance issuing from
the Pharisaic reactionary party ; but it is devoid
of all specific Messianic ideas. In this case the
human saviour of Israel is a woman. ν
Of the three other popular tales, two, The His-
tory of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon, contain
nothing bearing on the Messianic idea; but the
latter part of 7'obit may be accounted Messianic in
the general sense as giving a picture of the Golden
Age of the future. Jerusalem is to be scourged for
her children’s works, but she is to give praise to
the everlasting King that ‘afterwards his taber-
nacle may be builded’ in her ‘again with joy.’
Many nations are to come from far to the name
of the Lord God with gifts in their hands. All
generations shall praise her with great joy. The
city is to be built and paved with precious stones.
‘And all her streets shall say Hallelujah; and
they shall praise him, saying, Blessed be God,
which hath exalted it for ever’ (To 13°38). In all
this there is no mention of the son of David or any
human king and deliverer. (In the Hebrew varia-
APOCRYPHA 95
tion of the text of this chapter as rendered by
Neubauer, we read of ‘the coming of the Re-
deemer and the building of Ariel,’ z.e. Jerusalem ;
but evidently this Redeemer is Jahweh). We
must go outside our Apocrypha to the Psalms of
Solomon for the Pharisaic revival of the Messiah
of the line of David.
Apocalyptic literature lends itself more readily
to Messianic ideas, and these find full expression
in the Book of Enoch, where—in the ‘ Similitudes’
—the descriptions of the Messiah who appears in
clouds as the Son of Man are assigned by Dr.
Charles to the pre-Christian Jewish composition,
2 Esdras, also a Jewish Apocalyptic work, calls
for closer examination, since it is contained in our
Apocrypha, although its late date diminishes its
value in the history of the development of thought.
The Christian additions (chapters (@) 1. 2; (6) 15. 16)
do not call for attention here; they could only come
into the study of the development of Christian
thought if they were in any way contributions to
that subject ; but the warnings of the supplanting
of Israel by the Gentiles in (@), and the judgment
of the nations in (4), cannot be regarded in that
light. The original work (chapters 3-14) affords
significant evidence of the melancholy condition
into which Jewish Messianic hopes had sunk
during the gloomy interval between the destrue-
tion of Jerusalem and the rise of Bar-Cochba, the
reign of Domitian (A.D. 81-96) being its generally
accepted date (see Hastings’ DB, vol. i. p. 765).
Unlike the other Apocryphal writings, since it
does not illustrate the transition from the OT to
the NT, it is serviceable only in the study of post-
Christian Judaism. Its Christian interpolations
do not materially hinder us from discovering the
original text. The Messianic passages are in
chapters 7. 12. and 13. The insertion of the name
‘Jesus’ in 7°8 (not found in the Oriental versions)
by a Christian hand is not sufficient reason for dis-
crediting the Jewish character of the composition.
The picture of the Messiah is quite un-Christian.
It is startling to read that he is to die (739) ; but
(1) this is after reigning 400 years, and (2) without
a subsequent resurrection. The first point indi-
cates the visionary ideas of the Apocalyptic writer,
not the known fact of our Lord’s brief life on earth,
and the second is in conflict with the great pro-
minence which the early Christians gave to our
Lord’s resurrection. A Messiah who lived for 400
years and then died, and so ended his Messiah-
ship, could not be Jesus Christ. Accordingly the
Syriac reads ‘39’ instead of ‘400,’ evidently a
Christian emendation. Undoubtedly this is a
Jewish conception, and its mournful character,
so unlike the triumphant tone of Enoch, is in
keeping with the gloomy character of the book,
and a reflection of the deep melancholy that took
possession of the minds of earnest, patriotic Jews
after the fearful scenes of the siege of Jerusalem
and the overwhelming of their hopes in a deluge
of blood. The reference to the death of the
Messiah is not found in the Arabic or the Ar-
menian versions ; but it is easy to see how it came
to be omitted, while there is no likelihood that it
would be inserted later, either by a Jew, to whom
the idea would be unwelcome, or by a Christian,
since the resurrection is not also mentioned. A
noteworthy fact is that the Messiah is addressed
by God as ‘My son.’ The Ethiopic of 738, instead
ot ‘My son Jesus’ reads ‘My Messiah,’ and the
Armenian, ‘the anointed of God.’ But the refer-
ence to sonship occurs elsewhere frequently, 6.0.
‘My son Christ,’ or ‘My anointed son’ (79; see
also 13°: °7-52 145. in most versions, but not in
Arm.: see Dr. Sanday, art. ‘Son of God’ in
Hastings’ DB, vol. iv. p..571). Since, as Dr.
Sanday remarks in the article just referred to,
96 APOCRYPHA
the strongly Messianic passage in I’s-Sol 177°! has
not the title ‘Son,’ but clearly borrows from Ps 2
in v.6, it is a likely inference that 2 Esdras is here
based on that Psalm. Compare the words of the
high priest in Mt 26°. 4
In chs. 12 and 13 the writer names Daniel, and
manifestly bases his elaboration of the Messianic
picture on the Book of Daniel. The Messiah
appears as a lion rising up out of a wood and
roaring. A certain pre-existence is implied in the
assertion that the Most High had kepé him (1252);
the Latin has only ‘for the end,’ but the Syriac
reads ‘ for the end of days, who shall spring up out
of the seed of David.’ He will come to upbraid and
destroy the guilty people, but he will have mercy
on a remnant and deliver them. Similar ideas
are repeated in ch. 13, but in a different form. A
man comes from the midst of the sea. This is
unlike Daniel (73: 15), where the four beasts come up
from the sea, but the ‘ one like unto a son of man’
from theclouds. The Most High has kept him for
a great season (v.**), another reference to pre-ex-
istence. Similarly later on we read, ‘ Like as one
can neither seek out nor know what is in the
depths of the sea, even so can no man upon earth
see my Son, or those that be with him, but in the
time of his day’ (v.**). He exists, but hidden till
the time when God will reveal him. When he
comes and is revealed, ‘it will be as a man ascend-
ing.’ ‘When all the nations hear his voice’ they
will draw together to fight against him. But he
will stand on the top of Mount Zion, and there he
will taunt the nations to their face and destroy them
without any effort on his part, the instrument
of destruction being the Law, which is compared
to fire. Then in addition to the saved remnant
of the Jews already referred to, the lost ten tribes
will be brought back from their exile beyond the
Euphrates, whither they had gone by a miracu-
lous passage through the river, and whence they
will return by a similar miraculous staying of
‘the springs of the river’ again. Thus we have
the idea of a restoration of all Israel under the
Messiah, but with no further extension of the
happy future so as to include other nations, as in
the Christian Apocalyptic conceptions; on the
contrary, those nations will le humiliated and
chagrined at the spectacle of the glorification of
the former victims of their oppression. On the
whole we must conclude with Paul Volz (Jiidische
Eschatologie, p. 202) that 2 Ezra adopts the
traditional hope of the Messiah, but does not see
in it the chief ground of assurance for the future.
He is hailed as God’s son, but he appears to have
only a temporary existence. He does not bring
deliverance from sin ; nor is he to come for judg-
ment. His death is the end of his mission.
ii. THE DocrRInE oF Wispom. — Unlike the
Prophetic and Apocalyptic literature which con-
fessedly anticipated a great future, and so fur-
nished a hope which Christianity subsequently
claimed to fulfil, the Hebrew Wisdom writings
profess to give absolute truth, and betray no
consciousness of further developments. Neverthe-
less the Church was quick to seize on them as
teaching the essential Divinity of Christ. The
historical method of more recent times sees in them
the germs of ideas on this subject which were
subsequently developed by Christian theologians
of the Alexandrian school. For the doctrine of
Wisdom in the OT see DB, art. ‘Wisdom.’ That
doctrine in the epocerp ha is in direct succession
from the Hokhmah teaching of Proverbs.
1. Sirach.—In the Palestinian school represented
by Sirach it is difficult to see much, if any, ad-
vance on Proverbs. The idea of Wisdom itself is
essentially the same, and the gnomic form of writ-
ing continues an identity of method
APOCRYPHA
(a) Literary Form.—There is no attempt at meta-
physical analysis or philosophical argumentation.
This Jewish philosophy is not elucidated by reason-
ing, or based on logical grounds. It is regarded
as intuitive in origin and the treatment of it is
didactic. Thus we have nothing like a philo-
sophical or ethical treatise. Much of the writing
is directly hortatory, and where the third person
is used we have descriptions and reflections,
accounts of the nature and function of wisdom,
and illustrations of its operations in life and
history.
(Ὁ) Unity of Wisdom. —In Sirach, as in Pr.,
Wisdom is described from two points of view:
as found in God and His administration of the
world, and as attainable by man in his own char-
acter and life. But it is not that God’s wisdom is
merely the model or the source of our wisdom.
Wisdom throughout, though seen in such different
relations, is taken as essentially one entity. It is
wisdom, absolute wisdom, that God uses in the
administration of the universe, and that man also
is exhorted to pursue. This realism in dealing
with an abstract notion is the first step towards
personification.
(c) Personification.—As in Proverbs, wisdom is
here personified. Wisdom is supposed to act, 6.0.
“How exceeding harsh is she to the unlearned’
(6°). In a fine passage she celebrates her own
praises, glorying in the midst of her people,
saying—
‘IT came forth from the mouth of the Most High,
And covered the earth as a mist.
I dwelt in high places,
And my throne is in the pillar of the cloud’ (243. 4) ;
and, further, after a rich description of the scenes
of nature that she influences—
‘In three things I was beautified,
And stood up beautiful before the Lord and men,’ etc. (251).
But there is nothing in this personification beyond
a free use of the Oriental imagination. No doubt
to this vivid imagination such writing presents
wisdom as in some way a concrete entity, and
more, aS a gracious, queenly presence. But all
along there are expressions which admit the
imaginary character of the whole picture. For
instance, the opening passage, describing how
Wisdom stood up in the congregation of the Most
High to celebrate her own praises, would lose all
its force of appeal if it were taken in prosaic
literalness. It is just because this is no actual
person posing for admiration, but a truth set forth
before us, that the whole picture appears to be
sublime, and serves its purpose in leading to a high
appreciation of wisdom. Then wisdom is identi-
fied with understanding: ‘Whoso is wise, cleave
thou unto him’ (684)... ‘If thou seest a man of
understanding, get thee betimes unto him’ (ν. 36),
Thus cultivation of friendship with a man of
wisdom or understanding is part of the pursuit of
wisdom itself. Even Philo’s much more explicit
personification of the Logos does not mean that he
held the Logos to be an actual person in our sense
of the term. Here all we can say of the subject
is that the allegorizing is very vivid, so vivid as
to be on the verge of the mythopeeic, but still*in
the original intention of the writer not meant to
be more than the glorification of a great quality
found primarily in God, impressed on nature, and
commended to mankind as a highly desirable
attainment.
The difficulty of the question lies in the fact that the Oriental
mind would not clearly face this question of personality. The
imagination would so vividly realize the allegorical picture
that the idea would seem to assume form and body, condensing
to an apparently concrete and even personal presence, so that
it would be regarded for the time being as a person, and yet in
the course of the meditation this would melt again into an
abstraction, and in the less imaginative passages be regarded
Ces 7 Se ee |. τ ἢ
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APOCRYPHA 97
in its original character purely as a mode of thought or action.
To apply to the product of such a process the logic of the West,
or to attempt to bring it into harmony, say, with Locke’s theory
of ideas, is unreasonable. The atmosphere does not allow of so
hard a definition of personality as that which may be either
affirmed or denied.
(d) Source. —Wisdom originates in God. She
‘came forth from the mouth of the Most High’
(24°). ‘Wisdom was created together with the faith-
ful in the womb’ (14). She exclaims, ‘ He created
me from the beginning, before the world’ (24%).
As with Pr 8”, the Arian controversy has given
a factitious importance to this sentence. Wisdom
is identitied with Christ; and thus the Arian
doctrine that Christ is a creature, that He was
created, not begotten by God and not eternal,
appears to have clear support. It is probable
that Sirach is dependent on Proverbs, and the
rendering of LXX (ἔκτισε) is doubtful.* But the
much debated point is of little real importance ;
indeed, it is of no valuet ill we grant that Wisdom
in Proverbs and Sirach is (1) personal, and (2)
identical with Christ. The denial of (1) in the
previous paragraph carries with it the exclusion of
(2). Nevertheless, apart from the Arian concep-
tion, we still have the idea of the creation of
wisdom to account for. This, however, is but a
consequence of the allegorical personification in
conjunction with the thought that wisdom pro-
ceeds from God. That has a twofold signification,
corresponding to the two aspects of wisdom. First,
God is the source of His own wisdom. He has
not to learn; all His plans and purposes spring
from His own mind. Secondly, mankind learns
wisdom from God ; it is His gift to His children.
Wisdom is with all flesh according to God’s
‘ gift ’ (110).
(6) Characteristics. —There is an_ intellectual
element in wisdom, which is the highest exercise
of the mind. The opposite of wisdom is folly, a
stupid and brutish thing. The Divine side of wis-
dom most clearly exhibits this character. Wisdom
created by God is with God, and therefore is seen
in His presence and works. Nevertheless, Sirach
makes very little reference to the manifestation
of wisdom in Nature or Providence. The whole
stress is on this Divine gift as an object of
aspiration for mankind. Wisdom is seen as the
best of all human possessions. The sublimity of
wisdom is set forth in order to fire the enthusiasm
of men to have their lives enriched with the
Divine grace. This is just the same as in Pro-
verbs. So also are two further characteristics of
Hebrew wisdom. First, it is moral. It is con-
cerned with the practical reason, not the specula-
tive. Its realm 15 ethics, not metaphysics. It is
not a philosophy for solving the riddle of the
universe; it is a guide to conduct. The ethics is
not discussed theoretically ; there is no theory ot
ethics. The aim of the book is practical, and the
treatment of wisdom is didactic and hortatory.
Sirach even discourages speculation, in directing
the attention solely to conduct—
‘ Seek not things that are too hard for thee,
And search not out things that are above thy strength.
The things that have been commanded thee, think there-
upon ;
For thou hast no need of the things that are secret’ (321-22).
Second, it is religious. Wisdom here, as in Pro-
verbs, is identified with the fear of the Lord. The
way to attain wisdom is to keep the Law—
‘If thou desire wisdom, keep the commandments,
And the Lord shall give her unto thee freely’ (126).
EE ———_———————E
* The Hebrew of Proverbs (73) is rendered in RV as well as
AV ‘possessed.’ Still RVm has ‘formed,’ in agreement with
Bertheau, Zockler, Hitzig, and Ewald, and Delitzsch has the
similar word ‘ produced’; moreover, Syr. and Targ. agree with
the LXX. In Pr 47 73) is rendered ‘ get,’ and certainly there it
can only have that meaning.
VOL. I.—7
Like Proverbs, Sirach contains a quantity of
shrewd worldly wisdom, and it is eminently
prudential in aim; but it is the better self that
is considered, and the higher interests, rather:
than wealth and pleasure, that are studied. In
this way the whole book is concerned with the
exposition of the nature and merits of wisdom.
2. Baruch. —The eloquent celebration of the
praises of wisdom in this book, which probably
dates from the Ist cent. A.D. (see DB, art.
‘ Baruch’), is on similar lines to Sirach. Wisdom.
is like choice treasure, to be sought out from far.
But since she is above the clouds or beyond the
sea, no man can be expected to reach so far.i
There is only One who can do this. ‘He that
knoweth all things knoweth her’ (3*). Here the
idea is different from that of Sirach. Wisdom
is not created by God, but is found by Him, as:
though an independent pre-existence—‘ He found
her out with His understanding’ (ib.). But the
personification is thinner and more pallid than in:
Sirach. There is no real dualism. The language.
is little more than a metaphorical expression of
the idea that God has the wisdom which is above
human reach. Still it goes on into a sort of
myth, for Wisdom thus discovered by God hidden
in some remote region afterwards appears on
earth and becomes conversant with men (3*).:
Here we have a curious parallel to the Johannine
conception of the Word originally with God and
then becoming incarnate and dwelling with men.
But Baruch has no conception of incarnation, and
the idea has no place in the Hebrew personification
of wisdom.
3. Wisdom.—(a) The nature of Wisdom.—Al-
though, as an Alexandrian work in touch with
Greek philosophy, the Bk. of Wisdom carries the
doctrine of Hokhmah a stage forward in the direc-
tion of Philo, it is essentially Jewish, and its idea
of wisdom is fundamentally the same as that of
Proverbs and Sirach, but with additions, some of
which may be attributed to Hellenic influences.
The essential Hebrew elements, however, remain.
While a movement of intellect, wisdom is practical,
moral, and religious. We are no more in the
regions of metaphysics or even abstract ethical
speculation than in the Palestinian literature.
Thus we read—
‘For her true beginning is desire of discipline ;
And the care for discipline is love of her’ (611).
(6) Personification.—The personification of Wis-
dom, though still very shadowy, is a little more
accentuated than in Sirach. Wisdom is described
as ‘a spirit’ (1°), and as such seems to be identi-
fied with ‘the spirit of God’ (v.7). In answer to
Solomon’s prayer God gave him ‘a spirit of wis-
dom’ (77). ‘She is a breath of the power of God?
(7%). She sits as God’s ‘assessor’ (Drummond) by
His side on His throne (9%). When, however,
various functions, such as Creation and Providence,
seem to be ascribed to her, this cannot be as toa
personal agent, because they are also ascribed to
God (e.g. 91:3). It must be, therefore, that God is
thought of as doing these things by means of His
wisdom.
(c) Attributes.—A string of 21 attributes, in
thoroughly Greek style, is ascribed to the spirit
of Wisdom (7333). Among other things, she is said
to be ‘only begotten’ (uovoyevés, the very word
used of Christ in Jn 114-38 316 18 and 1 Jn 4°, though
ἮΝ of Wisdom renders it here ‘alone in kind,’
having ‘sole born’ in the margin). Further, wis-
dom is described as ‘a clear effluence of the glory
of the Almighty’ and an ‘effulgence (ἀπαύγασμα,
whence He 15) from everlasting light’ (7 3). She
is free from all defilement, beneficent, beautiful.
(d) Functions.—Divine functions are ascribed to
Wisdom, since it is by His wisdom that God pei-
98 APOCRYPHA
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forms them. (1) Creation. She is ‘the artificer
of all things’ (7), ‘an artificer of the things that
are’(8°). (2) Providence. The function of wisdom
in providence is much dwelt on. Wisdom is re-
garded as a sort of guardian angel watching over
men and directing the course of history. Patri-
archal history from Adam downward is described
as thus under the charge of wisdom. (3) Revela-
tion. The picture of Wisdom as the eflulgence
from everlasting light points to this. She is also
described as ‘an unspotted mirror of the working
of God, and an image (εἰκών, ef. 2 Cor 44, Col 11°) of
His goodness’ (756) ; in attaining to wisdom we come
to know the ways of God.
(6) Wisdom as a human acquisition. — While
wisdom is described in its relation to God as co-
extensive with the infinite range of the Divine
activities, it is also represented from another point
of view as a treasure which mankind is invited to
seek. The difficulty of acquiring wisdom suggested
in Baruch is not found here. On the contrary, we
read that—
‘Easily is she beheld of them that love her,
And found of them that seek her’ (612).
Moreover, there is no limitation of Jewish ex-
clusiveness in the privilege of enjoying this great-
est of God’s gifts, ‘for wisdom is a spirit that
loveth man’ (1°). When a little later we read that
‘the spirit of the Lord hath filled the world’
(τὴν οἰκουμένην, ‘the inhabited earth,’ RVm), the
breadth of Hellenism seen throughout the Alex-
andrian movement, first Jewish, later Christian,
is here apparent. While Wisdom is identified with
the Law in the Palestinian work Sirach, here all
true enlightenment, pagan as well as Jewish, must
be included in this far-reaching wisdom. At the
same time, this widespread wisdom is very different
from Greek philosophy. The practical, ethical
element which is essential to the Hebrew Hokhmah
is always its chief constituent. Moreover, the
homelier conception of wisdom as an exalted
prudence serviceable in worldly affairs, which is
often apparent in Proverbs and Sirach, is also to
be found in the Bk. of Wisdom.
(7) Anticipations of Christology.—With this con-
ception of wisdom we cannot claim the identity
of terms (ἀπαύγασμα, εἰκών, Χόγος) which are here
applied to wisdom and in the NT to Jesus Christ
as an indication of any clear anticipation of Chris-
tian truth. It is rather the other way. St. Paul
and the author of Hebrews knew Wisdom, and
made use of expressions in the book for their own
purposes, giving to them a richer Christian mean-
ing. Nor can it be allowed that the use of the
word λόγος as closely associated with wisdom is
any real anticipation of the λόγος doctrine of Philo.
In Wis 9! we read—
“Ὁ God of the fathers, and Lord who keepest thy mercy
Who madest all things by thy word’ (6 ποιύσας τὰ πάντα ἐν
Aoyw σου).
This is evidently an allusion to the Creation story
in Gn 1, so that we must understand λόγος in the
sense of ‘ word’ (33, in the familiar OT expression
‘the word of the Lord’), But Philo uses λόγος in
the Stoic sense of ‘reason.’ It may be conjectured
that the transition to this meaning has begun in
Wis., because the line immediately followine that
just quoted is, ‘and by thy wisdom thou formedst
man’ (Wis 95). Thus λόγος is treated as parallel to
wisdom. In any case λόγος is a rational word not
* mere utterance of the voice, but a word with
thought, reason in it. Still, the author elsewhere
uses the term in the sense of ‘word’ as the implied
reference to Gn 1 indir
cates that he does here.* It
a λόγοι occurs 15 times in Wisdom (viz. 19.16 92.17. 20 69.11
7: " οι 1} 5 τ 2 τῷ ‘
716 88. 18 9 129 1612.1815.22), In 13 of these instances there is no
question that it means ‘word.’ Of the 2 τι lainiver Cases one is
that now under consideration ; the other is 22—* And while our
would be nearer the mark to say that Jn 1’ is an
echo of Wis 91. Still there is much more in the
prologue to the Fourth Gospel than can be derived
in any way from this simple statement, and a great
deal of that reminds us more of Philo than of
Wisdom. The conclusion would seem to be that
in John as in Wisdom λόγος is used in the common
Biblical sense of ‘word’; but that there are also
associations with Philo, the author of the Fourth
Gospel ascribing to the λόγος as ‘ word’ some of the
attributes which Philo had ascribed to his λόγος as
‘reason.’ Accordingly the prologue to the Fourth
Gospel may be said to combine reminiscences both
of Wisdom and of Philo, together with its own
original Christian ideas.
iii. ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES.
—Anticipations of the Christ idea, either as Mes-
siah or as Wisdom, have been dealt with in the
previous sections. It remains to be seen for what
other Christian doctrines preparation is made in
the Apocrypha.
1. The Doctrine of God.—This subject is treated
very fully in DB, Extra Vol. art. ‘ Development
of Doctrine,’ pp. 276-281. All that is called for
here is to anilteate those phases of the doctrine
that approach the Christian idea. 1 Maccabees is
remarkable for its omission of any direct reference
to God. But although (according to the best text)
the name of God does not appear, He is thought of
under the euphemism ‘heaven’ (e.g. 1 Mac 3!%).
Therefore we must take the omission of the sacred
name as an indication of the reverence that feared
to mention it, which was characteristic of a later
Judaism. This went with the growing conception
of the Divine transcendence which was not an
anticipation of Christianity, but the reverse, and
against which Christianity was a reaction. Still it
prepared for Christianity by emphasizing the need
of some intermediary power to bring man into
contact with God, a mediating Christ. While no
hint of anything of the kind is dropped in the
historical part of the Apocrypha, the soil is here
prepared for it by the very barrenness of religion in
lack of it. The popular tales in the Apocrypha con-
tribute nothing material to the conception of God.
The fierce patriotism of Judith falls back on the
ancient appropriation of Jehovah for Israel; but
this can scarcely be reckoned a theological narrow-
ing, since the thought is net turned to any question
concerning the nature of God. In the Wisdom
literature, however, we may look for some develop-
ment of the doctrine. Negatively we see this in
the avoidance of the anthropomorphism that fear-
lessly asserted itself in the OT. Not only is there
no approach to a theophany in human torm, but
the human features often poetically ascribed to
God in the older literature do not appear. This,
again, goes with the growing feeling of Divine
transcendence, which is alien to Christianity. But
it is also an indication of a spiritual conception
that may be taken as anticipatory of the spiritual
idea of God in the NT. In Sirach, God is not so
much too remote, but rather too great for men to
understand His nature—
‘When ve glorify the Lord, exalt him as much as ye can;
For even yet will he exceed’ (Sir 4320),
God is addressed as ‘ Father and Master of my life’
(23'), and ‘ Father and God of my life’ (v.*), which
implies the Divine fatherhood of the individual, a
doctrine only just reached in the latest OT teach-
ing. Moreover, the goodness of God extends to all
mankind (1819). In Wisdom, under the influence of
Hellenic thought, the idealizing process is pushed
further. God is the ‘eternal light’ (Wis 7%), so
that wisdom which irradiates the world is the
heart beateth, reason is a spark.’ Here it is human reason that
In every case where λόγος is predicated of God
See especially 129 1822,
is referred to.
the sense is ‘ word.’
APOCRYPHA
APOCRYPHA 0.
effluence from this central fountain of light. On
the other hand, there is a narrowing of the idea
of creation under the influence of the Greek notion
of pre-existent matter. God creates the world out
of ‘formless matter’ (1117), and creation is described
as being ‘impressed,’ like wax by the seal (19°).
The motive of creation was love, and God hates
nothing that He has made, loving all things that
are (11%). Nevertheless, it is said in another place
that God only loves him who dwells with wisdom
(7). The seeming inconsistency may be reconciled
if we understand that here we have the more special
personal affection of Divine friendship.
2. The Fall and Original Sin.—While Gn 8 con-
tains the narrative of the fall of Adam, (1) it does
not attribute this to the devil, not identifying the
serpent with Satan, but treating it simply as the
most subtle of beasts ; and (2) it does not aflirm that
either sin or death visits the whole race in conse-
quence of this primary offence and its doom. But
both of these ideas appear in Christianity ; and the
latter is contained in the writings of St. Paul,
who does not give it as part of the new teaching,
but assumes that it is already an accepted belief.
St. Paul simply appeals to it as a Lasis for his
analogous teaching concerning Christ. Thus he
writes, ‘as through the one man’s disobedience the
many were made sinners’ (Ro 51%), and similarly
with the second part of the doctrine, ‘as in Adam
all die’ (1 Co 15**). Therefore these ideas must
have grown up apart from the OT. Now we
find them in the Apocr. Wisdom literature, both
Palestinian and Alexandrian, e.g. the Palestinian
teaching—
‘From a woman was the beginning of sin ;
And because of her we all die’ (Sir 2524)—
an easy inference from Gn 3, but never made in
the OT. Then there is the Alexandrian teaching,
‘ By the envy of the devil, death entered into the
world’ (Wis 2”).
Gritz regards this as a Christian interpolation ; but Dr. Drum-
mond shows that his three reasons for this view do not appear
to have much force. (1) Gratz objects that the clause disturbs
the connexion of the passage, but it balances the previous
statement—
‘God created man for incorruption,
And made him an image of his own proper being’ (v.2°) ;
for thus we have the antithesis which is one of the common
forms of Hebrew poetry. (2) For Gratz to assert that it has
for him ‘absolutely no sense,’ is a criticism that would apply
to it equally whoever wrote it. (3) The fact that it is without
parallel in other Jewish writings must not be taken as con-
demning it. The idea is familiar in Christian literature; yet
there is nothing specifically Christian about it, since it simply
results from an application of the doctrine of a devil to the
Genesis narrative, with the exercise of some imagination as to
the Evil Spirit’s motive. Moreover, Milton’s adoption of the
idea of envy as that motive in Paradise Lost, shows that, to a
great poet at all events, the expression is not without a reason-
able meaning. The author of Wisdom is a sufficiently brilliant
writer to have struck out these ideas and made the inferences
without any antecedent example. Diahne considers the passage
to be allegorical, because the notion of ‘an evil principle in
opposition to the Divine is foreign to pure Alexandrianism.’
Accordingly he applies Philo’s interpretation of Gn 3 to it, and
understands the word διάβολος to stand for the serpent as an
image of carnal pleasure. But why should not the writer
mention the serpent if he meant it? Since ὁ διάβολος appears
in the LXX for ‘ the Satan,’ it is impossible that a Jew who was
familiar with that version would use the word in an entirely
original way for a reptile. The story of fallen angels was not
unfamiliar to Jewish Apocalyptic literature (see Drummond,
Philo Judeus, p. 195 f.). That, however, Wisdom does not
teach the total depravity of the race, we may infer from its
singling out the inhabitants of Canaan as deserving to be
extirpated because of their innate vice. ‘Their nature by birth
was evil’ (1210); ‘they were a seed accursed from the begin-
ning’ (v.11), Here a doctrine of heredity is implied; but it is
applied only to the Canaanites, who are regarded as of an in-
veterately and hopelessly evil stock. It is to be inferred that
other peoples are not so bad.
The late date of 2 Esdras removes it out of the
category of anticipations of Christianity. Still, as
a Jewish work it witnesses to Jewish thoughts
which have their roots in an earlier period. Now
this book distinctly teaches the doctrine of original
sin. The angel Uriel undertakes to teach Esdras
‘wherefore the heart is wicked’ (2 Es 4). In an
earlier passage the sin of the race was traced to
Adam (37). The pessimism of the book is espe-
cially gloomy in regard to this subject. Esdras
declares that ‘it had been better that the earth
had not given thee Adam, cr else, when it had
given him, to have restrained him from sinning’
(75). Though it was Adam who sinned, the evil
did not fall on him alone, but on all of us who
come from him (ν. δ).
3. Redemption.—There is nothing approaching
the Christian doctrine of redemption in the Apoc-
rypha. The NT teachers had to go back beyond
all this literature to Is 53 for the seed thoughts of
their specific teaching on this subject. In the
Messianic ideas, as far as these appear in tle
Apocrypha, which we have seen is but meagrely,
there are the two thoughts of God redeeming His
people, and the Christ coming as a personal re-
demption. There is no anticipation of the doctrine
of the cross. The sombre prediction of the death
of the Christ in 2 Es. (later than the Christian
gospel, as it is) contains no hint that this is either
sacrificial or redemptive. The goodness and mercy
of God in delivering His people are frequently cele-
brated ; but with no specific doctrine of salvation.
The Hokhmah teaching would suggest that escape
from sin is to be had through the acquisition of
wisdom, which is rooted in the fear of the Lord.
It was wisdom that brought the first man out of
his fall (Wis 10. Tobit has the great OT teach-
ing of God’s forgiveness for His penitent people
whom He scourges for their iniquity, but to whom
He will show mercy. If they turn to Him with
all their heart and soul to do truth before Him,
He will turn to them (To 135: ). Sinners must
turn and do righteousness if they would receive
His restoring grace. The Patristic idea that the
‘blessed . . . wood. . . through which cometh
righteousness’ (Wis 147, cf. Ac 5%, 1 P 2*4) is the
cross, ignores the context, which plainly shows that
the reference is to Noah’s Ark (see v.°).
4. Liberalizing of religion.—In several respects
the Apocrypha shows advance beyond the narrower
exclusiveness of Judaism. The historical situation
in 1 Mac. did not encourage this movement. When
the Jews were struggling for freedom of life and
worship against the forcible intrusion of pagan-
ism, they were not in a condition for missionary
enthusiasm. Judith breathes a spirit of fiercest
Jewish patriotism. But Tobit in his prayer of
rejoicing declares that many nations shall come
from far to the name of the Lord God with gifts in
their hands (To 13!!). That this is not the re-
luctant homage of subject peoples is shown by the
sequel, where we read about ‘generations of genera-
tions’ praising God with songs of rejoicing. Still
all this is ministering to the glory of Jerusalem.
Israel is exalted in the honour shown to her
God. The Palestinian Hokhmah literature is not
free from Jewish narrowness. In Sirach, God
is prayed to send His fear on all nations. But
this is to be by lifting up His hand against them,
so that they may see His mighty power. Still
some gracious end even in this stern treatment of
the heathen may be desired, since the prayer pro-
ceeds, ‘ And let them know thee, as we also have
known thee’ (Sir 805). God is asked to hear the
prayer of His suppliants [Israel], in order that all
on the earth may know that He is the Lord, the
eternal God (v.").. This may not mean more
than the acknowledgment of God for His glory
and for the reflexion of that on His privileged
people. On the other hand, the importance at-
tached to wisdom has a widening tendency ; for
this is an internal grace, not an external privi-
lege. But the identification of wisdom in Sirach
100 APOCRYPHA
APOCRYPHA
with interest in the Law (39!) tends to limit this
grace itself and confine it to Israel. ἢ
When we turn to the Alexandrian teaching of
the Book of Wisdom we expect a wider outlook.
Here also the national privileges of Israel are
accentuated. God gave oaths and covenants of
good promises to the nation’s ancestors (127! 188).
Moreover, ‘the righteous’ are to judge the
nations and have rule over the people (3°). But
since the domain of wisdom is world-wide and
‘the spirit of God filleth the world’ (17), it might
be supposed that the world at large would benefit
by that gracious presence. Vrinces of peoples are
invited to honour wisdom that they may reign for
ever (6), an invitation necessarily applying to the
Gentile world. It is stated in a general way that
‘the ways of them which are on the earth’ [more
than Israel] were corrected by wisdom (9'*). There
is a magnificent universalism in the great saying
that God loves all things that are, and abhors none
of the things that He has made (112. God’s in-
corruptible spirit is in all things (12!) ; there is no
other God that careth for all (v.°); His sove-
reignty over all leads Him to forbear all (v.’%).
But further than this the book does not go. It
contains no explicit promise of redemption or of
the blessings of the future for the world outside
Israel, though it would be no illegitimate inference
from these large ideas concerning the presence and
activity and graciousness of God the whole world
over to conclude that such good things were not
to be confined to Israel. On the other hand, not
only were the Canaanites a helplessly evil race,
but the more recent oppressors of Israel, whose
gross idolatry is scornfully portrayed at large,
after the manner of Deutero-Isaiah, are described
as ‘prisoners of darkness ... exiled from the
eternal providence’ (177). For other heathen
people allowance is made on account of their
ignorance. ‘For these men there is but small
blame: for they too, peradventure, do but go
astray’ (138).
5. Resurrection and Immortality.—With regard
to no other subject is advance from the OT stand-
point towards that of the NT more apparent in the
Apocrypha. The distinction between Palestinian
and Alexandrian conceptions is here very marked,
the Palestinian writings promising resurrection, the
Alexandrian making no reference to a resurrection,
but coed ae | the Greek idea of the immortality of
the soul. The more conservative books of the
former school, Tobit, Sirach, and 1 Mac., contain no
reference to the resurrection or the future life in any
form, retaining only the old gloomy Hebrew notion
of Sheol, which, on the other hand, in these writings
is not Gehenna, not a place of punishment. ‘There
are no chastisements in Sheol’ (Sir 414, Heb. mar.,
and LXX).* According to Tobit, Sheol is an
‘eternal place’ (3°) where life is extinct. ‘ All the
rewards of faithfulness enumerated by the dying
Mattathias (1 Mac 2°61) are limited to this life?
(Charles, Eschat. p. 219). In Judith eternal punish-
ment is threatened to the enemies of Tae (16!7) ;
but nothing is said about a future life for God’s
people. 2 Mac., an epitome of the five books of
Jason of Cyrene (2%), contains a clear doctrine of
resurrection to eternal life (7%), which is denied
to the non-Israelite (v.44); this is a bodily resur-
rection (7'! 33. =), and it will be enjoyed in the fel-
lowship of brethren similarly privileged (v.). In
2 Esdras we have ‘ the day of judgment’ (124), A
first resurrection may be suggested by the refer-
ence to ‘ those that will be with him’ in the day
of God’s Son (13"). The end will come when the
* Dr. Charles points out that the reference to Gehenna in Sir
717 is undoubtedly corrupt, since it is contrary to the whole out-
look of the writer as to the future, and is not supported by the
Heb., Syr., and best MSS of the Ethiopic (Eschatology, p. 164).
number of those like Ezra is complete (438), Till
then the spirits of the wicked shall wander about
in torment while God’s servants will be at rest
(7). These spirits of the wicked will be tor-
mented in seven ways (vv.*!-§7), and after the final
judgment even more grievously (ν. 5). On the
other hand, those who have kept the ways of the
Most High shall have joy in seven ways, accord-
ing to their seven orders, during the intermediate
period, and after the judgment receive glory (ν."5),
when ‘ their face shall shine as the sun,’ and ‘ they
shall be made like unto the light of the stars,
being henceforth incorruptible’ (v.%).
In Wisdom there is no idea of resurrection. The
body is the temporary earthly burden (91°) of a
pre-existent soul (85). Immortality is for the
soul, but not by nature or necessity. It is attained
through wisdom (8:7), Still it was God’s design
that man should enjoy it, for He ‘created man
for incorruption’ (2%). ‘The souls of the right-
eous are in the hand of God’ (3!), at peace, with
a hope full of immortality. ‘The righteous live
for ever’ (v.!°). The wicked have no hope in their
death. They will be dashed speechless to the
ground ; and yet their fate does not seem to be
annihilation, for ‘they shall lie utterly waste, and
they shall be in anguish’ (4.9). But there is no
definite statement of eternal punishment.
iv. USE OF THE APOCRYPHA IN THE GOSPELS
AND THE CHURCH.—Our Apocr., which consists of
Jewish writings contained in the Vulg. but not
found in the Hebrew OT, rests primarily on the
LXX, and that was the version of the OT com-
monly used by the Greek-speaking Jews in the
times of the Apostles, and subsequently by the
Christians. Being thus the Scriptures in the
hands of the NT writers, the LXX introduced
the Apocr. to them together with the books of our
OT. But most of the NT writers knew the Hebrew
Bible. This is evident in the case of St. Paul, St.
John, and St. Matthew. The only certain excep-
tion is the author of Hebrews, to whom probably
we should add St. Luke; and it is reasonable to
suppose that these two men, being the most
scholarly NT writers, were not unacquainted with
the limits of the Palestinian Canon. No NT writer
names any book of the Apocr., nor is there any
direct quotation from one of these books in the
NT. Phrases from some of them indicate, how-
ever, that these books were used by the writers
in whom they occur, although there 1s no evidence
that they regarded them as authoritative. On
the other hand, 2 Esdras borrows from the NT,
especially from the Apocalypse. 2 Es 8* is an echo
of Mt 20°. The only books of our Apocr. to which
reference can be manifestly traced in the NT
are the works of Wisdom literature, Wisdom and
Sirach, especially the former ; and the NT writers
who most evidently make allusion to phrases in
those books are St. Paul, St. James, and the
author of Hebrews. Since these writers are be-
yond the scope of this Dictionary, the inquirer
is referred to DB articles, ‘ Wisdom,’ ‘Sirach,’
‘ Apocrypha,’ and those on the various NT books.
Coming to the special subject of the present
volume, we note that Jesus Christ never names
or distinctly cites any of the books of the Apocr.,
nor are any of them mentioned or directly quoted
by any of the Evangelists. Nevertheless there
seem to be several reminiscences of Wisdom and
Sirach, if not direct allusions to those books in the
Gospels.
Wis 37 has been connected with Mt 1343; but the Gospel
phrase can be better derived from Dn 123, for in both cases the
same verb is used—ézaéu-fovai[v], while in Wis. the verb. is
ἀναλάμψουσιν. Wis 35 ‘They shall judge (κρινοῦσιν) the nations’
may be alluded to in Mt 1928 ‘judging (zpivovzes) the twelve
tribes of Israel’ ; and, if so, the change is in accordance with our
Lord’s modifications of Jewish Messianic expectations, showing
i λς σως ἧς ον οενονωντώσροιν, ε΄
APOCRYPHA
that the judgment which the Jews reserved for Gentiles was to
come upon Israel. Possibly Wis 44 is alluded to in Mt 719. But
Wis 91 (ὁ ποιήσας τὰ πάντα ἐν λόγω cov) May be more than antici-
pation of Jn 18 ; it may have suggested the idea in the Gospel,
though the entirely different language (τάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο)
with reference to the function of the Logos in creation excludes
the notion of actual quotation. Wis 158 ‘ when he is required
(ἀπαιτηθείς) to render back the soul (τῆς Ψυχῆς) which was lent
him’ is suggested by Lk 1229 ‘ this night is thy soul (τὴν Lux av
cov) required (ἀπαιτοῦσιν) of thee.’ Perhaps ‘the darkness that
should afterwards receive them’ (Wis 172!) suggested our Lord’s
image of ‘outer darkness’ (Mt 812) as the fate of the lost ; but
the idea is too general to make any connexion evident. On
the other hand, Mt 1241.42 should not be cited as a reference to
Wis 416; nor Lk 1247. 48 for Wis 66; nor Jn 717 for Wis 612; nor
Mt 2534 for Wis 98; nor Mt 44 for Wis 1626. The last instance is
a declared quotation from the OT, and the other cases are too
vague to allow of any identification.
Sir 215 ‘They that love (ἀγαπῶντες) him will keep {τηρήσουσιν)
his ways’ may well have suggested the language in Jn 1428
‘If a man love (ἀγαπᾷ) me he will keep (τηρήσει!) my word.’
Sir 44 ‘Turn not away (μὴ ἀτοστρέψη:) thy face from a poor
man’ suggests to us Mt 542 ‘From him that would borrow of
thee, turn not thou away (μὴ ἀποστραφῆς). Sir 714 “ Repeat
not thy words in thy prayer’ suggests Mt 67, but here the
Greek is very different; Sir 1014 ‘The Lord cast down the
thrones of rulers, and set the meek in their stead,’ is probably
the source of Lk 152, which is nearer to it than to Job 5) or Ps
1476, especially in the use of the word ‘thrones.’ Possibly Sir
1119 suggested Lk 1219; Sir 121 has been associated with Mt 76,
it is more likely to have suggested Didache 1; Sir 1921 is too
general and obvious to have suggested Mt 2129, which is more
definite and specific; Sir 2111 ‘He that keepeth the law be-
cometh master of the interest thereof’ is a fine anticipation of
Jn 717; Sir 239 anticipates our Lord’s rebuke of swearing (Mt
588. 34), but is less specific ; the metaphor of the vine in Jn 1516
is not to be referred to Sir 2417, it is more likely to have been
suggested by Is 51ff, if by any passage ; Mt 6132 seems to be a
reference to Sir 282 ‘Forgive thy neighbour the hurt that he
hath done thee ; and then thy sins shall be pardoned when
thou prayest.’ The association of Mt 619 with Sir 2912, proposed
by Daubney, is very doubtful ; equally vague is that of Mt 1627
with Sir 3224 ‘He that trusteth in the Lord shall suffer no loss,’
In both of these cases the slight resemblances are probably
purely accidental. Lk 1170 ἐπιστρέψαι καρδίας πατέρων ἐπὶ
τέκνα evidently comes from Sir 4810 ἐπιστρέψαι καρδίαν πατρὸς
πρὸς υἱόν. The peculiarity of thought and phrase is too striking
for anaccidental coincidence. But that it is a reminiscence and
not a direct quotation is clear from the three changes of words
for which no reason can be assigned since the sense remains
the same, viz. singular for plural ; πρός for ἐπί; υἱόν for τέκνα.
The following clause in the parallelism is entirely different in
the two texts, so that either the conclusion was quite forgotten
or a new conclusion was deliberately formed. In Luke we have
‘and the disobedient to walk in the wisdom of the just,’ while
the clause in Sir. is ‘and to restore the tribes of Jacob.’ The
expression ‘the wisdom of the just’ in Luke seems to be a
reference to the title of Sirach, which was probably originally
simply ‘ Wisdom.’ In codex B this is called ΣΟΦΙΑ TEIPAX 5
and in the Syriac, NYO 727 NXnDIN. Similarly at the end of
the Hebrew text it is described as ‘the wisdom of Simeon ben
Jeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira.’ On the other hand, St. Luke
has not the LXX word for wisdom (σοφία), his phrase being ἐν
φρονήσει δικαίων. The conclusion to be drawn from these data
seems to be that both Wisdom and Sirach were known to Mat.,
Luke, John, or to collectors of Logia of Jesus earlier than those
Gospels, that Sirach especially was used by the author of the
Magnificat, and that our Lord seems to have made use of both
books, Sirach more probably than Wisdom.
While the special subjects of this Dictionary do
not call for a study of the Apoer. in later times,
a topic exhaustively treated in DB, vol. i. pp. 120-
123, a brief résumé of its history in the Church
may be here added. The presence of the books
which we designate Apocryphal in the LXX
mixed up with the OT Scriptures of the narrower
Heb. Canon would naturally tend to float them
among the Greek-speaking Churches. Several of
them are cited as Scripture by Ireneus and
Clement of Alexandria in the Greek Church, and
by Tertullian and Cyprian in the Latin Church.
While Melito of Sardis held to the Hebrew Canon,
Origen championed the more comprehensive Greek
Canon. A century later, Cyril of Jerusalem con-
demned this wider Canon, holding to the Heb.
22 books; and his position was confirmed by the
Synod of Laodicea (6. 360 A.D.). Epiphanius and
especially Athanasius introduced the intermediate
course, a recognition of several of the Apocr., not,
however, as in the Canon, but as good and useful.
Since then, while from time to time scholars have
declared the Apocryphal books to be non-canonical,
the Eastern Church has used them, and they are
.-----τὸὺῸ- -ῦ--ἑ-9-ο-ὖ---Ξ---ΟώΟυΟ ---ς-ς-ςςςς.
APOSTLES 101
in the Bible of the Greek Church. In the West,
the Apocr. obtained acceptance as part of the Old
Latin Version, which was based on the LX.X, and
as such formed part of Jerome’s revision. But
when Jerome translated the OT afresh from the
Hebrew, seeing that the Apocr.. was not there, he
advised its rejection from the Canon. Still, he
allowed it an intermediate position ; and, in spite
of its translator’s opinion to the contrary, the
books of the Apocr. took their place in the
Vulgate as integral parts of Scripture. At the
Council of Trent the Vulgate’ being pronounced
infallibly inspired, the Apocr. was canonized with
the rest of that version, and therefore it is now
regarded as Scripture in the Roman Catholic
Church. Among Protestants it has either taken
an intermediate position, or has been rejected
as not being Scripture. Luther placed it between
the OT and the NT with the title ‘ Apocrypha,’
and a statement that it was ‘not equal to the
Sacred Scriptures,’ but nevertheless ‘useful and
good to read.’ The Reformed Church is more
severe ; in the Ziirich Bible the Apocryphal books
come after the NT as ‘not numbered among the
canonical books,’ and without a word of com-
mendation. Coverdale translated the Apocr. and
placed it between the OT and the NT with a
statement that the books were in the Vulgate
but not in the Hebrew. - It has a similar position
in subsequent revisions, including AV (1611), where |
it is marked ‘ Apocrypha.’ But from 1629 onwards
editions of the AV began to appear without it.
LITERATURE.—Swete, OT in Greek ; RV of Apocrypha ; Com-
mentaries by Wace (Holy Bible with Com., Murray), Fritzsche,
and Grimm (Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch zu den A pocr.
etc.); Bissell (Lange-Schatf); DB articles, ‘Apocrypha,’ ‘ De-
velopment of Doctrine,’ also articles on the several books of
Apocr.; Drummond, Jewish Messiah and Philo Judeus ;
Stanton, The Jewish and the Christian Messiah ; Deane, The
Book of Wisdom; Charles, Eschatology ; Paul Volz, Jiidische
Eschatologie; Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums ; Schurer,
GJV?%, The DB articles referred to contain lists of books, which
therefore need not be repeated here, W. F. ADENEY.
APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS.—See GosPELs (ΑΡΟΟ-
RYPHAL).
APOSTLES.—
Introduction.
1. The first disciples.
2. Beginning of our Lord’s Galilean ministry.
3. Choice of the Twelve.
4. Training of the Apostles.
Literature.
Introduction.—It is proposed to treat in this
article the chief facts relating to that group of our
Lord’s personal disciples known to us by the name
of ‘apostles.’ The sole authorities on the subject
are the four Gospels and the first chapter of the
Acts. The remaining books of the NT furnish no
information as to the relations between Jesus and
His Apostles during His ministry on earth ; and
nothing that is found in the Apocryphal Gospels
can be regarded as historical.
The assumption so often made that the Synoptics possess a
greater trustworthiness than the Fourth Gospel is baseless,
and its baselessness cannot be better seen than in the case of the
Apostles. The Apostles of the Fourth Gospel are the Apostles
of the first three. Their character, prejudices, limitations,
ambitions, views, sympathies are the same in the four Gospels.
How can this harmony be explained unless all our authorities
draw from the life? But more than this. The Fourth Gospel
contains information regarding the Twelve peculiar to itself
which, properly weighed, enables us to understand much that
is otherwise perplexing in the first three. How can this famili-
arity with the Apostles be accounted for if the writer was not
himself one of them? What is the alternative hypothesis?
That the writer of the Fourth Gospel, with the first three before
him, was able to form so true and complete an apprehension of
the intelligence, moral condition, modes of thought, and lan-
guage of the Twelve as to be able to create situations where he
represents them as speaking and acting with perfect verisimili-
tude, while all the time he was simply drawing on his imagina-
tion. The author of the Fourth Gospel was a man of genius,
but his genius was religious, not intellectual or imaginative.
|
102 APOSTLES
APOSTLES
The achievement attributed to him was wholly beyond his
powers or the powers of any man who has ever lived. The
disciples of the Fourth Gospel are the disciples of the first three ;
their portraits are firm, exact, striking, because the writer knew
them personally.
When the attention of a reader is called to the
numerous oceasions on which the Apostles figure
in the Gospels, he might feel disposed to contend
that the Apostles are so prominent in the Gospels
because they are their ultimate authors. But this
supposition, however ingenious, is unsubstantial.
Great as is the place filled by the Apostles in the
Gospels, they are never magnified; it is Jesus
alone who is magnified. The many references
made to the Apostles correspond exactly to the
position they held; the Gospels are so much occu-
pied with them only because Jesus Himself was
constantly occupied with them, not the least of the
tasks of His life being to teach and train them to
understand His mind and heart, and to transmit
to others a correct representation of what He was
and said and did.
The Gospel of St. Mark has been characterized as pre-eminently
the Gospel of the disciples. But this language does injustice
to the rest of the Gospels, which are equally Gospels of the dis-
ciples. A judicious reader sees at once that the Apostles hold
substantially the same place in all the Gospels. Thereis nothing
to prove that one of the Evangelists took a deeper interest in the
Twelve than any of the rest.
1. The first disciples.—It is clear from the Gospels
that several of the Apostles had been on the most
intimate terms with our Lord before He selected
them to become Apostles. In fact the most promi-
nent among them passed through two stages of
relationship to our Lord before they were chosen
as Apostles. They were first called to become dis-
ciples in the most general sense of the term, and
thereafter they were summoned to leave their
usual occupations and to become the personal com-
panions of Jesus. It is therefore desirable to learn
the connexion in which the most distinguished of
them stood to Jesus before their formal appoint-
ment to the apostolate.
After the Temptation our Lord returned to
Bethany in Perea. Whether this happened by
arrangement betweeen Himself and His forerunner
we cannot tell, but nothing was more natural than
for Him to go thither. The Baptist could best
fulfil his duty if He were by his side. On two
occasions John, fixing a steadfast gaze on our Lord,
said in the hearing of some of his disciples, ‘ Be-
hold the Lamb of God’ (Jn 1°-%), The remark-
able expression doubtless suggested to his hearers
that this was the Messiah. ‘Two of them sought
an interview with our Lord, and ere they quitted
the house were convinced that they had found the
Messiah. Not a word is related of the considera-
tions which brought them to this conclusion, but
the explanation is to be found partly in the testi-
mony of the Baptist, partly and pre-eminently in
the impression produced on them by the personality
of Jesus. There was that in His character, aims,
and language which distinguished Him from all
other men. Hence Andrew and John, the two
disciples in question, had no doubt that the Messiah
stood before them (v.41), It is not quite clear
whether each started to find his brother; but
Andrew, at anyrate, brought his brother Simon to
Jesus. Reading his character and discerning its
possibilities, Jesus bestowed on him the name by
Which he is now known to the world: the name
had tee gahiad eee EE ee
frog ieee ὍΝ on aor eee accompanied
to follow Him Ate t} Θ Ἢ ἢ Brea Ae called hilip
» and the instant obedience rendered
suggests that Philip had already believed that
ae: ely through his friends
ens <indrew and Peter. On the |
way Philip encountered his friend Nathanael,
who lived in the village of Cana, at no great dis-
tance from his own home at Bethsaida, and informed
him of the discovery of the Messiah, in the person
of Jesus of Nazareth. Nathanael hesitated, but
he came and saw and heard, and the knowledge
which Jesus displayed of his character and of his
inmost life convinced him that He was indeed what
Philip had declared Him to be (v.48). How many
of these disciples accompanied Jesus to Cana and
witnessed His first miracle (2!"-) is not certain;
possibly the majority, if not all. The same un-
certainty arises in connexion with the journey to
Jerusalem at the Passover. We do not know who
witnessed the expulsion of the trattickers from the
temple, heard the mysterious words spoken regard-
ing the destruction of the temple, or saw the many
miracles which He performed in the capital (v.3*),
baptized at His command when He laboured in
Judea in the vicinity of the Baptist, and accom-
panied Him through Samaria on His return to
Galilee (4!"). It would seem as if thereafter the
disciples returned to their usual occupations, and
our Lord retired for a little from public life.
2. Beginning of owr Lord’s Galilean ministry.—
After a short interval our Lord resumed His
labours, and continued them without interruption
until His death. The Baptist had just been im-
prisoned (Mk 1'4 and ||), and He seemed to regard his
imprisonment as a call to attempt more than He
had yet done. So long as the Baptist laboured,
the work done by Jesus does not seem to have
differed much from his. Now that he was in
prison, our Lord proceeded to develop a ministry
of His own. This new type of ministry was
marked by a change of residence from Nazareth to
Capernaum (Mt 4!%). He wished to influence as
many of the inhabitants of Galilee as He could,
and there was no better centre from which to
approach them than Capernaum. The town was
large, and was near many others of the same char-
acter. It lay on several great roads, and was
therefore easily reached from all quarters. The
people were genuinely Jewish, and not given to
Gentile tastes or customs. No more suitable posi-
tion from which to command Galilee could have
been chosen. It was soon after He settled in
Capernaum that He renewed His summons to four
of the men whom He had already chosen as His
disciples. Walking along the shore of the Sea of
Galilee, He saw the brothers Simon and Andrew,
who were fishermen, engaged in casting their net.
In words the significance of which they could not
fail to discern, He commanded them to follow Him
and become fishers of men. Proceeding a little
farther, He found James with his brother John
repairing their nets, and addressed to them the
same command. They, like Peter and Andrew,
instantly obeyed (Mk 1%"), It is clear that our
Lord had a definite aim in calling these four dis-
ciples. The duty to which He now invited them
was an advance on their former relationship.
They were to be no longer fishermen. They must
exchange their former calling for a new one. And
the nature of that new calling was not wholl
obscure. The allusion to the occupation which
they were bidden to leave illustrated the character
of the labours to which they were invited. They
were to capture men instead of fish. Not one of
the four could fail to perceive that they were to
be employed continuously in the service of Jesus.
The call would fill them with the less surprise
because they had already served an apprenticeship
to Jesus, when they baptized in obedience to His
commands. It need not be inferred that Jesus
intended to send the four immediately on a special
mission. No particular time is specified in His
command ; and though St. Luke (5!) marks the
capture of men as beginning with the moment
APOSTLES
APOSTLES 103
of the call, this can only mean that their new
career began as soon as they obeyed the call ad-
dressed to them. Only one other call of the same
kind is related in the Gospels, that of Levi or
Matthew (Mk 9216. Mt 95). It, too, occurred in
Capernaum. ΤῸ the four fishermen a tax-gatherer
was added. Capernaum was the seat of a custom-
house, and the collector of customs, Levi by name,
was called precisely as the two pairs of brothers
had been. What previous acquaintance existed
between Matthew and our Lord, what special
qualities commended him we cannot tell; but the
instant obedience he rendered to so extraordinary
a command, and the feast which he gave in our
Lord’s honour as he bade farewell to his fellow-
officials, suggest that they had known one another
for some time. The interval which separated the
call of Matthew from the call of the four cannot
be ascertained, but as it is unlikely that he was a
disciple of the Baptist, and as it is probable that
he was not brought into contact with our Lord till
He settled in Capernaum, some little time must
have elapsed between his first knowledge of our
Lord and his call. He could hardly have been
with Jesus from the outset of His career in Galilee.
3. Choice of the Twelve.—It might have been
supposed that our Lord would continue as He had
begun, and summon disciple after disciple to His
side until He had obtained the number He required
for His purpose. But this was not to be. He had
determined to make a formal selection of a definite
number from the body of His disciples (Mk 8515, Lk
019). The importance of the step He was about to
take is shown by the fact that He spent the pre-
ceding night in prayer (Lk 6132), doubtless seeking to
learn His Father’s will regarding the intention He
had formed and the mode in which it was to be
accomplished. One of the critical hours of His life
was before Him. The nature of the selection He
was about to make was of supreme consequence. A
serious mistake would be followed by calamitous
results. No wonder then that He sought specific
guidance. He may even have gone over the names
of all whom He judged competent, and have made
His final choice.
The Gospels have not preserved any statement
by our Lord Himself as to His aim in selecting a
special group of disciples. That aim can be judged
of only by the issue, for it is certain that what the
Apostles proved to be, was what Jesus designed
they should become. An account, indeed, is found
in St. Mark's Gospel (313), according to which the
purpose of our Lord in choosing them was that they
might be with Him and that He might send them
forth to announce the approach of the Kingdom of
God, endowed with the power to heal and to exor-
cize. That this is a correct description so far as it
goes cannot be doubted, but it cannot be said to
embrace the full scope of our Lord’s purpose. It
defines His immediate rather than His ultimate
end. Its horizon is that of the first journey on
which the Apostles were sent, not that world-wide
commission afterwards committed to them. Hence
when we speak of the reasons which induced our
Lord to select the Twelve, we must look to the
work actually entrusted to them. That work
cannot be better described than by the words used
by our Lord Himself to the Twelve on the eve of
His death. He had been the envoy of the Father to
earth. ‘They were to be His envoys on earth. As
He had interpreted the Father to men, so were
they to interpret Him to men. Their chief, their
supreme duty, was to bear witness to Him: to
teach the world how He lived, what He said, what
He wrought (Jn 17!8, Ac 18).
A comparison has often been drawn between the disciples of
Pluto or of the Pharisees and the disciples of Jesus. And such
coiparisons are not without suggestiveness. But a sagacious
mind discerns that the apostolate of Jesus Christ is a unique
institution. The Apostles differ from, far more than they agree
with, the disciples of any thinker or teacher. They stand by
themselves, devoted to the performance of an unexampled task.
No one but Jesus could have conceived such a task; the
Apostles were the fit instruments for its accomplishment.
It is a noteworthy circumstance that few writers
have spent any time in describing the actual selec-
tion of the Twelve. The silence of the Gospels on
this point is only what was to be expected, but it is
surprising that those writers of our Lord’s life who
have given the freest rein to their imagination in
endeavouring to reproduce the scenes of His career,
have passed this event over as if it afforded no
opportunity fer their skill. Yet what materials
lay ready to their hand! What were the senti-
ments with which our Lord addressed Himself
to the task? What was His appearance as He
stood on the mountain side and called His fol-
lowers to Him? How did these followers feel as
they perceived that He was about to make a choice
among them? Was there excitement among the
crowd? Was there strong desire on the part of
many to be chosen? Was there any discussion as
to the principles He followed in the choice, or did
reverence prevent all debate? Was there much
disappointment when the number was completed ?
Was there surprise at the persons named? Not
less instructive would be some knowledge of the
sentiments of the Apostles when they stood to-
gether for the first time in the presence of our Lord.
What were their thoughts? Were they filled with
exultation? Did they infer that the Kingdom of
God would immediately appear? Did they antici-
pate a brilliant future for themselves? Or were
there those among them who reflected with
humility on their unfitness to be the generals and
statesmen of the new Kingdom? Did it occur to
even one of them that the choice just made was
a fresh disclosure of the view taken by Jesus of
the Kingdom of God and of the means by which
it was to be extended ?
Who now were the objects of our Lord’s choice?
With some of them we are already acquainted.
Simon, Andrew, James, John, Philip, and Levi or
Matthew are already known to us. So too possibly
is Bartholomew (wh. see). Bartholomew 1s not a
proper name, but means simply ‘son of Tolmai,’ and
there is much probability in the opinion that he is to
be identified with Nathanael. ‘These seven disciples
our Lord must have known for some time. ‘The
remaining five names—Thomas, James the son of
Alpheus, Simon the Zealot, Judas or Lebbzeus
or Thaddeus, and Judas Iscariot are new. How
long they had been known to Jesus is not told us ;
perhaps some of them had been in His company
tor several months. On the other hand, it is pos-
sible that He may have chosen some of the Twelve
without much if any personal knowledge, relying
on that power to read the heart which He un-
doubtedly possessed.
Who the Alphzeus was of whom James was a son (Mk 818)
we cannot tell. There is no reason except the similarity of
name for connecting him with the father of Levi; and the
assumption that he is the same person as Clopas is gratuitous.
The force of the epithet Cananzan is not free from doubt;
the most likely meaning is that of zealot. But the sense of
‘zealot’ in turn is not perfectly clear. It may denote the
political party known by that name; it may, again, simply
designate unusual devotion to a cause. Reflexion shows that
this latter view has but scanty recommendation, and that the
former has nearly everything in its favour. The Apostle who
bears a triple name is commonly known as Jude. That there
were two Judes among the Apostles is plain from the language
of Jn 1422, where ‘Jndas not Iscariot’ is mentioned. In two
of the lists of the Apostles, those in Luke (616) and Acts (11°), he
is described as ‘ Judas of James’ ; that is almost certainly Judas
the son not the brother of James. But who this James was is
quite uncertain. In Mt 103 and Mk 318 this Judas is called
Thaddzus, or, according to the Western text, Lebbzus;
and he was probably known indifferently as Judas or as Thad-
deus. The exact significance of the term Iscariot is still under
discussion. Most commonly it is regarded as a geographical
term signifying ‘man of Kerioth,’ but where Kerioth was situ-
104
APOSTLES
ated is keenly canvassed, some placing it to the east of the
Dead Sea and others in the south of Judah (see Jupas IscaRioT).
“Attempts have often been made to prove that several of the
Apostles were related to our Lord. Many of those who have
sought for traces of this relationship have been governed by
motives very different from those influencing our Lord, who
would have been the last person to allow His selection of an
Apostle to be determined by the ties of blood. Still there is no
reason why relatives of our Lord should not have been among
the Apostles. But what evidence is there to thiseffect? It has
been conjectured that James andJohn were cousins of our Lord,
Mary and Salome being sisters. This is one possible interpreta-
tion and by no means the least satisfactory of the well-known
verse in St. John (19%) which mentions the women at the cross.
Whether the silence of Scripture regarding the relationship can
outweigh the fitness of this interpretation will be answered
variously, yet a reader will allow for the possibility that James
and John were our Lord’s cousins. But if he tolerate this view
he will reject without hesitation the opinion once so common,
that several of our Lord’s brothers were among the Apostles.
Practically nothing can be brought forward in support of this
hypothesis ; for who can attach any value to the fact that three
of the Apostles bore the same names as three of our Lord’s
brothers, when it is known that these names were among the
most common in the land? The statement made in Jn 7° that
six months before the Crucifixion none of our Lord’s brothers
believed on Him is wholly inconsistent with the view that two
or even three of them were Apostles. Scarcely less decisive is
the distinction traced in the Acts between the brothers of Jesus
and the Apostles (114). Much ingenuity and labour have been
expended in the endeavour to prove that James the son of
Alphzeus was a cousin of our Lord, his father being a brother
of Joseph. But the steps by which this identification is made
are numerous and all open to challenge, so that no gain can
arise from an examination of the question. See art. BRETHREN
OF THE LORD.
Four lists of the Apostles are contained in the
NT, one in each of the Synoptics and one in the
Acts (Mt 107-4, Mk 316-19, Lk 614-16, Ac 113). A care-
ful examination of these lists shows that each of
them consists of three groups of quaternions, and
that in each group the same person is mentioned
first. The first group contains the names of Peter,
James, John, and Andrew. The second is made
up of Philip, Nathanael, Thomas, and Matthew.
The third is formed of James the son of Alpheus,
Simon the Zealot, Judas or Thaddeus, and Judas
Iscariot. Is this arrangement due to accident, or
does it rest on a perception of the historical im-
portance of the disciples at the time at which it
was drawn up? The places given to Peter and
Judas and the contents of the different groups
suggest that there is here an indication of the view
taken of the Apostles in the early Church. By
whom the catalogues were framed is unknown, but
their value as historical witnesses is great. They
form, as it were, a table of precedence dating from
the earliest times, and embodying the verdict it
may be of the Apostles themselves, or at least of
those of them who survived when they were pre-
pared. In all the lists the name of Peter occupies
the first place. St. Matthew (103) writes: ‘Now
the names of the twelve apostles are these ; the
first, Simon.’ In what sense is this ‘first’ to be
understood? It might refer to the fact that Peter
was the first of the Apostles to be chosen. This is
perfectly credible, but the fact that the order of
the names is not uniform in the lists may be
regarded as showing that the memory of the order
in which the Twelve were called was not preserved
in the Church, But why was Peter the first
called? Must not an explanation of this fact be
sought? And is it not to be found in the cireum-
stance that he was the foremost of the Apostles,
their leader, their spokesman? Primacy in the
sense of jurisdiction or authority over his fellow-
Apost les Peter never received and never exercised.
His position is that of the foremost amone equals ;
& position due not to any formal or official appoint-
ment, but to the ardour and force of his nature.
What kind of men were the Apostles? What
was their character, education, social rank ability
age? The Apostles were in an eminent sense
religious men, The tie which bound them to Jesus
was a religious tie. It was impossible for any per-
son to become a follower of Jesus who did not
APOSTLES
believe in obedience to the will of God as the first
of all duties. The Apostles were men who desired
to fulfil the demands of the law of God. Their
aims were high ; their morals were pure ; whatever
their ignorance, misconceptions, defects, they were
men of integrity, justice, and mercy ; diligent,
candid, honest, pious, God-fearing. None of the
Apostles had received more than a common educa-
tion. The range of their knowledge was that of
most of their fellow-countrymen. But they were
in no sense illiterate. It 1s probable that all of
them could read and write. Most if not all of
them spoke Aramaic and Greek. Their minds had
been quickened and nourished by the services in
the Synagogue. The education that springs from
the truest knowledge of God and of man was theirs.
And the discipline of their daily lives had rendered
them alert, considerate, patient, energetic.
The Apostles without exception belonged to the
working classes as they would be called to-day.
There was no man of rank or distinction or of
social consideration among them. Four of them,
we know, were fishermen. One of them was a coi-
lector of taxes. The rest belonged to the same
rank in life, and followed similar occupations. All
of them knew what it was to labour to maintain
themselves ; they were familiar with life as it pre-
sents itself to the great body of mankind. There
is no evidence that any of the Apostles was speci-
ally distinguished by intellectual force. There
was no man of genius among them: no original
thinker; no man dowered with the imaginative
faculty ; no man of great powers of organization.
It does not appear that any of them had an un-
usually impressive or attractive personality. As
far as can be ascertained, they were all young men,
about the same age as, or younger than, our Lord
Himself. No man of middle life, no grey head was
included in the circle. Variety of taste, temper,
mode of life found full expression among_ the
Apostles. No one was the same asanother. Their
experience of life had differed. Their anticipations
of the future differed. Their habits of thought
and action differed. Perhaps the only common
elements were their piety and their devotion to
Jesus. Such then were the Apostles. They were
pious men belonging to the people, full of the plain
sense and judgment which mark the common man :
slow to learn, but teachable ; free from social pre-
judices ; untrammelled by any fixed systems of
thought ; with keen eyes for character ; anxious to
win the favour of Jesus.
The most discordantcriticisms have been passed on the choice
of the Apostles, many of these betraying a complete failure to
grasp the circumstances and facts of the case. The vindication
of the wisdom shown in the selection is the future career and
achievements of the Twelve. In judging it is necessary to bear
in mind the materials at our Lord’s command and the purposes
which He had in view. The man who realizes these has no
difficulty in appreciating and admiring the sagacity exhibited
by Jesus. Here, too, he will perceive that originality which
marks His entire career. The Twelve would never have chosen
one another. Had the selection been left to them individually
or to any two or three among them, the persons included would
have been very different. Nobody but Jesus Himself would
have acted in disregard, as it would appear, of the motives by
which men are constantly swayed. No one will suppose that
our Lord had any aversion to intellect, wealth, rank, genius, ex-
perience, in themselves, or that He preferred fishermen to
lawyers, and tax-collectors to priests. But He was equally free
from the bias which leads so many to believe that the success of
any movement depends on its being supported by the higher
classes, whether of intellect or rank. His one test of men was
fitness or capacity for the special objects He had in view. The
number of adherents at His command as Apostles was limited.
His primary aim was to discover men who could be taught and
trained to comprehend His character, aims, and labours, who
could describe His life to their fellows, who could inform them
as to what He said and as to the deeds of mercy and power
which He wrought. The defects and the limitations of the
Apostles were far better known to our Lord than they are to us
or to His critics. Yet He called them despite of these, for
after all they were the best instruments within His reach.
Their faults of intellect, taste, manner, speech, their stupidity,
folly, their prejudices and prepossessions, their unbalanced judg-
APOSTLES
APOSTLES
ment and intemperate zeal were all before His eyes; neverthe-
less He summoned them to be His Apostles in the confidence
that He could make them become the very men best fitted to
discharge the duties connected with the establishment of the
Kingdom of God. He had no false anticipations as to the kind
of men the Twelve would prove ; He chose them knowing what
they were and what they would become.
The Apostles were twelve in number. The
number was intended to be significant. Its im-
port could not have been lost on the Twelve them-
selves when they were first called, or on the multi-
tude who witnessed their election. Our Lord was
evidently thinking of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Though ten of the tribes had largely disappeared,
Israel still consisted ideally of twelve tribes, and
the mission of the Messiah was to be to all the
tribes of the nation. Hence the fitness of the
number chosen by our Lord. There was one
Apostle for each tribe. Nor should it be over-
looked that the employment of this number was a
fresh claim on the part of Jesus to be the Messiah.
His disciples would argue thus: Who but the
Messiah could venture to create a body or group
of twelve Ee ὦ only? Nobody had done so
before, no prophet, not even the Baptist. Jesus
then must be the Messiah.
It has been suggested that the number twelve was, so to
speak, accidental ; that our Lord did not choose a definite num-
ber of disciples, but that He allowed all who desired to do so to
remain beside Himself. The alleged choice of the Twelve is pro-
nounced not historical. They chose our Lord, not He them.
The Twelve is but a name for His closest and most devoted
adherents. The only arguments advanced for this view are the
silence of the Gospel of St. Matthew as to the selection of the
Twelve, and the omission of the list of the Twelve from the
Gospel of St. John. But St. Matthew furnishes a list of the
Twelve, and therefore presupposes their selection. He assumes
as self-evident that they had been appointed by our Lord. St.
John not less than St. Matthew takes the selection of the Twelve
(667.70) as known, and even makes our Lord refer to His ap-
pointment of them (1516), To assert that the Twelve attached
themselves to our Lord gradually and spontaneously is to mis-
read the tenor of the statements regarding them.
The title ‘Apostle’ and its equivalents. —It is
expressly stated that the Twelve received from
our Lord the title ‘apostles’; but it is doubtful
whether the title was bestowed when they were
chosen, and its exact sense has always been a
subject of debate. It will be expedient at this
point to examine the designations borne by the
Apostles, because they are not called uniformly
by one name.
The most common of all the appellations be-
stowed on them in the Gospels is that of disciples.
This usage is as characteristic of the Fourth
Gospel as of the Synoptics. And it is noteworthy
that in none of the Gospels are the twelve disciples
sharply discriminated from the other disciples of
our iat They are called ‘the disciples of Jesus,’
‘his disciples,’ ‘the disciples,’ but the context
alone reveals whether the writer is speaking of
a limited group or of the disciples of our Lord in
general.
A peculiar usage appears in the Gospel of St. John. There
the title is applied to those who first attached themselves to our
Lord. ‘The disciples’ form a body or class by themselves long
before the Apostles are chosen. From the narrative it looks as
if no person belonged to this group who was not at a later stage
included among the Apostles, but the point is not by any means
certain.
The adoption of the term ‘disciples’ to denote
the followers of our Lord requires no explanation.
The primary sense of the word indicates the rela-
tion of a pupil to his teacher, and the designation
was therefore the most natural and appropriate
which could be employed.
The Twelve. This phrase explains itself. As
soon as our Lord had selected a specific number of
persons for a definite end, it was to be expected
that they should be called by the number which
they formed. They were twelve, and were accord-
ee known as ‘the Twelve.’ It is doubtful
whether it is proper to supply such a substantive
as ‘disciples’ or ‘apostles.’ There is authority in
the NT for the use of both of these phrases, but it
does not follow that the name first given to this
inmost circle of our Lord’s adherents was ‘the
twelve disciples’ or ‘the twelve apostles’ rather
than ‘the Twelve.’ A time came when all three
designations were current. St. Matthew mentions
‘the Twelve’ four times (10° 2614 29 477, St. Mark
nine times (419 67 9% 10%2 1111 141. 17. 20. 43) St. Luke
six times (8! 9}" 12. 183! 223-47), and St. John four
times (667-771 2074), St. Matthew speaks four
times (10! 11! 2017 267°) of ‘the twelve disciples,’
but he stands alone in his use of this description.
It is worth while to observe that after the death
of Judas the phrase ‘the Eleven’ was employed
precisely as ‘the Twelve’ had been. It is found
absolutely in Lk 24°; it is found with the substan-
tive ‘disciples’ in Mt 2816, and with.the substan-
tive ‘apostles’ in Ac 1°.
The word ἀπύστολος occurs ten times in the
Gospels. In the Gospel of St. John it is used only
in its etymological sense of @ person sent forth
(131°) ; in the other three Gospels it refers to the
twelve disciples of our Lord. But there is some
doubt as to the meaning it bears in each of
these Gospels. St. Matthew employs it once only
—in the passage already quoted: ‘'The names of
the twelve apostles are these’ (1035). This language
is used to introduce the list of the Apostles, to-
gether with the charge addressed to them. The
term may be understood here in either of two
senses: it may designate the Twelve as sent out
on one special mission of evangelization, or it may
bear the meaning which it has in Christendom
to-day. A decision between these senses is hardly
possible in the case of St. Matthew's Gospel. [Ὁ 15
otherwise with the Gospel of St. Mark. Here the
term is employed twice (3 6°), and apparently in
both instances only with regard to the particular
missionary tour or journey on which they were
about to enter. The use of the term in St. Luke
is noteworthy. It occurs six times. Once (11?)
it is possibly used in its etymological meaning of
messenger ; in two other places (6° 910) it may be
used to designate the special mission on which the
Twelve were first sent ; but in the remaining three
(17° 2244 241") it is employed to designate the ‘l'welve
in their capacity as the representatives of Jesus,
the sense which it commonly bears in the Acts.
It is unnecessary for our present purpose to
enter on the history of the word ‘apostle’ in
Greek. That the word was in use in NT times in
its etymological sense of messenger is generally
allowed. This fact is confirmed by the NT itself.
Our Lord, in speaking to His disciples on the
night of the betrayal, declared that the person
sent (apostle) is not greater than he that sent him
(Jn 13"), Again when our Lord is designated in
He 3! as ‘the apostle and high priest of our
confession,’ the reference is probably to His own
description of Himself as ‘the sent of God’ (Jn
178). There is then clear evidence that the word
was current in our Lord’s time in its sense of
messenger, delegate, envoy. Was it also in use in
a technical sense to designate those who were
despatched from the mother city by the rulers of
the race on any foreign mission, especially such as
were charged with collecting the tribute paid to
the temple service? (Lightfoot, Gal. 93). And was
it this usage which suggested to our Lord His own
employment of the term? There is no evidence to
show that the term was current in this technical
sense before the Gospels were written. Besides,
even though it had been in existence, it is doubtful
whether our Lord would have employed a term
which had already in the minds of His hearers
distinct associations of its own. The absence of
such associations would recommend a term to Him.
Ὄπ. ee ee APOSTLES
It was the very simplicity and directness of the
expression ‘apostle’ which won for it the favour of
our Lord. The Twelve were simply to be His
messengers or envoys. The analogy between His
own case and that of the men He had selected was
always pr esent to His mind. He had been sent by
the Father: they were to be sent by Himself. A
technical term could only have served to bewilder
the Twelve and lead them to misconceive the object
of their mission. What was necessary for our
Lord’s purpose was a word which set forth simply
and aptly the relations of the Twelve to Himself,
and for this there was no more suitable term than
‘messenger,’ ‘envoy.’ The term ‘apostle’ then
was not “suggested to our Lord by its currency as
a technical expression. He chose a common word
and adapted it to His own purpose. He wished to
give the most expressive title to the men whom
He had chosen, and none seemed to Him so suit-
able as the word ‘sent.’ It reminded them per-
petually that they were men with a mission.
It is generally held that the name ‘apostles’ was given to
the Twelve on the occasion of their call. The language of St.
Luke (618) does not compel us to adopt this conclusion, nor
is that of St. Mark (814) decisive on the point.* The state-
ments in both Gospels are consistent alike with the view
that the Apostles were so named when they were first called,
and with the view that this title was bestowed on them at a
later date. The other considerations to which appeal may be
made tell in opposite directions. It may be urged that the im-
pression left on the mind of an ordinary reader is that the
Apostles received their name at the time of their call, but it
does not follow that this impression is correct. For it is said in the
same context that our Lord gave to Simon the name Peter, and
we know that this name was given to him long before he became
an Apostle. This proves that the statements made in connexion
with the appointment of the Twelve must not be pressed as if
they referred to that event exclusively. Again, it may be con-
tended with much propriety that there was a special fitness in
our Lord assigning a new name to the men whom He had set
apart for a new task. The new relation might well be desig-
nated by anew name. But it may be pointed out in reply that
an interval elapsed between the choice of the Twelve and their
being sent forth. Is it not probable that the new designation
was given only when the new vocation was actually begun?
Would the new title be understood apart from the experience
by which it was illuminated? This argument is strengthened
by the circumstance that St. Mark appears to employ the term
‘apostle’ only in connexion with the missionary journey of the
Twelve. With him it is not so much a title belonging to them,
as a term descriptive of the functions assigned to them on a
special occasion. To decide between these conflicting opinions
is not easy, but on the whole the suggestion that the disciples
were not called ‘ apostles’ till they were first sent out appears
the more probable.
The Sermon on the Mount is regarded by many as an address
delivered by our Lord when He chose the Twelve. The note of
time in the Gospel of St. Luke ascribes it to this occasion, and
there is no reason to reject this testimony. Besides, it has the
greatest internal probability in its favour. The appointment of
the Apostles formed an epoch in the ministry of our Lord;
what more natural or suitable than that He should avail Him-
self of the occasion to explain and enforce His convictions as to
the true life of man? The time was most opportune for such a
deliverance. The hearts of the disciples were deeply moved ;
their whole natures were quickened and alert; why not sow
8 red which might afterwards bear abundant fruit? The char-
acter of the Sermon itself is another argument confirming this
conclusion. It is didactic rather than hortatory. It expounds
truth rather than proclaims the mercy of God. Finally, there is
| nothing in the Sermon which conflicts with this opinion. It may
; then be assumed with some confidence that the Sermon on the
Mount was spoken in connexion with the call of the Twelve.
Many writers go further and contend that it was spoken to them
principally or exclusively. But this opinion is at variance with
the statements of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and
is not required by the contents of the Sermon. The truths it
announces were not intended for the Twelve alone ; why then
should Bisy not have been heard by all the disciples? This
result is in no way inconsistent with the opinion that the
Sermon on the Mount f med, is if were, a special charge to
the Twelve in view of the new position which they were hence-
forward to occupy. It is n it necessary for our purpose to dis-
cuss the limits of the Sermon or do more than furnish a brief
“ount of its teac hing Our Lord wished His followers to
antlers ind the meaning of righteousn ess; to know what the
will of God re ‘lly. was ; the true nature of the der mands He
made on them; how to frame their conduct if they were to
obtain His approval. The subject of the address then is the
true life of man. The characteristic features of that life are set
forth in a series of blessings pronounced on those who possess
* It should be noted t}
iat the words ov
do not occurin TR. Se
ΕΖ. ΤΊ ἀποστόλους ὠνόμασεν
, however, RVn m.
APOSTLES
the qualities spoken of ; the mission of METUEE OC ts. 1c aa. | the ἀμημοιευθμ οἱ the inission of κτλ as the light
of the world and the salt of the earth is touched on; and then
our Lord proceeds to contrast the perfect requirements of the
Law of God as understood by Himself with the requirements of
that Law as contained in the OT or as sanctioned by tradition ;
after which He illustrates the true nature of almsgiving, fasting,
and prayer, and of devotion to the will of God. See SERMON ON
THE Mount below, and in Hastings’ DB, Ext. Vol. 1ff.
It would have been most instructive had any record of the
effect produced on the Apostles by this Sermon been preserved.
Their surprise must have equalled their admiration. The severe
requirements, the strictures on the Law, the novelty of the
interpretations, the apparent paradoxes, must have astonished
and perplexed them. It is doing them no injustice to say that
much it contained was beyond their comprehension. They may
have seen that the qualities required of them were embodied in
our Lord’s own life, and that the temper of the Beatitudes was
exactly His temper. They may have felt that the sphere of the
inner life was not less properly the sphere of law than that of
speech and conduct. They may have discerned that the true
greatness of man is to live not merely as God enjoins, but as God
Himself lives. But they could hardly grasp what our Lord meant
by the fulfilment of the Law. A fulfilment which was at the
same time an abolition was a mystery to them. Nor would they
perceive that He had transformed morality by reducing it to the
principle of life according to God ; the one supreme rule of duty
being to love God and man. The paradoxical expressions, too,
would be as puzzling to them as they have proved to thousands
since. In their discussions there would be champions of literal-
ism, but these would soon be brought to acknowledge that a
perfectly literal obedience to the commands given was im-
practicable.
4. Training of the Apostles.—From the call of
the Apostles the mission of our Lord was more a
mission to them than to His fellow-countrymen at
large. He had waited until the time that a proper
selection from His disciples could be made: now
that the choice had taken place He devoted Him-
self to their instruction and training. The Apostles
were to accompany Jesus from place to place ; they
were to be with Him continually. This implied
the relinquishment of their means of living. It
was not possible for them to continue at their
occupations and be Apostles of Jesus. The sacrifice
made by each Apostle in obeying the summons to
apostleship has seldom been adequately appreci-
ated. In some instances the property lett or
sold, the income abandoned, might not be great
intrinsically, but a man’s all is great to him,
hence the moral courage needed of every Apostle
was not slight. How then were their wants sup-
plied? W hence did they obtain money to meet
their daily expenses? The arrangement followed
was probably devised by our Lord, and formed one
of the earliest lessons He intended them to master.
In a sense this first lesson is the supreme and even
the sole lesson which He sought to teach, that of
absolute reliance on Himself for everything. Trust
in the Father, trust in Himself, was the lesson
which Jesus sought to inculcate at all times. The
Twelve and our “Lord formed, as it were, a single
household, of which He was the head. He presided
at the common meals, He gave directions as to
their movements. The cost of their maintenance
was borne by a common purse. One of the Twelve
was the treasurer of the company (Jn 13%). The
food needed was either carried with them, or pur-
chased, or provided by the hospitality which is so
characteristic of the East. The company could not
only supply their own wants, but could minister to
those of the poor (Jn 1339). The sources from which
their supplies were drawn were doubtless various.
Some among them had had or still had property,
and the proceeds, contributed to the common stoc
helped to defray the charges of each day. It is
reais certain that presents were made to our
Lord and the company from time to time by grate-
ful friends and neighbours. But the principal
source seems to have been the generosity of several
women who accompanied them on some of their
journeys, and placed their means and services at
the command of our Lord. The names of some of
these women have been preserved in a most in-
structive passage in St. Luke’s Gospel (8: 5), which
is the chief authority on the subject under con-
APOSTLES
sideration. Among these are mentioned Mary of
Magdala, Joanna (possibly a widow whose husband
had been asteward of Herod Antipas), and Susanna.
It is evident from St. Luke’s statement that the
number of such women was large, and it was prob-
ably owing to their generosity that our Lord and the
Twelve were able to devote themselves untroubled
and untrammelled to their task. It should be noticed
that the kind of life lived by the Twelve was itself a
practical illustration of some of the cardinal lessons
which Jesus desired to teach. The subordinate
value of earthly possessions could not have been
more effectively taught than by the life of depend-
ence on the liberality of others. Their journeys,
too, from place to place had also their value. They
were stimulated by new scenes and new persons;
new conditions had to be faced, new duties per-
formed. They had leisure to ponder on what was
said to them; they were not distracted from the
great work of their life, the knowledge of their
Master. This was their duty, and it became their
glory. For in understanding Him they came to
resemble Hin. The education of the Twelve, the
transformation of them from the men they were
into the men they became, is one of the greatest
of our Lord’s achievements. The Apostles were to
be our Lord’s witnesses, but the witnessing of
which He thought demanded insight, sympathy,
courage, self-command, tolerance, patience, charity.
It was inseparable from the highest moral endow-
ments. It involved great receptive and assimilative
power, issuing in vigorous amd unceasing obedience
and service.
In order that the Apostles might become His
witnesses, our Lord made use of three principal
agencies: («) His personality, (6) His miracles, and
(c) His teaching.
(a) To be with Jesus was in itself the best of all
education and training. It was on this account
that the Apostles were chosen to be with Him
habitually. A complete knowledge of Him could
be attained only in this way. For knowledge is
acquired insensibly not less than sensibly, and the
Apostles learned much regarding Jesus when it never
struck them that they were doing so. Gradually
His influence told on them. His ideals, motives,
ends became clear to them. His manners, looks,
tones, words, ways became their inspiration and
guide. They felt what goodness, truth, duty were.
Above all, they came to know God as the Father.
It would, however, be a serious error to hold that
the Twelve from the first moment of their selection
appreciated the true grandeur of the life of Jesus.
On the contrary, that life must often have pre-
sented to them a problem of no little difficulty.
It was not the type of life which they had been
accustomed to regard as specifically religious, still
less as embodying religion in its perfection and
integrity. Itis probable that those of the Apostles
who had been disciples of the Baptist were at first
more impressed by his austere and solitary life
than by the life of Jesus, which was substantially
that of ordinary men. He ate and drank as they
did. He dressed like them. He moved freely
among them. He never sought to protect Himself
from the approach of men, but on the contrary in-
vited them to draw near. Nothing in His bearing
or speech betrayed that He regarded Himself as
standing on a different plane from other men, or
that He expected them to treat Him as belonging
to a different order of existence. He was simple,
genial, affable, accessible. His mode of life, too,
viewed as religious, must have tilled them with
surprise. He had no fixed hours or forms of
prayer. His approach to the Father was the ex-
pression of His habitual reverence, adoration, and
trust, but it was not determined, much less fettered,
by rule.
He prayed as He was moved to pray.
APOSTLES
Again, He departed from a usage which was one
of the chief features of the piety of the time.
He declined to fast. Not only had He no regular
fast days, He neither fasted Himself nor did He
inculcate the observance on them. Another respect
in which He deviated widely from the religious
practices of His time was His disregard of cere-
monial ablutions. He paid no attention to the
rules affecting ritual purity. There is no evidence
that He violated the usages of His nation as to
foods, but His attitude towards these showed
that He attached no value to them. Even that
rite which was fundamental and distinctive, the
pledge of salvation because the assurance of being
a member of the covenant, the rite of circwmceision,
was unnoticed in His teaching. In yet another
and hardly less important respect our Lord’s life
was largely ditferent from the accepted type of
sanctity. The Sabbath, like circumcision, was
one of the peculiar glories of Judaism, and the
teachers of our Lord’s age and of preceding
generations had framed a code of rules to protect
it from desecration. These He trampled under
foot. The endless regulations intended to stop
the performance of any work whatever on that
day He brushed aside as at variance with the true
end of the Sabbath institution. He rejoiced in
the Sabbath, esteeming it to be one of God’s best
gifts to man, but He was everywhere denounced
as a Sabbath-breaker by those who regarded
themselves as the interpreters of the law (Jn δ)8).
Even in the matter of almsgivine He was not as
the men who professed to be specially religious.
He was beneticent in the highest degree, but He
followed no systematic rules.
Hence it is plain that the tenor of our Lord’s
life must have formed a problem of no little com-
plexity to the Twelve during the first stages of
their apprenticeship. Was this life—so simple, so
natural—a truly religious life? Was the religious
life bright, sunny, cheerful, full of hope and joy?
Was this life of simple trust in the Father and of
obedience to His will in the fulfilment of the
common duties of lfe—was this religion? Nor
was the perplexity of the Apostles lessened by
the classes with which our Lord preferred to
associate. He addressed Himself. to the sick, the
poor, and the outcast. ‘The solicitude of Jesus for
the least necessitous of these classes was a difficulty
| to some of them, but their surprise rose to the
height when they saw Him mix freely with those
under a social ban.
Doubtless the eyes of the Apostles were opened
gradually. They came to perceive, as we do
to-day, that the life spent by their Master was
the typical life of man. Its likeness to the
common life of men is its glory. For by it the
common life which all must live is transfigured
and made the ideal life of men. Its freedom from
rule is discerned to be the reason why it is capable
of becoming the model of all lives without excep-
tion. For that freedom teaches men that true
religion creates its own forms, while its essence
of trust in God and devotion to His will remains
unalterable. The sympathy which He exhibited
for all classes was a revelation of the truth that
He was the Saviour of the world.
(ὁ) Perhaps nothing impressed our Lord’s dis-
ciples more when they first became acquainted
with Him than His miracles. The expectation
that the Messiah would work miracles seems’ to
have been general. The Gospels leave the im-
pression that the common people anticipated that
works of a most marvellous description would be
performed by the Messiah. The nature of these
works was undefined, but they transcended the
ordinary endowments of man. The Twelve then
may have felt little surprise when they saw their
108 APOSTLES
APOSTLES
Lord perform miracles, but every new miracle
would serve to strengthen their conviction of His
title to be the Messiah. It is not likely, however,
that they were prepared for the kind of miracles
which He worked. None of them could have fore-
told that the Messiah would confine Himself in
great measure to the accomplishment of miraculous
cures of body and mind; that He would spend
many hours on many days in healing sickness and
in expelling demons. The miracles of Jesus were
as unexpected as His mode of life. The Apostles
wele dreaming of miracles of judgment at the very
hour when He was performing miracles of mercy.
Even the miracles over nature were not those of
which they naturally thought.
The Apostles could not fail to perceive the range
of the power wielded by their Master and be filled
with amazement. No disease could withstand His
word or touch. The very demons yielded to His
sway. Death itself was powerless before Him. It
is important to notice that some of the miracles
were performed before the Apostles only. The
miracles in which the Apostles as a whole or some
of them were specially concerned are these: the
Miraculous Draught of Fishes recorded by St. Luke
(5'-7), the Stilling of the Storm (Mk 439), the Walk-
ing on the Sea (6%, Jn 6!°), the Stater in the
Fish’s Mouth (Mt 17-7), the Cursing of the Fig-tree
(Mk 1130), and the Second Miraculous Draught of
Fishes (Jn 21"). These signs had a peculiar value
for the Twelve. They were proofs of knowledge
and of power fitted to promote faith and to
enforce truth. There is a fitness in the cireum-
stance that most of the miracles on nature were
wrought before or on behalf of the Apostles.
For they more than others were prepared to
embrace the truth that Jesus was the Lord of
nature. It was indispensable that they should
be taught this fact, and how could it have
been better illustrated than by the miracles
wrought on the Sea of Galilee? What a revela-
tion of the knowledge or power of Jesus; what a
prophecy of the success of the new vocation to
which they were summoned, was the first draught
of fishes! What a lesson concerning the might of
Jesus was contained in the instant obedience of
the raging waves and winds to His command !
What a fresh disclosure of His power was His
walking towards them on the sea as they toiled to
make the western shore of the lake! What in-
struction to Peter and to the rest when Peter first
succeeded in imitating his Master’s walking on the
water and then began to sink! How fraught with
Suggestions to Peter the coin found in the mouth
of the first fish which came to his hook as he
lowered it into the lake! What confirmation of
all that they had learned was found in the second
draught of fishes, that after the Resurrection !
The cursing of the fig-tree occupies a place by
itself among our Lord’s miracles, but the lesson it
teaches is most weighty. A miracle of judgment is
as suitable asa parable of judgment. The lesson
of the need of correspondence between profession
and practice could not have been more impressively
taught than by the fate of the fig-tree.
No one can doubt that the number and variety
of the miracles witnessed by the Aposties enhanced
their conception of our Lord’s person and powers.
Perhaps, too, they discerned, even if imperfectly,
What 1s so clear to us to-day, that the miracles
were indeed what He called them, signs : manifes-
tations of the character and qualities of the kine-
dom which He had come to set up. The boundless
sympathy and compassion of their Master must
have struck them ; Eis life not less than. His teach-
ing was mercy and service. His works’ of mercy
were the livine embodiment of the principles of
merey He inculcated. He healed all who sought
His aid, making no inquiry into their past, their
station, their gifts, but caring only for their needs.
It was impossible for the Apostles not to discover
that the miracles they beheld with such frequency
were signs of the grace and love of the Father
speaking to men through Jesus.
As the Apostles saw the miracles and heard
what Jesus said respecting them, did they form a
just conception of their nature and_ function?
Were they able to compare them with the por-
tents for which they had at one time longed? Did
they perceive the relation of the signs to the
person of Jesus? Did they discern that the signs
could be fully understood only through His char-
acter? Did they recognize that the character and
words of Jesus were greater than His signs, but
that these were nevertheless such as to convince
every impartial judge that His mission was of
God? They knew that Jesus never regarded His
miracles as the chief evidence for the validity of
His claims; they were neither His sole nor His
principal credentials ; they were rather a part and
element of His message and His work. Did they
see clearly that the evidential value of the miracles
did not consist in their departure from the estab-
lished order of nature, in their capacity as mar-
vels, but in their congruity with the character and
aims of Jesus, and as illustrations of His spirit
and ways? We would gladly learn whether the
Apostles ever reflected on the use made by our
Lord of His miraculous endowments. Believing
in Him as the Lord of nature and of life, aware
that He had unnumbered forces at His command,
were they surprised that He never employed His
powers to promote His advantage cr to defend His
disciples or Himself from injustice and violence?
Whence this self-repression? Why was the sphere
of the miraculous so strictly limited? Why were
none of the miracles of a character to dazzle,
compel, overwhelm? Why did Jesus refuse so
often the request for a sign, and especially for a
sign from heaven? Why was the thaumaturgie
element wholly absent from His works? The fact
that our Lord observed a peculiar temperance in
the employment of His miraculous gifts must have
imprinted itself on the minds of the Apostles, and
it is probable that the significance of the fact
became more and more obvious as their experience
widened. Even before the Crucifixion they may
have discerned that this self-restraint was in full
harmony with His attitude towards the world, and
only the corollary of His conception of the King-
dom. See, further, art. MIRACLEs.
(c) From the first, the disciples had regarded
Jesus as a teacher, and whatever more He became
to them as their intercourse with Him deepened, a
teacher He remained to the end. Or, to speak
more correctly, from being ὦ teacher He became
the Teacher ; and the greatest of teachers, measured
by any proper standard, He certainly was and
abides. ‘The substance of His teaching is the
truest, wisest, and best on the loftiest and
weightiest of all topies—topics. as to which all
teachers before Him were as men groping in the
dark. He and He alone speaks with the confidence
of personal knowledge regarding the nature of God
and His relations to man. It is sufficient for our
present purpose to refer to the naturalness, the
ease, the familiarity with which Jesus spoke con-
cerning the Kingdom of God; the character and
intentions of the Father; the righteousness He
requires ; the conditions on which entrance into the
Kingdom depends ; its history and its final issues ;
the testimony borne by Jesus to Himself ; the place
He assigns to His person and work. Never man so
spake (Jn 7%). Yet He speaks what He knows,
and testifies of what He has seen (Jn 3"). Here, if
anywhere, the entire religious experience of man-
a a ι΄ Ὸ----κς ς΄ 0ὸὸὖἋς παν ντσποι
é APOSTLES
APOSTLES
109
kind affirms the truth of the witness He bore.
His message authenticates itself ; it bears the seal
of its Divine origin upon it. Such views never
sprang up within the mind of man ; they descended
out of heaven from God.
And this teaching was conveyed to the disciples
and to the people according to definite methods
and in language which forms an epoch in human
speech. It is unlikely that our Lord ever reflected
on the problems which form the science and art of
teaching, or that He ever laid down rules for His
own guidance ; but the essence of all that is best
in the writings of the great educators is embodied
in His practice. Let a reader come to the Gospels
full of what he has learned regarding education
from Plato and Aristotle and their successors, and
he can perceive without difficulty, in the relations
between our Lord and the Apostles; in His attitude
towards them; in His modes of stimulating, en-
larging, and enriching their minds; in His tact,
patience, and wisdom,—the signs of skill which is
Incomparable because so spontaneous, so flexible,
and so fertile of resource. Never fora moment did
He lose sight of His object, to qualify the Apostles
to be His witnesses and representatives ; but He
did not dwell on that purpose. He was aware
that the power of personality is the strongest and
most penetrating of all forces, and accordingly He
separated the Apostles more and more, as the days
went by, from their familiar scenes and labours, in
order that they might, because of their complete
intimacy with Him, breathe His spirit and share
in Eis aims. They were ennobled, as it were,
despite themselves. New ideals and motives took
possession of them. He was so constantly before
their eyes, so continually the subject of their
speech, so much the centre of their interests and
the goal of their hopes, that they grew into His
image. Not less evident was His desire that the
Apostles should not be mere echoes of Himself, but
men of originality, courage, and resource. It was
on this account that He delivered no systematic
instruction ; that He caused nothing to be com-
mitted to memory; that He did not store the
minds of the Apostles with rules, lists of duties,
tables of the forbidden and the permissible. Hence
He gave no dogmas in fixed shape even on the
greatest of all subjects. Hence, too, He furnished
no directory for the duties of the day, and made no
attempt to prescribe the hours to be employed in
devotion or the words to be used, or to determine
the provision to be made for the sick and the poor,
Again, He taught only as His disciples were able
to receive. Not that He never went beyond their
capacity. This He frequently did, and of set pur-
ose. But He observed an order in what He said.
‘he most obvious illustration of this fact is His
teaching regarding His person. He did not begin
to tell at once who He was, nor did He open His
lips as to His death until He had evoked from
Peter’s lips as the spokesman of the Twelve the
confession that He was the Messiah (Mk 8”,
Mt 1016, Lk 930). It is expressly stated that He
kept back much from His disciples, leaving them
to the enlightenment of the Spirit, because they
were unprepared to receive what He had to com-
municate (Jn 16"). If He spoke of what they did
not comprehend at once, it was either that their
intellects might be quickened or that they might
treasure in their memories the truth mentioned, in
view of their future experience. His references
to His death had as their chief aim to render the
Apostles certain of the fact and, above all, that it
was foreknown by Him. Nor was He impatient
for results. He never forced growth. He knew
that to build durably is to build slowly ; and so
He bore with ignorance, with misapprehension,
with imperfect views, with partial and hasty
inferences, knowing that these would be corrected
by the discipline of experience. He sought
especially to preserve the individuality of His
disciples, and to unfold the characteristic endow-
ments of each. None of them was to be other
than himself. No one was to be a model for the
rest. He knew each so well that He could play on
him as on an instrument, but this knowledge He
used only to promote the welfare of the disciple.
The manifestation of personal character, the per-
sonal discernment of truth, the exhibition of
personal sympathy, appreciation, reverence, devo-
tion, love, filled Him with delight.
The Gospels show on every page that our Lord
encouraged the disciples to ask Him questions.
Whatever difficulties presented themselves to their
minds they were free to place before Him. This
they did so constantly that the habit must have
been created by our Lord. How large a portion
of the Gospels is occupied with the questions and
remarks of the Apostles! It is to these questions
that we are indebted for the explanation of the
parable of the Sower (Mk 410). The same is true
of His teaching regarding defilement (Mt 15).
How much we owe to Peter’s questions—‘ How
often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive
him?’ (Mt 1832) ; ‘ What shall we have therefore ?’
(Mt 1057). But perhaps the finest illustration of
the relations of our Lord and the Apostles in this
connexion is the intercourse on the night of the
betrayal. No passage in the Gospels is so in-
structive as to the readiness of the disciples to
break in by questions on what our Lord was say-
ing, and the skili with which He availed Himself
of these questions to open to them His deepest
thoughts and purposes (Jn 13°6-),
The resources of human speech have been strained
to the utmost to describe the grace and power of
the language of Jesus, and yet the result is felt to
be inadequate. Did the Apostles recognize the
originality, the strength, the flexibility, the charm,
the aptness, the simplicity, the depth of the words
of Jesus? We cannot tell; it may have been that
their apprehension of the beauty and majesty of
His language was much less than ours, but even
they must have felt a strange thrill as they heard
the most sublime of all truths clothed in terms
which they were in the habit of using every day
of their lives. It was a new experience to have
religion speak the tongue of the home, the work-
shop, and the street. Then, too, the illustrations
which He used! The whole life of the ordinary
man was laid under tribute to illustrate the King-
dom of God. The furniture of his home, his food,
his clothing, his work, his intercourse with his
fellows were made the symbol and the vesture of
heavenly truths. Earth shone in the light of
heaven. One form of speech is specially identified
with the teaching of Jesus—the parable. The
parable may be regarded as the creation of Jesus.
‘he parables of the OT, and those found in Jewish
writings, hardly deserve mention in this respect.
Nor did Jesus teach in parables because the lan-
guage of parable is the language of the East. He
devised the parable to meet the requirements of
His hearers. The parable is His own workman-
ship, the product of His mind and heart. The
parables of Jesus are unique alike in literature
and religion, and are as distinctive of Him as the
miracles.
An ordinary reader of the Gospels is apt to suppose that the
ministry of Jesus, from its beginning to its close, was distin-
guished by the use of parables. But this opinion is erroneous.
No parables marked the opening of the ministry. The first use
of the parable is noticed at length. To the question why Jesus
finally adopted the parable most men would reply—to attract, to
interest, to stimulate, to find the readiest and most direct access
to the mind for truth and duty. But when the Gospels are con-
sulted they give an answer altogether different. They tell that
our Lord, when questioned on the subject, affirmed that He
110 APOSTLES
taught in parables, not to reveal but to conceal the truth;
not to instruct but to condemn men (Mk 412). These words
have always been a stumbling-block to interpreters. Perhaps
their true significance may never be ascertained ; but the view
which rejects them as the correct description of the parables as
a whole is justified, because they are at variance with the Gospels
themselves. The most cursory examination of the parables
shows that many of them are messages of grace. Who can fail
to discern that the heart of God is represented in the parable of
the Prodigal Son as the heart of a Father? Is this truth meant
to extinguish hope? Again, an examination reveals that many
of the parables were spoken to the disciples themselves. Was
this the penalty of their blindness and hardness of heart?
Accordingly, the common view of the parable is the true view,
and our Lord spoke in parables to render his teaching as simple,
vivid, stimulating, and effective as possible. See PakaBLEs, and
ILLUSTRATIONS.
The extent to which the parables were addressed
to the Twelve has scarcely received adequate recog-
nition. Indeed the parables are seldom spoken of
in connexion with the education of the Twelve.
Yet one-third of them were, to all appearance,
directed to the Apostles exclusively. ‘These cover
the period from the time when our Lord first began
to speak in parables till His death. The ten
ἘΜΉΝ belonging to this class, following the
order first of St. Matthew and then of St. Luke,
are: the Hidden Treasure, the Pearl, the Drag-net,
the Unmerciful Servant, the Labourers in the Vine-
yard, the Ten Virgins, the Talents, the Friend at
Midnight, the Unprofitable Servant, the Unjust
Judge. A slight acquaintance with these parables
shows that the lessons they teach were those our
Lord was most anxious that His disciples should
learn. The measureless value of the kingdom of
God, the certainty of a final severance between the
evil and the good, the necessity of a forgiving dis-
position, the nature and conditions of the future
recompense, the obligation of watchfulness, the
reward of perseverance in prayer, the truth that
no men have claims of merit on God, are the sub- |
jects with which these parables deal, and these
subjects were constantly in the heart and on the
lips of our Lord. A flood of light was thrown on
all these topics by the parables. The truth was
now clearer, more comprehensible, more affecting,
more subduing.
Is it possible to discover the sentiments with
which the Twelve listened to the parables? Per-
haps they were too plain men to perceive their |
In all their |
discussions concerning them not a word may have |
exquisite naturalness and beauty.
been spoken in praise of that perfect felicity which
secures for them an unequalled place in the litera-
ture of the world. But they would at least per-
ceive their appropriateness.
duty! Did the Twelve find any difficulty in under-
standing the import of the parables? Presumably
t How they must have |
lived in their memories and illuminated truth and |
their condition was just that of the diligent and |
devout reader of to-day. Some parables bear their |
meanings, as it were, on their forehead. Nobody
doubts what is the meaning of the parable of the |
Good Samaritan or of the Ten Virgins. It is true
that there are questions connected with their inter-
retation which are still under discussion, but the |
essons Which they inculcate are obvious. But
What of the parables which perplex expositors
to-day? What of the Unjust Steward? What of
the Labourers in the Vineyard? The same diffi-
culties which occur to us must have occurred to
the disciples. But they had this immense advan-
tage over us that they could ask their Master ques-
tions as to His meaning, and we know that these
questions were freely put. The interpretations of
the parables of the Sower and of the Tares are
said to have been replies made to the request of
the disciples for an explanation. What strikes
one in these answers is the point, depth, freshness
of the meaning. These explanations have some-
times been assigned to the Apostles themselves,
APOSTLES 5
but the supposition is without probability. Were
it sound, it would form the most striking proof of
the effect on them of their intercourse with Jesus,
for it is impossible to suggest juster or more
suitable interpretations of the parables concerned.
One peculiarly instructive sentence was spoken by
our Lord in this connexion (Mt 13°"). He had been
expounding some of the parables to His disciples,
and asked if He had been understood. When they
replied affirmatively, He remarked that every
teacher of the Law instructed regarding the king-
dom of heaven was like a householder who produced
from his stores things new and old. The Apostles
were the scribes of Jesus, taught to understand the
nature, characteristics, and history of the King-
dom of God, and hence capable of furnishing most
profitable instruction to their hearers. The old
and the new alike were at their command in their
mutual relations and connexions. They did not
despise the one nor vaunt themselves concerning
the other. The Law and the Gospel, prophecy
and its accomplishment, the Law and its fulfil-
ment, furnished them with the subjects which they
could treat with knowledge and power.
Aiter the Twelve had been some time with
our Lord, they were sent forth on a missionary
journey (mission of the Apostles, Mk 67, Mt 1v°,
᾿ς 9ὴ. The time at which the mission took place,
the town from which they started, the duration
of the mission, are uncertain. Two reasons pro-
bably influenced our Lord in despatching the
Twelve on this enterprise. The first and most
prominent was His profound sympathy for the
condition of the people of Galilee. It was im-
possible for Him to evangelize all Galilee, to say
nothing of the entire land; others must share His
labours. This was one of the ends for which the
Twelve had been chosen, and accordingly He sent
them to announce everywhere that the Kingdom
of God was nigh. A second reason was that He
might in this way train them for their future career.
The message which they were to proclaim corre-
sponded with their own comparative immaturity on
the one hand, and with the spiritual state of their
audiences on the other. To have declared the
Messiahship of Jesus would have led to misunder-
standing, and have hindered rather than furthered
the expansion of the kingdom; hence they were
confined to the assertion, so full of promise and
hope, that the Kingdom was at hand. To assist
them in discharging their mission as the envoys of
Jesus they were endowed with miraculous powers.
They were enabled to cure disease and to expel
demons. These powers they were to exercise
gratuitously. This liberahty was intended by
Jesus to be an evidence of the nature of the king-
dom, of which they announced the near approach.
It was to be a kingdom of compassion, sympathy,
tenderness. These endowments, besides serving to
show the nature of the kingdom, were also a
demonstration of the truth of their message. The
Apostles were enjoined to make no special pro-
vision for the mission on which they were about
to enter. They were to start on it just as the
were. They were to take neither money, nor food,
nor clothing for their journey. They were to rely
for their maintenance on the providence of God,
and on the hospitality which they were to seek.
Because of the urgency of the case their attention
was to be concentrated on the lost sheep of the
house of Israel. It is, indeed, not probable that
our Lord meant their mission to extend beyond
Galilee, or even to the whole of the province,
the Greek-speaking cities being excluded. The
efforts of the Twelve were probably intended to be
restricted to the homes of the people. No refer-
ence is made in the instructions given them to any
appearance in the synagogue or in the market-
_———$ SSS ΞΞ ΞΟ ΠΗ ΝΣ
te ti
APOSTLES
ea ee τὺ 5
place. Their inexperience did not permit them to
deliver addresses in public. The Twelve were sent
on their mission by twos; that is, six different
enterprises were carried on by them at once. The
wisdom of this arrangement is obvious. It was
desirable that they should overtake as many of
the population as possible, but it was not less
important that they should be encouraged and
strengthened by one another’s presence. Had each
of the Twelve entered on the work alone, he would
have felt isolated and discouraged, and often have
been at a loss how to act. No agreement exists
among scholars as to the length of time occupied
by the mission. Some consider that it lasted only
a single day, others two days, others several weeks,
and others again, several months. It may be pro-
nounced with confidence that it took up some weeks
at least.
The Twelve strictly followed the commands they
received, passing through the villages, preaching
repentance and the gospel, and casting out demons
and healing everywhere. How their message was
received does not appear. It issimply known that
on their return they told our Lord what they had
done and taught. No reference is made to the
experience they had acquired or to the conclusions
they had been led to ies It would have been
most profitable had any information on these
oints reached us. Not less advantageous would
it have been for us to know how they felt when
they wrought their first miracles. Were they
startled? Did they exult? Or were they grateful
and humble? We can but speculate on these
points, but we may feel assured that the Apostles
profited not a little by this their first mission.
Besides those lessons of confidence in the wisdom
and power of their Master which they were always
receiving, they were taught how to apply the
truths they had learned, and how to use the
powers with which they were clothed. They were
forced to act for themselves, to reflect and decide
in a way which elicited their latent capabilities.
From this point the education and training of
the Apostles may be regarded as merged in the
life of our Lord, and the further treatment of the
subject must be sought under the relevant articles.
The intercourse between our Lord and the Apostles
should be regarded from their side if the work He
accomplished in their case is to be fully appreci-
ated and understood. To study the life and teach-
ing of Jesus through the eyes and minds of the
Apostles is advantageous in no common degree,
because of the many new questions which are thus
raised, and which cannot be determined without
a clearer and fuller insight being obtained into
the wisdom of the methods He followed in prepar-
ing them to expound His thoughts and to extend
Hiskingdom. A list of some of the more important
topics to be considered may be serviceable. They
are such as these: the question put to the Twelve
at the crisis in Galilee, ‘Will ye also go away?’
the confession of Peter, and its significance for
the Apostles; the predictions of the death and
resurrection made, it would appear, to the Apostles
only; the strife for the first places in the King-
dom, and the action taken by our Lord regarding
it ; the words spoken to the Apostles on the night
of the betrayal, some of which form a parting
charge to them; the appearances to the Eleven ;
the tinal commands addressed to them. Two sub-
jects besides are deserving of particular notice:
the inner circle of the Apostles—Peter, James,
and John, the Three within the Twelve; and the
many questions connected with the name of Judas
Iscariot.
The Christian Church rests on the Apostles, for
the Christian Church is their creation. But they,
in turn, were the creation of Jesus. That He trans-
APPARITION 111
formed them in so brief a space of time from the
men they were when called, as to be able to con-
vince the world that He was the Messiah of Israel,
the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind, is not the
least of His titles to the admiration and the grati-
tude of men; for His success proves what can be
made of ordinary men when they surrender them-
selves to the guidance of His spirit.
LITERATURE.—The chief books to be consulted are the Com-
mentaries on the Gospels and the Lives of Christ, together with
art. ‘Apostle’ in the different Bible Dictionaries and Encyclo-
pedias, though the best of these are meagre and inadequate
for the purposes of the student of the Gospels. For a general
treatment two valuable works in English should be named—
Bruce’s Training of the Twelve and Latham’s Pastor Pastorwm.
On the name and office of an Apostle see Lightfoot, Gal.5 92-101 ;
Hort, Christian Ecclesia, 22-41; and on the Apostolic group,
Expositor, τ. i. [1875] 29-48, 111. ix. [1889] 100ff., 187 ff., 434 ff.
W. PATRICK.
APPARITION.—
In AV this word occurs thrice, in the Apocr. only: Wis 173
(Gr. iderAua, RV ‘spectral form’), 2 Mac 324 (Gr. ἐπιφάνεια, RV
‘apparition,’ RVm ‘ manifestation’), and 54 (Gr. ἐπιφάνεια, RV
‘vision,’ RVm ‘ manifestation’). In RV it occurs thrice only :
me "ἢ || Mk 649 (φάντασμα, AV ‘spirit’), and 2 Mac 8293 (as
above).
The Revisers have used this word in its ordinary
current sense of ‘an immaterial appearance, as of
a real being, a spectre, phantom, or ghost.’ There
is always connected with this term the idea of a
startling or unexpected appearance, which seems
also associated with the original φάντασμα. The
immaterial appearance of a person supposed to be
seen before (dvzwble) or soon after death (ghost), is a
wraith ; but these three synonyms are often inter-
changed.
The Jews of Christ’s time, like all unscientific
minds (ancient and modern), believed in ghosts
naturally, instinctively, uncritically. Dr. Swete
(The Gospel according to St. Mark, London, 1898, p.
131) refers to Job 4'°% 208, and especially to Wis
175 Ὁ and 1713 (18) for earlier evidence of a popular
belief in apparitions among the Hebrew people.
The disciples’ sudden shriek of terror (ἀνέκραξαν, Mk
6*) shows that they thought the phantom was real ;
but if we try to realize their attitude and outlook,
we shall understand the futility of attributing
to such naive intelligences the discrimination of
modern psychological research. The suggestions
of excitable imaginations were indistinguishable
from the actual presentations of objective reality.
The best illustrations of their habits of thought
must be sought in ancient and modern records of
Oriental beliefs.
A. Erman (Life in Ancient Egypt, London, 1894, pp. 307, 308)
says that ‘the Egyptians did not consider man as a simple
individuality ; he consisted of at least three parts, the body,
the soul, and the ghost, the image, the double, or the genius,
according as we translate the Egyptian word Ka. ... After
the death of a man, just as during his lifetime, the Ka was still
considered to be the representative of his human personality,
and so the body had to be preserved that the Ka might take
possession of it when he pleased. . . . It is to their faith in the
Ka that we owe all our knowledge of the home life of the
people of ancient Egypt.’
E. J. W. Gibb (History of Ottoman Poetry, London, 1900, pp.
56-59) says that ‘according to the Sufi theory of the human
soul it is a spirit, and therefore, by virtue of its own nature,
in reality a citizen of the Spirit World. Its true home is there,
and hence, for a certain season, it descends into this Physical
Plane, where, to enable it to act upon its surroundings, it is
clothed in a physical body. . . . The power of passing from the
Physical World into the Spiritual is potential in every soul, but
is actualized only in a few.’
For the medieval conception of the nature of ghosts see the
locus classicus—Dante, Purg. xxv. 88-108—in which Dante ex-
plains his conception of the disembodied soul as having the
power of operating on matter and impressing upon the surround-
ing air the shape which it animated in life (Aquinas), thus form-
ing for itself an aerial vesture (Origen and St. Augustine). See
also Dante, Conv. tr. ii. c. 9, and Thomas Aquinas, Summa
Theol. pt. ili. suppl. qu. Ixix, art. 1.
Keim (Jesus of Nazara, London, 1879, iv. 184—
191) critically reviews the various explanations
offered of the miracle of Jesus walking over the
billows, but says nothing of the word φάντασμα,
112 APPEARANCE
merely remarking (p. 190): ‘If we adhere to the
actual narrative, the going on the water was far
from being an act of an ordinary character—it was
something divine or ghostly.’ For the latest criti-
cism of the popular belief of NT times in the
manifestations of the spirit world, see P. Wernle,
Beginnings of Christianity, London, 1903, jp. 1-11.
P. HENDERSON AITKEN.
APPEARANCE. See Curist IN ArT, and Por-
TRAITS.
APPEARANCES.—Scee RESURRECTION.
APPRECIATION (or Curist).—The whole NT
is one long appreciation of Christ. It is no blind-
fold acceptance of Him, no mere echo of a tradition,
but a series of utterances of men personally con-
vinced of the supreme value of Christ to the world.
St. Paul speaks of Christ only as he himself has
been influenced by the Lord, not as the disciples
had described Jesus to him. His phrases—high,
beautiful, and so often mystical—are the direct
expressions of his own personal consciousness of
Jesus Christ. No one has accused him of extra-
vagance or of exaggeration. It is because he has
felt that to be clothed with the Lord must be the
perfection of power and joy, that he says, ‘ Put ye
on the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Ro 134). It is because
he has seen the love eternal that nothing imagin-
able can utterly root out again from the awakened
heart, that he says, ‘ Neither death, nor life, .. .
nor any other creation, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord’ (Ro 8). And St. John opens his first Epistle
with the strongest personal declaration of the whole
of the Epistles, ‘that which we have heard, .. .
seen with our eyes, . . . and our hands have
handled of the word of life . . . declare we unto
you’ (1 Jn 1’).
But the simplest appreciation of all—as natural
as a bird’s song or a child’s praise—is that which
threads its way through every page of the Gospels.
Inspite of allthe enmity written there ; remembering
that there were those who saw in Him an ally of
3eelzebub (Mt 1274), working with the devil’s aid;
that some called Him ‘a gluttonous man, a wine-
bibber, friend of publicans and sinners’ (11) ;
that lawyers, and Pharisees, and Sadducees were
ever watching to trip Him (2215), and plotting with
Herodians (v.1*) to destroy Him ; that the Galilean
cities, which should have known Him _best,—
Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum (117) 2%), and even
Nazareth,—rejected Him (Lk 4); and remem-
bering the awful and lonely agonies of the last
hours, we can yet point to the Gospels as abounding
with witness to the wide contemporary apprecia-
tion of Christ.
[Ὁ was most natural that it should be so, even
when He is thought of entirely apart from any
doctrine of His Divine personality. His own
sympathy for others, and indeed for all things,
was sure to attract others to Him. His quick
perception of the good in all, His tender response
to the least wave of the world’s infinite music,
show Him as destined to be the desired of men.
He came upon the most diverse types, the most
opposite of characters, and instantly knew their
possibilities and their worth. He ‘sees through
the pure-minded hesitancy of Nathanael (Jn 147)
He recognizes the true value of the
᾽
widow’s
mite (Lk 21'4), He draws Nicodemus the
timid to Him (Jn 3), He knows what will
satisfy Thomas (Jn 20°’), and what will please
and win Zaccheus (Lk 19°); and His immediate
followers include a Mary Magdalene as well as a
Mary of Bethany, a Judas as well as a John.
Even the failures are appreciated by a standard
of faith unknown to the world. He acknowledces !
ee eee ee ..ᾳ0Ψᾳ.ᾳῃ
APPRECIATION
ὌΝ ΠΡ LEER SL ς
the longing of the heart though a weak will robs
it of fruition; He reads the zealous affection of
Peter between the lines of a moment’s Satanic
pride (Mt 16”), or a terror-stricken denial (Mt 26%) ;
He penetrates to the secret yearnings behind the
materialistic questions of the woman at the well,
and imparts to her His highest thought of God
(Jn 4%). He cannot even look upon the earth or
sky but He must read into it the indwelling of the
Eternal, find in all its pages picture and parable
of spiritual realities. ‘To His all-sensitive being
the universe of things seenis but asymbol. The
sower with his seed, the harvest-fields, the birds
of the air, the fox in his hole, the sheep in the
fold or lost on the hills, the wind that foretells
heat or rain (Lk 1254-5), the prophecies of the
sunset (Mt 162), or the springtide promise of the
sprouting fig-tree (Mk 13%5),—all passing through
His appreciative spirit is treasured as the visible
manuscript of God.
We might expect that such a receptive, com-
prehensive, and understanding nature would
compel confidence. Men could not help trusting
such deep and ready sympathy. And, as we read
the Evangelists, one of their most notable traits
is this—that they succeed in bringing together,
almost without form, and apparently without
intention, a wonderful accumulation of witness
to the appreciation Jesus inspired from the first.
The record is so varied. It is from no one school,
or type, or rank. Almost every grade of life in
the community is there—from the outcast and the
leper to the Sanhedrist and the Roman centurion.
From the first His gifts of healing attract the
sufferers, and none are more definite in their
acknowledgment of Him. The villagers bring
their sick on beds to the market-places (Mk 6° °°),
or lower the palsied through the roof at Capernaum
(Mk 2%). The centurion in that town is satisfied
that a word from Jesus will be enough to heal his
sick servant (Mt 88). Martha says, with such
simple trust, ‘Lord, if thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died’ (Jn 113). The ruler of the
synagogue feels that the touch of the Lord’s hand
would be enough to heal his dying daughter
(Mt 918. The woman with the issue of blood
would but touch the hem of His garment to be
cured (Mk 5%). The Syro-Phcenician woman per-
sisted in her prayer for her sick daughter, eagerly
claiming the rights, while bearing the reproach
of being a Gentile ‘dog’ (Mk 7%). With one cry
is He greeted alike by blind Bartimzeus (Mk 10”),
the two blind men (Mt 957), and the ten lepers
(Lk 17*)—‘ Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy
on us’; acry the meaning of which is uttered by
the leper (Mk 1*°)—‘ Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst
make me clean.’ When sight is given to the man
born blind, the parents testify to the Divine origin
of the power that has been exercised (Jn 95. And
the multitude at Nain, when they saw the dead
raised, had no hesitation in erying—‘A great
prophet is risen among us’ (Lk 7!*). It was a
glad welcome from the sufferers and their friends
that greeted Jesus as the manifestation of God
in all these things. But not less earnest is the
witness of the crowds to the popular estimate of
the teacher. ‘There went great multitudes with
him’ is the frequent note that leads up to some
great doctrine of life (Mt 192, Lk 14, Mk 6). The
house filled at Capernaum (Mk 2?) is but the parallel
of the occasion when His own mother ‘could not
come at him for the press’ (Lk 8), or of the
thousands by the seashore (Mk 4), or of the
multitude that ‘trod one upon another’ (Lk 12?).
Lives that He changes from darkness to light
bear willing evidence to His power and charm:
Mary Magdalene will not be held back by false
shame from entering the Pharisee’s house to
ah
‘we anticipate such trust.
ARAMAIC
ARCHELAUS 113
acknowledge her Saviour (Lk 736-50). nor be re-
pulsed by the charge of wastefulness through
sentiment (Mk 144); and Zacchzus will boldly
profess a practical conversion before those who
Εν him intimately (Lk 198).
We look for appreciation from His nearest
disciples, a quick obedience, a joy that has no
place for fasting (Mk 218), the mother’s confidence
at the marriage-feast at Cana (Jn 2°), the great
utterances of His forerunner the Baptist (Jn 1° 380)
the exalted vision of the Transfiguration (Mk 95),
and that Petrine outburst, repeated by all, as they
neared Gethsemane—‘If I should die with thee,
I will not deny thee.’ From these His intimates
We look for it, too,
from the band of holy women—Joanna, Susanna,
Salome, the Marys, and those ‘who ministered
unto him of their substance’ (Lk 8*). But beyond
these we have the scribes (Mt 819, Mk 12%) ear-
nestly approaching Him, Pharisees inviting Him
to their houses (Lk 11°7 141); we have the confes-
sion of the council of priests and Pharisees—‘ If
we let him alone, all will believe on him’ (Jn 1148) ;
we have the acknowledgment of Samaritans, con-
vinced not by hearsay but by personal knowledge
(Jn 45), of centurions (Mt 85:5, Mk 1539), and of
the rich young man ‘running and kneeling’ and
saying, ‘Good Master’ (Mk 1017), Strangers seek
Him out—‘ Sir, we would see Jesus’ (Jn 127°); and
the common people of His own race ‘heard him
gladly’ (Mk 12), and acclaimed His entry into
Jerusalem (Mk 11°?°), In the beginning, shep-
herds and magi, angels and stars bear witness
to the newborn King; so that to the last it is
a strange mixed company, that seems to include
(by his long faltering before judgment) Pilate
himself, the lone, mysterious figure of Joseph of
Arimathzea, and Nicodemus ‘ bringing myrrh and
aloes’ (Jn 1939).
This many-sided appreciation of our Lord in His
own day, in addition to its obvious gain to the
Christian preacher, is suggestive of the many
differing points of view from which men may rever-
ently regard Christ, each one expressive of a truth,
though not the entirety of the truth. And it may
also indicate the many successive ways of wonder,
repentance, sympathy, and vision in which Christ
speaks to each individual soul.
EDGAR DAPLYN.
ARAMAIC.—See LANGUAGE.
ARBITRATION.—The settlement of disputes by
the acceptance of the judgment of a third party
supposed to be impartial. The arrangement may
be purely private, or in accordance with special
statute; the application is multifarious. Some
method of settlement by umpires is as old as civil
government. In Job 9* the ‘daysman’ is perfectly
described. The Greek term (μεσίτης) translated
‘mediator’ (or middleman) has the same meaning ;
though as applied, in the NT, to Moses and to
Christ (Gal 3: 2°, 1 Ti 25, He 8° 915 12%4), as standing
between man and God (ef. Dt 5°), it belongs to an
essentially different order of ideas, inasmuch as
God is not man. The complexity of modern life
has multiplied the occasions ; but the most import-
ant recent advance has been the application to
international differences. Thereby questions such
as have often led to wars become capable of
amicable settlement. The first notable instance
was the Geneva arbitration under the Washington
Treaty (1871) in the Alabama Question. The
principle, then disputed, has now found universal
acceptance. Treaties of arbitration already exist
or are being negotiated between most nations that
have mutual relations. And in the future, except
where ambitions and strong passions are involved,
this means of agreement will be largely resorted to.
VOL. 1.—-8
᾽
The idea is based on the acknowledgment of the
identity of moral law in the two spheres of indi-
vidual and national life. Duty for persons or
communities or nations is one. ‘There is no valid
distinetion of private and public right; the code
of ethies that is binding for the private individual
is equally obligatory on kings and the representa-
tives of peoples. This doctrine is opposed to the
long history of statecraft, to the maxims of diploma-
tists, and to the passions of despotism. But few
now openly deny its truth; and the acknowledg-
ments already made in treaties of arbitration
may be reckoned one of the greatest triumphs of
Christian civilization.
The principle may be said to be based on the
Golden Rule (Mt 7:3, Lk 691), which teaches recipro-
cal obligation, or on the kindred command to love
our neighbours as ourselves (Mt 22%, Mk 1231),
These fundamental laws are given as the sum of
practical duty. They condemn the egoistic atti-
tude. They teach us to regard the position of
others with full sympathy, to seek an impartial
standpoint, and to make the individual will har-
monize with the general mind. The principle of
arbitration is also an illustration of the grace of
peaceableness. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’
(Mt 5°). This truth finds full expression in the
Epistles, where peace, the fruit of the Spirit (Gal
5”), and the concomitant of righteousness, is con-
trasted with the strife and envy of sin, and is
noted as a mark of the kingdom of God, who is
the God of peace. Once more, the principle may
be based on prudence; for a willing settlement
may prevent a legal defeat, or even a worse dis-
aster (Mt 525-26, Lik 1258-59, ef, Pr 2589),
Christ declined on one occasion to be an arbiter
(Lk 12%), He was addressing the multitude, when
one of them said, ‘Master, bid my brother divide
the inheritance with me.’ Jesus replied, ‘Man,
who made me a judge (κριτήν, so BDL and the
erit. edd. ; TR has δικαστὴν) or a divider (μεριστήν,
only here in NT) over you?’ The words which
follow (v.5"-) show that Jesus knew that this man
was moved by covetousness ; but apart from His
censure of a wrong motive, He here aflirms that it
was no business of His to arbitrate between men.
He would not interfere in civil disputes which fell
properly to be decided by the regular law (ef. Dt
211, But His saying goes far beyond the sphere
of jurisprudence. Christ lays down universal laws
of justice and love, but does not apply them.
Moral casuistry was no part of His mission, and
decisions of the kind this man wanted could only
have weakened the sense of personal responsibility,
and hindered the growth of those spiritual dis-
positions it was His chief aim to create.
KR ΞἸΘΌΠΙΙΣ
ARCHELAUS (’Apyé\aos) is named once in the NT
(Mt 2), and probably is referred to in the parable
of the Pounds (Lk 19!*"-), He was the elder of the
two sons of Herod the Great by Malthace, a Sam-
aritan woman (Jos. BJ I. xxvill. 4,- xxxiii. 7).
Judea, with the title of ‘king,’ was bequeathed
to him by his father’s will; but he would not
assume the royal dignity till he had obtained con-
firmation of that will from the emperor Augustus
(Ant. XVII. viii. 2-4). Before his departure to
Rome a rebellion broke out in Jerusalem; and
in quelling it his soldiers put three thousand men
to death, among whom were pilgrims visiting the
Holy City for the passover (ἐδ. Xvi. ix. 3). Thus
at the beginning of his reign an evil reputation
was gained by Archelaus, and the alarm of Joseph
may be understood (‘But when he heard that
Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of his
father Herod, he was afraid to go thither’).
After the rebellion, Archelaus proceeded to Rome
(Ant. XVII. ix. 3-7, οἵ, Lk 1912), Augustus, dealing
114 ARIMATH EA
with Herod’s will, received a deputation from the
eople of Judea, who begged that neither Arche-
aus nor any of his brothers should be appointed
king (cf. Lk 19"). The emperor finally decided
that Archelaus should receive Judea, Samaria,
and Idumza, with the title not of ‘king, but of
‘ethnarch’ (Ant. XVII. xi. 1-4; Δ τι. vi. 3). On
his return from Rome the ethnarch sought ven-
geance against his enemies (cf. Lk 1957) in Judiea
and Samaria. In the ninth or tenth year of his
reign, after many acts of tyranny and violence,
he was banished by the emperor to Vienne in
Gaul (Ant. xvi. xili. 2). According to Jerome,
the tomb of Archelaus was pointed out near
Bethlehem (de Situ et Nomin. Loc. Hebraic. 101.
11).
LITFRATURE.—Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Wars of the
Jews [BJ], as cited above; references s. ‘ Archelaus’ in Index
to Schurer’s Geschichte des Jiidischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu
Christi, 1898-1901 [Ene. tr. of 2nd ed. 1885-90}; and Hausrath’s
Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, 1873-77 [Eng. tr. in 2 vols.
1878-80]. Of the last named work, vol. i. [German] was pub-
lished in a 8rd ed. in 1879, J. HERKLESS.
ARIMATHZAEA (‘Apiuaéaia) is mentioned in Mt
277, Mk 15%, Lk 2851, and Jn 19% as the place
from which Joseph, who buried the body of Jesus,
came up to Jerusalem. In the Onomasticon (225. 12)
it is identified with ‘Apuadéu Σειφά (Ramathaim-
zophim*), the city of Elkanah and Samuel (1 $ 13),
near Diospolis (Lydda) and in the district of
Timnah (Tibneh). In 1 Mae 1154, Ramathem is
referred to along with Aphzerema and Lydda asa
Samaritan toparchy transferred, in 145 B.c., to
Judiea. These notices of Ramathaim point to
Beit-Rima, 13 miles E.N.E. of Lydda, and 2 miles
N. of Timnah,—an identification adopted by G. A.
Smith (HGHL 254 n. 7) and Buhl (GAP 170).
Another possible site is Rém-allah, 3 miles S. W. of
Bethel, suggested by Ewald (Hist. ii. 421). The
proposed sites S. of Jerusalem are not ‘in the hill-
country of Ephraim’ (1 5.1). If Arimathzea, then,
be identified with the Ramathaim of Elkanah, it
may well be at the modern hill-village of seit-
Rima. The LXX form of Ramathaim is Δρμαθαίμ
(15 11 and elsewhere), thus providing a link be-
tween Ramathaim and Arimathiea.
A. W. Cooke.
ARISTEAS (LETTER or).—This interesting piece
of fiction may find a place in this Dictionary,
because it gives the first account of that work
which more than any other paved the way of the
gospel in early times, namely, the Greek trans-
lation of the OT, the so-called Septuagint. There
15. no agreement as yet about either the age or the
aim of this composition. That it is a fiction is
now generally admitted. The author pretends to
have been one of the two ambassadors—Andreas,
ἀρχισωματοφύλαξ of the king, being the other—sent
by king Ptolemzeus Philadelphus to the high priest
Eleazar of Jerusalem in order to get for hima copy
of the Law, and men to translate it for the Royal
Library at Alexandria. The letter gives a long
description of the cifts sent by Philadelphus to
Jerusalem, of the city, its temple and the religious
customs of the Jews, and of the table-talk between
the king and each of the 72 interpreters. When
the work was finished, a solemn curse was de-
nounced on any one who should change anything
in it (cf. Dt 42, Rey 2918.19), Schiirer, I. Abrahams
and others fix the date about B.c, 200: Herriot (on
Philo) dates it 170-150; Wellhausen (isr. und Jiid.
Gesch.® 1897, p. 232) in the Ist cent. B.c. (but in
4th ed. 1901, p. 236, he assions it to the 2nd cent.)
.
᾽
Wendland, between 96 and 63,+ nearer to 96; L.
* On this name (which is almost « rtainly bs
fimost certainly based on a tex
corruption), see H stings’ DB, vol, iv. bp. 1988 note ees as
tIn Hastings’ DB iy. 438, line 7 ir tom
6s eae tings’ DB iy. 438», line 7 from bottom of text, read
ARISTION (ARISTO)
Cohn doubts whether it was known to Philo;
Graetz placed it in the reign of Tiberius, and
Willrich (Judaica, 1900, pp. 111-130) brings its
composition down to ‘later than A.D. 33.) Lom-
broso was the first to show that the ‘author was
well acquainted with the details of court life in
the times of the Ptolemies’; and recent researches
have confirmed this; on the other hand, there are
interesting connexions with the Greek of the NT;
compare καταβολή used absolutely for ‘creation’
(Mt 13° and Aristeas, § 129 [a usage apparently
unknown to Hort ad 1 P 1°, and Swete, Jntrod.
p. 397]) ; ἀνατάττεσθαι (Lk 1! and Aristeas, § 144;
Mt 6*!-*? and Aristeas, § 140, ete.).
While Jerome had already called attention to
the fact that Aristeas speaks only of the Law as
having been translated by the 72 interpreters, in
later times it became customary to consider the
whole Greek OT as the work of the ‘Septuagint.
Philo seems to follow a somewhat different tradi-
tion, and mentions that in his days the Jews of
Alexandria kept an annual festival in honour of
the spot where the light of this translation first
shone forth, thanking God for an old but ever new
benefit. He is sure that God heard the prayer of
the translators ‘that the greater part of mankind,
or even the whole of it, may profit by their work,
when men shall use philosophical and excellent
ordinances for regulating their lives.’
On the use made of the Greek OT in the NT see
Swete, pp. 381-405, ‘ Quotations from the LXX in
the NT.’ That Jesus Himself was acquainted
with it would seem to follow from the quotation in
Mt 15°=Mk 77. For the words μάτην δὲ σέβονταί με
are the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew ‘am
dpxt’, which rendering rests on a confusing of the
first word with 377) (noticed already by Grotius).
But it is doubtful whether we are entitled to ex-
pect in our Greek Gospels such a verbatim report
of the words of Jesus.
On the influence of the Septuagint on the spread
of the Gospel, ef. (in addition to older works like
Grinfield, Oikonomos, ete.) Alfred Deissmann, ‘ Die
Hellenisierung des semitischen Monotheismus,’
Leipzig, 1903 (reprinted from Neue Jahrbiicher fir
das klassische Altertum, 1903).
LirERATURE.—The Letter of Aristeas was first published in
Latin (Rome, 1471 fol.) in the famous Latin Bible of Sueynheim
and Pannartz; first edition of the Greek text by Simon Schard,
Basle, 1561; all subsequent editions superseded by that of
(Mendelssohn-) Wendland (Lipsiae, Teubner, 1900), and that of
H. St. J. Thackeray in H. B. Swete’s Introduction to the OT in
Greek (Cambridge, 1900, 2nd ed. 1902). English translations by
J. Done, 1633 and 1685; Lewis, 1715; Whiston (Awthentic
Records, i. 423-584), 1727; recently by Thackeray (JQR xv.,
April 1903). Compare, further, Abrahams, ‘ Recent Criticism on
the Letter of Aristeas’ (ib. xiv. 321-342); the works on the
Septuagint (Swete, /.c.; Nestle in Hastings’ DB iv.); Fried-
lander, Geschichte der jiidischen A pologetik (Ziirich, 1903)
Es. NESTLE.
ARISTION (ARISTO).— One of the principal
authorities from whom Papias derived (written 3)
‘narratives of the sayings of the Lord’ (τῶν τοῦ
Κυρίου λόγων διηγήσεις ; cf. Lk 1), and (indirectly)
oral traditions.
1. Importance and Difficulty of Identification.—
According to Eusebius (HE iii. 39), Papias of Hier-
apolis in his five books of Interpretations (var ἴ.
Interpretation) of the Lord’s Oracles ‘referred fre-
quently by name’ to ‘ Aristion and the Elder John’
as his authorities. From the Preface (προοίμιον)
Eusebius cited the following sentence to prove that
Ireneus had misunderstood Papias in taking him
to refer to the Apostle John as his authority,
whereas the ‘John’ in question was not the ‘dis-
ciple of the Lord,’ but a comparatively obscure
‘Elder.’ We abridge the sentence, but give the
relevant variants: εἰ δέ που καὶ παρηκολουθηκώς τις
τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις ἔλθοι, τοὺς τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἀνέκρινον
λόγους" τί ᾿Ανδρέας ἡ τί Πέτρος εἶπεν, ,. ἤ τις ἕτερος
ee 6 "
ARISTION (ARISTO)
τῶν τοῦ Κυρίου μαθητῶν, ἅτε ᾿Αριστίων καὶ ὁ πρεσβύτερος
Ἰωάννης οἱ τοῦ Κυρίου μαθηταὶ λέγουσιν.
For ᾿Αριστίων Svr. and Arm. read ’Apicrwy, and omit the clause
οἱ τοῦ Κυρίου μαθηταὶ λέγουσιν, Arm. by compensation rendering
‘ Aristo and John the Elders.’ Nicephorus (HE ii. 46, but ποῦ
iii. 20) makes the same omission. Rufinus renders ceterique
discipuli dicebant. Jerome changes the tense (loguebantur).
Four Greek MSS and Niceph. (iii. 20) omit οἱ
Deferring the question of the significance of the
variant readings, it is apparent that ‘ Aristion and
the Elder John’ are in several ways placed in con-
trast with the group of ‘disciples of the Lord’ men-
tioned immediately before, by whom Papias cer-
tainly means the twelve Apostles, enumerating
seven (including James the Lord’s brother ; ef. Gal
119. 2°), from Andrew to ‘John (author of the
Revelation) and Matthew’ (author of the Logia).
The designation μαθηταί instead of ἀπόστολοι is em-
ployed because the function in consideration is that
of transmitting μαθήματα --- [Π6 precepts (ἐντολαί)
learned from the Lord. The disciples (including
James) of the Lord Himself are the first generation
of traditores. The group next mentioned, ‘ Aris-
tion and the Elder John,’ are distinguished ex-
pressly and implicitly as belonging to a subsequent
generation.
(1) As Eusebius points out, the John spoken of
in connexion with Aristion is (a) ‘mentioned after
an interval,’ (4) ‘classed with others outside the
number of the Apostles,’ (¢) has ‘ Aristion men-
tioned before him,’ (d) is ‘distinctly called an
Elder’ (in contrast with the John mentioned just
before, who is called a ‘disciple of the Lord’). No-
where in the context should the term ‘ Elder’ be
taken as = ‘ Apostle.’
(2) A distinction not referred to by Eusebius, but
at least equally important, is the contrast of tense
(disregarded by Rutfinus and Jerome), whereby
Papias makes it apparent that at the time of his
inquiries the Apostles, including John, were dead ;
whereas Aristion and the E/der John were living.
He ‘used to inquire of those who came his way
what had been said (τί εἶπεν) by Andrew, Peter,
Philip, Thomas, James, John or Matthew, or any
other of the Lord’s disciples ; as well as what was
being said (ἅτε λέγουσιν) by Aristion and the Elder
John.’ Hence, as an authority of note, and a trans-
mitter of Gospel traditions earlier than the time of
Papias’ writing (A.D. 145-160), Aristion is a witness
of the first importance for the history of Gospel
tradition. On the other hand, great difficulty and
dispute are caused by the descriptive clause attached
in most texts to his name and that of John the
Elder, because it is identical with that by which
the Apostles are appropriately designated as tradi-
tores of the first generation ; whereas the distine-
tions already noted, especially the contrast of tense
τί eimev—dre λέγουσιν, make it certain that Papias
did not regard Aristion and the Elder John as be-
longing to this group. For Lightfoot’s proposal
(Essays on Sup. Rel. p. 150, n. 3) to regard λέγουσιν
as ‘a historical present introduced for the sake of
variety,’ is confessedly advanced only to escape
the ‘chronological difficulty’ of supposing two
‘disciples of the Lord’ still living at the time of
Papias’ inquiries. It is certainly inadmissible.
The Armenian version makes a natural inference
when it forms the second group by reading ‘ Aristo
and John the Elders.’ But the change 15 clearly
arbitrary. Papias applies the title ‘the Elder’
only to ‘ John’ to distinguish him from the Apostle.
It was doubtless applicable to Aristion as well
(Conybeare, Expositor, 1893, p. 248, against Hilgen-
feld, Ztschr. f. wissenschaft. Theol. xxxvii. 1894, p.
626), but was superfluous. The exegesis suggested
above (Weiffenbach, Corssen, e¢ al.) removes all
difficulty by rendering τοὺς τῶν mp. ἀνέκρινον λόγους
as an ellipsis: ‘I would inquire the utterances of
ARISTION (ARISTO) 115
the Elders (reporting) what Andrew or Peter . .
had said,’ because ‘ Elder’ is then used consistently
throughout the paragraph for ¢raditor of the post-
Apostolic generation (cf. Ac. 15: 4 6. 9118 and the
Heb. 701), though it is not relied on (as in Arm.) to
make the distinction of the Apostolic from the
post-Apostolic generation, but only of the two
homonymous individuals, John the Apostle and
John the Elder.
On this interpretation, Aristion and John were
members of the group which perpetuated the tradi-
tions of the Apostles (in Palestine?) until Papias’
day (cf. Hegesippus ap. Eus. HE Il. xxxii. 6-8,
and Lk 11:9. Ac 1139. 152 4- 6- 22. 23.9718) But even if
this exegesis be rejected, there is no escape from the
following alternative : Either the descriptive phrase
οἱ τοῦ Kuplov μαθηταί, appended after ‘ Aristion and
the Elder John’ precisely as after the list of
Apostles, is textually corrupt (assimilated to the
preceding clause); or the designation is used in a
different and very loose significance. On this view
the only certainty is that Aristion was living at
the time of Papias’ inquiries (A.D. 120-140?) after
‘ Apostolic narratives’ (ἀποστόλικας διηγήσεις), and in
a region whence Papias could obtain them only
from ‘ travellers who came his way.’ For Eusebius’
statement that ‘Papias was himself a hearer, not
of the Apostles, but of Aristion and the Elder
John,’ is made in the interest of his desire to tind
‘some other John in Asia’ besides the Apostle
(Zahn, Forsch. vi. 117f.), and is corrected by him-
self in the next clause: ‘ At all events he mentions
them frequently by name, and sets down their
traditions in his writings.’
(3) A second difficulty of more importance for
the true reading of Papias and the identification
of ‘ Aristion’ than is generally recognized, is the
spelling of the name, whieh Syr. and Arm. give as
‘Aristo.’ For this spelling, in combination with
the omission of the designation ‘the disciples of
the Lord,’ is not only traceable to about A.D. 400
(Syr. is extant in a MS of A.D. 462), but these two
nain variations are accompanied by minor ones in
Syriac, Armenian, and Latin authorities, which
form a group in that they manifest a belief in com-
mon regarding the personality of Aristo-Aristion
which differs from that of the received text of
Eusebius.
2. Text of Eusebius. —Mommsen (ZNTW 11].
1902, p. 156 ff.) regarded this textual evidence as con-
clusive in conjunction with the admitted ‘ chrono-
logical difficulty.’ He would therefore omit the
epitheton from the text of Eusebius. Corssen (ib. iii.
p. 242 ff.) rightly criticised Mommsen’s proposal to
omit, because some designation of this second link
in the chain of traditores is indispensable to the
sense. He thought Papias capable of the colossal
anachronism of regarding his own contemporaries
as ‘disciples of the Lord.’ The present writer
had argued (Journ. of Bibl. Lit. xvii., 1898) for the
reading οἱ τούτων μαθηταί (sc. τῶν ἀποστόλων) as the
true text of Papias, on the internal evidence, and
because ‘the Elders’ of Papias are twice referred
to by Irenzeus (Her. Vv. v. 1 and V. xxxvi. 1) as
‘the disciples of the Apostles.’ The corruption
followed by Eusebius (and probably even by
Irenzeus in this passage, though he transcribed
others where ‘the Elders’ were correctly described
as ‘disciples of the Apostles’), involves only the
change (by assimilation) of three letters, OITOY-
(TON)MACHTAL becoming OITOY(KT)MAOHTAL.
In the form wherein Edwin Abbott (Enc. Bibl. s.v.
‘Gospels,’ il. col. 1815, n. 3) adopts the emenda-
tion, the change involves but two letters, OITOT-
(TQ)MAOHTAI becoming OITOT(KT)MAOHTAT, as
in Jg 453 (LXX) TON TIQN B becomes KT TION in
A. This would largely explain the strange error
116 ARISTION (ARISTO)
ARISTION (ARISTO)
of Ivenzeus in taking Papias to belong to a genera- | ment on ‘the sixth book of the Hypotyposeis of
tion even earlier than Polycarp (‘some of them saw
not only John but other Apostles also, and heard
these same things from them and festi/y [present]
these things’). The difficulty experienced by
Eusebius in refuting it could hardly have been
so great if his text of Papias had not the same
corruption.
On this view the variants are of no help to
improve the text of Husebius, which is correct
in the received form (Bacon, art. ‘ False Witness,’
etc., in ZNTW vi. 1905). They have some im-
portance, even if arbitrary, as indicating that in
antiquity also the ‘chronological difficulty’ was
felt as well as (in Arm.) the incompleteness of
sense produced by simple omission of the descrip-
tive wank and (in Rufinus) the incongruity of
applying to ‘Aristion and John the Elder’ the
same designation by which the Apostles had just
been distinguished. They would have great im-
portance if it could be made probable that they
rest, directly or indirectly, upon a knowledge of
Papias (or, much less probably, of Aristion-Aristo)
independently of Eusebius.
3. Origin of Variants.—‘ Aristo’ is not simply
‘the Greek name Aristion badly spelt’ (Cony-
beare, 1.6. p. 243), nor even should it in strictness
be called ‘an equivalent (gleichbedeutende) form of
the same proper name’ (Hilgenfeld, Ztschr. 7.
wissenschaft. Theol. 1875 11. p. 256, 1883 i. p. 13,
1894 p. 626). Τῦ 15 at least the more usual, if not
more correct form, and ‘occurs very frequently in
ancient writers. It has been calculated that about
thirty persons of this name may be distinguished.’
But Smith’s Dict. of Greek and Roman Biogr., the
authority for the statement just made (i. p. 310),
knows of but two occurrences of the form ‘ Aris-
tion,’ once as the nickname of the adventurer
Athenion (B.C. 87), once as designating a surgeon
of small repute ὁ. 150 B.c. In Jewish literature
only the form ‘Aristo’ oceurs (Jos. Ant. xix. 353
[ed. Niese]). Pape (s.v. ᾿Αριστίων) adds four others
from Antiph. vi. 12, Ausch. Πλαταικός 8. 162, Plut.
Num. 9, and Pausanias. Patristie literature
knows only the form ‘ Aristo’ in Christian legend
(Acta Barn. xiv. ed. Tisch. p. 69, knows a Chris-
tian host Aristo in Cyprus ; Acta Petri, ed. Lipsius,
p. 51, 14-53. 13, one in Puteoli; Constit. Apost. vii.
46, ed. Lagarde, p. 228, 21, gives to the first and
third bishops of Smyrna the name Aristo). The
form ‘Aristion’ is unknown. Eusebius himself
(HE iv. 6) draws his account of the devastation
of Judiea in the insurrection against Hadrian (132-
135) from a certain Aristo of Pella. This writer,
accordingly, would be a contemporary of Papias in
position to be referred to as a traditor of Apostolic
teaching. ΤῸ speak of him and ‘the Elder John,’
if by the latter were meant John the elder of the
Jerusalem Church (Eus. HE iv. 5; ef. Schlatter,
Kirche Jerusalems, 1898, p. 40), whose death is
dated by Epiphanius (Her. Ixvi. 20) in the 19th
year of Trajan, as ‘disciples of the Apostles,’
would involve no greater looseness or exaggeration
than we should expect in Asia c. 150 A.D. But
as Eusebius gives no account of Aristo’s writings,
although making it a principal object of his work
to describe early Christian authorities, it is pro-
bable that Aristo of Pella was not a Christian, but
εἶ Jewish or (more probably) pagan writer. To
; is supposition there is but one serious objection,
ΟἹ the references of Nicephorus (HE iii, 24) and
the peat while aa may admittedly be disre-
creed gy ke hot ny Eusebius. Maximus
“rec ae ar igh ΟΣ. n his scholion on the Theol.
aay or /reopagiticus (6. 1. p. 17, ed. Corder),
undoubtedly refers to the same ‘Aristo of Pella?
( Ἀρίστωνι τῷ ἸΠελλαίῳ) as author of the Christian
Lialogue of Jason and Papiscus, basing his state-
Clement of Alexandria,’ who seems to have
referred to this ‘Jason’ as ‘mentioned by ({.
ὃν ἀναγράψαι) Luke’ (Ac 17°°). Only, while the
Dialogue is known to Celsus (6. 167), Origen,
Tertullian, Cyprian, and Jerome, if not to pseudo-
Barnabas and Justin Martyr, and even probably
survives in more or less altered form in the Alter-
catio Simonis et Theophili (TU 1. ili. p. 1151};
P. Corssen, Altercatio S. ef Th. 1890), it is known
to none of these as the work of Aristo, nor do
any of the later quotations, references, or other
evidences indicate that the work in question
contained διηγήσεις τῶν τοῦ Κυρίου λύγων (Eus. l.c.).
If the name ‘ Aristo’ was ever properly connected
with the Dialogue, it circulated only anonymously
after A.D. 200, and without the introductory narra-
tive portion which it may have once possessed.
The late and unsupported statement of Maximus
is therefore much more likely to be due to some
misunderstanding of the Hypotyposeis, especially
as we have the explicit quotation of the same
Aristo of Pella by Moses of Chorene (400-450 3)
extending to considerable length beyond the por-
tion quoted by Eusebius, accompanied by the
statement that Aristo was secretary of Ardasches,
king of Armenia, when the latter was sent by
Hadrian into Persia (Langlois, Coll. des. Hist. de
VArmenie, i. Ὁ. 391ff., ef. ii. 110, n. 3, and Le
Vaillant de Florival, Hist. Arm. ii. 57). Harnack
(£U 1. 2, p. 125) and Zahn, it is true, reject Moses’
quotation as a fabrication; but it contains no-
thing ‘fabulous,’ and is defended with reason by
Hilgenfeld (Zts. f. το. Th. 1883, p. 81). Besides
this, Stephen of Byzantium, who knows of no
Aristo of Pella, mentions an Aristo of Gerasa (less
than 25 miles distant) simply as an ἀστεῖος ῥήτωρ.
Our conclusion must be that, while direct
acquaintance with Papias is quite conceivable, the
variant form ‘Aristo’ in Syriac and Armenian
sources is best accounted for by a mistaken identifi-
cation of this Aristo of HE iv. 6 with the ‘ Elder
Aristion’ of HE iii. 39 and Moses of Chorene.
4. The Appendix of Mark.—The most important
addition to our data regarding Aristo was made by
Conybeare’s discovery at Eemiadzin in 1893 of
an Armenian MS. of the Gospels dated A.D. 989,
in which the longer ending of Mark (Mk 109-32)
has the separate title in red ink, corresponding to
the other Gospel titles: ‘From the Elder Aristo’
(Eapositor, Oct. 1893, pp. 241-254). This repre-
sentation, though late, Conybeare takes to be
based on very early authority (Zxpositor, Dec.
1895, pp. 401-421), appealing to the internal evi-
dence of the verses in question. Undeniably the
reference in Mk 16 to drinking of poison with
impunity must have literary connexion with
Papias’ anecdote regarding Justus Barsabbas (Eus.
HE iii. 39), whatever the source. Conybeare’s
citation of a gloss ‘against the name Aristion’ in
a Bodleian 12th cent. codex of Rufinus’ translation
of this passage, which referred to this story of the
poison cup, was even (to the discoverer’s eye) a
designation by the unknown glossator of Aristion
as author of thisstory. But, besides the precarious-
ness of this inference, it would scarcely be possible
to write a gloss ‘against the name Aristion’
which would not be equally ‘against the name
of the Elder John’ immediately adjoining ; and as
medieval legend reported the story of the poison
cup of John (i.e. the Apostle, identified with the
Elder in the glossator’s period) this would seem to
pe the more natural reference and meaning of the
gloss.
The evidence connecting the Appendix of Mark
with the name ‘Aristo’ is thus reduced to the
statement ‘inserted by an afterthought’ by the
Armenian scribe John, A.D. 989, over Mk 16°,
i
which he had attached, contrary to Syriac and
Armenian tradition, to his text of the Gospel. This,
however, is unquestionably important, especially
if, as Conybeare maintains, ‘it must have stood in
the older copy transcribed.’ The statement has
been generally received at its face value, but
with different identifications of ‘the Elder Aristo.’
Resch (‘ Ausserkanonische Paralleltexte,’ 7'U x. 3,
1894, p. 449; Eng. tr. by Conybeare in Laxpos. 4th
ser. x. [1894], pp. 226-232) regards Aristo of Pella
as the only personality open to consideration as
author of the Appendix. Hilgenfeld (Zéschr. f.
wissenschaft. Theol. xxxvii. 1894, p. 627) stands
apparently alone in identifying the ‘ Aristion’ of
Papias with Aristo of Pella, ‘a notable contem-
porary of Papias,’ and refusing to the Aristo of
the Eemiadzin codex any significance beyond that
of ‘some Elder Aristo or other before c. 500 A.D.,
from whom a Syriac MS will have borrowed Mk
16°29’ (regarded by Hilg. as the original ending).
Other critics regard it as ‘practically certain’
that the Mark-Appendix is really taken from the
authority referred to by Papias. Harnack sets
the example of peremptorily refusing the sug-
gestion of Resch (7U x. 2, p. 453 ff), that this
‘Elder Aristo’ may be no other than Aristo of
Pella, but gives no other reason than the date
(ec. 140); which, as he rightly says, is irreconcilable
with the (disputed) phrase οἱ τοῦ Κυρίου μαθηταί
(Chron. i. p. 269; on the textual question, see
above, §2). Zahn (Theol. Literaturbl. 22nd Dee.
1893 [Eng. tr. by Conybeare in Lzpos. l.c.] regards
it as a conclusive objection to Resch’s identification
that ‘Aristo of Pella, who wrote his (?) Dialogue
of Jason and Papiscus after 135, and perhaps a
good deal later, cannot be the author of a section
(Mk 169-39) which Tatian already read in his Mark
at the latest in 170, and which Justin had already
known so early as 150, though perhaps not (N.B.)
as an integral part of Mark.’ We may inquire
later what antiority the scribe John may have
had for his insertion of the title.
5. Internal evidence of the Appendix.—The im-
pression of Westcott and Hort (Gr. NT, 11. p. 51),
corroborated by Conybeare (Expositor, 1893, p.
241 ff.), that the Appendix to Mark is not the
original full narrative, but an excerpt, constitutes
the next step in the solution of our problem. In
particular, a real contribution is made by Zahn
(Gesch. Kan. ii. App. xiv. la, and Forsch. v1. ὃ 3, p.
219) in the demonstration that Jerome (c. Pelag.
ii. 15, ed. Vall. ii. 758) had access to it in a fuller,
more original form; for he adds after v.4 * Et
illi satisfaciebant dicentes: Szeculum istud ini-
quitatis et incredulitatis substantia (cod. Vat. 1,
“sub Satana’) est, quie (2. qui) non sinit per im-
mundos spiritus veram Dei apprehendi virtutem ;
idcireo jam nune revela justitiam tuam’ (cf. Ac
19). Jerome’s source for this material, whose
Hebraistic expressions and point of view confirm
its authenticity, becomes a question of importance.
This source can scarcely have been the Dialogue
of Jason and Papiscus, whoever its author ; for
while Jerome was acquainted with this work (Com.
on Gal 3%, and Quest. Heb. in lib. Gen., beginning),
and while Celsus, who also used it, twice quotes
the substance of Mk 109 (c. Cels. ii. 55 and 70), the
nature of the work, so far as ascertainable, was
not such as to admit material of this kind. Besides,
we have seen that by all early authorities it is
treated as anonymous. Zahn’s supposition (Forsch.
vi. p. 219) has stronger evidence in its favour, and
still leaves room to account for the points of con-
tact between the Appendix, the Dialogue, Celsus,
and Jerome. According to Zahn, ‘The ancient
book in which Mk 16148 was extant independently
of the Second Gospel, and whence it was drawn
by transcribers of Mark, can only have been the
ARISTION (ARISTO)
ARISTION (ARISTO) 117
work of Papias, in which it was contained as a
διήγησις οἵ Aristion (516). But Jerome, he holds,
obtained his version indirectly, through his teacher
Apollinaris of Laodicea, This explanation has in
its favour certain evidences adduced by Cony-
beare (Hapositor, Dec. 1895), to connect the can-
cellation of Mk 16°? in Armenian MSS with
knowledge derived from Papias of its true origin.
In particular, the same Ec¢miadzin codex which
attributes the Appendix to ‘the Elder Aristo’ has
a version of the Pericope Adulterze (Jn 7°%-8!
TR) independent of the received form, briefer, but
with the explanatory comment after Jn 8° ‘To
declare their sins; and they were seeing their
several sins on the stones.’ Echoes of this addition
are traceable in Jerome (Pelag. ii. 17), in uncial U,
and perhapselsewhere. Moreover, Conybeare’s con-
tention that this ‘represents the form in which
Papias . gave the episode,’ is strongly sup-
ported by Eusebius’ statement of what he found
in Papias (‘a story about a woman accused of
many sins before the Lord, which the Gospel ac-
cording to the Hebrews contains’). This applies
to the Eemiadzin text only (‘ A certain woman was
taken in sins, against whom all bore witness,’ ete.
Cf. Eus. HE iii. 39). It has some further support
in the express statement of Vartan (14th cent.)
that this pericope was derived from Papias, though
this may be merely dependent on Eusebius. Cony-
beare’s suggestion that the story will have been
one of the ‘traditions of the Elder John,’ and for
this reason have become attached in most texts to
the Fourth Gospel, is more probable than Zahn’s
attributing it to ‘Aristion’; but see Blass, Phv-
lology of the Gospels, p. 156, who thinks it was
simply appended at the end of the Gospel canon.
The Eemiadzin Codex, accordingly, in the two
most important questions of Gospel text makes
deliberate departure from the received Armenian
tradition, in both cases relying on authority
which might conceivably go back indirectly to
Papias himself. (1) Until about this date (A.D.
989) Armenian tradition followed the Sinaitic, or
older Syriac, in omitting the Mark-Appendix. In
the 10th cent. it begins to be inserted as in the
Curetonian and Tatian, but with various scribal
notes of its secondary character. Our codex is
simply more exact and specific than others of its
time in adding a datum which could never have
gone with the Appendix, but must have been
derived, like the comment of Vartan on_ the
Pericope Adulterie, from comparison of Eusebius,
which in the Arm. spells the name ‘ Aristo’ and
expressly designates him as ‘Elder.’ (2) It also
goes beyond current Armenian tradition regard-
ing Jn 81:1, Instead of attaching the story after
Lk 2155, as the Gosp. acc. to the Hebrews pro-
bably suggested, it adopts the position usually
assigned it after Jn 755, with the marginal scholion
in red ink τῆς μοιχαλίδος, and an expurgated and
embellished text, which Eusebius enables us to
identify as that of Papias. To infer from this,
however, that the scribe John had actual access to
Papias would be rash in the extreme. On the
contrary, the evidence is only too convincing that
his title is based simply on a comparison of the
two Eusebian passages regarding ‘ Aristo,’ with
the further statements of his own chief national
historian, Moses of Chorene (400-450), regarding
the Aristo of Pella quoted by Eusebius in H# iv. 6.
6. Aristo of Pella.— Moses of Chorene _ (cf.
Langlois, /.c.), in writing of the death and obsequies
of Ardasches, king and national hero of Armenia,
transcribes first the quotation of Eusebius from
Aristo of Pella regarding Hadrian’s devastation of
Jerusalem, to explain how Aristo came to be
attached to his (Ardasches’) person as secretary ;
for Ardasches had been sent by Hadrian into
ARISTION (ARISTO)
118
ARMY
Persia. He then continues, quoting professedly
from ‘the same historian,’ an elaborate account of
Ardasches’ death and obsequies. The connexion
of this supplementary quotation, however, 1s so
awkwardly managed as to leave it quite ambiguous
to whose person Aristo was attached as secretary.
In the text it follows the statement that Hadrian
‘established in Jerusalem a community of pagans
and Christians whose bishop was Mark. Langlois
accordingly makes him secretary of Mark (cf.
Eus. HE iv. 6). Zahn understands of Hadrian
himself (ἢ. The Ecmiadzin scribe seems to have
been of Langlois’ opinion, and to have drawn the
inference that this Aristo, secretary of Mark the
bishop of Jerusalem under Hadrian, could be no
other than ‘the Elder Aristo’ of Eus. ΠῚ iii. 39, as
weil as the natural completer of ‘ Mark’s’ Gospel.
If the attribution of Mk 16° to ‘the Elder
Aristo’ be dismissed as untrustworthy, our know-
ledge of the ‘Aristion’ from whom Papias de-
rived (indirectly) his ‘accounts of the Lord’s
sayings’ is reduced to a minimum. Eusebius
clearly did not identify him with Aristo of Pella,
and from his silence would seem to have known
nothing more about him than the statement of
Papias that he was an elder, one of the ‘disciples
of the Apostles’; or, as his text of Papias would
seem already to have read (by assimilation to the
preceding), ‘of the Lord.’ Aristo of Pella, Eusebius
certainly did not include in his chain of Christian
writers, and save for the late and improbable
statement of Maximus Confessor, all that we know
of Aristo indicates that he does not belong there.
He may, or may not, be the same as ‘the cultured
rhetorician Aristo of Gerasa.’
7. Conclusions.—The following may be taken as
more or less probable conclusions from the fore-
going data. (1) In the famous extract of Eusebius
from Papias and the adjoining context (/7# iii. 39),
there is no warrant for substituting the reading
᾿Αρίστων, the common form of the name, for the
rarer form ᾿Αριστίων. The Syriac, followed by Arm.,
assimilates it to ᾿Αρίστων (ὁ Πελλαίος), quoted a few
paragraphs farther on by Eusebius himself (12
iv. 6), or perhaps merely falls into the ordinary
spelling. ‘The reverse process is inconceivable. Of
this Aristion, Eusebius seems unable to relate any-
thing beyond what he found in Papias. He cer-
tainly did not regard him as identical with Aristo
of Pella, whose narrative of the revolt of Bar
Cochba was in his hands. Papias, however, knew
of Aristion as a traditor (orally ; cf. οὐ yap ἐκ τῶν
βιθλίων, x.7.d.) of the teachings of the Apostles, him-
self ‘one of the disciples of these,’ probably in
Palestine, since Papias obtained his traditions
(Eusebius to the contrary notwithstanding) only
from ‘those who came his way.’ Aristion was
still living at the period of Papias’ (youthful ? καλῶς
εμνημόνευσα) inquiries.
(2) from this otherwise unknown ‘ Aristion’ of
Papias we must sharply distinguish ‘Aristo of
Pella,’ the historian of the revolt of Bar Cochba,
quoted by Eusebius. Had this been a Christian
Writer, 1t 1s inexplicable that Eusebius, in spite of
the avowed purpose of his book, elsewhere so con-
sistently followed, should have omitted all mention
whatsoever of his works. The Viri Illust. of
Jerome is equally silent.
(3) The process of confusion of Papias’ Aristion
with Eusebius Aristo of Pella begins with the Syriac
translator (c. 400), followed by the Armenian; or,
7 Maximus ( onfessor be right in attributing to
ement’s Hypotyposeis the (conjectural 2) assign-
ment of the anonymous Dialoqueof Jason and Papis-
cus to this author, perhaps with Clement. The late
and unsupported statement of Maximus (6. 600),
quite in conflict with all that is known either of
the Dialogue or the writer, is really valueless,
(4) The Armenian historian Moses of Chorene
(5th cent. ?) appears really to have known, as he
claims, Aristo of Pella. His quotation, where it
goes beyond that of Eusebius, shows more and
imore manifestly the secular, non-Christian writer.
His statement that Aristo was secretary of Ard-
asches, which was so unfortunately ambiguous as
to seem to make him secretary of Mark, bishop of
Jerusalem, seems to be the starting-point for the
last stage of the process.
(5) The seribe ‘John’ who wrote the Armenian
Codex of the Gospels in A.D. 989 (found by Cony-
beare at Eemiadzin), departed from previous Ar-
menian tradition by appending, after the row of
dises by which he had marked the end of the
Gospel of Mark, at Mk 168, the spurious ending
νν." 0. literally translated from the ordinary Greek
text. To justify this unusual insertion, he crowded
in ‘by an afterthought’ between the first line and
the row of discs, in small, cramped, red letters,
the title ‘Of the Elder Aristo.’ That he knew the
Eusebian passage about Papias’ informant is indi-
cated by his use of the title ‘Elder’ and the form
‘Aristo’; for only the Armenian Eusebius has
these peculiarities. That he should have identified
the writer of the Markan appendix with ‘the
Elder Aristo’ is most probably explained by his
finding in Moses of Chorene what he took to be
the statement that Aristo (of Pella) was secretary
of Mark, the bishop of Jerusalem, in the time of
Hadrian. Who indeed should venture to complete
Mark’s unfinished Gospel, if not his secretary ?
B. W. BAcon.
ARMOUR.—Lk 11” speaks of the πανοπλία (az.
dey. in Gospels; also Eph 61-1, with which οἵ.
1 Th 58) of ‘the strong man’= the Wicked One
—the def. art. ὁ (v.*') indicating a single and de-
finite person. The ‘armour’ is the potent influ-
ences at his disposal, called by St. Paul (Eph 6")
‘wiles’ and (61%) ‘ fiery darts,’ by which he deludes
and overcomes. ‘Trusting to these, he with his
possessions is ‘at peace’ until ‘the stronger than
he’ (ἰσχυρότερος αὐτοῦ [ef. Lk 3'*]) comes on the
scene, When the armour is taken away and he is
spoiled of his possessions.
The passage has a soteriological and an eschato-
logical bearing. (1) It points to the power of Christ
as able to dislodge evil passions and habits from
the heart (cf. Mt 1038 οὐ pass.). He is ‘stronger’
than ‘the strong man,’ and has ‘power to heal’
(Lk 5"). He thus fulfils the prophecy of Is 49° 55
and 53', delivering the prey and dividing the
spoil. (2) Eschatologically it points to the final
victory of good over evil. Cf. Col 215, where we
have the word ἀπεκδυσάμενος (cf. Lighfoot’s note,
in loc.). The ‘stronger’ had already come into
the ‘strong one’s’ house and had delivered many ;
the conflict was continued by Him and against
Him till His death, when He overcame him that
had the power of death; the same conflict of evil
against good is still continued, His ‘spoiling’ is
going on, He is still taking from His adversary
one and another of his possessions, till in the end
He shall bind him in the abyss and utterly destroy
him (cf. esp. 1 Co 157-7 and Rev 19% τ):
For passages descriptive of Roman armour of
the time, in Polybius and Josephus, see Hastings’
DB, s.v.; οἷ. also Martial, Epigr. ix. 57. With
these St. Paul’s description of the Christian’s
armour is in close harmony ; but to find a ‘ diabolic’
significance in the several details is rather fanciful
than helpful.
LITERATURE.—Hastings’ DB, s.v.; Ecce Homo, ch. xiii.; Expos.
Times, iii. (1892) p. 349 f.; Bunyan, Holy War, ch. ii.
Kt. MACPHERSON,.
ARMY.—‘ Armies’ (στρατεύματα) are mentioned
by Jesus as the natural instruments of discipline
at the command of an Eastern king (Mt 227). He
ARNI
ARREST 119
also foretells (Lk 21°) the day when ‘Jerusalem
shall be compassed with armies’ (στρατόπεδα).
Otherwise there is little allusion to armies in the
Gospels, and comparatively small use is made of
lessons or figures drawn from military life. The
Roman soldier, the legionary, did not loom very
large in Palestine. When the Church spreads
into the Province Asia, to Rome and Corinth,
the impression of the army of Rome is much
stronger both in the incidents of the Acts and
in the figurative allusions of the Epistles.
John the Baptist found soldiers (see art. SOLDIER)
among the crowds who came to him to be baptized
(Lk 34); and the most remarkable bond of union
between the military character and the character
conformed to God, that of discipline and orderl
subordination, was suggested to our Lord by the
conduct of a centurion (Lk 7°).
M. R. NEWBOLT.
ARNI.—An ancestor of Jesus, according to the
genealogy given by St. Luke (3°, AV Aram). In
Mt 15: he is called Ram (AV Aram).
ARPHAXAD.—The spelling (in both AV and RV
of Lk 3:0) of the OT name which appears more
correctly in the RV of OT as Arpachshad.
ARREST (Jn 187"%=Mt 2641-86-- ΜΠς 14%2=Lk
2247-53), __When Judas, withdrawing from the
Supper, betook himself to the high priests and
informed them that he was ready to implement his
agreement (see BETRAYAL), their simplest way
would have been to accompany him hack to the
upper room and there arrest Jesus. It was, how-
ever, impossible for them to proceed thus sum-
marily. They had, indeed, the officers of the
temple at their command (cf. Jn 753); but these
were insufficient, since the Law forbade them to
go armed on the Passover day,* and, though Jesus
and the Eleven were defenceless, He was tlic popular
hero, and, should an alarm be raised, the multitude
would be aroused and would come to the rescue.
Moreover, had they taken such a step on their own
authority, they would have offended the procura-
tor, Pontius Pilate, who was ever jealous for the
maintenance of order, especially at the festal
seasons; and it was of the utmost moment that
they should secure his sympathy and co-operation.
Accordingly, though doubtless impatient of the
delay, they first of all appealed to him and ob-
tained from him a detachment of soldiers from
Fort Antonia, under the command of a tribune.
The Roman garrison at Jerusalem consisted of a single cohort
(σπεῖραν), i.e. 500 men (cf. Schtirer, HJ P τ. ii. p. 55). λαβὼν τὴν
σπεῖραν (Jn 18%) does not, of course, imply that the entire cohort
was despatched on the errand. Cf. such phrases as ‘call out
the military,’ ‘summon the police.’
Ere all was arranged several hours had elapsed.
Jesus had quitted the upper room and the city,
but the traitor knew whither He had gone, and
led the way to the garden on Mount Olivet, where
each night during the Passion-week the Master
had bivouacked with the Twelve in the open (Lk
2939), It was a motley band that followed Judas.
The soldiers would march in order, but the temple-
servants, armed with cudgels and carrying lamps
and torches, gave it the appearance of a mere
rabble (cf. Mt 2647=Mk 14%=Lk 22%). And with
the rest, forgetting their dignity in their eagerness
to witness the success of their machinations, went
some of the high priests, the temple-captains,+ and
the elders.
* Mishna, Shabb. vi. 4: ‘No one shall go out with sword or
bow, with shield or sling or lance. But if he go out, he shall
be guilty of sin.’ :
t Lk 224-52 στρατηγοὶ τοῦ ἱεροῦ, the Ὁ), officials next in
dignity to the priests, charged with the preservation of order
in the temple. Cf. Schiirer, HJP u. i. p. 257 ff.
When he had guided the band to the garden,
Judas doubtless would fain have kept in the back-
ground, but he was doomed to drink his cup of
degradation to the dregs. It was the business of
the soldiers to make the arrest, but they did not
know Jesus, and, seeing not one man but twelve,
they were at a loss which was He. It was neces-
sary that Judas should come forward and resolve
their perplexity. Casting shame to the winds, he
gave them a sign: ‘The one whom [I shall kiss is
he. Take him.’ Then he advanced and, greeting
Jesus with feigned reverence: ‘Hail, Rabbi!’
kissed Him effusively.* It was the climax of his
villainy, and Jesus repulsed him with a stinging
sentence. ‘Comrade!’ He eried, in that one word
summing up the traitor’s baseness; ‘to thine
errand.’ + Brushing the traitor aside, He stepped
forward and demanded of the soldiers: ‘Whom
are ye seeking?’ ‘Jesus the Nazarene,’ they
faltered. ‘I am he,’ He answered, making per-
haps to advance towards them and surrender Him-
self; and, overawed by His tone and _ bearing,
they retreated and fell on the ground.
‘Unless,’ says St. Jerome,t ‘He had had even in His counte-
nance something sidereal, the Apostles would never have fol-
lowed Him at once, nor would those who had come to arrest
Him have fallen to the ground.’ It is, however, unnecessary
to assume a miracle. Cf. the consternation of the mercenary
soldier who came, sword in hand, to kill C. Marius at Minturne.
‘The chamber in which he happened to be lying having no
very bright light but being gloomy, it is said that the eyes of
Marius appeared to dart a great flame on the soldier, and a loud
voice came from the old man: ‘‘ Darest thou, fellow, to slay
C. Marius?” So the barbarian immediately rushed out, erying :
“T cannot kill C. Marius!” ’§ It is related of John Bunyan
that once, as he was preaching, a justice came with several
constables to arrest him. ‘The justice commanded him to
come down from his stand, but he mildly told he was about
his Master’s business, and must rather obey His voice than
that of man. Then a constable was ordered to fetch him
down; who coming up, and taking hold of his coat, no sooner
did Mr. Bunyan fix his eves stedfastly upon him, having his
Bible then open in his hand, but the man let go, looked pale
and retired ; upon which said he to his auditors, *‘ See how this
man trembleth at the word of God!”’ And John Wesley was
once assailed by a gang of rutfians. ‘Which is he? which is he?’
they cried, not recognizing him in the press. ‘Iam he,’ said
Wesley, confronting them fearlessly ; and they fell back and let
him go unmolested.
Jesus reiterated His question: ‘Whom are ye
seeking?’ and, when they answered again: ‘Jesus
the Nazarene,’ He once more gave Himself up to
arrest, adding an intercession for the Eleven: ‘If
ye are seeking me, let these men go their way.’
ecovering themselves, the soldiers seized Him,
and, as they were proceeding to bind Him, the
more roughly perhaps that they were ashamed of
their weakness, the indignation of the disciples
mastered their alarm, and Peter, with the courage
of despair, drew a sword which he carried under
his cloak|| and, assailing a slave of the high priest
named Malchus, cut off his right ear. An uproar
ensued, and the disciples must have paid the
penalty of the rash act had not Jesus intervened.
Working His hands free from the cords and cray-
ing a brief release: ‘Let me go—just thus far,’
He touched the wounded ear and healed τὐ. The
miracle occasioned a diversion ; and, while his mates
were crowding about Malchus, Jesus reasoned with
His excited followers. ‘Put the sword into its
sheath,’ He commanded Peter. ‘The cup which
my Father hath given me, shall 1 not drink it?
Dost thou suppose that I cannot appeal to my
* Mt 264849=Mk 1444-45 φιλήσω, κατεφίλησεν. Cf. Lk 798.45,
t+ Euth. Zig. τὸ δὲ ἐφ᾽ ᾧ (Tisch., WH ἐφ᾽ 0) rapes οὐκ ἐρωτηματικῶς
ἀναγνωστέον" ἐγίνωσκε γὰρ ἐφ᾽ ὦ παρεγένετο᾽ ἀλλ᾽ ἀποφαντικῶς.
τ Ad Principiam Explan. Psali. xliv.
§ Plut. C. Mar. § 39.
|| Cf. Lk 2238, Chrysostom thinks that these μάχαιραι were
the knives (μάχαιρα may mean either sword or knife) which
Peter and John (cf. Lk 228) had used in slaying and dressing
the Paschal lamb. It evinces their sense of impending peril
that they carried the μάχαιραι despite the legal prohibition.
“1 This miracle is recorded by Luke alone, but the immunity
of Peter from instant vengeance is inexplicable without it.
120 ART
ART
Father, and he will even now send to my support
more than twelve legions of angels (i.e. one for
Himself and one for each of the Eleven)? How
then are the scriptures to be fulfilled that even
thus it must come to pass?’ St. Chrysostom * finds
here an allusion to the destruction of Sennacherib’s
army (2 K 19%): If a single angel smote that host
of 185,000 armed men, what could this rabble do
against 72,000 angels?
Anxious to avert attention still further from the
Eleven, Jesus addressed Himself to the Jewish
rulers who with their officers had accompanied the
soldiers, ‘As though against a brigand,’ He said
scornfully, ‘have ye come forth with swords and
cudgels? Daily in the temple I was wont to sit
teaching, and ye did not arrest me.’ What had
kept them from arresting Him in the temple-
court? It was fear of the multitude (ef. Mt 26%°=
Mk 141-?=Lk 22"), And they were cowards still,
coming forth with an armed band against a de-
fenceless man. It was a stroke of biting sarcasm,
and they felt the sting of it. Apparently it pro-
voked them to violence. At all events the Eleven
were at that moment stricken with sudden panie,
and ‘all forsook him and fled.’
They made good their escape, but the infuriated
rulers + laid hands on one who, though not a
follower of Jesus, was evidently a friend and
sympathizer. St. Mark alone has recorded the
incident. A solitary figure (es tis) strangely
attired had been hovering near during the ven-
contre—‘a young man arrayed in a linen sheet ¢
over his undress.’ When the Eleven took to flight
the rulers laid hold on him; and, dropping his
garment, he left it in their grasp and escaped un-
dressed. §
Who was he? and why should the Evangelist have recorded
an incident which seems merely to introduce an incongruous
element of comedy into the tragic narrative? Of all the con-
jectures which have been offered,|| the most reasonable seems to
be that he was St. Mark himself (Olshaus., Godet). The conjec-
ture is of recent date, but long ago it was alleged that he was
from the house where Jesus had eaten the Passover (Euth. Zig.,
Theophyl.) ; and it may well have been, as Ewald suggests, the
house of Mary, that widow lady who resided in Jerusalem with
her son John Mark, and showed hospitality to the Apostles in
after days (Ac 1212). Probably Mark had gone to rest that
evening after the celebration of the Passover by his household,
and, with a foreboding of trouble, had lain awake. He had
heard Jesus and the Eleven descend after midnight from the
upper room and quit the house, and, hastily rising and wrapping
his sheet about him, had anxiously followed after them and
witnessed all that passed in Gethsemane. And it may be that
the incident was less trivial than it appears. In early days St.
Mark bore a singular epithet. He was styled ‘the stump-
fingered,’ J and in the absence of any reasonable explanation of
the epithet it may, perhaps, be conjectured that during the
scuffle in Gethsemane his finger had been mutilated by the slash
of a sword (see Expos. 1st ser. i. [1875] pp. 436-446).
k DAVID SMITH.
ART.—There has been in Christian history no
antagonism between religion and art as such;
though there have been abuses of particular forms
of art, and consequent reactions against those
abuses. The NT attords little guidance, for it is
not concerned with the subject. It is the revelation
of a Person, not of a code of rules. It deals with
fundamental spiritual facts, and it was not within
the scope of the writers of its books to supply
Beepnaltions on art or philosophy or science. Such
pro ems were left to be settled from age to age
* In Matth. Ἰχχχν.
t Mk 145 οἱ νεανίσκοι om. Tisch., WH.
t The σινδών was a bed-sheet. Οἵ, Eus. HE vi. 40: μένων ἐπὶ
J . ὃ ἤμην γυμνῦξ, εν τῷ Ava ἐσθ! “eri, Where Heinichen,
omparing our passage, comments: “ἐν τῷ λινῶ ἐσθήματι idem
est quod alias vocatur σινδών. i Ὧν
$ γυμνός, not absolutely naked. Of, Jn 917.
οἱ ree ee ττου Er d from his panic and followed Jesus to
ὯΝ ade = thy pa : e (Gregory, Moral. xiv. 28), James,
ἯΙ r his sai ld oe ah παν ga PD us HE ii, 23, always
See Petavel in Expositor, ie g le ie vn., Theophy1.).
4“ Hippol. Phil
λίάρχος ὁ χολοβοδάκτυλος.
ph. Vil. 80: οὔτε Παῦλος ὁ ἀπόστολος οὔτε
by the spiritual instinct of a Church, to which
Christ promised the abiding presence of the Spirit :
the NT has no more to say about art than it has
to say about economics or natural science, and
therefore it neither praises any of these things nor
condemns them; it is concerned with that which
underlies them all.
The NT is neutral also in regard to the use of
art in the worship of the Temple. The Jews were
not an inartistic nation, though they had not the
genius for art of some other races: they had musie,
poetry, sculpture, architecture, and the usual minor
arts of their time; and, though in sculpture they
were under strict regulations for the prevention of
idolatry, this did not prevent them from using
graven images within the sanctuary itself, while
in the ornaments of their worship they had been
guided by elaborate regulations as to form and
colour and symbolism. Christianity grew up in
these surroundings, and did not find any fault with
them. Our Lord condemned the ethical formalism
of current religion, but not its art: He condemned
the trafficking in the Temple, but not its beauty.
Nor did His disciples have anything to say against
the art of the pagan cities where they went,
though they had much to say about the wicked-
ness: they are silent on the subject, except for a
few illustrations from engraving and painting in
He 1° 85 and 101. It is in the Apocalypse alone
that we have any setting forth of visible beauty ;
and here there is a clearer recognition of the
principle of art, because nothing else could express
what the writer had to show forth. It is not
enough to say that the imagery of the Apocalypse
is merely symbolic: all religious art is symbolic.
St. John envelops his conception of the highest
form of being in an atmosphere of glowing beauty ;
and a Church which accepted his teaching could
hardly mistrust material beauty as a handmaid of
religion. It is not therefore to be wondered at
that Christian worship, as we know of it after the
Peace of the Church, was much influenced by the
descriptions of the heavenly worship in the Apoca-
lypse (see, e.g., the recently discovered Testament of
our Lord, A.D. 350).
But, if we would find in the NT the final argn-
ment in favour of art, we must turn, as Westcott
says in his great essay on the subject, to the
central message of Christianity—the Word became
jiesh. Here is the justification and the sanctifica-
tion of all that is truly human: Christianity em-
braces all life, and ‘the inspiration of the new
birth extends to every human interest and faculty.’
The old conflict between the spiritual and the
material is reconciled by the Incarnation ; for by
it the visible became the sacrament, or outward
sign, of that which is inward and spiritual. Thus,
like the Incarnation itself, ‘Christian art embodies
the twofold conception of the spiritual destiny of
the visible, and of a spiritual revelation through
the visible. The central fact of the Christian faith
gives a solid unity to both truths.’ The office of
art, Westcott continues, is ‘to present the truth
of things under the aspect of beauty’: the effect
of Christianity upon art is that of ‘a new birth,
a transfiguration of all human powers by the
revelation of their divine connexions and destiny’ ;
and thus ‘Christian art is the interpretation of
beauty in life under the light of the Incarnation.’
Thus the Christian artist is a teacher, his art is
ministerial, and when it appears to be an end in
itself idolatry has begun; his true function is both
to interpret the world as God has made it in its
beauty, in the light of a deeper understanding of
its meaning, and also to embody to men his own
visions of the truth—‘he is not a mirror but a
prophet,’ and love is his guide. Thus he is led
‘through the most patient and reverent regard of
ART
phenomena to the contemplation of the eternal’ ;
for ‘the beauty which is the aim of Christian art is
referred toa Divine ideal. It is not ‘‘ of the world,”
as finding its source or its final measure there,
but ‘‘of the Father,” as corresponding to an unseen
truth. The visible to the Christian eye is in every
part a revelation of the invisible.’
Westcott, however, assumes an ‘antagonism of
early Christians to contemporary art,’ and points
to the central message of Christianity as establish-
ing a reconciliation between supposed ‘ elements of
contrast.” Was there, we must ask any such an-
tagonism as a matter of history? When Westcott
wrote, Christian archeology was still in its in-
fancy ; much that we now have was still undis-
covered, and that which was known was uncertain
in date and inaccurately reproduced ; notions still
held the field which have since been disproved, as,
for instance, that which credits the early Church
with the wanton destruction of pagan monuments,
when, as a matter of fact, the ancient Roman
temples were, after the triumph of Christianity,
long kept in repair at the expense of the Christian
State, as the chief glory of the city.
The question is of great importance, for modern
writers frequently condemn Christianity because
of its supposed depreciation of humanity. Thus
the natural scientist Metchnikoff — writing, as
people do, about matters which are outside his
province —declares in The Nature of Man that
Christianity lowered our conception of human
nature, and gives as evidence this statement :—
‘Sculpture, which played so great a part in the
ancient world, and which was intimately associated
with Greek ideals, began to decline in the Chris-
tian era,’—the real truth being, as we shall see,
that sculpture had been declining for several
generations in pagan hands, and that Christian
artists did what they could with the decadent
craft.
Now Westcott himself states that ‘ the literary
evidence is extremely scanty’ as regards the rela-
tion of Christianity to art; and, writing twenty-
two years Jater, we may add that archeological
evidence all points in the opposite direction to
that which he supposed. The literary evidence,
indeed, proves little as to the first two centuries,
though recent discoveries have increased our know-
ledge of the 3rd century.
The usual quotations from the Fathers—such as
Westcott gives—are, indeed, ‘extremely scanty’ ;
but the one extract which does deal directly and
definitely with the subject has been curiously over-
looked. It is from Clement of Alexandria in the
chapter headed ‘Human arts as well as Divine
knowledge proceed from God’ (Strom. 1. 4), and is
quite final as to Clement’s opinion. After perti-
nently referring to the craftsman Bezalel the son
of Uri (Ex 3156), whose ‘ understanding’ was from
God, he proceeds—
‘For those who practise the common arts are in what per-
tains to the senses highly gifted: in hearing, he who is com-
monly called a musician ; in touch, he who moulds clay ; in
voice, the singer ; in smell, the perfumer ; in sight, the engraver
of devices on seals. .. . With reason, therefore, the Apostle has
called the wisdom of God ‘‘ manifold,” which has manifested its
power ‘‘in many departments and in many modes” [Eph 910,
He 1!]—by art, by knowledge, by faith, by prophecy—for our
benefit. ‘‘ For all wisdom is from the Lord and is with him for
ever” [Sir 11], as says the Wisdom of Jesus.’
Though less comprehensive than this admirable
statement, the passage to which Westcott himself
alludes is also extremely interesting. Clement
describes a number of subjects commonly engraved
upon seals to which Christians could give a Chris-
tian meaning (see CHRIST IN ART), whilst he
forbids the use of seals which bear idols, swords,
bows, and drinking cups—condemning thus, not
art, but idolatry, war, and drunkenness (Ped. ili.
ART
3). Origen’s answer to Celsus (c. Ceds. viii. 17-20) is
often quoted as denying the use of art. He meets
Celsus’ charge that ‘ we shrink from raising altars,
statues, and temples,’ by saying that Celsus ‘ does
not perceive that we regard the spirit of every
good man as an altar,’ and that Christ is ‘the most
excellent image in all creation,’ and ‘that we do
refuse to build lifeless temples to the Giver of all
life, let anyone who chooses learn how we are
taught that our bodies are the temple of God.’
This rhetorical answer cannot be taken as denying
the use of art by the African Christians: it is a
vindication of the spiritual nature of Christian
worship, and the ‘lifeless temples’ must be referred
to paganism, since there was nowhere any shrinking
from the erection of church buildings. Origen is
not concerned with the question of art: he merely
denies ‘ altars, statues, and temples’ in the heathen
sense.
Even Tertullian, Montanist though he was, is
clear in not condemning artists for practising their
art, though he has a good deal to say about their
making idols; the artist who makes idols works
‘ illicitly’ like Hermogenes, who ‘despises God’s
law in his painting’ (adv. Hermog. 1). An artist’s
profession was full of temptation from heathen
patrons: so Tertullian warns them that ‘every
artificer of an idol is guilty of one and the same
crime’ as he who worships it (de Idol. 3), since to
make an idol is to worship it (4b. 6); and he
advises them to practise their art in other direc-
tions—‘ gild slippers instead of statues’—‘ We urge
men generally to such kinds of handicrafts as do
not come in contact with an idol’ (ib. 8). Else-
where he gives useful testimony. by his incidental
mention of Christian art work in the painting of
the Good Shepherd and other subjects upon chalices
(de Pudiec. 7 and 10).
This is, in fact, the conclusion to which the literary
evidence leads us: the early Christians were told
to keep clear of paganism, with which their daily
work was often so closely involved, but they were
not told to forswear art.
If we wish to find a condemnation of art as such,
we must turn not to Christianity, but to pre-
Christian philosophy, and—in spite of all that has
been said about the opposition between Hebraism
and Hellenism—not to a Jewish but to a Greek
writer. Plato knew what art was; he belonged toa
race with whom art was not a mere incident but a
most important part of life ; in describing his ideal
city he had to deal with the problem of art, and he
settled it by excluding the artist altogether. Be-
ginning with dramatic art, he proceeds, towards the
end of the Republic, with a consistent adherence
to principle that is as rare now as it was then, to
include every form of art in his condemnation.
His reasons are three—The artist creates without
knowing or caring what is good or bad, and thus
separates himself from morality ; he is an imitator
of appearances, and therefore a long way off the
truth; and art, whether poetry or painting or the
drama, excites passions which ought to be curbed.
Plato fully recognized that if painting is wrong,
poetry must be wrong too; and he decided that
poetry also must be excluded from the perfect city.
He was right at least in this, that all art must
stand or fall together ; and in the light of his clear
thought it is easy to see that the three movements
which have appeared in Christendom—Asceticism,
Iconoclasm, and Puritanism—were not really move-
ments against art. The Christian Church never
adopted Plato’s position: the ascetic precursors of
Monasticism came nearest it, but they formulated
no principle beyond that of complete renunciation
of the world for the benefit of their own souls, and
they did little or nothing to check the lavish deco-
ration of churches which characterized their age.
122 ART
ART
NN Oo
The Iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire were often
great patrons of architecture, poetry, and the minor
arts; and, though they carried their special prin-
ciple down to the forbidding of pictures of sacred
subjects even in books, they did not carry it beyond
the question of images. The Puritans, being Eng-
lishmen, were naturally less logical than the Greek
iconoclasts; thus, they accepted Judaism when it
forbade images, and ignored it when it commanded
ceremonial ; in fact, they disliked art in so far as
it embodied ideas which were distasteful to them,
and no further. Puritanism was a mingling of the
two earlier reactions, asceticism and iconoclasin :
it can hardly be taken as embodying a principle of
opposition to art. Fae
The question is not, then, one between Puritanism
and Catholicism, or between Hebraism and Hellen-
ism, but between Platonism and Aristotelianism.
For it was Aristotle who answered Plato; and he did
so by pointing out that a true philosophy must make
the whole of human nature rationally intelligible ;
for, the Universe being rationally organized, the ex-
istence of art proves that it must have a proper
function in life. This is surely the philosophy also
of the Incarnation: the Word became flesh, and in
that the whole of human nature becomes intel-
ligible; it is good in itself, and in its unstained
perfection can become a fit manifestation of the
Divine.
Sin, indeed, mars this perfection ; and while sin
remains, asceticism continues to have its function
in the world. The love of the beautiful may de-
generate into the lust of the eye, because the
inward and spiritual is forgotten, and the sacra-
mentalism of art is lost. It may then become
necessary to pluck out the eye that sees, or to cut
off the fashioning hand, in order to enter into
life; but it isa choice of evils,—the man escapes
Gehenna, but he enters into life ‘maimed.’
So, though it is better to be maimed than to be
lost, better to hate art than to make it a god,
hiding the eternal which it should reveal, better,
indeed, to break images than to worship them ; yet
the fulness of truth lies not in the severance, but
in the union of the good and the beautiful. They
have often appeared as rival tendencies in history.
teligious men have often been narrow and _ in-
human, artists have often been weak in will and
the creatures of their emotions, as Aristotle found
them ; but the one-sidedness of men serves only to
illustrate the manysidedness of truth. Christen-
dom through all her struggles has loved righteous-
ness, and has not forgotten to love art also. She
has her fasts, but she has also her feasts.
It is certain as a historic fact that the early
Church ‘had no suspicion of art, but accepted
without seruple the decorative motives and forms
of the classical civilization to which, apart from
religion and ethics, she belonged, eliminating only
such themes as bore an idolatrous or immoral
meaning. Limited at first in her resources, she
did not for a while attain to magnificence ; but all
the evidence of archeology, which is yearly ac-
cumulating, shows that she made use of art so far
as she had opportunity. Nor did she try to create
an art of herown; she used the art as she used the
languages of the empire. The art of the early
Chureh is not Christian in its form, but in its
inspiration.
_Most of the earliest Christian art that has been
discovered is in the Catacombs of Rome. This
eden ΠΕ; 168 W estcott supposes, that the
/yhurch of Italy was artistic while the rest of the
Church was not; still less does it show, as is
popularly imagined that the Roman Christians
used the ( atacombs as their churches and per-
manent hiding-places. The art of the Catacombs
hes survived because it has been preserved under-
| often sketchy in character.
ground ; but it was not the only art, and the early
Christians worshipped above ground like every-
body else, except in the case of occasional services
for the departed. But hardly anything has sur-
vived of the art above ground: in literature we
have only hints that stir but do not satisfy the
imagination,—as when Eusebius tells us (AL viii.
12) that in times of persecution the churches were
pulled down (as by Diocletian in 302), and men-
tions that the church at Nicomedia, destroyed in
303, was of great size and importance (de Mort.
Pers. 12, ‘fanum illud editissimum’). At a time
when not the buildings only, but the very books of
the Christians were destroyed, it was in the burial-
places—immune by Roman law from molestation,
and hidden away from the ravages of sun and air,
and of barbarians ancient and modern—that works
of art survived; and to the Catacombs we must
turn for our evidence. There is every reason to
suppose that the art which we find there is typical
of that of the whole Church ; for (1) the Christian
Churches were bound together by remarkably
close ties in the first three centuries ; (2) the sym-
bolism of the Catacombs is shown by the early
literature to have been that of the rest of the
Church also; and (3) there was a uniformity of art
throughout the empire, of which Rome was the
cosmopolitan centre,—an Italian city mdeed in
which most of the art was executed by Greeks.
Enough description for our present purpose of
the paintings in the Catacombs will be found in
the article on CHRIST IN ART. To that article,
which deals with Christian art on its most import-
ant side (the Christological), reference may also be
made for illustrations from the other arts which are
here more briefly mentioned. It wiil suffice here
to make a few general statements. (1) Pictorial
art is found in the earliest catacombs, belonging
to a period before the end of the Ist cent., as well
as in those of later date; (2) the first Christians
must have been fond of art to use it so freely in
the dark: the cubicula of the Catacombs, which
were only visited occasionally, and where nothing
could be painted or seen except by lamp-light,
must represent art atits minimum. Yet that art
is both good and abundant. (3) Among the very
earliest examples, figures are included as well as
merely decorative subjects of animals, flowers, ete.
(4) The art is the highly developed art of the
Roman Empire, which was at its height in the Ist
and 2nd centuries, and declined after the reign of
Hadrian. (5) The art of the Catacombs is there-
fore Christian only in that it generally represents
Christian subjects, and that it acquires almost at
once a certain marked character of mystic sym-
bolism which is peculiar to the ages of persecu-
tion. Certainly there is something about this
early painting which at once distinguishes it as
Christian. Its authors were intent on expressing
ideas,—not the technical theology of an ecclesi-
astical system, but the faith and hope of ordinary
Christian people,—therefore they use suggestion
and symbol, and are fond of a conventional treat-
ment even of Scripture subjects, and thus their
work is marked by a quiet reserve that excludes
all reference to the sufferings and death of the
martyrs, and dwells upon the life and power of
Christ, not upon His death and passion. This art
is marked by simplicity, happiness, and peace ;
it deals only with such OT and NT and other
subjects as could bear a mystical interpretation in
connexion with the deliverance and happiness of
the departed through the power of Christ and the
grace of the sacraments. It is sometimes of a
high technical order and of great beauty, though
the difficulties of its execution led to its being
Born full-grown in
the Ist cent., it passed in the 2nd into this second
ART
mystical period, declining after the 2nd cent.
gradually in technique, as the pagan art was
declining. After the Peace of the Church in the
4th cent. it passes into its third period, when its
symbolism is more obvious, more didactic and
dogmatic.
Sculpture naturally does not appear so early as
painting. The dark catacombs were no place for
its display, though in them it has its beginnings
in the graffiti or incised designs which are common
on the tombs. These were easily to be seen, and
could be wrought on the spot, which was an imn-
portant consideration in days when it was difficult
to order Christian sculpture from pagan shops. It
would be an easier matter to have executed in the
publie studios a subject that could bear a pagan
interpretation ; and thus it is that we do find a
statue of the Good Shepherd which probably
belongs tothe 3rd cent., though one would natur-
ally expect Christians who lived in pagan times to
be shy of the use of statuary. In the 4th cent.
the growing custom of burial above ground,
coupled with the prosperity of the Church, en-
couraged the use of sculptured sarcophagi (cf.
CHRIST IN ART). Excellent carved ivories are
also found at this period, but art had been steadily
declining since Hadrian’s time, and after the 6th
cent. no good sculpture of any sort is found. There
was no opposition to it in the West, but in the East
the Iconoclastic controversy (716-867) led to the
wholesale destruction of ‘images,’ whether painted
or carved ; and though it ended in the restoration
of pictures, there was a tacit compromise by which
statues were not restored, in spite of the decision in
favour of ‘images’ by the Second Council of Nicaea
(787). This renunciation of statuary in the Eastern
Church grew into a passionate aversion to its use
inside a place of worship,—an aversion which con-
tinues still.
Among the minor arts may be mentioned that
of gold-glass, which commenced early in the 3rd
cent., and has preserved for us many Christian
pictures and symbols. Miniature illustration
came into general use in the 4th cent. in MSS
of books of the Bible; it was not decorative like
that of the Middle Ages; the miniatures were
separated from the text, and were devoted to
giving pictures of the Scripture events described,
much as in present-day book illustration. The
handicrafts of pottery, metal, and jewel work,
ete., gradually adopted Christian symbolism,—thus
it first appears on lamps in the 3rd century. The
magnificence of church plate after the Peace of the
Church almost passes belief. An early instance is
given in the Pilgrimage of Sylvia (A.D. 385), which
was discovered in 1888.
‘It is needless, she says, describing her experiences in Syria,
‘to write what was the ornamenting on that day of the Church
of the Anastasis, or of the cross in Jerusalem or in Bethlehem ;
for there you would see nothing but gold and gems or silk ; for
if you see the veils, they are all of silk, with stripes of gold ; if
you see the curtains, they are the same. Every kind of gold
and gemmed vessel is used on that day. It is impossible to
relate the number and weight of the lights, tapers, and lamps
and other utensils. And what shall I say of the adornment of
the fabric, which Constantine, with all the power of his king-
dom, in the presence of his mother, honoured with gold, mosaic,
and precious stones?’
With this may be compared the gifts, recorded
in the Liber Pontificalis, which Constantine made
to certain churches: among them he gave to St.
Peter’s ‘3 golden chalices with emeralds and
jacinths, each having 45 gems and weighing 12
pounds’; and ‘a golden paten with a tower of
purest gold, with a dove adorned with emeralds
and jacinths, and 215 pearls, weighing 30 pounds ᾿;
while to St. John Lateran he gave no fewer than
174 candlesticks and chandeliers of various sorts,
as to which Fleury reckons that altogether they
furnished 8730 separate lights. These figures
ART 123
suggest a magnificence of the surroundings of
worship that is far removed from the simple two-
handled cup of the 2nd cent. fresco of the Fractio
Panis. None the less, the fact that Constantine’s
gift was made shows that there was no tradition
of dislike to such magnificence. Such descriptions
bear out the general impression that the early
Church made free use of whatever richness of art
her opportunities could provide, though when
necessity required she was content, as Jerome
says, ‘to carry the body of Christ in a basket of
osiers and His blood in a cup of glass.’
Mosaic art, of which there are extant such
splendid examples in the churches of the Imperial
cities, Rome and Ravenna and Constantinople,
followed upon architecture, and flourished between
the 4th and 7th centuries. Its magnificence and
durability make it to us the most characteristic
feature of the Christian art of that period. The
principal subjects represented are the great figures
of Christ enthroned, figures of the Apostles and
other saints, apocalyptic and other symbolic sub-
jects, scenes from the Old and New Testaments,
and pictures of imperial personages and bishops.
In architecture there have been many theories
as to the origin of the basilica. It is now very
cenerally agreed that the Christian church is a
development of the classical atriam, the central
colonnaded court of dwelling-houses in the Imperial
age. The earliest gatherings for worship took place
in the atrium of some wealthy convert, and were
thus surrounded with all the greater and lesser arts
of the period. Now, the Greek and Roman temples
were constructed for a worship in which both the
altar and the worshippers stood outside. The Chris-
tian worship began in the home (Ro 16° and perhaps
Ac 2%), and the purpose of the earliest aimstes
was to hold a large number of worshippers before
the Lord’s Table ; thus, though the style was that
of the age, the manner of its use was different
from the first. The basilica is a distinctively
Christian building, marked out by its oblong
shape, clerestory, colonnaded aisles, and apse. It
was probably in process of development in the
centuries betore the Peace of the Church,—we
read, e.g., of church buildings in the newly found
Canons of Hippolytus, c. 220-250 A.D.,—though no
extant edifice is known (unless the startling theory
just put forth by Dr. Richter and Mr. C. Taylor in
their hooks on S$. Maria Maggiore in Rome comes
to be accepted—the theory being that this church
and its mosaics belong to the 2nd century). The
churches destroyed by Diocletian were rebuilt
under Constantine, and it is to the Constantinian
period that the earliest surviving basilicas belong,
whether in Italy, Syria, or Africa. In the East
there was later one marked development, the use
of the dome, which culminated under Justinian in
St. Sofia, and has continued to be characteristic
of the Greek and Russian churches down to our
own day. In the West the basilica continued un-
changed till the 8th, and in some parts till the
10th cent., when it was modified by the growth of
what is called Romanesque architecture, of which
Gothicis but adevelopment ; but the main features
of the basilica—nave, clerestory, aisles, projecting
sanctuary, and often transepts—remain unchanged
to-day.
The decline of Western art in what are called
the Dark Ages is often attributed to Christianity
and its supposed hatred of human nature. The
truth is, that while Byzantium maintained a high
culture far better and longer than used to be sup-
posed, the whole Roman civilization well-nigh dis-
appeared under the invasions of the northern
races ; these peoples were converted and gradually
civilized by Christianity, and, as their civilization
grew up, their art developed from the barbaric
ART
124
stage till it culminated in the perfection of Gothic.
That art in its development had the limitations
of the young races; it developed more rapidly in
architecture and architectural carving than in
painting or statuary ; but all this has nothing to
do with Christianity, as writers like ‘Taine sup-
pose —‘If one considers the stained glass windows,
or the windows in the cathedrals, or the rude
paintings, it appears as if the human race had
become degenerate, and its blood had been im-
poverished : pale saints, distorted martyrs, hermits
withered and unsubstantial,’ ete. (Phd. de VArt,
88, 352, 4th ed.). Passages like this are beside
the mark; the art of the Middle Ages was full-
blooded enough, and was admirable even in its
rude beginnings, when it had not learnt the most
difficult of lessons—the representation of the
human form. In architecture and the kindred
arts the Middle Ages brought a new revelation of
beauty into the world,—an art that stands alone,
not only for its lofty spirituality and_ technical
excellence, but also for its homely democratic
humanity.
Beyond this it is not necessary to go, since we
are not dealing with the history of art in general,
but only with the relation between it and Chris-
tianity. It has been necessary to sketch the
beginnings because of the widespread idea that
Christianity started with an aversion to the fine
arts, and was reconciled to them only as worldli-
ness increased upon her. Modern archeology has
proved this idea to be mistaken; and, having
pointed out what is now known as to the early
use of art by the Church, we need not follow the
subsequent history of painting and sculpture, of
architecture and the handicrafts, in their develop-
ments and decadences, except to say that, though
art in the Christian era has been sometimes rude
and sometimes pagan, it has at its best—when
most perfect in technique and most imbued with
spiritual purpose—excelled all else that the world
has been able to produce: even the perfect statuary
of Greece was outrivalled by such an artist as
Michael Angelo, who reveals not only the body
but the soul within the body also. The best Chris-
tian art is better than anything that has gone
before, because it has more to express.
Christendom, then, began its career in natural
association with art; and art is Christian, not by
reason of any peculiarity of style, but when it is
informed by the Christian ideal. Art is not an
end in itself, but alanguage; the greatest artificers,
like the greatest writers, are those who have the
greatest things to say, and the fineness of any art
is, aS Ruskin says, ‘an index of the moral purity
and majesty of the emotion it expresses.’ Pagan
reaction has, indeed, more than once taken refuge
in art, as it has also taken refuge in science ; but
the fault does not lie ineither. There must always
be reaction when the Church refuses to recognize
the truth of science or the seriousness of art. And
art is serious, for it is one of man’s primal gifts,
and, like nature, one of his most constant edu-
cators, Art is necessary because, in Ruskin’s
words, ‘life without industry is guilt, and industry
Without art is brutality’; and though, as he found,
religious men in his time despised art, they de-
spised it at the peril of religion. He was himself
the greatest exponent of the religieus mission of
art and of its moral value. And his conclusion
was that the root of all good art lies in ‘the two
essential instincts of humanity, the love of order
and the love of kindness,’ the one associated with
righteousness, the other with charity. The ‘love
of beauty,’ he proceeds, ‘is an essential part of all
healthy human nature, and though it ean lone
coexist with states of life in many other respects
unvirtuous, it is itself wholly good,—the direct ad-
ASCENSION
versary of envy, avarice, mean worldly care, and
especially of cruelty. It entirely perishes when
these are wilfully indulged.’ If this be so, it is
indeed of the gospel, and excellent in so far as it
is close to the spirit of Christ. If this be so,—and
no man had a better right to make bold generaliza-
tions on the subject than Ruskin,—artists and
preachers can agree in his conclusion that the
great arts ‘have had, and can have, but three prin-
cipal directions of purpose: first, that of enfore-
ing the religion of men; secondly, that of perfect-
ing their ethical state ; thirdly, that of doing them
material service.’
LITERATURE.—The same authorities mainly as for the article
on Curist IN ART. Special use has been made in the present
article of : W. Lowrie’s Christian Art and Archeology (2901) ;
Westcott’s essay on ‘The Relation of Christianity to Art’ in his
Commentary on the Epistles of St. John (1883); A. J. Maclean’s
Recent Discoveries Illustrating Early Christian Life and
Worship (1904); an article on ‘Art and Puritanism’ by J. W.
Mackail in Saint George, vol. vii. (1904) ; while out of the multi-
tude of Ruskin’s works the concluding extract is taken from
his Lectures on Art (1887). P. DEARMER.
ASA.—A king of Judah (c. 918-878 B.c.), named
in our Lord’s genealogy, Mt 1%.
ASCENSION.—The Ascension is the name ap-
plied to that event in which the Risen Christ
finally parted from His disciples and passed into
the heavens. The traditional view is based on the
passage Ac 1115, supported by Mk 162, Lk 2449-51
(which narrate the event), Jn 6 20! (which look
forward to it), Eph 4°, 1 Ti 3%, 1 P 3%, He 413:
(which imply it). To the foregoing list many
would add references of Christ to His departure
(from the context not identifiable with His death),
Mt 915 2611. 29.64 Jn 73 14-16; and allusions in
Acts, Epistles, Revelation, to Christ being ‘ seated
at the right hand of God’ (Ac 2% 32! 53! 758 1335-37,
Ph 2°, He 1° 2° 12”, Rev 113 5° ete.). The details are
drawn from Ae 1: the scene, the Mt. of Olives ;
the time, forty days after the Resurrection ; the
occasion, a conversation concerning the Kingdom ;
the act of parting in being taken up ; the vanish-
ing in a cloud; the vision of two men in white
apparel and their announcement of His coming
again: all indicating a bodily disappearance by an
upward movement into the sky.
The bodily Ascension is vindicated as _ possible,
as necessary, and as adequately evidenced.
1. Possibility.—The wondertulness of the event
is not denied, but its acceptance is urged by a varied
appeal. Sometimes the reference is to the Divine
power operating in the fulfilment of the Divine
purpose of salvation. The Ascension is then re-
garded as part and parcel of the redemptive scheme,
and not more wonderful than the other redemptive
facts, e.g. Incarnation, Resurrection, ete. Or the
reference is to our ignorance of the physical uni-
verse and its constitution. “ Miraculous Chris-
tianity’ does not ‘imply an anti-scientilic view
of the world’ (cf. Goldwin Smith, Guesses at the
fiddle of Existence, p. 165). There is a vast un-
comprehended region in nature not yet within the
sweep of human faculties, which Science has not
fathomed and to whose existence she has become
recently profoundly sensitive. The world, as
science interprets its phenomena, is not the com-
plete world nie may [11 potentialities permissive
of such an event as the Ascension. Or, again, the
reference may be to our ignorance of the nature of
the ascending body. Grant the cogency of the
scientific objection to a body having gravity and
normal dimensions rising in upward flight to a
distance, is it certain that such was the body of
Christ? There are hints which furnish the op-
posite suggestion. The only sure statement that
may be aflirmed with regard to it is that it was the
same, yet not the same, as the pre-Resurrection
ASCENSION
ASCENSION 125
body : it was a body which issued from the sepulchre
with identity complete, yet physically changed,
sumably capable of reaching its end. Underlying
that process lay His Divine Being, in its inherent
existing under new conditions of which we have } power incapable of growth, no attainment but
only the faintest apprehension. Physically, the
Ascension meant a complete change of conditions,
the passing into a mode of existence having no
longer direct physical relations with our ordinary
experience, whither we cannot follow by the exer-
cise of our sensitive intelligence, and which in our
lack of material for comparison we cannot even
imaginatively picture. The conjecture, further, is
hazarded that if the process of spiritualizing the
body was at the time of the Ascension so complete
as to render it invisible to ordinary sense, the pro-
cess of preparing the spiritual perception of the
disciples was by that time also complete, so that
what was hidden from others was manifested to
them. Recent research also into psychical ac-
tivities, both conscious and sub-conscious, has
brought the question into renewed prominence
especialiy among scientific men, and that in no
spirit of hostility to the traditional view.
2. Necessity.—The necessity of the Ascension is
obvious. It was at once the natural consequence
of all that preceded and the only sufficient cause
of the marvellous experiences that followed. The
risen state and the forty days demanded its occur-
rence. Apart from any explicit teaching on the sub-
ject during those days, the situation of itself must
have provoked reflection and pointed to an exit
from earthly scenes not by way of mortal dissolu-
tion but rather of glorification. The interval is
clearly transitory. The relationship between Jesus
and the disciples evinces a certain reserve on His
side, a certain surprise and perplexity on theirs.
It partakes in all the mystery that hangs over the
world of spirits in general, as well as in that per-
taining specially to the borderland of that world,
the region where thought and matter meet. His
appearances are only occasional. His movements
are mysterious. His life is not of the bodily order,
Whether the theory of progressive spiritualizing
be tenable or not,—the conception is very obscure,
—the facts of physical transformation and spiritual
enhancement are indubitable. The disciples are
convinced by the empty tomb and the apparitional
body that He had not seen corruption in the grave,
yet do not always recognize Him as He appears.
e is no longer of them. Their mind must have
been challenged again and again to inquire, What
next? It was neither fitting that He should die
again, nor that He should remain on the earth in
His then state: death He had already sounded
and survived, while for His departure He had
aforetime prepared them. Further, His Person
claimed it. His self-consciousness during the
earthly ministry, and the teaching it prompted ;
the definite impression of these on the minds of
the disciples leading to the expectation of further
developments of His Being; as well as the most
distinct intimations of the preparatory character
of His present activity, the specialty of His saving
mission, the uniqueness of His relation to the
Father and heaven,—all combined in an impressive
witness to the assurance that not this world but
the heavenly life was His proper and rightful
sphere, and that until He had attained to it He
was not in possession of His own, the glory He
had with the Father before the world was, which
was as yet for the most part hid, revealing itself
only in hints, and which He was bound to re-
assume, accentuated, so to speak, with all that
virtue He had won in His human nature for be-
stowal on men. In His human life He had been
the subject of development in time,—a develop-
ment, it is true, not from evil or imperfection
to the good and perfect, but from strength to
strength, involving living growth, a process pre-
original endowment. The return to the Father
in the Ascension-act marked the perfection of the
human process in harmonious realization within
the Divine powers of His Person.
Still further, the work of Christ remained incom-
plete without the Ascension. It has been objected
against His teaching that it is incomplete as a
system and incoherent in its details. There is
eround for the complaint. His ministry bears
traces throughout of its preparatory character.
His teaching is at times parabolic, His acts often
typical, His method as much an effort to create a
new power of insight as to offer a new sum of
truths. He holds out hopes of a more immediate
personal, if spiritual, direction, under the force of
which a richer fulness of His truth shall be gained.
He anticipates future acts of His work which are
not simply symbolic of His utterances, but neces-
sary to their interpretation. A future is always
with Him: separate from the present in its con-
ditions and gifts and in the nature of His agency,
so separate as justly to be entitled to the name of
a new ‘dispensation.’ The Ascension marks the
transition. It has no substantial independence.
It closes the public ministry; it opens the con-
tinuation of that ministry in the new age of the
Spirit. It announces that the great human facts
necessary to redemption are finished, and that the
results are henceforth to be increasingly realized.
His saving energies are consummated in His in-
carnate and glorified Personality : the departure is
necessitated that they may not remain a legacy of
dead and inoperative information. For this reason
the Ascension, as the passing into exaltation, stands
at the beginning of the fresh spiritual experiences
of the Apostolicage. It explains the extraordinary
change in the mind of the Apostles. They felt an
intense conviction. Because there had been no
loss, their conception of Christ has been cleared,
His exaltation seen, His perpetual action promised.
Under the new light they proceed to organize the
momentous work of the Church. On precisely the
same basis they instruct their hearers and develop
their doctrine. The centre of the missionary dis-
courses is the Exalted Christ ; intimate communion
with Him exalted is normative to their thought.
That truth fills up their entire consciousness and
crushes out every other thought. It forms the
firm foundation on which their whole life and
mind are built up. They are witnesses to one
great fact. The NT documents set forth much in
the way of new truths and new ethics, but their
distinctive testimony is toa new intense experience,
which has altered the entire character of those who
share it. That experience is everywhere traced in
direct derivation from Christ glorified.
But the Christ glorified is the Jesus of history.
The new experience is related to the acts of His
life in a vital way. A distinction may be drawn
between them, but only as two aspects of one
reality, not as two terms, the one of which may be
regarded as the mythic symbol of the other. Both
terms must be safeguarded. Hence, if the Lord
now glorified was once within the conditions of
human experience, cognoscible to human faculties,
and has passed from them, the question cannot be
silenced, How did He pass? The essential point is
His passage out of those earthly conditions of life
within which He had hitherto been known. Must
not such passing have been visible? The bodily
Ascension is the answer.
3. Historicity.—The evidence for the Ascension
is direct and indirect. (a) The direct witness is
meagre. There is but one description that may
serve as a basis of fact, viz. the narrative in Ac
126 ASCENSION
1-12, The other passages (Mk 16, Lk 2451) are
under the highest critical suspicion as being not
original to their texts. They suffer, moreover, under
two further disadvantages: their vagueness, their
summary character. They appear to give results,
being less accounts of detail than confessions of
faith. Their value is similar in character to that
of the Epistles; they testify to the existence of
a widespread erystallized tradition in_ the first
century. Does the record in Ac 1113 give more?
It belongs to the less authentic of the sources of
the author. If the author be St. Luke, he cannot
be reckoned an eye-witness; but he may furnish
the information of an eye-witness. The narrative
bears every trace of careful statement and of non-
reflective features. Even if indications of idealiza-
tion of the past occur in this first part of the book
elsewhere, there are none here; the phrasing is
simple and matter of fact; there is no sentiment,
nor sorrow: only a glad vision evoking worship,
challenging thought, inspiring courage. The dis-
crepancies between this account and that in Lk.
are probably superficial. Bethany lay on_the
further or eastern slope of the Mt. of Olives, about
a mile down from the summit. The road from
Jerusalem passed along over the lower wooded
ridges, on one of which in all likelihood, just above
the village (ἕως πρός) over against it, the Ascension
took place. There was another route leading
nearer the summit, on which later tradition sought
the site and erected a church. Neither Acts nor
Lk. means to give an exact spot. The fragmentari-
ness of the narrative has created difficulty. Several
considerations are adduced in reply. For one thing,
the Ascension is plainly regarded as belonging to
the Resurrection appearances, viz. as the appear-
ance.in which Christ’s final vanishing took place,
and notable simply on that ground. For another,
it is pointed ont that the NT writers take a view
of history which does not correspond to modern
requirements. They write not to prove truths
denied, but to illustrate truths accepted. They
do not seek to prove the occurrence of events
or to escape ‘discrepancies’; they seek rather to
emphasize the significance of events. And to the
significance of the Ascension there is abundant
reference. A suggestion, again, of great interest
as justifying the sparse particulars given in the
Gospels, is that a sort of convention forbade the
introduction of the theme into a narrative of
Christ’s life, the Resurrection being regarded as
the culminating point of His earthly existence.
(4) The indirect evidence is remarkably strong.
Both in the two Gospels which do not record the
event and in the Epistles and discourses of Acts
as well as in the visions of the Apocalypse it is
implied. We thus have reference to the belief
in sources for the greater part earlier than the
Gospels. St. Matthew represents Christ as fore-
telling it (26%); St. John puts similar foreshadow-
ings into His mouth (65 133. 33 1428 16% 10. 17. 28); Gt,
Paul and St. Peter habitually assume it as a fact
(Ac 2% 351 55! 138-37, Eph 48-0, Ph 133 9? 3%, Col 3),
1'Th 1° 418, 1 ΤΊ 315, 1 P 3%); St. Stephen declares
τ vee (Ac 7°), ‘The author of the Epistle to
1e ebrews 1s e ‘ a 09 9, 20 πὴ
9-4 10!2- 18 19%), ἜΝ σὺ Υ ἐξ λτοι (πὲ: ἘΝ oe oe
the Apocalypse many passages
corroborate (Rev 116 58 1414 7011-16 221). “The con-
viction of His Ascension fills the mind of the
Apostolic age. It is nowhere insisted upon or
proved, it is assumed as a fact among the other
tacts of Christ’s life, as consistent with them, and
asreal. There is no suecestion that it is an idea
less historical than the other feature described.
ἃ, Mod: rn departure from the traditional view.—
Within recent years the traditional view of the
Ascension has been vigorously contested in various
interests. From the side of naturalistic theory the
oe
ASCENSION
ns
idea of corporeal ascension has been assailed as
absurd. Different rationalistic tendencies have
scouted the event as delusion (classical representa-
tives are Renan in France; Strauss in Germany ;
Baur, Schenkel), or myth, whose growth was
natural from the presence of contributory elements
in the intellectual and religious atmosphere of the
age which were not only not inharmonious with
such an idea and event, but even rendered it
necessary (cf. Keim, M. Arnold, ‘Supernatural
Religion,’ etc.). Even the necessitics of a true
spiritual experience have been urged against it by
at least one considerable school (viz. that of
Ritschl), which has vastly enriched present-day
theological movements by a singularly impressive
attempt to interpret the Christian facts through
analysis of the ethical experience of the Christian
personality, since such experience, it is maintained,
best grows and is best explained by communion
with the Exalted Christ, conceived not as ‘ reach-
ing down within the realm of our earthly ex-
perience,’ but as ‘otherwise than we see Him in
the mirror of history’ (Herrmann, Commamnion of
the Christian with God, Bks. i1., i1i.),—a conception
to which the Evangelical record as it stands is not
adequate. In association with those attempts the
relevant textual evidence has been painstakingly
sifted and found insutlicient (as, e.g., latest by
Schmiedel in his Encyc. Bibl. article on ‘ Resurrec-
tion and Ascension Narratives’). The departures
from the traditional view here referred to are
better dealt with under RESURRECTION. Here we
may point merely to two considerations. First,
the whole controversy between orthodox and liberal
thought as to the miraculous features in the history
of Christ’s life has entered on a new phase. A
separation is being made between the ‘Jesus of
history’? and the ‘Christ of faith’ identified by
ecclesiastical dogma. It is admitted that what
we have in the Gospel narratives was written after
the identification was practically complete. The
‘Jesus of history,’ therefore, can be resuscitated
only by going behind even the oldest historical
sources; where, the presumption is, it will be
found that the miraculous incidents disappear.
The various sources whence the ‘ myth of Christ’ is
derivable are inquired into; the ignorance of the
times, the manifest prejudices of His biographers,
and the natural tendency in Oriental minds to ex-
pand fact into fable.* The hypotheses of fraud, or
delusion, or vision, previously entertained, are dis-
carded and ‘the intellectual atmosphere of the age’
substituted. In particular, in the matter of the
Ascension emphasis is laid on (@) current Jewish
ideas concerning the departure of great men of
God; (6) alleged similar ideas in ethnic religions ; (¢)
contemporary apotheosis of the Roman emperors ;
(d) the natural working of the human mind, vener-
ating a great name, to idealize the life and invest
its close with marvel—as all contributory to the
belief. Such analogies are pressed with ingenuity.
It may be rejoined, however, that in reality they
are not in point. Prevailing mental conceptions do
not seem even to have favoured the acceptance of
the doctrine, not to speak of having originated it.
The narratives give the consistent impression of its
novelty. It appears as not native, but alien to the
disciples’ thought. Comparison with the assump-
tion of Enoch and of Moses or the translation of
Elijah, or with the deification of the Imperial
representative, or with the Buddha-legend, onl
serves to demonstrate its striking originality. It
has a character, place, and use that cannot be
assigned to these. It is not in the same plane or
in the same department of thought. It possesses
an inevitableness, a conscious connexion with pre-
vious conditions, a naturalness as another and new
* Cf. Browning, Christmas Eve, xv.
ASCENSION
ASCENSION Vai
a 95 ςυ ῤΠῖἝὃ[Ὶ΄Γ[ ὃ ῤῥῤόΖ΄ΖΣ ΄ Ι΄...
aspect of Jesus’ life yet continuous with and neces-
sarily complementary to it, which they all alike
lack. It lacks their formality, spectacular effect,
incoherence with real life. The motives, more-
over, which prompted the Senate to give each
successive emperor a place among the gods, or the
Hindu devotee to regard his hero as divine, are
easy to trace: in the former instance political ; in
the latter, religious indeed, but too naive for the
Jew, who had no natural tendency to deify—such
a tendency has not been proved, it is incompatible
with the exclusive and stubborn monotheism of
the race. The belief enshrines in simple and reti-
cent phrase the reception by the disciples of a new
fact of His Person, which brings new light and
adds new mystery, yet for which they had been
prepared.
Secondly, the attempt to separate the Christian
facts from Christian experience is not well based.
We may rejoice to witness that the life of faith
now is the being in Christ in a richer sense than
the being with Him before He ascended. The
acknowledgment, however, neither disproves the
necessity for His life before the Ascension, nor
proves the necessity to visualize it after the Ascen-
sion. The increase of faith may not, indeed, come
by a mere ‘return to Jesus’ as He was known
before His death ; but how can He as ascended be
fruitfully contemplated by ignoring His earthly
existence? ‘Then, again, wherein lay the need for
the disciples to give outward form to their emo-
tions more than for us now? The narratives they
have given us, it is averred, are due to their
spiritual imagination embodying in mythic form
their spiritual experience. The disciple lives by
faith and not by sight, it is argued, hence Christian
experience must dispense with outward events.*
There is in both statements a gross exaggeration.
The full glory of Christ’s Person is, of course, im-
measurable: no vision or bodily appearance can
possibly exhibit it except in faint traces. Is the
vision therefore useless? The contrary is the very
principle of the Incarnation ; God revealing Himself
in personal, eventful form. ‘The Christian facts
underlie Christian faith, and make it progressively
effective’ (Westcott, ‘ Work,’ 2). And this because
they manifest the Person of Christ, by them His
Person is brought within the range of our ex-
perience ; they are the channel of His communicat-
ing His power tous. The facts and the faith are
vitally related. They form one reality. They
are distinguishable as aspects of that reality, but
not to be separated. In explaining the reality it
is not legitimate to make the distinction and then
proceed to reject one of its terms, resolving, as
may happen, on the one hand, the experience into
an aftermath of the event; or, on the other, the
event into a vivid picture of the experience. In
both cases the witness is invalidated by imagina-
tion. The second of those tendencies is aggres-
sively in vogue. If carried to its logical issue, it
must eviscerate the Ascension-experience of Christ
of all objective substance, and expunge the narra-
tive from the gospel. But to do this is to create
a lacuna in the facts which will prove intolerable.
On the whole, the new method of psychological
analysis of the primitive Church consciousness has
brought no new danger. In at least three respects
it is beneficial : it has given the cowp de grace to
earlier negations (cf. Schmiedel in above cited
article); it has withdrawn attention from the
details to the belief itself as the heart of the
question, as the better mind of the Church insists ;
* The references in the foregoing section are to the school of
Ritschl on the one hand (cf. Herrmann, Communion with God,
etc.), and to such theistic theologians as Martineau and Estlin
Carpenter (cf. the former’s Seat of Authority, also sermon on
‘Ascension’ in vol. entitled National Duties; and the latter’s
The lirst Three Gospels.
it has broadened the range of points to be con-
sidered, opening the door for a class familiar to
traditionalists but hitherto excluded by advanced
critical investigation.
5. General consequences for Christian faith.—
Belief in Christ’s Ascension involves several general
consequences of an interesting kind. From the
earliest time it was seen, 6.0., to be a type of the
ascension of all believers. If Heaven is His true
abode, it is also theirs; and this as the natural
goal of human nature, the end continuous with
the beginnings of human life on earth. For Christ,
His Ascension was the assumption of His own
proper life, the orderly passing into its full exer-
cise and enjoyment; for the Christian, it is the
orderly completion of his life recreated in Christ.
It is not simply the ideal to be set before his
natural life here, and to be realized by modifica-
tion or development hereafter. The earthly life is
renewed by being incorporated into Christ, through
whose Spirit a new power enters into it; he is a
‘new creature.’ But the new creation is his own
proper life, to live below it is to degrade his nature.
The renewed earthly nature is already begun to be
taken into God; like Christ, believers are ascend-
ing even here. To this process the ascension is
but the natural close. As such it is at once the
entering into the heavenly inheritance of blessing
and the entering upon the triumph of them that
endure.
Again, the Ascension of Christ assures and de-
velops the desire for immortality. It has greatly
quickened interest in the hope of life after death,
and encouraged the conviction that it will be justi-
fied by the event. There are ‘natural intimations
of immortality.’ There is a practically universal
remonstrance of the human heart against the grave.
The highest knowledge of this world has always
been optimistic of reaching a world of solved
problems and of realized ideals. The latest gift
of science to mankind is the gospel of hope which
is contained in the doctrine of evolution, ‘man is
not man as yet, but in completed man begins anew,
a tendency to God’ (Ascent through Christ, iii. 3).
3ut of all this there never has been real certainty.
The hope is but a longing and an inference at the
best. Did Christ actually ascend? The conviction
that He did has for centuries been rooted in Chris-
tian minds, and has reacted on the general hope.
It has assured them that the spirit in man is more
powerful than death; it has furnished the proof,
as it is the illustration, of man’s final destiny.
That conviction, be it observed, is not an inference
from the general hope. It is a fruit of fellowship
with Christ. It is a religious experience: the ex-
perience, viz., of men who, united to Christ, share
in the power of His Spirit, and by that power
enter upon endless life. Further, Christ’s Ascen-
sion offers a suggestion of important possibilities
for the bodily nature. There is to be ‘a redemp-
tion of our body’ (Ro 859); there is ‘an image of
the heavenly’ (1 Co 1533) we must bear; a ‘spiritual
body’ (v.44), the ‘body of glory’ (Ph 3531), that will
be raised ; ‘our mortal bodies’ are to be ‘quick.
ened’ (Ro 8). The future life is not to be one of
pure spirit: it is to be ‘clothed upon’ (2 Co 5°).
In no respect did Christ assume fundamental
divergence between His nature and human nature.
The Apostolic thought dwells on His oneness with
His brethren. Later theology became audacious,
and affirmed explicitly, ‘Man is to be made God.’
Manhood is to be taken up into the Godhead.
That the body in some mysterious manner is to
participate in this glorification would appear to be
necessary, however difficult the conception. The
one precedent for the thought is Christ’s, whose
body was not dissolved but transtigured. See
Bopy.
ASCETICISM
ASCETICISM
LITERATURE.—Milligan’s The Ascension and Heavenly Priest-
hood of Our Lord still remains the most exhaustive book in
English on the theological aspects of the subject. Every ‘ Life
of Christ’ deals, with more or less fulness, with the event in
its historical details: see specially the studies of Fairbairn,
Gilbert, Farrar, Edersheim. Of brochures, the following are
important :—Knowling, Witness of the Epistles, 897-414; Bernard
in Expository Times, 1900-1901, pp. 152-155. There may be
consulted also: Bruce in Expos. Gr. Test. vol. i1.; Swete,
Apostles’ Creed; Westcott, Historic Faith, ch. vi., Revelation
of the Risen Lord, chs. x., xi. ; art. ‘Ascension’ in Hastings’
DB, Paget, Studies in the Christian Character, Sermons xxi.,
xxii. ; Findlay, Things Above, 119-138.
A. S. MARTIN.
ASCETICISM.—Asceticism may be defined as
a form of self-discipline which consists in the
habitual renunciation of the things of the flesh,
with a view to the cultivation of the life of the
spirit. It is a deliberate attempt to eliminate
and uproot the sensuous, to banish it altogether
from the sphere of consciousness. It is not content
with a doctrine of mere subordination. It does
not stop short with teaching men to govern their
wants, to subject them to the service of a higher
end and purpose. It bids men stifle and suppress
them, or at least resist them to the utmost of their
ability. The body is represented as the enemy of
the soul, and the way of perfection is identified
with the progressive extirpation of the natural
instincts and inclinations by means of fasting,
celibacy, voluntary poverty, and similar exercises
of devotion. Hence asceticism may be described
as the gospel of negation,—negation of the world
and negation of the flesh, each of which is apt to
be confounded with negation of the devil.
It is the purpose of the present article to inquire
what traces, if any, of such asceticism are to be
found in the practice and preaching of Jesus. As
a preliminary, however, it will be necessary to
notice briefly the main forms of asceticism which
were prevalent in Palestine in the time of Christ.
The Jewish ascetics of the Ist cent. may be
divided roughly into three classes. (1) First,
there were the Essenes, who lived together in
monastic colonies, shared all things in common,
and practised voluntary poverty. Philo says that
they were indifferent to money, pleasure, and
worldly position. Their food was limited in quan-
tity and carefully regulated in respect of quality.
They ate no animal flesh, drank no wine, and
abstained from the use of oil for purposes of anoint-
ing. The stricter members of the brotherhood
eschewed marriage. The idea of this rigorous
asceticism seems to have been that the objects of
sense, as such, were unholy, and that man’s natural
cravings could not be gratified without sin. Hence
the Essenes may be said to have prepared the way
for the Gnostic doctrine of dualism and of matter
as the seat and abode of evil. In this place, how-
ever, the principles of the Essenes need not further
be discussed. They are not referred to in the
Gospels, and the suggestion that John the Baptist
or Jesus Himself came under their influence cannot
for a moment be entertained. (9) Secondly, there
was a class of hermit ascetics who fled away from
the allurements and temptations of society, and
gave themselves up to a life of rigid self-discipline
in the solitude of the wilderness. We meet with
an example of this class in the Banus, mentioned
by Josephus, who lived in the desert, clothed him-
self with the leaves of trees, ate nothing save the
natural produce of the soil, and bathed day and
night in cold water for purity’s sake (Jos. Vit. 2).
A hermit of a somewhat different type was John
the Baptist. He, too, dwelt in the desert, wore
for dress a rough garment of camel’s hair with a
leathern girdle, and subsisted on carob-beans (?) and
wild honey. We learn from a saying of Jesus that
his rigorous mode of life astonished the people,
who gave out that
he was posse ed by «
2 ‘ ssess y a demon
(Mt 118, Lk 7),
But the asceticism of John seems
to have been an incident of his environment and
vocation, and was not regarded as an end in itself,
He made no attempt to convert his hearers into
ascetics. While it is true that his immediate
disciples were addicted to fasting, presumably
with his sanction (Mt 94, Mk 218, Lk 658), yet in
the fragments of his popular sermons which have
been preserved there 1s no trace of any exhorta-
tion to ascetic exercises. The moral preparation
for the Kingdom, by repentance and works of
righteousness, was the substance of his teaching
(Mt 31%, Lk 3'14). (3) Lastly, there were many
pious Jews who cultivated asceticism of a milder
and less striking kind, who, like Anna, ‘served
God with fasting and prayers night and day’ (Lk
27), The more strict among the Pharisees paid
particular attention to abstinence from food, and,
in addition to ordinary fasts, were accustomed to
observe all Mondays and Thursdays in the year as
days of fasting (Lk 1812, The asceticism of the
Pharisees, however, was a formal performance
which resulted naturally from their legal and cere-
monial conception of religion. It expressed itself
chiefly in fasting, and did not include either volun-
tary poverty or abstinence from marriage.
Such being the principal types of contemporary
asceticism, it remains to inquire, What attitude did
Jesus Himself take up in relation to this asceticism?
How far did He identify the life of righteousness
with that ‘vita religiosa’ which has found its
fullest expression in Monasticism? To answer
this question we must consider (1) the practice of
Jesus, and (2) the teaching of Jesus so far as it
bears upon the subject.
1. The practice of Jesus.—Now it cannot be
denied that from very early times there were
circles of Christian ascetics who pointed to Jesus
as the Founder and Example of the ascetic life
(Clem. Alex. Strom. iii. 6). They emphasized His
forty days’ fast, His abstinence from marriage,
His voluntary poverty, and leaped to the conclu-
sion that the highest life, as exemplified by Jesus,
was the life of asceticism or world-denial. Com-
plete renunciation of the things of the present was
‘the way of perfection according to the Saviour.’
Even now large numbers of people are of this way
of thinking; but a closer and more detailed exami-
nation of Jesus’ mode of life seems scarcely to bear
out such a conclusion. Offering, as He did, a most
wonderful example of self-forgetfulness and _self-
denial in the service of others, Jesus exhibited
nothing of that asceticism which characterized the
Essenes, or John the Baptist, or Christian saints
like St. Bernard, St. John of the Cross, and even
St. Francis, who of all ascetics approached most
nearly to the spirit of his Master. He showed no
disposition to flee from the world, or hold aloof
from it; He did not eschew the amenities of social
life. He accepted the hospitality of rich men and
poor, He was present at meals, He contributed to
the gaiety of a marriage-feast, He permitted very
precious ointment to be poured upon His feet, He
had a love for children, welcomed the society of
women, and clearly enjoyed the domestic life
of the home in Bethany. There is no trace in
the records that Jesus frowned on innocent plea-
sures. His life, entirely devoted to His mission,
was undoubtedly hard and laborious in the highest
degree ; but the motive of His renunciation—e.q.
of marriage or property—seems to have been, not
the desire to avoid these things as in themselves
incompatible with spiritual perfection, but the
desire to leave Himself perfect freedom in the pro-
secution of His work. He did not, so far as we
know, impose upon Himself unnecessary austeri-
ties, or go out of His way to seek suffering. He
accepted pleasures and pains as they came, neither
avoiding the one nor courting the other, but,
ASCETICISM
ASCETICISM
with a sublime serenity, subordinating both to His
main end and purpose. The so-called ‘forty days’
fast’ need not cause us to modify our view. This
fast is not mentioned in the oldest authority (Mk
1%); and at any rate it can scarcely have been a
ceremonial observance of fasting, but was rather
a necessity imposed on Jesus by His situation
in the wilderness. The key to its meaning may
perhaps be found in St. Luke’s expression, ‘in
those days he did eat nothing’ (Lk 45), with which
we may compare Christ’s own description of the
life of John the Baptist, ‘John came neither eat-
ing nor drinking’ (Mt 1118. The phrase as ap-
plied to Jesus may, as in the case of John, mean
merely that He ate no ordinary food, but sup-
ported life on such means of subsistence as the
wilderness afforded. But even if St. Matthew’s
νηστεύσας (Mt 4°) be taken literally, yet, in the face
of Christ’s teaching on the subject (to be mentioned
below), we cannot believe that He attributed any
great importance to this abstinence from food.
He was supremely indifferent to the traditional
practices of asceticism; in the sphere of self-
renunciation in which He moved, no one-sided prin-
ee of world negation could find a place. Hence,
while Jesus is presented to us by the Evangelists
as the living type and embodiment of absolute self-
denial,—self-sacrifice, as it were, incarnate, —yet
the marks of the ascetic are not foundin Him. And
it is interesting to note that His unascetice deport-
ment and manner of life attracted the observation
of His contemporaries. ‘John came neither eat-
ing nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil.
The Son of man came eating and drinking, and
they say, Behold a man gluttonous and a wine.
bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners’ (Mt
1138-19, Lk 7°34), There can be no question that
the Jews were right when they pointed out the
absence of asceticism from the practice of Jesus.
We have but to contrast the life of the Son of
Man, who ‘came eating and drinking,’ with that
of such an one as St. John of the Cross, and the
fact will immediately become apparent.
2. The teaching of Jesus.—Passing now to the
consideration of the teaching of Jesus, we remark
at the outset that, from first to last, it is instinct
with the spirit of self-denial. ‘If any man will
come after me, let him deny himself,’ is the refrain
which continually recurs. The principle laid down
by Jesus is that the doing of the will of God and
the promotion of His kingdom is the absolute
duty of man, to which all private and particular
aims must necessarily give place. ‘Seek ye first
the kingdom of God’ (Mt 6”, Lk 1251) is the cate-
gorical imperative. The Kingdom of God is the
highest good, and as such establishes a claim on
man’s exclusive devotion. Hence all desires and
strivings which have not righteousness as_ their
ultimate goal must be ruthlessly suppressed ; all
lesser goods and blessings which hinder and ob-
struct a man in the pursuit of the swmmum bonwm
must unhesitatingly be sacrificed. Thus a man
must sell all that he has in order to purchase the
field with the treasure, or the pearl of great price
(Mt 134-4). If necessity arise, he must surrender
all his possessions to come and follow Jesus (Mt
1951, Mk 10?!); he must even renounce the closest
ties of earthly relationship,—father and mother,
children and wife (Mt 10°7, Lk 1456), the last im-
perative duties of affection (Lk 959. 50), the courtesies
of farewell (Lk 961-65) ; nay, the most indispensable
goods, the hand, the foot, the eye, must be aban-
doned if they cause offence (Mt 5%: *, Mk 97-47) ;
and, at the call of God, the very life itself must
be laid down (Mt 1674+, Mk 84f-, Lk 9%). ‘ Who-
soever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he
hath, he cannot be my disciple’ (Lk 14%). No
teaching could be clearer or more forcible than
VOL. I.—9
this. With the greatest possible plainness Jesus
declares that every earthly blessing must be made
subordinate to the service of God and contributory
thereto. All lesser goods which come to be sought
for their own sake, whether in preference to, or
even independently of, the highest good, must be
instantly sacrificed. In other words, when the
individual realizes that the gratification of any
desire will impede or distract him in the _per-
formance of his duties asa member of the King-
dom, he is bound to forego such gratification if he
would still be in truth a disciple of Cirist.
It is important to notice that, in all Jesus’ pre-
cepts about the sacrifice of earthly goods, there is
a condition, explicit or implied. The condition in
any given case is, that the particular good to be
sacrificed shall have been ascertained to be an
obstacle to the attainment of righteousness on the
part of its possessor—‘if it cause thee to stumble.’
Thus the necessity of every sacrifice is determined
by the special circumstances of the particular case.
The rich young man is bidden to part with all his
possessions and follow Jesus; Zacchzeus gives half,
and is told ‘this day is salvation come to this
house’ (Lk 19°); Martha and Mary are not asked
to leave their home. To one man Jesus denies’
permission to bid farewell to his relatives (Lk 9®) ;
to another He says, ‘ Return to thine own house’
(Lk 8%). A sacrifice which is imperative for one
man need not necessarily be the duty of another,
but the general rule is Jaid down that all must
be prepared, if occasion arise, to surrender their
dearest and most cherished blessings for the sake
of the Kinedom of God. ;
Now the note of this doctrine is self-denial, not
asceticism. Jesus nowhere teaches that earthly
goods are of the devil, or that the gratification of
the natural cravings is fraught with sin. He does
not recommend men to treat their bodies with con-
tempt. He does not suggest that flight from the
world and disengagement from physical conditions
is sanctification. He does not say that those who,
for duty’ssake, renounce the world, are ona higher
spiritual level than those who do their duty in the
world. He does not hint that the only way of
avoiding sin lies in an austere renunciation of all
those things from which an occasion of sin might
arise. He nowhere implies that the lower goods
are of no value in themselves, or that they ought
under all circumstances to be foregone. The doc-
trine of Jesus is a doctrine not of annihilation, but
of subordination. He admits, indeed, that special
circumstances may make 1ὖ incumbent on an indi-
vidual to abstain from certain things which others,
otherwise situated, may lawfully enjoy; but He
does not say that earthly goods, as such, are irre-
concilable with righteousness. His teaching on
the subject may be summarized in the word swb-
ordination. The main point is that earthly goods
are not to be retained or enjoyed for their own
sake, but must be made subordinate and sub-
servient to a higher end, and must ultimately be
directed towards the promotion of the righteousness
of the Kingdom of God.
Further to illustrate this point of view, we may
briefly allude to Jesus’ teaching on three pro-
minent characteristics of the ascetic life—volun-
tary poverty, celibacy, and bodily discipline as
exercised in the practice of fasting.
(1) No one could have been more alive than
Jesus was to the dangers of wealth, and to the
peculiar psychological difficulties which hinder the
rich from entering the Kingdom. His warnings
on the subject are more than usually vigorous.
Wealth is represented as an idol; care about
material things as a kind of heathenism. He even
goes so far as to say that, humanly speaking, it is
unpossible for a rich man to be saved (Mt 1935, Mk
130 ASCETICISM
ASCETICISM
1057, Lk 187). ‘Woe unto you that are rich!’ He
cries again, ‘for ye have received your consolation’
(Lk 64). He bids men not lay up treasures upon
earth (Mt 6), but rather sell what they have and
ive alms (Lk 1933. He says, ‘Ye cannot serve
God and mammon’ (Mt 6%). Jesus knew that men
tend to become absorbed in their property, to give
their heart to it, to become its slaves instead of its
masters; and the idea of such bondage filled Him
with horror. Hence to those who were in danger
of falling beneath the tyranny of money and
material things-He had but one word to say: ‘Go
and sell that: thou hast, and give to the poor...
and come, follow me’ (Mt 1921, Mk 1031, Lk 1833).
This, however, is not a precept of universal
validity ; it is not, as some of the Fathers have
wrongly conceived (e.g. Hieron. ὁ. Vigilant. 14;
Beda, Lap. in Marci Ev. iii. 10), a consiliam evan-
gelicum of poverty. It was addressed primarily to
a particular person, and it can properly be applied
only to those who are in danger of forgetting that
‘a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the
things which he possesseth’ (Lk 1215). The parables
of the Unjust Steward (Lk 101-13), of the Talents
(Mt 25'*%), or the Pounds (Lk 19!*?7), prove that
Jesus was far from regarding wealth as evil in
itself, or requiring that people in general should
renounce its use. On the contrary, He insisted
that riches are a deposit from God, which can and
ought to be employed in His service ; and He even
declared that fidelity in such employment would
be the standard for testing a man’s capacity for
higher tasks. ‘If ye have not been faithful in
the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to
your trust the true riches?’ (Lk 161). There is
nothing ascetic in such teaching. What Jesus
reprobates is not wealth, but the abuse of it;
what He recommends is not alienation of wealth,
but subordination of it. He recognizes, indeed,
that there may be special cases where the reten-
tion of wealth is incompatible with the service of
God, but in general He bids men keep and use it
in accordance with the purposes of Him who has
bestowed it on them. Neither wealth nor poverty
is in itself meritorious: only the disposition which
makes either minister to the coming of the
Kingdom.
(2) So, too, in respect of marriage. Jesus cer-
tainly teaches that a spiritual vocation is some-
times inconsistent with the married state. ‘There
be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs
for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is
able to receive it, let him receive it’ (Mt 1912).
‘ This,” says Jerome, ‘is the voice of the Lord
exhorting and urging on His soldiers to the reward
of chastity.’ But to write thus is an exaggera-
tion, if not a perversion of the truth. Nothing is
more noticeable than the extremely guarded form
of Christ’s utterance here, in striking contrast
With His very explicit injunctions concerning re-
nunciation in other matters. Jesus weighs His
words. with the greatest care. He makes no
general exhortation to celibacy. He merely points
out that some people, in the enthusiasm of their
heavenly calline, have suppressed the very instinets
of nature, so that they have, as it were, undergone
an operation of ethical self-emasculation, being
dead to sexual desire; and He recommends those
who have received the gift of abstinence, in this
sense, not to neglect it. Just as elsewhere, in His
"Or slang paradoxical way, Jesus bids men ‘hate’
ather, and mother, and wife, and children (Lk
14°), if their claims tend to supersede the claims
of God (Mt 107 ; so here He bids those who are
convinced that God’s claims demand the whole
of their time and energy, to refrain altocether
from entering the marriage state
teri: But this is
no ascetic doctrine of celibacy
The Master who
taught that matrimony was a divinely ordered
condition, and emphasized in the strongest terms
the sanctity of the conjugal relation (Mt 5° 19°,
Mk 107, Lk 1618), who practised (Lk 251) and in-
culeated the duty of filial obedience and love to-
wards parents (Mt 15*5, Mk 79-13), who habitually
used the symbolism of the family to express the
profoundest and holiest truths of religion, certainly
did not mean to teach that family life, as such,
was irreconcilable with righteousness. He uttered
no word in disparagement of it ; He never implied
that the married attain a lower grade of perfec-
tion than the continent. On the contrary, it is
clear that Jesus regarded marriage as the right
and natural course for the majority of people, and
He even chose a married man as the chief of His
apostles. In short, while recognizing that through
special circumstances the individual might be
called upon to renounce the gratifications of mar-
riage, Jesus anpears to indicate that such renuncia-
tion is an exceptional duty imposed on the few,
not a general rule for the many. Marriage in itself
is not to be avoided as a thing debasing ; it debases
only when men refuse to subordinate it to the
claims of the Kingdom.
(3) So, once more, towards the traditional dis-
cipline of asceticism Jesus took up an attitude of
indifference. In His view, the value of such ex-
ercises depends solely upon the spirit in which
they are undertaken. As forms through which
devotion seeks to find expression, He does not
condemn them; but, on the other hand, He does
not suggest that they are the necessary or inevit-
able concomitants of the holy life. This will
appear from His teaching on fasting—one of the
most distinguishing characteristics of the Jewish
piety of His time. Jesus points out that true
fasting is not a parade of piety before the eyes of
men, but an outward expression of a personal
relation of the individual soul to the ‘ Father
which seeth in secret’ (Mt 6'*!8). Hence fasting
is not a matter of compulsion or prescription or
external ordinance; it has value solely as the
appropriate manifestation of a state of mind.
Thus Jesus refuses to impose fasts on His disciples
in their days of gladness, but He foresees that ‘ the
days will come when the bridegroom shall be
taken from them,’ and then the sorrow of their
heart will seek an outlet through the forms of
sorrow (Mt 9%, Mk 2)% ὐ Lk 5%4-%). In justifica-
tion of His refusal to lay down fixed rules upon
the subject, Jesus goes on to say that, just as no
wise man would sew a new patch on to an old
garment, or pour new wine into old bottles, so it
would be foolish to graft the new-found liberty of
the gospel on to the mass of old ebservances, and
still more foolish to attempt to force the new
system as a whole within the forms of the old.
The new piety must develop new forms of its own
(Mt 916 17) Mk 221-22, Lk 536-38), From all this we
gather that Jesus refuses to bind religion to ex-
ternal acts of asceticism, or to declare such acts to
be of obligation. Such performances as fasting,
flagellation, or restriction of sleep may certainly
have a conditional worth as the sincere expression
of a sad and contrite spirit, but they are not of
the essence of devotion. Jesus emphasizes the
state of the heart, the self-denying disposition,
the bent of the soul towards God ; with anything
besides this He is not concerned.
Hence in answer to the question, Was Jesus an
ascetic? we are bound to reply in the negative.
Neither in His practice nor in His teaching did He
adopt the tone of asceticism. He called indeed
for self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-forgetfulness. He
demanded that all lower goods should be subordi-
nated to the highest good, that all human strivings
should be directed ultimately towards righteous-
ASHER
=
131
ASTROLOGY
ness. But He does not condemn the lower goods
or attempt to tear out the human instincts and
cravings. Nor does He make fellowship with God
depend on any kind of outward ascetical observ-
ances. Indeed, as Harnack writes, ‘ Asceticism
has no place in the gospel at all; what it asks is
that we should struggle against mammon, against
care, against selfishness; what it demands and
disengages is love ; the love that serves and is self-
sacrificing. This struggle and this love are the
kind of asceticism which the gospel means, and
whoever encumbers Jesus’ message with any other
kind fails to understand it. He fails to understand
its grandeur and importance ; for there is some-
thing still more important than ‘‘ giving one’s
body to be burned, and bestowing all one’s goods
to feed the poor,” namely, self-denial and love’
(Harnack, What is Christianity ? p. 88). See also
art. SELF-DENIAL and the Literature cited at end
of that article. F. HOMES DUDDEN.
ASHER (LXX and NT ᾿Ασήρ, Jos. “Aonpos) is the
transliteration of the Heb. wx =‘fortunate.’ In
Gn 30" the origin of the name Asher is connected
by J with this adjective, but perhaps its source
should be found rather in the name of some
Semitic divinity (cf. the goddess Ashera and _per-
haps also the Assyrian god Ashur). In Rev 75
Asher appears in the list of the twelve tribes of
ΠΕ ΡΝ π 115. ὧὐὔδ ΟἿ. 725" 7056. 131s [ῥὈ], Dt
275 [Π]}.. The patronymic ancestor of the tribe is
presented in Gn 3015 (J) and 35° (P) as the eighth
son of Jacob: born (like Gad) of Zilpah, Leah’s
slave-girl. Asher is mentioned in the ‘ Blessings’ of
Jacob (Gn 49”) and of Moses (Dt 3374). It is put
in possession of a territory in the land of Canaan
(Jos 197431 [Ρ], ef. 21% 306. [P]), but does not succeed
in making itself thoroughly master of it (Jg 1515};
the result of which is that its territory is some-
times confused with that of Manasseh (Jos 17}
[J]), and that it holds a precarious situation in
the midst of the Canaanites (contrast Jg 1°
with v.2-). The district assigned to Asher corre-
sponds to what was afterwards western Galilee, a
very fertile country, but apparently never subdued
completely by Israel; it is by a fiction that the
possession of cities like Acco, Achzib, Tyre, and
Sidon is attributed to it. Asher is named in the
Song of Deborah (Jg 5:7) as devoted to navigation ;
it figures also in the story of Gideon (Jg 055 729).
But it quickly disappearsfrom the page of history,
where after all it had played a very small part.
It is still mentioned incidentally in 1 K 415 under
Solomon, and in 2 Ch 30" under Hezekiah, but
there is no trace of it in the Books of Ezra and
Nehemiah. The genealogical tables will be found
in Gn 46!7(P), Nu 264-47 (P), and 1 Ch 7?0-%,
According to Lk 9535 the prophetess Anna, the
daughter of Phanuel, was of the tribe of Asher.
The source of this genealogical statement is un-
known. Its correctness has been suspected in view
of similar claims made for some Jews elsewhere to
illustrious origin (descent from Aaron, David, ete.).
It may, however, be remarked, that there is a
cardinal difference between these and the present
instance : there was nothing particularly glorious
in descent from Asher. LUCIEN GAUTIER.
ASHES.—Used twice in the Gospels, referring
to an ancient and widespread Eastern mourning
custom. The mourner, or the penitent, would
throw dust, or dust mixed with ashes (σποδός), into
the air, as an expression of intense humiliation,
due to penitence for sin, er grief because of afflic-
tion (Mt 11:1: for this idea in the OT cf. Mic 17,
Job 42°). Such symbolic use of dust and ashes was
not unnatural, since grief seems to call for a pro-
stration of the body. These, being beneath the
feet, suggest humiliation, and when thrown into
the air they were allowed to fall upon the person
of the mourner, that he might carry the evidences
of his grief with him. Sometimes ashes is asso-
ciated with σάκκος, sackcloth; the penitent or
mourner sitting upon the ash-heap, his face be-
erimed with the dust. To this custom Christ
referred when He said of Tyre and Sidon, ‘They
would have repented long ago, sitting in sackeloth
and ashes’ (Lk 10"; ef. use of ἼΞΝ in Job 2°, Jon 3°).
KE. B. POLLARD.
ASS.—See ANIMALS, p. 633.
ASTONISHMENT, ASTONISHED.—These terms
oceur with some frequency in EV of OT, but in
NT only in the historical books (except John), and
in the RV only in the Synoptic Gospels (except
Ac 3). They are always used in NT as an ex-
pression of one of the emotions aroused by super-
natural manifestations. The noun occurs once
only in either version (but in different passages :
AV Mk 52%; RV Mk 168): the verb more fre-
quently. In AV the term translates sometimes
ἐκπλήσσομαι (Mt 778 1354 29° Mk 6? 737 1076 1138,
Lk 435, Ac 13); sometimes ἐξίσταμαι or ἔκστασις
(Mk 5%, Lk 24 8% 942 Ac 10% 1916); and
sometimes θαμβέομαι or θάμβος (Mk 10%, Lk 5°,
Ac 9°). In RV it is reserved for ἐκπλήσσομαι (ex-
eept Mk 168, where ‘astonishment’ represents
ἔκστασις), of which it is the uniform rendering. In
its etymological implication it very fairly repre-
sents ἐκπλήσσομαι, which is literally ‘to be struck
out (of the senses) by a blow,’ and hence, to be
‘stunned,’ ‘shocked,’ ‘astonished.’ For its re-
lation to words implying ‘fear,’ see Schmidt,
Synonymik εἰ. gr. Sprache, No. 139. For its place
among the terms descriptive of the effect of our
Lord’s ministry on its witnesses, see art. AMAZE-
MENT. BENJAMIN Β. WARFIELD.
ASTROLOGY was an important element of all
ancient astronomy. The scientific observation of
the positions and movements of the heavenly
bodies was closely associated with the belief in
their Divine character, and their influence upon
the destinies of men, and formed the basis of eal-
culations and predictions of future events. Baby-
lonia was the earliest home of this study, which
continued to be prosecuted in that part of the
world with special diligence, so that in later times
the word ‘Chaldean’ was equivalent to ‘ Eastern
astrologer.’ It is to this class that we must refer
the Magi or Wise Men from the East, who are men-
tioned in Mt 918. They had seen in their own home
the rising (for so perhaps we should understand
the words ἐν τῇ davarody, rendered ‘in the east,’ in
v.”) of a star or constellation, which they connected
with the expectation, already diffused in the East,
of the birth of a great ruler among the Jews.
Travelling to Palestine, they ascertained at Jeru-
salem that the Messiah was expected to be born in
Bethlehem, and directing their steps thither they
saw the ‘star’ in front of them all the way, till
they came to the house where the infant Jesus
was found. (This appears to be the only sense
in which the popular and picturesque language of
v.’ can be understood),
The first two chapters of the First Gospel are
recognized as being taken from another source
than the rest of the book, and different views have
been held as to their historic value. But so far as
the astrological references in ch. 2 are concerned,
no difficulty need be felt about the narrative. The
Evangelist, it is true, does not raise any question as
to the reality of the connexion between the ‘star’
and the birth of Jesus. On the possibility of such
a connexion, no doubt he shared the common
beliefs of his time. But we may accept his state-
fruit of the
132 ASSURANCE
ment of the facts without being compelled to
admit that there is any truth in astrological
theories. The famous calculation of Kepler shows
that an unusual conjunction of Mars, Jupiter, and
Saturn took place about B.C. 7, and it is quite
conceivable that this or some similar phenomenon
may in God’s providence have led the Wise Men,
even through the mistaken principles of their
science, actually to visit Palestine about the time
when Jesus was born. See further, artt. ΜΆΘΟΙ
and STAR. JAMES PATRICK.
ASSURANCE.—This term stands for the fact and
the doctrine of personal fellowship with God in
Jesus Christ, made certain to the consciousness of
the believer by the direct witness of the Holy
Spirit. The prophetic ideal appears in the promise
of a peaceful work of righteousness, the effect of
which is quietness and confidence for ever ΠΕ ΘΟ
In Mt 1157 Jesus declares that ‘no one knoweth the
Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son willeth to reveal him.’ Such a personal revela-
tion of God to the believer in Christ would seem to
be necessarily obvious and assuring to him who
receives it. The immediate context also gives
assurance of rest and comfort to the souls of all
who labour and are heavy laden, and who come to
Christ for help. This teaching is confirmed and
enhanced by the doctrine of the Gospel of St. John
concerning the Comforter. This heavenly Com-
forter, the Holy Spirit of truth, bears witness of
Christ, and makes known the things of Christ, unto
those who receive and love Him (Jn 1576 161).
The world cannot receive this Spirit of truth, for
He is an invisible presence, known only to the be-
liever with whom and in whom He abides (14:7).
Those disciples in whom the Spirit thus dwells are
loved by the Father and realize the manifestation
of Christ, so that Father, Son, and Spirit come unto
them and make their abode with them (147) 33),
The doctrine also finds noteworthy confirmation in
the First Epistle of St. John (3!%*4 415), where it is
said that the Spirit of God and of Christ abides in
the believer, and assures (persuades) his heart with
the Divine conviction of His immediate presence,
so that he has great ‘boldness toward God’ (zap-
ρησίαν πρὸς τὸν θεόν).
That the Holy Spirit bears immediate and direct
Witness within the human spirit to the fact of one’s
being a child of God, is the explicit teaching of
St. Paul (Ro 8"). In Col 2? we note the remark-
able expression about Christian hearts being com-
forted and ‘knit together in love unto all riches of
the full assurance (πληροφορία, “ fulness’) of under-
standing’ in knowing the mystery of God. The
same truth appears in the phrases ‘full assurance
of hope’ and ‘full assurance of faith’ (He 6! 1053).
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews declares
faith itself to be ‘assurance of things hoped for,
conviction of things not seen’ (111).
This Biblical doctrine of Assurance presents one
of the most precious truths of the gospel of Christ.
It presupposes, as a matter of course, the believer’s
personal acquaintance with the saving truths of
Christianity and the facts of Divine ‘revelation ;
but it has been needlessly complicated with the
dogmas of Election and the final Perseverance of
the Saints. It should not be construed to involve
a present assurance of final salvation, but it should
be defined and guarded against the various de-
lusions of mere subjective feeling. <A spiritual
conviction, however deep and assuring, needs the
constant test of verification in a pure and upright
life. It must have the ‘testimony. of our con-
science, that in holiness and sincerity of God, not
in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we be-
haved ourselves in the world’ (2 Cy 122). The
Spirit (Gal 5*-*) ust supplement and
ATONEMENT
continuously establish the personal witness of the
Spirit. Therefore Jesus Himself gave the im-
portant admonition that the real character of a
tree is known by its fruit (Mt 7°).
LireraTurE. —Calvin, Institutes, bk. m1. ch. ii. §§ 15-175
Westminster Confession, ch. xviii.; W. Cunningham, ‘The
Reformers and the Doctrine of Assurance,’ the third essay in his
Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation ; John Wesley,
Sermons on ‘The Witness of the Spirit,’ and ‘The Witness of
our own Spirit’; Richard Watson, Theol. Institutes, vol. ii.
pp. 269-284; Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. iii. pp. 106, 107 ;
Miley, Systematic T'heology, vol. ii. pp. 3839-353; Bishop Sher-
lock, Works, vol. i. Discourse 8; R. N. Young, The Witness of
the Spirit, Fernley Lecture of 1882; Jonathan Edwards, Re-
ligious Affections, Part iii., Introd. ; Dorner, System of Chris-
tian Doctrine, vol. iv. p. 184; J. Agar Beet, Romans, 231 ff. ;
J. H. Newman, Parochial Sermons, v. 239; J. Martineau,
National Duties, 146 ff. M. 5. TERRY.
ATONEMENT. — The Atonement is the recon-
ciling work of Jesus Christ the Son of God, in
gracious fulfilment of the loving purpose of His
Father; whereby, through the sacrifice of Himself
upon the Cross once for all, on behalf and instead
of sinful men, satisfaction was made for the sins of
the world and communion between God and man
restored.
The starting-point of Christian experience is the
Resurrection of Jesus (1 Co 1517, Ro 455). It may
now be taken as accepted that the belief of the
primitive community and the Apostolic preaching
were based on this conviction (see Dele
What is Christianity ? Eng. tr. Lect. ix. ; Schmiedel,
Encye. Bibl. art. ‘ Resurrection’). This fact, rein-
forced by successive appearances of the risen
Christ whether to individuals or the assembled
disciples, led to the further conviction, the ulti-
mate root of the doctrine of the Atonement, that
Jesus of Nazareth, crucified, risen, ascended, was
present in the midst of the Christian congregation.
He who in the days of His ministry had claimed
authority on earth to forgive sins (Mt 95:8), con-
firming the word with signs following, who had
awakened an implicit trust as alone having the
words of eternal life (Jn 68 1030), and who had
manifested Himself as the one way by which men
might come to the Father (Jn 14°), had fulfilled
His own promise to return to His elect and abide
with them to the end of the days (Mt 983). The
first corporate act of the disciples was to claim the
promise to be present in the midst of two or three
gathered in His name (Mt 1839), by calling upon
their Master to choose into the Apostolate one of
two set before Him conceived as invisibly present
(Ae 115-26) Moreover, He was present In power as
exalted to God’s right hand, not therefere limited
by time and space, but acting under Divine,
eternal conditions, arising to succour His martyr
Stephen (Ac 7°), manifesting Himself as the
Righteous One to St. Paul (224), giving specilic
revelations of His will to Ananias and to St. Paul
himself (94-6 12-26 189-29 23"), and performing those
greater works of which He had spoken (Jn 14")
through those who wrought in His name (Ac 3°
9), ‘This conviction, peculiarly vivid in the
earlier ages, is clearly traced in the hymns ad-
dressed to Christ ‘as to a god’ (Pliny’s Letter to
Trajan), and in the records of early martyrdoms.
And the realism with which it was held even as
late as the 4th cent. is attested by apologetic like
that of Athanasius (see de Incarnatione, 46 tf.), or
traditions like that of the consecration of St. John
Lateran.
3ut proclamation of forgiveness of sins through
faith in the name of Jesus, though arising out of
the conviction that the Absolver was Himself in
the power of His deity still present on earth, was
not made until the realization of the promise of
the Spirit in the Pentecostal gift. To this fact,
the external results of which were present in the
experience of his hearers, St. Peter appealed as
ATONEMENT
Ee a a a Ξε τον πῚΞ ῚῚ
ATONEMENT 133
TE eee
witnessing to the reality of Jesus’ exaltation and
His power to remit sins (Ac 2°, cf, Gal 344), This
significant element in the first preaching of the
Gospel answers by anticipation objections urged
against the Atonement as involving immoral con-
sequences and unworthy views of God. Not only
in this passage but throughout the Acts the
possession of the Spirit is emphasized as the essen-
tial mark of discipleship (Ac 2°8 491 582 314-19 917 7047
1116 13 19'6). The call to repentance, intimately
associated with the gift of the Holy Spirit (Ac
2°, cf. Mt 3"), necessarily involved a tite con-
formed to the image of the Son of God. The
Gospel, though a message of God’s free favour
with no condition of antecedent righteousness,
referred to moral results, the manifestation of an
inparted spirit, as evidence of the truth of the
promise (Ro 81... 1. Gal 5724). And when the
doctrine of justification by faith was challenged
by imperfectly instructed Christians, St. Paul met
the charge by an abrupt appeal not only to ele-
mentary moral convictions, but to the implications
of baptism as ἃ new and spiritual birth (Ro 6!)
Nor, again, was it possible for those to whom the
possession of the Spirit was a fact of experience to
regard God otherwise than as the Father. For
He who dwelt within them was the Spirit of
Christ Jesus (Ac 16’, Ro 89, Ph 19, 1 P 1"), the
promise of the Father (Ac 14), wherely they had
themselves attained the adoption, and were enabled
to cry, ‘Abba, Father’ (Ro 8:5:17 Gal 4°)
The fact of Pentecost was immediately explained
as that outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh which
was to mark the establishment of the Messianic
kingdom (Ac 2162! 531.82) Tt stood directly related
to the event of which the Apostles were the chosen
witnesses, the Resurrection of Jesus, whereby He
was exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour unto the
remission of sins (Ac 2°: %8), of which, according to
Hebrew expectation, the kingdom was to be the
home (6. . Jer 31, Ezk 361°). The assurance that
Christ was the ever present source of forgiveness
gave its supreme significance to the Cross by
which He entered into His glory (Jn 12). Later
theologians have been charged with ‘placing the
emphasis too exclusively upon the death of Jesus
as the means of redemption’ (H. L. Wild, Contentio
Veritatis, Essay iii.) But the evidence of the NT
is irresistible. It is true that the earliest sermons
lay stress rather upon the fact of the Resurrection,
but always as closely following upon the Death,
which, though inflicted by His enemies, resulted
from the determinate counsel of God (Ac 2539), who
glorified ‘his Servant’ Jesus. The frequent repeti-
tion of this OT expression (παῖς θεοῦ) in the early
chapters of Acts (3! 26 427%), taken in connexion
with explicit references to the things which God
foreshadowed by the prophets that His Messiah
Should sufter (Ac: 23 818 411- 25-28-1347 ; cf. 1.00 15%,
1 P 1%), leaves no room for doubt that Philip the
Evangelist was not alone in beginning from the
icture of Jehovah’s Suffering Servant to preach
esus (Ac 8), but that the Apostles gave their
witness to the Resurrection by preaching what St.
Paul called ‘ Christ erucified’ (1 Co 159, cf. Gal 31).
The Crucifixion was regarded neither as a bare fact
nor as the symbol of a theological system, but as a
‘gospel,’ an event whose reality lay in its signifi-
cance, a message of Divine favour and forgiveness.
The central fact of Christ’s life and work was com-
plex, consisting of both the Cross and the Resur-
rection. The NT considers neither apart. The
redeeming efficacy is attached to each in turn.
While, according to the compressed formula in
which St. Paul expresses the content of his gospel,
‘Christ died for our sins and rose again the third
day’ (1 Co 15*- 4), the common form of the Petrine
preaching represents God as raising up Jesus ‘for
to give repentance and remission of sins’ (Ac 5°: 31;
Cf. 282,98) 3 195265 TP 1232) also. Ro 42 andl Co5!"),
But it was the Cross that tended to fix itself as
the central fact, and therefore the characteristic
symbol of Christendom. It is the figure of Him
‘who bare our sins in his body on the tree’ which
dominates the First Epistle of Peter (1 P 2%).
And the 2nd cent. Gospel according to Peter has
contrived with singular fidelity to the Apostle’s
mind to give an imaginative picture of the Resur-
rection, wherein the Cross is curiously blended
with the rending tomb (Gospel ace. to Peter, § 10,
ed. Robinson and James). With St. Paul the
gospel of Christ, which is the fixed point in his
teaching (Gal 111, 1 Co 15!, 1 Ti 141, 2 Ti 28), the
touchstone of all preaching (Gal 1°, 1 Ti 19 63),
proclaimed alike to Jew and Gentile (1 Co 1%), de-
livered whether to St. Peter or to himself as the
deposit of Christian truth (1 Co 3", 2 Ti 138-14), is
‘the word of the cross’ (1 Co 18”). So remark-
able is the unanimity of the two great primary
preachers of Christianity that it leaves no room to
question the statement of Harnack (What is Chris-
tianity ? Eng. tr. Lect. ix.) that ‘ the primitive com-
munity called Jesus its Lord because He sacrificed
His life for it, and because its members were con-
vinced that He had been raised from the dead and
was then sitting at the right hand of God.’
To this must be added the general symmetry of
the NT and the evidence of Christian institutions
and Church History. The story of the Passion is
out of all proportion to the rest of the Synoptic
narrative, as given in each of the three Gospels,
unless the foreground is rightly occupied by the
Cross. And here the Fourth Gospel, though it
emphasizes the function of revelation in the incar-
nate life of the Son of God, is found in close and
almost unexpected agreement with its predecessors.
The Apocalypse rings with the praises of ‘the
Lamb’ ( Rev 54-6. 12.13 1710. 14-17 191-12 141- 198-3 : ef. 1°
138). The Epistle to the Hebrews, though it opens
with one of the classical Christological passages,
yet makes the Death of Jesus the pivot of its
teaching (He 23). And the Epistle to the Romans,
which elaborates the great argument of Justilica-
tion through a crucified and risen Saviour, is
central to the theology of St. Paul.
Midway between the NT and Chureh History,
as related in point of evidential value to either,
come the Creed and Sacraments. The former
represents the inviolable basis of the word con-
centrated in catechetical teaching. That its em-
phasis rested upon the Cross is apparent not only
trom such primitive formule as the Apostles’
Creed, but from the NT itself (1 Co 15*4, 1 Ti 115).
Baptism is the initiatory Christian rite, and
whether it conveys or only represents the forvive-
ness of sins, stood from the first in close relation
to the Death and Resurrection of Christ (Mt 9819,
Mk 16): 16, Ae 938 81s. 10. 36 gis 1011. 48 1093 19° ΝΣ No
6* 5. Gal-32-27,. Ep 4° 9 (Ὁ] ΟἹ» πο a lela
ch. ὑπ 85: AG LISS Colds; ΘΙ ὦ ἡ 22salkeymyseas)
The Eucharist is the Christian counterpart of the
sacrifice of the Passover, which commemorated the
deliverance of God’s people from Egypt; it is
associated by the terms of its celebration with the
Lord’s Passion, and employs language of sacrificial
im port, (Μ| 6 6:5 Mile 1425: Ὁ e228: 0 ἢ] Ὁ 118-4
10 16:3 [for τράπεζα Κυρίου Ξε: θυσιαστήριον, cf. Mal 17],
cf. Jn 652:68 [see Westcott, ad loc.], Ex 127’, He
13:0).
Following upon the Sacraments is the witness of
Church History—the worship, the dogma, the art,
the experience of the Christian centuries—which
have all consistently gathered round the Cross.
We are therefore entitled to hold that any inter-
pretation of the Christian facts which shifts the
focus from Calvary to Bethlehem or Galilee repre-
134 ATONEMENT
ATONEMENT
sents a departure from the historic faith, and
tends to distort the Christian revelation.
Theories of the Atonement, of which the view
that identifies it with the Incarnation may be
taken as the norm, have inevitably been popular
in an age dominated by two great influences,
physical science and Hegelian philosophy. But it
may be doubted whether they have taken their
rise in a study of the facts of Scripture and not
rather in a determinist conception of the Universe,
to which the Incarnation seemed to give a religious
and Christian form. A consequence of this method
of thought has been the revival, in this country
by Bishop Westcott and others, of speculations like
those of Rupert of Deutz and the Scotists, which
postulate an Incarnation independent of those con-
ditions of human life which demand the forgive-
ness of sins.* It is perhaps enough to say of this
line of thought, with Dr. A. B. Davidson (O7
Prophecy, ch, x.), that it involves ‘a kind of
principle, according to which God develops Him-
self by an inward necessity,’ and which ‘is cer-
tainly not a Biblical principle.’ Such thinking
invariably regards the Atonement merely as a
mode of the Incarnation required by the conditions
under which it took place. And whether this
theory be specifically held or not, it has been a
tendency of recent theology to fix the mind rather
upon the ethical principle of the Atonement, 1.6.
the obedience or penitence or assent to God’s
abhorrence of sin, of which death is the ‘sacra-
ment’ or visible sign, than upon the Crucifixion as
a work intrinsically efficacious apart from the
moral qualities expressed in its accomplishment.
Such views are defective, not because they fail
to give expression to aspects of Christ’s redeem-
ing work, but because they stop short at the
point where explanation is necessary, why these
qualities of the spirit of Jesus should have been
directed towards the particular end of the death of
the Cross. The climax of the account which St.
Paul gives in the Epistle to the Philippians of the
exaltation of Jesus, is neither the assumption of
human flesh nor the suffering of death, but the
obedience which accepted the humiliation of the
Cross as the act whereby He fulfilled, not the
general, but the particular will of God (Ph 25-4,
cf. 1 P 14),
The Apostles, as we have seen, saw the purpose,
and therefore the explanation, of this concrete his-
torical event through the medium of the OT.
Whatever view it may be expedient to take of the
relation between Hebrew prophecy and Jesus of
Nazareth, this fact is of primary importance,
because it exhibits what in the view of the first
messengers of the Cross was the essential char-
acter of the good news it was their mission to pro-
claim ; nor would the case be materially altered if
the language of Law and Prophets had merely
been chosen to illustrate the central idea of the
Gospel. What we find is the remarkable manner
in which the idea of the King and the Kingdom,
consonant with contemporary Jewish expectation,
is combined with that of the suffering Messiah, so
alien to the current interpretation of the Serip-
tures as to present ‘to the Jews a stumbling-
eek. The antithesis between the Cross and the
resurrection was, indeed, such as sugges
re re toga eed, such as to suggest that
ath of Jesus was united to its marvellous
sequel by a chain of causation removing it from
the ordinary category of dissolution, and making
it the interpretative fact of a career otherwise the
most unintelligible in history. But the main
* These speculations must be distincuis} i
5 : i © distinguished from the teaching
of the Calvinistic Supralapsarians of the 17th cent. Silt
relying upon suc h passages as Eph 311, 1 p 120, Rey 138 (?) main-
tained that the Atonement was itself the fulfilment, of an
eternal purpose.
point to observe is that the Resurrection, being in
the first instance the crucial fact of experience
which marked off for the disciples their Master
Jesus as the Son of God (Ro 1 ὁρισθέντος, cf. Ac
1026-43 1328-82. 88). ratified, in the minds of those who
had continued with Him in His temptations, that
view of His work which had been before the eye of
the Divine Sufferer throughout His ministry, and
which He had progressively disclosed to hearts
slow of belief, until a hitherto invincible prejudice
had succumbed to the decisive evidence of accom-
plishment.
The persistence with which early heresies con-
nected themselves with the Baptism of Jesus reveals
the prominence which the event assumed in the
story of the ministry, and goes far to authenticate
the details of the Synoptic narrative (Mt 81:5: Mk
15:11. Lk 951: 55, ef. Jn 1°), the correspondence of
which with the Apostolic view of the Saviour’s
mission is too subtle to warrant the theory that
they are the glosses of a later tradition. In this
narrative Jesus is represented as doing something
more than declaring the obligation which rested
upon Him to fulfil that righteousness characteristic
of the Hebrew covenant. ‘ Thus it becometh us to
fulfil all righteousness,’ 7.e. by submitting to the
baptism which John would have withheld because
it involved repentance and provided for the remis-
sion of sins. The Voice from Heaven, and the
Temptation endured in the power of the baptismal
Spirit (Mt 4!, Mk 115, Lk 4"), even if they be regarded
merely as the interpretation of the subjective con-
sciousness of Jesus, witness to the identity between
the scheme of the ministerial life accepted from the
first by the Son of Man and the gospel of the re-
deeming work preached by the Apostles. For the
Voice blends the prophecy of the royal Son (Ps 27)
with that of the beloved Servant (Is 421), and the
Temptation is essentially the refusal of Messianic
royalty on any condition but that of suffering ser-
vice. [015 no accident that the same Voice is heard
again on the Mount of Transfiguration (Mt 17°
and Mk 97 ὁ vids μου 6 ἀγαπητός, Lk 9° 6 vids μου ὁ
ἐκλελεγμένος [v.2. ἀγαπητός], cf. Is 421), when the
manner in which righteousness is to be fulfilled is
made explicit in the subject of Jesus’ converse with
Moses and Elijah, ‘the decease which he was about
to fulfil’ (Lk 951 πληροῦν, ef. Mt 3 πληρῶσαι) ; and
that again, from the moment when He begins to
make plain to the unwilling ears of His disciples
that His throne can be reached only through resur-
rection after suffering and death, He has to ery,
‘Get thee behind me, Satan’ (Mt 16%). And the
taunt of the rulers on Calvary, when the crucified
Jesus is bidden to prove Himself the Christ of God,
the chosen (Lk 23* ὁ ἐκλεκτός), makes it clear that
the claim to be at once the Messiah and the Servant,
if doubted by the disciples and derided by the Jews,
was at least in the hour of its accomplishment sufti-
ciently understood.
It is the Divine necessity of dying which is pro-
minent in the later teaching of the Lord, beginning
from that crisis of the ministry which is emphati-
cally presented in all the Synopties (Mt 167!-*, Mk
82-91, Lk 9-27). He sets His face towards it as
the end (Lk 227 [ef. Is 5313] τελεσθῆναι and τέλος
ἔχει, cf. Jn 1958: 8°), the goal to which His whole life
moves. And in the hour when the things concern-
ing Him had fulfilment, He singled out the leading
feature in the portrait of the Servant as that which
above all others fastened its application upon Him-
self. ‘I say unto you that this which is written
must be fulfilled in me, And he was reckoned with
transgressors.’ The Prophet, who at the outset of
His ministry read in the synagogue of Nazareth
the words foreshadowing the deliverance which
was to issue in the Kingdom of God (Lk 438 9=Is
61'-*), knew that for Himself it meant the Man of
ATONEMENT
Sorrows, led like the lamb of the Hebrew ritual to
the slaughter, and in the power of His healing
wounds making intercession for the transgressors
of His people (Is 53; for the connexion with the
Ceremonial Law see Davidson, O7' Prophecy, ch.
xxii.) There is thus no inconsistency between the
language of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptics and
those utterances of the Fourth Gospel which seem
to remove the Passion and Death from the imme-
diate historical conditions, and to represent them
as the decision of eternal issues by the voluntary
activity of the Divine Sufferer, who lays down His
life of Himself and judges the prince of this world
on the uplifted throne of the Cross (Jn 813 1017: 18
1231-33 1430 1606}}- 33),
These considerations give peculiar point to the
declaration which, according to both St. Matthew
and St. Mark, stands in close relation to the request
of the sons of Zebedee for eminent places in the
Messianic kingdom. Messiah’s kingship is based
on service which takes specific form in the death
He goes to accomplish—‘ The Son of Man came to
give his life a ransom for many ’—a substitution
which made His soul an offering for sin, fulfilling
all that was foreshadowed not only in the redemp-
tion of the people from Egypt, but also in the re-
demptions of the Ceremonial Law (Mk 10°, Mt
2028 λύτρον ἀντί not ὑπέρ, cf. ἀντίλυτρον 1 Ti 2°,
λυτρώσηται Tit 213, ἐλυτρώθητε 1 Ῥ 1'8, where also the
τίμιον αἷμα of Clirist is the price; Is 53%, 2 Κ 7%,
Ex 13%, Nu 18”, ef. Ps 498).
That Jesus should thus have recognized the true
significance of His death as a fact possessing not
an accidental but an inherent worth, is not incon-
sistent with a due acknowledgment of the historical
circumstances which became its efficient cause.
Witk regard to the prophecy of Jehovah’s Servant,
it must be remembered that the Sufferer, though
offering a sacrifice for sin of which the liturgical
oblation is the type, yet incurs pain and death only
through setting his face as a flint (Is 50:9) in main-
taining truth and righteousness under conditions
which inevitably made this witness a martyrdom.
And it would be misreading the phenomena of the
Gospel narrative to represent the propitiatory death
of Christ as wantonly sought by our Lord in a
manner inconsistent with the dictates of common
morality. The Cross could not have been media-
torial if Jesus had been an official and conventional
Messiah reaching Calvary by any other road than
that which in the first instance made Him one with
His brethren (He 219-18) in the pursuit of His own
moralend. His death, which atiects the conscience
(He 9" 10%), is not represented as self-immolation.
He ‘witnessed before Pontius Pilate a good con-
fession’ (1 Ti 6", cf. ‘the faithful witness,’ Rev 1°
34). His mission being to establish the kingdom
upon a basis of surrender (Mt 20%, Jn 13% 15:16),
upon a gospel preached to the poor (Lk 418) by one
who is Himself lowly in heart (Mt 1159), He must
not shrink till He send forth judgment unto victory
(Mt 12%). When there is no more risk of quench-
ing the smoking flax by appearing openly as the
uncompromising foe of the hierarchy, He recog-
nizes that His hour is come (Jn 12% 17! al., Mk
144, ef. Jn 24, Lk 2958), changing the method of
His discourse so that they who reject Him may
perceive that He speaks of them (Mt 21), and
without further parley join the inevitable issue.
There is, however, no warrant for Mr. F. W. New-
man’s theory, that Jesus’ denunciation of scribes
and Pharisees was a deliberate provocation of
judicial murder ; though it must be remarked that,
assuming the knowledge of power to rise again the
third day, we could not judge even such an action
entirely by the ordinary standard. Still, if the one
necessity of the case was a sacrificial death upon
the stage of history, the event might have been
ATONEMENT 135
accomplished amid accessories more suggestive of
ritual than the Crucifixion. But this would have
been something less than a moral act, whereas the
NT shows the propitiation wrought by Jesus Christ
‘the righteous’ (1 Jn 2', Ac 8:5 75 2214) to have
been something more. The Agony in the Garden,
followed by the Seven Words from the Cross,
attests the naturalness of the Passion as suffering,
though voluntarily endured, yet inflicted from with-
out. It is only after the Resurrection that the
human actors in the tragedy fall out of sight, and
the Cross can be presented absolutely as that which
it behoved the Christ to suffer, so entering into His
glory (Lk 24°).
From what has been already said, it follows that
an adequate soteriology, or theology of the Atone-
ment which is genuinely evangelical, must be the
expression of a spiritual experience resting upon
Christ’s death as the expiation of sin. With atew
notable exceptions, foremost among them Dr. R.
W. Dale, the trend of modern theology, since the
publication of M‘Leod Campbell’s treatise on The
Nature of the Atonement, has been on the whole to
develop the doctrine on its ethical side, and to find
its spiritual principle either in the sinless penitence
or the perfect obedience of Jesus (e.g. Westcott,
Wilson, Moberly, Scott Lidgett). The tendency of
these writings has been, while dissipating theories
of a non-moral ‘ transaction,’ to obscure to a greater
or less extent ‘the offering of the body of Christ,’
and to give an insufficient value to the Biblical
account of His death as an objective act of pro-
pitiation addressed to the Father by the incarnate
Son. No doubt English writers for the most part
maintain that the ‘penitence’ and obedience of
Christ are imparted by grace to the believer. But
between the obedience and the grace, as that
which gives meaning to both, NT theology places
the substitutionary sacrifice.
St. Peter connects obedience with the ‘ sprink-
ling of the blood of Christ’ (1 P 15:14. 18.139) and
the sin-bearing of the tree (24). Involving as
these expressions do ‘the blood of the covenant’
(ΠΣ 248-85 Ty 1619 17 Zeca! > ck, He lees,
and, for the ‘new covenant,’ Jer 31° 338, Ezk
3655), and the laying of hands upon the head of the
βίη offering (Lv 105], οἵ. Is 53°; the whole passage
[Is 5347] should be carefully compared with 1 P
971-5. and the influence of the Levitical code in
moulding language and ideas noted), both familiar
conceptions of the Hebrew ritual, they point un-
doubtedly to a real transfer of guilt, a genuine
substitution, as the true meaning of the ‘glad
tidings’ (1 P 1”), of which the Apostle was the
witness (51). The Christian society is the ‘ people
of God’s own possession’ (2% 1), ransomed and
brought into covenant by the precious blood. The
obedience and sufferings of Christians are not,
therefore, redemptive, for such are already dead to
sin (222),
With this the Johannine writings agree. Fellow-
ship with God is the eternal life which Christians
enjoy, but this mystical union* is effected by the
purifying blood of Jesus His Son (1 Jn 17), in whom
is forgiveness (1% 1° ΟἹ 3°), who is the propitiation
for the sins of the whole world (23 410, ef. 5° [Jn
1934], Jn 4% 11°!, Ro 355 ἱλαστήριον). The antecedent
power of Christ’s death is thus explained by the
sacrificial term ἱλασμός to be an effectual means for
turning away the wrath of God, which the impres-
sive imagery of the Apocalypse represents as rest-
ing upon the wicked (Rev 61°17 1419 and passim).
Nowhere is the significant figure of the Lamb more
* The unio mystica must not be confounded with atonement
by pressing the etymology of the latter word (at-one-ment), the
Pauline equivalent of which (zerzaruyz) St. John never uses,
According to its proper meaning, the verb ‘atone’ is not transi-
tive, but is followed by the preposition ‘for.’ Mr. Inge in
Contentio Veritatis constantly ignores this.
136 ATONEMENT
emphatically applied to Christ than in the Johan-
nine books (Jn 159: * 196 [Ex 12%], the Apocalypse,
passim).
With the Apostle Paul we reach the fullest state-
ment of the doctrine of the Atonement. And here
it must be noted that the Epistles of the first im-
prisonment, which develop the teaching concerning
the Person of Christ in His eternal relation to the
Universe and the Church, follow those which give
detailed expression to the reconciliation of believers
to God through the redemption which is in Christ
Jesus. It would seem, therefore, that theologians
like Westcott, who subordinate redemption to the
Incarnation, are less true to Christian experience
than those who reach the Incarnation through the
Atonement. For St. Paul the Cross in its twofold
aspect of Death and Resurrection is the central
fact which forms the subject of his gospel (1 Co
118, 39 95. Gal 54, 1 ΤΊ 2°-7), the basis of Baptism (see
above) and of the Eucharist (see above), the source
of the forgiveness of sins (Col 9218. 4, ef. 312, Eph 433),
the motive of Christian morality (Ro 6%), the spring
of faith (1 Co 12°, οἵ. Ro 10°) and of spiritual life
(2 Co 41, Gal 950), and the assurance of immor-
tality (2 Ti 1). To this fact there is a correspond-
ing personal experience, so that baptism may be
represented as involving an identification of the
believer with his Lord so intimate that not only is
the figure of putting on Christ as a garment felt to
be appropriate to the initiatory Christian rite (see
above), but His death, burial, and resurrection
are regarded as reproduced in the believer (see
above). From the Cross the Christian life takes
its specific complexion, so that ‘the new man
created in righteousness’ (Eph 44) becomes ‘ cruci-
fied unto the world’ (Gal 613), branded in the body
with the marks of the Lord Jesus (Gal 617) ; glories
in the Cross (v."); and fills up that which is lack-
ing in the sufferings of Christ (Col 1%). Obvi-
ously, therefore, the interpretation of this fact and
its consequent experience is from the point of view
of St. Paul the primary task of the Christian
theologian.
The interpretative word used in St. Paul’s soteri-
ology is καταλλαγή, ‘reconciliation’ (Ro 5! AV
‘atonement’), the root idea of which is restora-
tion of personal relations between parties hitherto
estranged. This involves the explanation of the
‘catastrophe in human life,’ sutticiently evident
im common experience but inexplicable apart from
the Hebrew realization of the personal God, which
is set forth in Ro 118-28 as the rebellion of the un-
thankful human will against the claim of the
Divine Creator (v.*!). The need is universal (Ro
3”) ;* but the later Augustinian terminology,
Which, in spite of Luther’s return to a fuller
Paulinism, still dominates the language even of
Protestant divinity, tends by the use of such
figures as ‘vice’ (vitium), ‘flaw,’ ‘ disease,’ to
palliate the exceeding sinfulness of sin and to
obscure the personal significance of the Cross,
which is always uppermost in St. Paul. Three
points must be noted.
t+ Christ died ‘to reconcile the Father to us.—
Chis phrase, if not strictly Biblical, conveys the
essential idea of Scripture, which is quite ob-
scured by the statement that His death recon-
eee nen ee ee parcrriecine τν concerned to
{ of God, have inclined to repre-
sent the Cross as intended to produce merely a
change in the moral life of the sinner. Not only
é ᾿ Notice that St. Paul more Hebraico states sin as a universal
act. ill have sinned ’—without deve loping a theory by physical
an ra No amount of ὁ originality’ in sin detracts from full
moral responsibility towards God in the individual. Mr. Ten-
: open his Hulsean Lectures speaks as though the traditional
Goctrine of sin neutralized personal disobedient e; but this is
not the case, as δὶ right underst; is 4
, a8 & rig Standing of St. Paul's doctrine
reconciliation in Christ will show. ¥ : SRS ot
ATONEMENT
is this inconsistent with the idea of reconciliation,
but St. Paul, while, with the NT generally, always
representing the work of Christ as arising in the
gracious will of the Father (2 Co 5:8. 19, Ro 58 82,
Col 11%: 20, Eph 1929, 1 Th 5°, Tit 34; ef. 1 P 1°, Jn3®
and passim, 1Jn 31), yet invariably regards it as
the loving act (2 Co 5! 8%, Gal 14 2”, Ro 857, Eph
52, ef. Jn 1013, Rev 15) of a mediator (1 Ti 2° 5,
ef. He 9%), producing in the first instance a
change in God’s attitude towards the sinner (2 Th
18-9, Ro 8}, ef. vv.7 8), turning away wrath (1 Th
110. Ro 5°), removing trespasses (2 Co 515), and pro-
viding a channel through which God might forgive
sins as an act not only of mercy but of justice
(Ro 8:0).
It is perhaps unnecessary to argue with the
formality which sets up an abstract Law * to
which even God must do homage. At this point
even Dale becomes somewhat cumbrous. But it
is obvious that even the parable of the Prodigal
Son would not ring true in human ears unless 1t
was for ever interpreted by a transaction which
gives due weight to the enormity of a sin that
entailed the sacrifice of the Father’s only Son.
Nor would St. Paul have succeeded in commend-
ing the death of Christ to the Christian conscience
save by insisting that only thus could God recon-
cile a world unto Himself and be alike just and
the justifier of the believer.
2. Lhe death of Christ is the act of God (Tit 918
fcf. 2 P 11, Ro 14, 2 Co 44, Col 115. Ph 25 Ro 95 ὦ;
Ac 20%).— ‘It is at this point in the last resort
that we become convinced of the deity of Christ’
(Denney). ‘God was in Christ,’ who was ‘ marked
off as the Son of God by the resurrection.’ Grace
is always in St. Paul the free act of God’s favour
(Ro 3% 445 a@/.), and it is ‘the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ’ (Ro 5% 16°, 2 Co 89 13), whereby
we have been enriched, The love of Christ which
constrains us, because He died for all, is Divine
(2 Co δ᾽" 19% +9 ‘on behalf of Christ’=‘as though
God were entreating by us’). The position of the
justified sinner is that of a restored sonship, be-
cause his redemption from first to last 1s the
action towards him of the eternal God Himself
His right relation to the Father is witnessed by,
or rather is, the presence of the Spirit of the Son
‘sent forth’ into his heart by that same God who
had ‘sent forth’ the Son Himself to work out a
redemption under the conditions which imposed
this necessity of love upon the paternal heart of
God (Gal 4*°). When this is once apprehended,
the objections to a doctrine of substitution (‘ evo
sum peccatum tuum, tu es justitia mea’—2 Co
5*!) are seen to have no application in tact. They
are valid only if the activity of the Mediator is
separated sharply from that of the Father. Such
a distinction is neither Pauline nor Christian.
The threefoldness of God is a revelation inci-
dental to ‘the unfolding of the work of Divine
Atonement’ (see Moberly, Atonement and Person-
ality, ch. viii.). With St. Paul, as with St. John,
it is the Father who is revealed in the Son (see
above), whose work is manifest in the work of
Christ. Redemption is parallel to Creation (Gal
015. (0]..118.. Eph 1) 1 0 153 θυ πο Ὁ cides
Rev 21}. 8). If the morality of the latter lies in
the fact that ‘God saw that it was good,’ the
Justice of the former is witnessed not only by the
‘new creation’ but by the infinite worth of the
Son (1 Co 6*’), whom God gave up for us all and
who endured the Cross.
*Such theories, like the attempt of Anselm in Cur Deus
Homo to express the Atonement in terms of the feudal idea of
society dominant in the Middle Age, to which they are akin,
no doubt perform useful service in freeing the teaching of
Scripture from unwarrantable and misleading aceretions, but
they are a method of expressing rather than of explaining the
problem.
ATONEMENT
3. Reconciliation is antecedent to the renewal of
the individual.—This is almost wholly ignored in
modern German theology, which thereby goes far
to forfeit its claim to be a true development of
Lutheran teaching, losing touch with the NT
generally and especially with St. Paul. Ritschl,
for example, for whom the statement that ‘Christ
expiated sin by His passion’ has ‘ very little war-
rant in the Biblical circle of thought,’ regards the
death of Jesus merely as ‘the summary expression
of the fact that Christ maintained His religious
unity with God,’ and places the forgiveness of
sins in the ‘effective union’ of believers with God
in that Divine kingdom which it was the vocation
of Jesus to found (Justification and Reconciliation,
Eng. tr. ch. viii.) Now, while Ritschl thus re-
covers a truly Apostolic conception in the King-
dom of God as the primary object of reconciliation
(see below), he does so only at the expense of the
‘finished work,’ which is the glory of all true
evangelicalism. St. Paul in particular leaves no
doubt as to the objective character of the ‘recon-
ciliation’ wrought by Christ, which stands com-
plete before the preaching whereby comes hearing
and faith. ‘While we were enemies we were
reconciled to God through the death of his Son’
(Ro 5”, ef. vv.& 8:9, Col 17-22). He has previously
shown (Ro 3*4-*6) that the vindication of God’s
righteousness (ἔνδειξις THs δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ), which
conscience requires as a condition of the acquittal
of sinners, has already been given in the redemp-
tion wrought by Christ, involving as it did the
bloodshedding of the Son of God, which con-
stituted the Redeemer a propitiation for sin. The
equivalence adumbrated by the symbolic transfer
of guilt to the head of the victim was consum-
mated in Christ (Ro 8", 2 Co 551, Gal 313, ef. Lv 16°
also Hebrews, passim, see below). The spectacle
of such a substitution—not one man redeeming
his brother, but God putting Himself in_ the
sinner’s place—was the manifestation of a Divine
righteousness to which Law and Prophets, the
Hebrew dispensation, had witnessed (Ro 3). In
Christ crucified that righteousness is complete,
needing no human condition (ἔργον) to perfect it,
but offered freely to him that believeth on the
justifier of the ungodly, so that his faith can
be reckoned instead ot righteousness,* because
through it the sinner appropriates Christ’s finished
work and becomes ‘the righteousness of God in
him’ (2 Co δ). Here the Atonement, as St.
Paul interprets it, leads to the development of
the doctrine of the Incarnation (Ro 6155], ef. 1 Co
1571: 22), Christ is the second Adam; He ‘recapi-
tulates’ (Eph 1”, cf. Protev. Jac. 13, and Trenzeus,
bk. ur. ch. xxx. ‘recapitulans in se Adam’) the
human race, so that His redemptive, recreative
act has more than a representative value. In
Him ‘all died’ (2 Co 5%). This characteristic
principle of Pauline theology—‘in Christ’ — ex-
pands on the other side into the doctrine of the
new life through membership (Ro 12%, Eph 45)
in the body of Christ and fellowship of the one
Spirit (1 Co 1213, 2Co 134). The second Adam is a
quickenine spirit, endowed with the grace of unc-
tion (Hooker, Hecl. Pol., bk. v. ch. lv.), imparting
through the Resurrection a Spirit which dwells in
the believer and finally quickens even his mortal
body (Ro 81).
That the communion of the elect people with
God meant the indwelling of His Spirit, is a
familiar idea of the OT (Is 63°" Ezk 367). So
*Much harm has resulted from insisting on the ‘ forensic’
character of this justification. No doubt διπκαιόω has associa-
tions of the law court; but it isas absurd to suppose that legal
fictions were present to the mind of St. Paul as to ascribe
these ideas to the compiler of Genesis (Gn 155) or the author of
the thirty-second Psalm (Ps 322). The word expresses only the
free forgiveness of the Father's love.
ATONEMENT 137
the body of Christ, which is the Church (Col 1*4),
being the primary object of redemption (Ac 20:8,
ΠΡ Ποὺ ΠΡ. cf, 22) ereconciled
through death (Eph 2:5), becomes a habitation of
the Spirit (Eph 2! *), distributed according to the
measure of faith to the several members (Eph
47-16) Ro 12%), which through the Presence (‘ Christ
in you,’ ‘the Spirit of the Son shed abroad in your
hearts,’ ‘the fulness of God,’ Eph 313) have a com-
mon access to the Father (Eph'2"’, cf. 513), manifest
the gifts of the Spirit (1 Co 12+", Ro 128), and in
mutual dependence grow together to ‘the measure
of the stature of the fulness of Christ’ (Eph 4!% 4-18,
Col 215, Ro 12*). That this teaching, though given
in St. Paul’s individual manner, was no personal
speculation of his own, may be gathered from its
close relation to the great social sacraments of
Baptism and the Eucharist, which would be start-
ling if, in view of their generally accepted signifi-
cance in the primitive community, it were not
obvious (Eph 4% °, 1 Co 10").
To claim for the death of Christ that it is a ecom-
pleted act of reconciliation, the ground of the be-
lieving sinner’s justification, and thus alike the
subject of adoring gratitude and the source of re-
newed moral effort, is to establish a doctrine satis-
factory to reason rather because it sets the several
parts of Scripture and Christian teaching in an
intelligible proportion to one another, than because
it is itself rationally explained. The Cross estab-
lishes the Law (Ro 3*), and, as thus interpreted,
manifests and supplies the need of the human
spirit, and thus finds its justification in experi-
ence. But propitiatory sacrifice remains to be
apprehended rather than understood. This is be-
cause it is a fact of religion rather than of ethics.
Men have felt the need of something to set them
right with God, even when they have been far
from knowing that He is love. If this distinction
be not perceived, we shall fail to see the true bear-
ing of the evidence from Comparative Religion for
the universality of the idea of atonement as mani-
fested in myth, ritual, and custom. Thus Sir
Oliver Lodge (see art. ‘Suggestions towards the
Reinterpretation of Christian Doctrine,’ Hibbert
Journal, vol. ii., No. 3), while admitting the
cogency of the universal belief in immortality,
sees in the crudities of the widespread practice of
sacrifice only a reason for discounting this ele-
ment in traditional Christianity. There can be no
doubt that atonement is fundamental to the idea
of sacrifice (see Robertson Smith, Religion of the
Semites, Lect. vi. p. 219; Lect. xi. pp. 377-384),
and that this idea of ‘covering’ is prominent in
the ritual of the OT (see Schultz, OZ Theol., Eng.
tr. vol. i. pp. 884-400).
Far from deprecating, or even ignoring the
ancient sacrifices, the NT, as we have seen, pre-
sents Christ as the ‘Lamb of God.’ And in the
Epistle to the Hebrews the Son is explicitly set
forth as ‘Himself the victim and Himself the
priest,’ manifested once at the consummation of
the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Him-
self (He 9538. Though, unlike St. Paul, who sees
the analogy between heathen sacrifices and the
Christian Eucharist (1 Co 102!), the author of this
Epistle confines his attention to the worship of
the Hebrews, the argument may be legitimately
extended to embrace the ‘ blood of bulls and goats’
offered under any system for what in view of the
Cross is seen to be a typical, conventional purifi-
cation and approach to God. There is, however,
one important point in which the Mosaic sacrifices
differ from all others. They fulfilled the primary
condition of Divine appointment, and therefore.
availed within the limits of the institution. They
were inadequate, not because, like the oblations of
the heathen, they were material, but because, un-
138 ATONEMENT
ATTRACTION
like the offering of Christ, they were transitory
(He 10!-"), and alien to those who brought them
(9! >). Christ, who elsewhere in the N'T appears
as the Mediator, Saviour, Word made flesh, here
becomes specifically the Priest (2! [ὁ ἁγιάζων --
‘priest’; the act of consecration is identified with
the Cross in 1315, ef. 2% 1°] 3! and passim), the ap-
propriate scientific term, as we may call it, for
whoever establishes the proper end of religion,
communion with God. His is a ‘ finished work,’
because by Divine appointment (3? 5!:+°) He is
‘a priest for ever’ (5% 77+ 8), who ‘through the
eternal Spirit’ (9) obediently (5° 10°) fulfilled the
priestly function (8°) in offering the body prepared
for Him by the will of God (10°) as an eternal
sacrifice (10, cf. 5°). This is no metaphorical
self-sacrifice, the essence of which is undeviating
conformity to the general law which conditions
human life. It is ‘through his own blood’ (9!)
that He enters once for all into heaven. This
lays the emphasis on His death as the means
through which He makes that purification of sins
(1° 91) whereby access is gained to the throne of
grace (1019 414-16), The open way witnesses to a
sacrifice already offered and accepted (10! ἡγιασ-
μένοι ποὺ ἁγιαζύόμενοι, 10'4 τετελείωκεν [cf. Jn 1930]
τοὺς ἁγιαζομένους, Which RV rightly translates ‘them
that are [not ‘are being’] sanctified’). The new
covenant is thus dedicated with blood (918-22), not
because life is liberated through death (for why
should death effect this result except according to
Oriental mysticism ?), but because a death must
have taken place for the redemption of trans-
gressions (9! 105", ef. Mk 143: and parallels), which
is, in the phraseology of sacrifice, what St. Peter
says when he declares that ‘Christ bore our sins
in his body on the tree’ (1 P 2%).
Minds to which sacerdotal ideas are repugnant
will always resent such language as sophistical
and superstitious, and, if they do not reject, will
endeavour to explain away what is certainly the
meaning of the Epistle to the Hebrews. No doubt
this particular mould of thought is not necessary
to the gospel, which is content to assert that Christ
died for our sins. Yet the consequence of reject-
ing it is likely to be a denial of the atoning char-
acter of Christ’s death. To describe the central
fact of the gospel in ethical terms as a revelation
of love, an exhibition of obedience, or a manifesta-
tion of the Divine character, expresses a side of
truth, apart from which a doctrine of substitution
may become, if not immoral, at least supersti-
tious. But such descriptions cease to be true, if
they are taken for definitions. The Cross is no
longer a revelation, if it be not a redemption. Τῇ
it be large enough to deal with a situation of
which the factors are God, man, and sin; if it be
«a fact of religion through which men approach
that Personality in whom they have their being,
its significance cannot be understood unless it be
recognized as a mystery, illuminating and illumi-
nated by life and experience, but itself not. re-
ducible to simpler terms. It is at this point that
_lnysteries, in the Greek sense of the word, have
their place. No organized religious system can
entirely dispense with them. And Christianity
With its sacraments of initiation and membership
bears witness to the ‘mystery of godliness’ (ets
3”) preached by it among the nations. Whatever
may be the With individuals, the race has
found ho language in which to express its need
Cause
towards God but that of propitiatory sacrifice.
lo the method of its satisfaction many analogies
point, but all taken together cannot sum up the
Cross. For it is esse
ntially
bracing but not embraced Ἷ
theory, though to the
Saw must ever be
an eternal fact, em-
'y experience; and its
Spiritual man increasine]
less than that which it seeks
|
to explain. It is not distrust of reason, but the
confidence of intelligent faith which, the more
surely it realizes the reasonableness of the evan-
gelical doctrine of the Atonement, will the more
readily make the words of Bp. Butler its own:
‘Some have endeavoured to explain the efficacy
of what Christ has done and suttered for us, be-
yond what the Scripture has authorized; others,
probably because they could not explain it, have
been for taking it away, and confining His office as
Redeemer of the world to His instruction, example,
and government of the Church. Whereas the doc-
trine of the Gospel appears to be . . . not only
that He revealed to sinners that they were in a
capacity of salvation... but... that He put them
into this capacity of salvation by what He did
and suffered for them. . . . And it is our wisdom
thankfully to accept the benefit, by performing the
conditions upon which it is offered, on our part,
without disputing how it was procured on His’
(Analogy, pt. ii. ch. v.).
LITERATURE.—Among English works, J. M‘Leod Campbell,
The Nature of the Atonement ; H.N. Oxenham, Catholie Doc-
trine of the A.; R. W. Dale, The Atonement; J. M. Wilson,
Hulsean Lectures; J. Denney, The Death of Christ, and ‘The
A. and the Modern Mind; J. Scott Lidgett, Vhe Spiritual
Principle of the A. (Appendix on ‘The Doctrine of the A. in
Church History’); R. C. Moberly, Atonement and Personality ;
B. F. Westcott, I'he Victory of the Cross; ΝΥ. Alexander,
Verbum Crucis; W. O. Burrows, The Mystery of the Atone-
ment. The student should also consult A. M. Fairbairn, Christ
in Modern Theol., Div. m1. ch. ii. ; W. Sanday, Priesthood and
Sacrijice ; B. Εἰ. Westcott, Com. on Ep. to the Heb., passim, also
dissertation on ‘The Gospel of Creation’ in The Epistles of St.
John; A. B. Davidson, Theol. of the OT, 350 ff.; 8. R. Driver,
art. ‘ Propitiation’ in Hastings’ DB; W. P. Paterson, art. ‘ Sacri-
fice,’ ib. Among foreign writers may be mentioned A. Ritschl,
Die christl. Lehre von αἰ. Rechtfertigung τι. d. Versohnung (Eng.
tr. Justification and Reconciliation); A. Seeberg, Der Tod
Christi; W. Herrmann, Der Verkehr d. Christen mit Gott (Eng.
tr. Communion with God); B. Weiss, Lehrbuch ἃ. biblisch.
Theol. d. Newen Test. (Eng. tr. i. 419 ff. and ii. 220ff.); A.
Sabatier, The Doctrine of the A. andits historical Evolution
(Eng. tr.). As landmarks in the development of doctrine
Athanasius’ de Incarnatione and Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo are
amongst the most important. J. G. SIMPSON.
ATONEMENT, DAY OF.—Sce Day or ATONE-
MENT.
ATTRACTION.— Under this head we shall con-
sider the attraction possessed and exerted by the
character and the teaching of Christ as portrayed
and expressed in the four Gospels. ‘That character
and that teaching are, of course, inseparable ; for
the work and the message of Christ are vitally
and absolutely a personal work and a personal
message. Thus the supreme appeal of the gracious
invitation is: ‘Come unto Me’ (Mt 1138). Christ’s
character and teaching have an attraction, both
extensive and intensive, which goes far beyond
the merely cesthetic : it 15 ἃ dynamical and spiritual
attraction including and permeating man’s person-
ality. On the one hand, there is the uniqueness
of the message (Jn 74); on the other, the eauty
of the character (Jn 14); and yet the attraction
of Christ for all men is something deeper than ex-
pression or analysis, the attraction of One lifted
up from the earth, drawing all men to Himself
(Jn 12%), This attraction is the continual directed
pressure of His Holy Spirit in the hearts of men,
and its reality is suggested by Ignatius’ compari-
son of the Cross to a crane of which the Holy
Spirit is the rope to draw mankind upwards to the
Father in heaven (Zph. 9). The universality of
this attraction is exemplified in the Gospel records.
Jesus was the centre of attraction for multitudes,
men and women and children (Mk 127 22, Lk 19%
etc.) ; and Zacchzeus (Lk 194), Nicodemus (Jn 32),
| the ‘Greeks’ (Jn 12?) are only instances of this
attractive power which had its culmination in the
response of the Apostles to their Master’s call.
In these cases the attraction was visibly, audibly,
ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST
ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST
139
and sensibly personal ; the objects of it saw, heard,
a often felt the Man that is called JESUS (Jn 9",
1 9π|1}}:
To-day, the attraction of the teaching must be
held to be personal still, through that action of
the Holy Spirit which is implied in the inspiration
of the Gospels. This attraction may also be said
to have its seat in the fact of the revelation of God-
in-man vouchsafed to the race of men fashioned
in the likeness of God. Thus no limits can be set
to the etlicacy of the attraction of Christ which
starts from such a source: witness the unfailing
attractiveness of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt
5-7) and the last discourses (Jn 13-17). The
attraction, too, increases many-fold as it takes
effect in drawing us nearer to the Master. One
feature of this will be the more easy and quick
perception of fresh beauties and glories in the four-
fold Gospel of Christ, the acquisition of grace upon
grace (Mt 11, Mk 10, Lk 15, Jn 9).
More difficult of expression, and intertwined
with this attraction of the teaching, is the at-
traction of the character. Christ appealed to it.
‘Me ye have not always’ is the pathetic appeal
He made as man (Mt 26"); ‘I am with you all
the days’ is the glorious promise He makes as God
(Mt 28:9. Above all, however, it is the work of
Christ in the sacrifice of self for love of others that
draws the heart of man with cords stronger and
surer than any variable and uncertain attractions.
‘Having loved his own which were in the world,
he loved them unto the end’ (to the uttermost, εἰς
τέλος, Jn 13'). It is the Cross of Christ which is
the supreme instrument of the attraction, the Cross
on which He was lifted up in glory and in shame.
LITERATURE.—Seeley, Ecce Homo15, p. 156 f. ; Bruce, Galilean
Gospel, p. 30ff. and passim; Dale, Living Christ, p. 42 ff.,
Atonement 7, p. 438 f. W. B. FRANKLAND.
ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST. —In the Divine
Person of Jesus Christ two perfect Natures were
united. We shall therefore find attributes belong-
ing to (1) His Divine Nature, (2) the union of the
two Natures, (3) His true Human Nature. Asin
dealing with certain passages the extent of the
Kenosis will weigh greatly, the present arrange-
ment must be taken as largely provisional.
i, ATTRIBUTES BELONGING TO CHRIST'S DIVINE
NATURE.—Jesus Christ is the manifestation of the
Divine attributes. He is ‘the image (εἰκών) of the
invisible God’ (Col 115); ‘ the effulgence (ἀπαύγασμα)
of his glory, and the very image (χαρακτήρ) of his
substance’ (He 1°); ‘the power of God and the
wisdom of God’ (1 Co 1*)—synonyms for Λόγος, in
the phraseology of Jewish speculators. He applied
to Himself words spoken of God, making the
significant change of ‘Me’ to ‘Thee’ (Lk 7”, cf.
Mal 3! and Lk 117 34); He asserted that He came
forth from God (ἐκ Jn 8”, cf. παρά 178, ἀπό 13°),
words which ‘can only be interpreted of the true
divinity of the Son of which the Father is the
source and fountain’ (Westcott) ; He claimed the
power of interpreting and revising the Mosaic law
(Mt 52%, Mk 10%) ; He acted in the temple as its
master (Jn 2'4f, Mt 9113); He accepted from Thomas
the supreme title (Jn 20%), and joined His name
permanently with that of the Father (Mt 28").
St John identified the Divine Person of Isaiah’s
vision with Christ (Jn 12"). St Paul charged the
FEphesian elders to ‘ feed the Church of God which
he purchased with his own blood’ (Ac 20%) and
a olied to Christ the words of Joel, ‘ Whosoever
shall call upon the name of the LORD shall be saved ’
(Ro 10%). Thus He is One to whom prayer 1s
offered (Ac 759 14 probably), cf. one of the earliest
names for His disciples (Ac 9" *!, 1 Cor 15). In
the Epistles His Divinity is everywhere assumed
and is ‘present in solution in whole pages from
which not a single text could be quoted that
explicitly declares it.’* His name is joined with
that of the Father, and a singular verb follows
(1 Dh 3! 2) Thy 21647) the title: * Lord? in) the
highest sense is given (Ro 10°, 1 Cor 12%, ete.) ; He
is ‘God blessed for ever’ + (Ro 9°), and ‘in him
dwelleth all the fulness (πλήρωμα) of the Godhead
bodily ’ (Col 2%, cf. 119 Jn 1").
1. Eternal Existence.—Christ claimed that He
came down from heaven without ceasing to be
what He was before (Jn 83:5). Existence without
beginning is implied in 858 ‘ before Abraham was
born (γενέσθαι) 1 am’ (εἰμί), ef. Rev 21°; and He
spoke of the glory which He had with the Father
before the world was (Jn 175. The Adyos was in
the beginning, He was the ‘mediate Agent of
Creationea(dmi js Col 115. Henle 1°) Helis) the
upholder of all things (Col 1:7, He 1°), the ‘ first-
born of all creation’ and ‘before all things’ (Col
11°. 1"), ef. the use of ‘manifested’ (φανεροῦσθαι) in
1 Ti 3", 1 P 1, ete.
2. Unique Relation to God.—In a few passages
only does Jesus call Himself the Son of God (Lk
2270) Inyo OSes chew Mth 7a τ lO) yeenvet site
was early conscious of His Sonship (Lk 2%). He
frequently accepted the title (cf. Mt 161°), and this
led to the charge of blasphemy (Jn 197, ef. δ|8).
From the earliest time it was adopted as expressing
the uniqueness of His Person (Ac 939, Ro 1", ete.).
He is described as the ‘ Only-begotten ’ (μονογενής,
Jn 11 15. oe. 18.1 Jn: 43). . He jspoke ain a My,
Father,’ ‘Your Father,’ but not of ‘Our Father’
(except as a form of address to be used by His
disciples in prayer, Mt 6°, Lk 11° AV), ‘ thus draw-
ing a sharp line of distinction between Himself
and His disciples, from which,’ says Dalman,t
‘it may be perceived that it was not the
veneration of those that came after that first
assigned to Him an exceptional relation to God
incapable of being transterred to others.’ In this
respect Mt 11°’, which forms the link between the
Synopties and the Fourth Gospel, is quite explicit
(cf. Hastings’ DB ii. 623); cf. also Mk 13° and the
clear distinction made in Jn 9017,
3. Union and Equality.—The Jews interpreted
His words ‘My Father worketh even until now
and I work’ as making Himself equal with God,
and He did not correct them (Jn 5!” 38), ‘Tand
the Father are one’ (ἕν ἐσμεν) implies one essence
not, oe) Person.(10”), cf. 5271033 7.40 7 2 et
is difficult to describe the manner in which St.
Paul associates Him with the Father as the ground
of the Church’s being and the source of spiritual
grace and peace, in any other terms than as
ascribing to Him a coequal Godhead (1 Th 1! 31!*,
2 Th 1, 2 Co 13%), cf. Ph 2° (οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο
TO εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ).
4. Subordination and Dependence — such as
belong to the filial relation—are also clearly implied
in Jn δ᾽" (‘The Son can do nothing of himself, but
what he seeth the Father doing: for what things
soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like
manner’), and in Jn 1455 (‘ The Father is greater
than I’), cf. also Jn 57° 637, So in Epp. ‘All
things are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ
is God’s*.(1 Co 324-4), ΘΕ Ὁ. 112 152.
5. Universal Power is frequently claimed by
Christ as His even on earth, although it could not
be fully exercised until after the Ascension (Lk
10°? || Jn 1015. He is given authority (ἐξουσία) over
all flesh (Jn 17°); ‘ All authority hath been given
unto me in heaven and on earth’ (Mt 9818), cf. Jn
3” 13°. Accordingly St. Peter describes Him as
‘ Lord of all’ (Ac 10°) ; He is ‘over all’ (Ro 95) ; and
the ‘head of all principality and power’ (Col 2!°).
* Dale, Christian Doctrine, p. 87.
t See Sanday—Headlam, Romans, pp. 233-238.
} The Words of Jesus, p. 190 (Eng. tr.).
eee eee —— 0000S ——eeeEeEeEeEeEe———eEeEeESESEeE— SS
140 ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST
ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST
He is present still with His Church though invisible
(Mt 18:9 28”, ef. 1 Co δ), ruling and guiding (Ac 91}
22'8 9311 and cf. the letters to the Churches, Rev
2. 3).
6. Divine Consciousness and Knowledge. —
Jesus claimed a unique knowledge of the Father
and the exclusive power of revealing Him (Mt 1157).
He spoke of heavenly things which could only be
known by Divine consciousness (Mt 18! 1%, Lk
15", Jn 3! 14!). He was the great Prophet which
was to come (Jn 6'4, Ae 3°), the fullest revealer of
God’s will (He 1”), but He differed essentially from
even the highest prophets, in that He spoke with
authority as from Himself, and never introduced
His message by such words as ‘Thus saith the
Lord.’ ‘In him are all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge hidden’ (Col 2°). He knew (Jn 18)
and made known the details of His Passion and
fesurrection (Mk 851 9%! 10% ete., ef. 148%). He
foretold the sufferings of His disciples (Mt 10!5*),
the destruction of Jerusalem (Lk 19%: 44 2121), events
preceding the end of the world (Mt 24} and the
judgment of mankind (see below). Here too may
be mentioned His power of knowing the thoughts
of men. Such knowledge is described both as rela-
tive, acquired (γινώσκειν, cf. Mk 2%), and absolute,
possessed (εἰδέναι, ef. Jn 6%, Lk 11”), ef. Lk 79% 4°
97, Heseems to be addressed as καρδιογνώστης in
Ac 1*, which agrees with what is told as to His
supernatural knowledge of the thoughts and lives
of persons, cf. Jn 225: 5 (‘ He knew all men. .
he himself knew what was in man’), also Lk 195,
Jn 118 435-9 6 114-14. Tt appears also with regard
to things (Mt 1727 21? 2618 Lk 5*6 ef. Jn 915).
Whether such passages imply absolute omniscience,
or omniscience conditioned by human nature, de-
pends upon the view taken of the Kenosis (see West-
cott, Add. Note on Jn 2; Gore, Bamp. Lect. p. 147).
7. Self-assertion and Exclusive Claims.—His
works were such as no other man did (Jn 15%),
His words shall outlast heaven and earth (Mt 24°),
men will be judged by their relation to Him (Mt
7* 10%), and by their belief or unbelief on Him
(Mk 16'°, Jn 6 12%), He requires the forsaking
of everything which may prove a hindrance to
following Him (Mt 8 10%, Mk 1031, Lk 1425),
Suffering and loss incurred for His Name’s sake
will be rewarded in the Regeneration (Mt 1929 ll),
even now those who suffer for His sake are blessed
(Mt δ᾽. He claims to be the Light of the world
(Jn 8° 9° 12), the Way, the Truth, and the Life
(Jn 14°), Eternal life, spiritual streneth, and
growth can come only from union with Him and
feeding on Him (Jn δ 651 1038 1545172). He is
the Giver of rest and peace (Mt 1138, Jn 1427), And
such claims are endorsed by St. John (Jn 19,1 Jn
5) and St. Paul (Ro 81, Ph 423, 1 Ti 113).
li. ATTRIBUTES BELONGING TO THE UNION OF
THE TWO NATURES.—1. Mediation.—There is a
twofold Mediatorial activity ascribed to the Son
of God which must be distinguished; that pre-
sented in the revelation of the Logos proceeding
from God all-creating and all-sustaining ; and that
exhibited in the work of the Christ, leading back
to God and transforming the relation of contrast
into one of union, that God may be all in all.* |
Che former has been already mentioned, the latter
appears Im passages which speak of Christ as
delivering us from sin and Satan (Jn 123! 2 He
2“, 1 Jn 3° 5), as obtaining for us eternal life
(Jn 3 6°, Ro 6% ete.), as procuring the gracious
influence of the Holy Spirit (Jn 146 58 ἃς 233, Tit
25. 6 - " δι τα ‘ Ω . -
τ et -), conterring Christian graces (1 Co 154, Eph
** ete.), and acting as our representative High
Priest (He 41:4 7:5! ete.).+ The title ‘ Mediator’
(μεσίτης) occurs in 1 'Ti 25, He 88 915 7934.
ὦ
* See Martensen, Christian D gmatics, ἃ 180.
t Dale, Atonement, p. 451.
2. Sovereignty.—One object of Christ’s coming
was to found a world-wide imperishable society,
called the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of
God. He was foretold in prophecy as King (Zee
9°, cf. Mt 21°). He Himself spoke of His Kingdom
(Mt 13+! 1058, Lk 22%°) and accepted the title from
Pilate, but explained that it was ‘not of this
world’ (Jn 1859. °’). Satan tempted Him to ante-
date it by a short but sinful method (Mt 48: 9),
He is ‘ King of Kings and Lord of Lords’ (Rev 1916,
Git, NE).
Dalman (Words of Jesus, Ὁ. 133f.) thinks, assuming an
Aramaic original, that ἐν τῇ fer. μου or «trod would have to
be rendered ‘ when I am King,’ etc., and Lk 2342 ‘as King’; ef.
Dn 629 w3:77 M2722 ‘in the reign of Darius.’ On the ‘origi-
nality’ and ‘audacity’ of Christ’s design to form a world-wide
kingdom see Liddon, Banvp. Lect. iii.; Hece Homo, ch. v.
3. Consciousness of His Mission was ever present
to His mind. Frequently He uses such expressions
as ‘the Father that sent me’ (Jn 653 81:6, cf. 9031),
‘Him that sent me’ (Jn 7* 12* 16°), ‘I am sent’
(Mt 154, Lk 4:5). There was the sense of purpose
in His life, “ΤῸ this end am I come into the world,
that I should bear witness unto the truth’ (Jn 1897),
it is implied in the repeated use of ‘must’ (δεῖ),
implymg ‘moral obligation, especially that con-
straint which arises from Divine appointment’
(Grimm-Thayer, see Mk 8*!, Lk 24% TR, Jn 314
ete.); and cf. Lk 9°! ‘He steadfastly set (ἐστήριξε)
his face to go to Jerusalem.’
4. Sinlessness.—While He had the most perfect
appreciation of sin and holiness, while He pre-
scribed repentance and conversion, rebuking all
self-righteousness and pride, He was absolutely
without any consciousness of sin or need of re-
pentance in Himself. He claimed to be free from
it (Jn 14°°); He challenged examination and con-
viction (Jn 8%); He could say at the end: “1
glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished
the work which thou hast given me to do’ (Jn 174,
cf. Jn 8* 19°, Mt 3!7 17°; and as to His best disciples,
Lk 17"), The truth of His claim was testified by
His forerunner (Mt 3"), most intimate friends (Jn
114), enemies (Mk 1455), judges (Jn 1858, Mt 2724
ete., Lk 23), and betrayer (Mt 274)—on Mk 1018
see the Commentaries. Christ’s moral perfection
is recognized everywhere in the Epistles: ‘who
knew no sin’ (2 Co 5); ‘who did no sin, neither
was guile found in his mouth’ (1 P 2%). He is
holy (ἅγιος, Ac 384, Rev 37; ὅσιος, He 730), righteous
(δίκαιος, 1 P 318,1 Jn 21), pure (ἁγνός, 1 Jn 3°), ouile-
less and undefiled (ἄκακος, ἀμίαντος, He 725); ef.
He 4, 1 Jn 3°, 1 P 19.
5. Glory.—St. Jolin, summing up his experience,
writes: ‘We beheld his glory, glory as of the
only-begotten from the Father’ (Jn 1"4) ; here many
find a reference to the Shekinah (note ἐσκήνωσεν»)
and interpret δύξα as the ‘totality of the Divine
attributes’ (cf. Liddon, B L? 232); others, as ‘a glory
which corresponded with His filial relation to the
Father even when He had laid aside His divine
glory’ (Westcott). Isaiah in his vision saw His glory
(Jn 12), it was manifested in His ‘signs’ (Jn 214),
and at the Transfiguration (2 P 117: In some
sense it was laid aside or veiled at the Incarnation
(Jn 17°), but Christ constantly spoke of it as re-
gained by means of His death and resurrection
(Jn 1235 133! 171-5), ef. Jn 1216, Ph 321, and Rev 5!
(‘Worthy is the Lamb that hath beenslain to receive
the power and riches . . . and glory and blessing’).
He will come hereafter in His glory as Judge (Mt
25°1), cf. Mt 1978, Ῥ 43; and in Epp. He is styled
‘the Lord of glory’ (1 Co 28, Ja 2}).
6. Salyation.—His mission on earth was ‘to
seek and to save that which was lost’ (Lk 19", ef.
9°) Jn 13), ἢ ΠῚ 115} 10 8 Ξ implied in His very
name (Mt 15). He is the author (ἀρχηγός, He 2”;
αἴτιος, 5°) of salvation. Twice only is the full title
ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST
ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST
141
‘Saviour of the world’ given (Jn 4%, 1 Jn 4:3, ef,
1 Ti 4"), but ‘Saviour’ is found frequently (Lk 24,
Gig e AcEb 15... ἘΠ 90 2) PA388etc:). In this
connexion may be noted the power of forgiving
sins which He claimed on earth as Son of Man; see
His words to the man sick of the palsy, with the
comment of the bystanders (Mt 9:1), and to the
woman who was a sinner (Lk 74°), cf. Ac 5*! 10%,
7. Judgment.—One of the most momentous at-
tributes is the power of judging mankind, involving
complete and entire knowledge of the thoughts,
actions, and circumstances of all men (cf. 1 Co 4°).
That such should be His work was foretold by
John the Baptist (Mt 315) and asserted by Himself
(Mt 167? 25%! ete., ef. Rev 2212), It is committed to
Him by the Father (Jn 5°), because He is a son of
man (Jn 5°? RVm), and His disciples should watch,
making supplication that they may prevail . . . to
stand before Him (Lk 21%). He is ‘ ordained by
God to be the judge of quick and dead’ (Ac 10%,
cf. 1151, 2 Ti 41), and before His judgment-seat we
all must be made manifest (2 Co 5", ef. Ro 14),
8. Supreme Power.—He exercised power over
nature (Jn 29, Mt 876 14% 2119 Mk 6%, Lk 53%),
His various miracles of healing showed His power
over disease. Sometimes the eure was accom-
panied by His touch (Mt 8% 15. 2051, Lx 2951) ; some-
times the sufferer touched Him (Mk 5*, Lk 61) ;
it was wrought by a word (Mt 1213) ; or by visible
and tangible means (Jn 9°-7); and even at a dis-
tance (Mt 8, Mk 7%, Jn 459, Three instances of
power over death are recorded (Mk 5*!, Lk 7%,
Jn 11%); cf. Mt 11% His power also over evil
spirits was shown in many cases and acknowledged
by them (Mk 13 57, Lk 433 etc., cf. Ac 1038. He
was the One stronger than the strong man, Lk
1133, cf. Mt 4". He excited astonishment in the
people (noted chiefly in Mk. and Lk.). It was
caused by His teaching (Mt 7:8, Mk 1”), His
words of grace (Lk 4”, οἵ. Jn 715. 45), and the
authority with which He spoke (Lk 433); in these
instances θαυμάζειν and ἐκπλήσσεσθαι are used.
The effects produced by His miracles are ex-
pressed by similar words of amazement—éauud-
fev (Mt 1531, Mk 5, Lk 114, Jn 72"); ἐκπλήσ-
σεσθαι (Mk 757, Lk 9%); θάμβος and ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι
(Mk 9%, Lk 4°); ἔκστασις and ἐξίστασθαι (Mk 913,
Lk 5°6 8%) ; φόβος (Lk 5°° 715), Among the disciples
the same feelings were caused : ‘they were sore
amazed in themselves’ (λίαν ἐξίσταντο, Mk 6°!);
‘being afraid they marvelled’ (φοβηθέντες ἐθαύμ-
acav, Lk 8”); ‘they were amazed (ἐθαμβοῦντο) and
astonished exceedingly ᾿ (ἐξεπλήσσοντο, Mk 1074 36),
‘they were amazed (ἐθαμβοῦντο) and afraid’ (ἐφοβ-
ovvTo) on the last journey to Jerusalem (Mk 10°”).
9. Dignity.—An attribute commanding respect
and reverence is closely connected with the above.
The Baptist declared Christ to be immeasurably
above himself (Jn 1°7), while Christ described him
as the greatest of the prophets because His fore-
runner (Mt 11% ?"); the disciples ‘ were afraid to
ask him’ (Mk 952, ef. Jn 4°7); those who came to
arrest Him fell to the ground (Jn 18°, cf 10° RV),
and Pilate was the more afraid hearing His claim
to be the Son of God (Jn 19%); note His silence
(Mt 26%f Mik 15%, Lk 23%). Other feelings, how-
ever, than reverence for His dignity were also
excited, e.g. repulsion in the demoniacs (Lk 455)
and in the Gerasenes (Mk 5!7); wrath (Lk 455);
shame in His adversaries, joy in the multitude
(Lk 13"); consciousness of unworthiness in the
centurion (Mt 88), and of sinfudness in Pete
(Lik*58):
10. Restraint in the use of Power.—This attri-
bute is strongly marked. Christ never used His
Divine power for His own benefit (Mt 455) nor for
destroying life (on apparent exceptions, Mk 5”,
Mt 21°, sce Comm.),.
He restrained it that the
Scriptures might be fulfilled (Mt 26%4), and His
exercise of it was often limited by want of faith on
the part of those present (Mt 1955),
iii. ATTRIBUTES BELONGING TO CHRIST’S TRUE
HuMAN NATURE.—Becoming truly man, He took
upon Him our nature as the Fall had left it, with
its limitations, its weaknesses, and its ordinary
feelings so far as they are not tainted by sin.
He partook of flesh and blood, and in all things
was made like unto His brethren (He 2" 11 ef. Ro
8°). He possessed a true human will, but ever
subject to the guidance of the Divine will (Jn 05,
Mt 26°) ; ahuman soul (ψυχή, Mt 26°, Jn 12°7) and
a human spirit (πνεῦμα, Mk 28, Lk 23%, Jn 11°85, 1 P
318); He was representative Man (1 Co 1533) ; all
which is implied in ‘the Word became flesh’ (6
Λόγος σάρξ ἐγένετο, Jn 1). The Permanence of His
Manhood is evident since He was recognized after
the Resurrection (cf. Jn 2057) and ascended with
His glorified body into Heaven; there He inter-
cedes as our High Priest (He 4" ete.), and will one
day come again in like manner as He was seen to
go into heaven (Ac 11}.
1. Limitation of Power seems to be implied in
the Incarnation ; it is noted especially by St Mark,
who has several passages expressing inability (οὐ
δύνασθαι, Mk 1” 7-4 and 6°, which compare with Mt
13°).
2. Limitation of Knowledge is distinctly asserted
by Jesus Himself on one point (Mt 24° RV, Mk
13°, ef. Ac 17, He 1013). In His childhood He grew,
‘Lecoming full of wisdom’ (πληρούμενον) ; He ad-
vanced (προέκοπτε) in wisdom (Lk 2%": *) ; the story
of the fig-tree implies that He expected to find
fruit (ἦλθεν εἰ dpa εὑρήσει τι ἐν αὐτῇ, Mk 11%). He
prayed as if the future were not clear (Mt 2653) ;
He asked questions for information (Mt 958, Mk 098
Sep cd 051. 0} teh day IE) care, uD te! ILA
3. Astonishment and Surprise.—In two cases
only is Jesus said to have marvelled (θαυμάζειν, Mk
6°, Lk 7°), but surprise is implied at His parents
(Lk 2%); at the disciples’ slowness of faith and
understanding (Mk 4” 7!5); at the sleep of Simon
(Mk 14°"); cf. Mk 14°° where a very strong word
is used of the Agony (ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι, to be ‘struck
with amazement’).
4, Need of Prayer and Communion with the
Father is apparent from many passages. Some-
times He continued all night in prayer (Lk 6%).
It was associated with great events in His life (Lk
9.51.0 15: 10 0155 98} 7192 57 Ὁ ΠΡ al coi, Lele τὺ σε
mentioned after days of busy labour (Mt 1455, Mk
1, Lk 51%). He offered thanks also (Mt 11”, Jn
111), Jesus prayed for His disciples (Lk 22%,
Jn 17), and taught them to pray (Mt 6%, Lk 11°),
but He never gathered them to pray with Him.
Compare also Mt 141° 1915, Lk 11! 24” ete.
5. Temptation was a reality to Jesus (Mt 41!) |),
Satan left Him only for a season (Lk 4:3; οἵ. Lk
2253, Jn 14°), It came also from Peter (Mt 10:9)
and His enemies (Lk 11%); οἵ, Lk 2275 (ἐν τοῖς
πειρασμοῖς μου); He was ‘in all points tempted like
as we are, yet without sin’ (χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας, He 41°).
6. Suffering came from such temptation (He
2'8); but the word πάσχειν is specially used of the
last days of His earthly life. Thus the prophecy
of the Suffermg Servant in Isaiah was fulfilled
(Mk 913, Lk 24°°- 46; ef, εἰ παθητὸς ὁ Χριστός, Ac 26”),
Peter’s confession at Cresarea Philippi marked the
time when Jesus began to emphasize this side of
the Messianic prophecies (Mt 167, cf. Mt 417). The
only absolute use of the word in the Gospels oceurs
in Lk 22, (See ‘Sorrow’ below.) By sufiering
He learned the moral discipline of human experi-
ence, He was ‘made pezfect’ and ‘learned obedi-
ence’ (He 2! 58:9), so that He can be a pattern and
example for Christians (1 P 2%, 1 Jn 26 33). He
exhibited faith (He 3*°) and trust (Jn 11%, He 915)
142 ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST
—--- ---------
ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST
in the highest forms. He is the ‘author and per-
fecter (ἀρχηγὸς καὶ TeXewr7s) of our faith’ (He 125),
‘the perfect example—perfect in realization and
effect—of that faith which we are to imitate trust-
ing in Him’ (Westcott). Swbhmission and Obedience
He showed to Mary and Joseph also (Lk 251), and
to His Heavenly Father (Mt 26”); οἵ. Ro5!% The
purpose of His life was summed up in the words
‘to do thy will, Ὁ God’ (He 107). Ἷ
7. Liability to Human Infirmities.—J esus experi-
enced hunger (Mt 4" 2138, ef. Jn 4%!) ; thirst (Jn 47
19*8, οἵ. Mt 27%); weariness and pain: ‘being
wearied (κεκοπιακώς) with His journey He sat thus
(οὕτως) by the well’ (Jn 4°); in the boat He ‘fell
asleep’ (ἀφύπνωσε, Lk 8539); in the Garden there
appeared an angel strengthening Him (ἐνισχύων,
Lk 22); He was unable to carry His cross (Mk
1551), and it would seem that He Himself required
support (ef. φέρουσι v.72 with ἐξάγουσι v.~°) ; ef. 2 Co
13', He 415, No sickness is mentioned (the quot.
in Mt 8” can hardly bear this meaning) ; He truly
died, but it was a voluntary death (Jn 1017-38; and
note that in no Gospel is the word ‘died’ used of
His passing from life); cf. Ro 69 ‘death hath no
more dominion over him?’ (οὐκέτι κυριεύει), and Ac 9523,
8. Sorrow.—The prophecy was amply fulfilled
that the Messiah should be ‘a man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief.’ Sorrow was inevitable for
one who had such insight into human nature, and
so sympathized with its woes (ef. Jn 11°38), It
came also from ‘the gainsaying’ (ἀντιλογία) of sinners
(He 12%, cf. 1 P 251). One of the greatest causes
of grief is misunderstanding of motive and action,
which He experienced in abundance. On one
occasion His relatives spoke of Him as ‘mad’
(ἐξέστη, Mk 3!) ; His enemies said He had a demon
and was mad (Jn 107°), and ascribed His works to
Beelzebub (Lk 11%). There was disappointment
also (Lk 13%, Jn δ). The knowledge of what
was coming cast a shadow on His life (Lk 12°, Jn
12*7), it is implied in the description of the last
journey to Jerusalem (Mk 10%); at the Last
Supper He was troubled in spirit (ἐταράχθη, Jn 137) ;
it is clearly expressed in the accounts of the Agony
—Mt 26% ἤρξατο λυπεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν, the latter
expressing ‘utter loneliness, desertion, and desolate-
ness’ (Edersheim) ; Mk 14% ἤρξατο ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι καὶ
ἀδημονεῖν ; Lk 22 γενόμενος ἐν ἀγωνίᾳ, and the
Bloody Sweat; His soul was περίλυπος ἕως θανάτου
(Mt 26%) ; the strong word ἀπεσπάσθη ‘ was parted’
is used in Lk 22" as if the separation itself caused
grief; and the sorrow culminated in the heart-
broken cry on the cross (Mt 274). Cf. He δ
μετὰ κραυγῆς ἰσχυρᾶς καὶ δακρύων.
9. Joy.—It would be a great mistake, however,
to regard His whole life as one of continuous over-
whelming sorrow.* Our accounts deal almost
entirely with the last three years, and surely
there must have been much real happiness in the
previous thirty years spent in honest work amid
the beautiful surroundings of Nazareth, especially
as He was conscious of no stain of guilt or failure
in duty, and felt no remorse. Even in the Gospels
Wwe see His pure appreciation of nature and of
ehildren’s
8S games. It is once recorded that He
rejoiced in spirit (ἠγαλλιάσατο, Lk 10°"), and several
times He used ‘joy’ (χαρά and χαίρω) of Himself
(Jn 11 15" 17!3, ef, Lk 15510), He must have felt
Joy In communion with His Father (Mt 11%, Jn
1141), and in the consciousness of suceess (Lk 1018
Jn 16%), Complaisance appears in His praise of
the centurion (Mt 8.10) and His werds to Simon
(Mt 16'7) ; cf. Mt 2116 Lk 19% Jn 482. So He 122
(‘for the joy that was set before him he endured
the cross’). See ‘Sox lability’ (29),
_ 10. Humility and Meekness.— These were shown
in the circumstances of His childhood (Lk 924.51) .
* See Brooks, New Starts in L Je, Sermon on ‘Joy and Sorrow
———————EE
during His ministry He was homeless (Mt 8”), and
sometimes without money (Mt 177’, ef. Lk 85. He
describes Himself as ‘meek and lowly of heart’
(πρᾷος καὶ ταπεινός, Mt 11%); οἵ. Jn 1%, 2 Co 10! (διὰ
τῆς mpadrnros Kal ἐπιεικείας τοῦ Χριστοῦ). ‘Though
he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor’
(ἐπτώχευσε, 2 Co 89); He ‘emptied himself’ (ἑαυτὸν
éxévwoe, Ph 27, see whole passage). His life was
one of unselfish ministry to others (Mt 20%, Jn
134, Lk 2277-51; ef, 2338 and the first three ‘ Words
on the Cross’). He ‘pleased not himself’ (Ro 15%),
and ‘ He gave himself up for us’ (Eph δ᾽).
11. Patience and Longsuffering are seen in
Lk 95 23%, Jn 18-23; He left us the example of
His), patience (1 Ὁ 2220-2) Ele e212) οὐ nase
(Lightfoot’s Notes on Epp. of St. Paul, in loc.) and
Hae Te :
12. Compassion.—His compassion (σπλαγχνίζεσθαι)
is often noticed ; it led Him to send out the Twelve
(Mt 9°), to heal the sick (Mt 14"), to feed the 4000
(Mt: 15°), to give sight to the blind (Mt 20°), to
touch the leper (Mk 151), to teach (Mk 6%), and to
restore the widow’s son (Lk 7!). Cf. also Lk 1%,
Mk 9, Ph 18. In AV ‘compassion’ stands also for
ἐλεεῖν (Mk 5!) and μετριοπαθεῖν (He 5°). His mercy
is appealed to (ἐλεεῖν) by the Canaanite woman
(Mt 1539), Bartimzeus (Mk 10%), and the ten lepers
(Lk 17). Heisa High Priest who can be ‘ touched
with the feeling (συμπαθῆσαι) of our infirmities’ (He
415). cf. Mt 817,
13. Tender Thoughtfulness appears in Mt 177
2810, Mk 651. 4, Jn 6! (RV) 18° 20". (Cf. the story
of Jairus’ daughter, Mk 5%® 40. 41. 43 (on Mk 75, see
Comm. ).
14, Pity.—In the story of the man with the
withered hand mingled pity and anger appear
(συλλυπούμενος, Mk 3°). Twice He is recorded to
have sighed (ἐστέναξε, Mk 7%; dvacrevdias τῷ
πνεύματι, 8:3). Twice He wept for others (ἔκλαυσεν,
Lk 19%; ἐδάκρυσεν, Jn 11%; ef. He 5’, under
‘Sorrow’ above). He was accustomed to give alms
to the poor (Jn 125 13%). Cf. Lk 134 22%),
15. Love.—He showed His affection for little
children, taking them up in His arms (Mk 956 1016,
cf. Mt 211°); beholding the rich young ruler, He
loved him (ἠγάπησεν, Mk 107!); He ealled the dis-
ciples His friends (φίλοι, Lk 124, Jn 1513" 15). whom
He loved (ἠγάπησεν) unto the end (Jn 13], ef. 13%4
15°: 1"), Even in this select circle there was one of
Whom it was specially said ‘Jesus loved him’
(ἠγάπα, Jn 19° 217-2; ἐφίλει, Jn 20°). He also
loved (ἐφίλει) Lazarus (Jn 11° 36), and, with a sig-
nificant change of word (ἠγάπα, Jn 115), Martha
and Mary. There are many reff. in Epp. to His
love for His people and the Church; ef. Eph 52%,
to 8%, 2 Co 5'4, it ‘passeth knowledge’ (Eph 315),
from it true love may be learned (1 Jn 8316 RV).
16. Courage and Firmness appear under various
circumstances in Mt 825, Mk 4°5-40 1032, Lk 42°, Jn
111 18-194. His ndependence was well expressed
by His questioners (Mt 22%),
17. Fear in any unworthy sense (φόβος) is not
attributed to Him. In He 5/itissaid that He was
‘heard for His godly fear’ (εὐλάβεια). Westeott
takes the word in ‘its noblest sense,’ so Alford
‘reverent submission’ (see note); but Grimm-
Thayer prefers to render as ‘fear, anxiety, dread’ ;
‘by using this more select word, the writer, skilled
as he was in the Greek tongue, speaks more rever-
ently of the Son of God than if he had used φόβος.᾽
Caution, however, is often noted; ef. His with-
drawals before opposition (Mk 37 724, Jn 71.1154),
also Jn 6! and the directions about the place of
the Last Supper (Lk 9910).
18. Desire (ἐπιθυμία, see art. DESIRE) is once
used of Himself (Lk 22"), and a longing for sym-
pathy is apparent in His bringing of the three into
the Garden and His returning to them between
ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST
His prayers (Mt 2051): ‘in magnis tentationibus
juvat solitudo, sed tamen ut in propinquo sint
amici’ (Bengel).
49. That he felt shame at hearing a foul story
seems a fair inference from Jn 85 (see Hece Homo,
ch. ix. end). He Himself says, ‘Whosoever shall
be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall
the Son of Man be ashamed’ (ἐπαισχυνθήσεται, Lk
926). cf. He 12°.
20. Anger and Indignation He often showed,
though ὀργή is attributed to Him in only one
passage in the Gospels (Mk 3°; cf. ὀργὴ τοῦ ᾿Αρνίου,
Rev 6). He was ‘moved with indignation’ at
the action of the disciples (ἠγανάκτησε, Mk 1012);
possibly this should also be the translation of
ἐμβριμᾶσθαι in Jn 11-383 (RVm), on which see
notes of Westcott and Godet. The same word
is rendered ‘strictly charge’ (‘threateningly to
enjoin,’ Grimm-Thayer) in Mt 95, Mk 1%. His re-
Dukes (ἐπιτιμᾶν) are noted (Mt 826, Mk 12, Lk 439).
Cf. also Mk δ 1121, Jn 2'5, Mt 21°. Sometimes he
used Irony and Sarcasm: Lk 5", Mk 79 (καλῶς
ἀθετεῖτε); Lk 13° (‘that fox’); Lk 162 (‘and was
buried’ [‘a sublime irony,’ Trench)). Hypocrisy
excited His deepest abhorrence. Cf. the Woes on
the Scribes and Pharisees, Mt 23" || ending ‘ye
serpents, ye offspring of vipers’; also Mt 12".
21. Attractiveness appears in the readiness of
many whom He called to forsake all and follow
Him. The common people ‘heard him gladly’
(Mk 12°, οἵ. Lk 1948, Jn 1929); publicans and out-
casts were drawn to the ‘friend of publicans and
sinners’ (Mk 215, Lk 737 198); two members at least
of the Sanhedrin became His disciples (m9 5: Ὁ;
and He foretold how by His Crucifixion and Resur-
rection this attractiveness would attain universal
sway (Jn 12%). See art. ATTRACTION.
29, Sociability.—In this respect Jesus presented
a marked contrast to the Baptist, which was com-
mented upon (Lk 7°). He accepted invitations
from Pharisees (Lk 786 11°7 14!) and from Publicans
(Mt 9”, ef. Lk 195). In the home at Bethany He
was a welcome guest (Lk 10%). His first ‘sign’
was wrought at a marriage feast (Jn 2"), and much
of His parabolic teaching was suggested by feasts
and the incidents of ordinary life ; cf. Mt 292 951. 14,
Juke 1418 19”.
93. His Catholicity is to be noted finally.
Though a Jew on the human side, yet He rose
entirely above all merely national limits. ‘He
can be equally claimed by both sexes, by all classes,
by all men of all nations.’* Even in His earthly
ministry, though necessarily confined to His own
nation (Mt 15%), His sympathy went beyond these
bounds; ef. Mt 85: 15, Lk 10°3f 1738, Jn 42% 85
1016 122% 47, He looked forward to the time when
‘they shall come from the east and west, and
from the north and south’ (Lk 13”); ef. Mk 13"
and His last command, Mt 28". So each race of
men as it is gathered into the Church finds in Him
its true ideal.
We have thus presented to us a Person in whom
Divine power, wisdom, and goodness are joined
with the highest and holiest type of manhood.
The portrait is ‘such as no human being could
have invented. . . . We could not portray such an
image without some features which would betray
their origin, being introduced by our limited, erring,
sinful minds. .. . And least of all could Jews have
done so; for this was not by any means the ideal
of their minds’ (Luthardt, Fundamental Truths
of Christianity, 295f., and notes). See also artt.
on DIVINITY and HUMANITY OF CHRIST, and on
NAMES AND TITLES.
LITERATURE.—Sanday’s ‘Jesus Christ,’ Ottley’s ‘Incarnation,’
Bampton Lectures
and Dissertations ; Liddon, Bampton Lectures ; Stalker, Imago
AUGUSTUS
143
Christi; Seeley, Ecce Homo ; Dale, Christian Doctrine and The
Atonement; Dalman, Uhe Words of Jesus; Robinson (J. A ),
The Study of the Gospels; Robinson (C. H.), Studies in the
Character of Christ; D'Arcy, Ruling Ideas of Owr Lord;
Beet, Through Christ to God; Edersheim, Life and Times of
Jesus the Messiah ; Commentaries of Westcott, etc.
W. H. DUNDAS.
AUGUSTUS.—The designation usually applied
to Caius Octavius, son of Caius Octavius and Atia,
grandson of Julia the sister of C. Julius Cesar,
erand-nephew of the Dictator and ultimately his
idopted son and heir. He was born 23rd Sept.
B.C. 63, not far from the ‘ House’ on the Palatine
afterwards built for him; declared Emperor B.C. 29;
honoured with the title of ‘ Augustus’ B.C. 27 ; died
19th Aug. A.D. 14 at Nola, when he had almost
reached the age of 77.
If we take b.c. 6 as the corrected date for the
birth of Jesus, we find that Augustus was then in
his 58th year, had already been Emperor 23 years,
and had’ before him 20 more. Though his reign
thus runs parallel with the Christian era for 20
years, there is but a single allusion to him in the
Gospel history (Lk 2!). In the NT writings there
are but three other instances of the use of the
name Augustus. Of these one only (Ac 27!) can
be held as possibly pointing to him, the other two
(Ac 2571 and 25%) mean the reigning Cesar (RV
‘Emperor’), in both cases Nero. Even that soli-
tary allusion to Cesar Augustus might have had
no place in the Gospel record, had it not been St.
Luke’s aim to ‘trace the course of all things
accurately from the first.” In ‘drawing up his
narrative’ he makes it evident that Nazareth, not
Bethlehem, was the home of Joseph and Mary, and
that the ‘enrolment,’ originating in a decree of
Cesar Augustus, was the occasion of the journey
from Nazareth within a little time of the expected
birth. The Syrian governor is named with the
view of fixing the date, as was the custom in those
days. Theophilus, as a Roman official, would have
access to the list of provincial governors, and must
have at once understood the exact period meant.
Thus Augustus’ contact with Jesus, so far as
Scripture deals with it, begins and ends with Lk 2".
It need not surprise us that there is no further
reference in the 20 years of contemporaneous
history that followed. The birth of Jesus took
place in a remote part of the Empire and in an
insignificant town of Judah. The first 30 years
of His life, with the exception of the brief sojourn
in Egypt, were spent in the obscure, even despised,
Nazareth. Among His townsmen He was known
only as the carpenter (Mk 6°), or the carpenter's
son (Mt 13°). Though the arrival of the wise men
from the East, with the inquiry as to the birth
of ‘the King of the Jews,’ ‘troubled Herod’ and
‘all Jerusalem with him’ (Mt 2°), the commotion
caused by their advent soon passed with the
tyrant’s death in B.C, 4. Even the Massacre of
the Innocents ‘from two years old and under’ in
Bethlehem may never have been heard of in the
palace of Augustus, or, if heard of, would have
made very little impression, owing to the many
acts of cruelty that had marked Herod’s reign.
It was about this very time that Augustus is
reported to have said that it was ‘better to be
Herod’s sow than his son’ (Macrob. Saturn. li. 4).
For St. Luke, with his wider outlook as a cultured Greek
writing to a Roman official, it was quite natural to give a
distinct place in his record to the decree about the census as
leading up to the birth in Bethlehem. The object of the decree
is given in the RV correctly as ‘an enrolment’ (ἀπογραφή), not
necessarily involving ‘a taxing’ as well. As on this occasion it
did not lead to any serious uprising of the Jews, as in A.D. 6,
it must have been only a census in accordance with Jewish
customs: ‘all went to enrol themselves, every one to his own
city.’ The historian is careful to point out that it was part only
of a world-wide enrolment (‘all the world’). In the light of
later research, we can add that this decree seems to have intro-
duced a periodic census in the Roman Empire. The carefully
chosen language of St. Luke distinguishes between the going
144 AUGUSTUS
AUGUSTUS
up from Galilee as an act once for all completed (ἀνέβη), and an
enrolment begun and having a continuance (ἐπορεύοντο πάντες
ἀπογράφεσθαι). The further description of the census as ‘the
first’ accords with this, not the first under Quirinius, but the first
of aseries. For those to whom St. Luke wrote the decree was
memorable as ‘the first’ that affected the Jews. Other enrol-
ments may have taken place before it under Augustus, as the
review by the Emperor himself in the celebrated Monumentum
Ancyranum bears, but there is no contradiction between that
and the Evangelist’s testimony. Three distinct censuses are
there named (in B.c, 28, B.c. 8, and in A.D. 14). Only the number
of Roman citizens is given in each case, as all others might
not have been considered worthy of being mentioned in the
Emperor’s Memorials. Important light has recently been
thrown on the system of enrolments in the Roman Empire
through the labours of various scholars referred to by Prof. W. M.
Ramsay in his volume Was Christ boriat Bethlehem? The tombs
and even the dust-heaps of Egypt are proving that enrolments
of households there were quite common, and even that a cycle
of 14 years was observed. Applying this cycle to the period
immediately before and after the Christian era, we bring out
well-known dates, B.c. 8 and A.D. 6, the former marking a
Roman-citizen census taken by Augustus, and the other that
of the ‘great census,’ when the disturbances took place in
Palestine which were quelled by Quirinius. There is thus a
strong presumption, amounting almost to proof, that B.c. 8 is
the most likely date for the issue of the decree referred to in
Lk2!. The delay between B.c. 8 and B.c. 6, so as to have it
coincide with the corrected date for the birth of Jesus, may be
accounted for by the strained relations existing about the time
between Augustus and Herod, and also between Herod and his
subjects. As it seems to have been the first enrolment of Jews
under the Empire, it is easy to conceive that time was needed
to overcome Jewish scruples.
The real difficulty, however, as to this alleged census under
Quirinius lies in reconciling St. Luke’s testimony with the facts
of secular history. TheSyrian governorsin the period of B.c. 9-4
are given by Schitirer as C. Sentius Saturninus (B.c. 9-6) and
P. Quintilius Varus(B.c. 6-4). As B.c. 4 is the generally accepted
year of Herod’s death, the possibility of a governorship of
Quirinius at the time of the execution of the decree of Cesar
Augustus is thereby excluded. Many therefore have been
ready to say, with Mommsen, that St. Luke has ‘erred.’ Even
Tertullian is quoted against the Evangelist, when he affirms
that an ‘enrolment’ was made by Sentius Saturninus. And yet
his testimony, while it differs from that of St. Luke as to the
name of the governor of Syria, supports none the less the fact
that there was a census earlier than the famous one of A.D. 6.
The evidence in favour of an earlier as well as later governor-
ship of Quirinius is nowadmitted to be so strong, that Mommsen
and others have fully accepted it. The only question that
remains is as to where we are to place it. Important help
towards the solution of it has been found in the inscription
discovered at Tivoli in 1764, now preserved in the Lateran
Museum of Christian Antiquities. On it are recorded the ex-
ploits of a Roman official, with the honours awarded to him in
the time of Augustus. While no name has been preserved, we
are told that he was proconsul in Asia, and that he twice
governed Syria and Pheenicia. The only one, known to us, who
satisfies these conditions is Quirinius. Where then, in the
interval immediately before the birth of Jesus in B.c. 6 or at
latest B.c. 5, are we to find room for his earlier Syrian governor-
ship? It must be between Saturninus and Varus, or as a con-
temporary of the one or the other. If we can find proofs in
history of a double ‘hegemony’ in provincial government, we
mnay consider that only theve can the solution lie. In the
history of Josephus we have a singular confirmation of this two-
fold governorship. A Volumnius is named in relation to Sentius
Saturninus as ‘the hegemon of Cwesar’ (Schiirer, HJP 1. i.
p. 350). Why might not Quirinius have been the military
governor, while Saturninus was the civil administrator? In
view of the progress of discovery in recent years, may we not
hope that some additional fragment of the Tiburtine inscription
will be found, and definitely settle the much debated question as
to the historical accuracy of St. Luke? See art. Census.
Though secular history from B.c. 6 to A.D. 14
furnishes us with no trace of any influence havine
been exerted by Augustus on Jesus or by Jesus on
Augustus, we are able to trace, in the remarkable
career of Augustus, a singular preparation for the
Christian era. In nothing is this more manifest
than in his unification of the Empire. When
Augustus finally defeated Antony at Alexandria
in B.C. 31, he was the one ruler left in the whole
Roman world. The only adverse influence with
which he had thereafter to contend was found
among the heads of the old families in the Roman
Senate, : In the course of the next 10 or 12 years
he so skilfully guided the affairs of the State, that
he was clothed with every attribute of supremacy
which it seemed possible for the State to bestow.
rat is true, indeed, that the imperf.
repetition of the census, but
for some time (cf. Winer, (
may point, not to a
Simply to the fact of its going on
ram. of NT Greek (Eng tr.]9, p. 335),
The title of ‘ Princeps Senatus’ was revived in B.C.
29, and had new significance given toit. In B.C. 27
the Senate conferred upon him the proconsular
imperium for 10 years. This put into his hands an
all but absolute military power throughout the
empire. At this same time he received the title of
‘ Augustus,’ a name having to do with the science
of augury [or from augeo, as an-gustus from
ango], and suggesting something akin to religious
veneration. ‘hough even then he wished him-
self to be considered as having a primacy only
among equals, yet, as wielding the power both of
purse and sword, he had become really the master
of the Roman world. Nor was he content with
this. The tribunicia potestas was granted to him
in a sense more extended than ever before. While
he appeared to assume it year by year, it really
became his for life, and was the symbol of his
sovereign authority, being used to mark the years
of his reign. In B.C. 23 the whole machinery of
the State had definitely and permanently passed
into his hands. When the Christian era dawned,
Augustus had for 17 years exercised a dominion un-
rivalled in its nature and extent, entitling it to be
spoken of asover ‘the whole world.’ And yet there
was no one in his day that felt so much the need
of limiting the extension of the Empire. Among
his last instructions there was one enjoining his
successors not to seek enlargement, as it only made
the work of guarding the frontiers more difficult.
One of his greatest anxieties during his later years,
owing to the deaths of Marcellus, Agrippa, Lucius,
and Gaius, had to do with the succession to the
Imperial throne. While the Christian era had
not yet reached its first decade, he had only
Tiberius, his step-son, to look to as his successor.
Atan early period of his reign Augustus had given
himself to the development of a complete system
of road-supervision for Italy and the provinces.
The celebrated pillar of gilded bronze, the ‘* Milli-
arium Aureum,’ of which but a fragment of the
marble base can be seen to-day near the ascent of
the Capitol, was set up by Augustus on ‘his com-
pletion of the great survey and census of the
foman world’ (Lanciani). On it were marked
the distances of all the principal places along the
main roads from the city gates. Where these
roads led, civil government was found established,
with a representative of the Emperor or the Senate, -
and with tribunals for the administration of justice.
Anyone claiming to be a Roman citizen had the
privilege of appeal to Cesar, and could be assured
of a safe conduct to Rome. Safe and compara-
tively speedy modes of travel were assured.
Our knowledge of the government of the provinces under
Augustus is too limited to admit of any clear and full description
of it. Suetonius (August. 47) has given us the principles
on which he acted in dividing the provinces between himself
and the Senate, in these words: ‘The provinces which could
neither be easily nor safely governed by annual magistrates he
undertook himself.’ In other words, those that required a
strong force to hold them in subjection, or whose frontiers were
exposed to attack on the part of restless and powerful enemies,
he retained in his own hands. The others, which could be easily
governed and had nothing to fear from surrounding peoples, he
handed over to the Senate. This arrangement placed in his
hands almost the whole military forces of the Empire. The
Emperor’s legates, commanding the provincial troops, were not
only appointed by him, but could be suspended or dismissed at
his pleasure. The provinces were divided into groups according
as they were administered by consuls, pretors, or simply
knights. Even those that appeared to be entirely under the
control of the Senate were restricted in their appointments by
the Emperor, as the list of those eligible had to be submitted to
him, and all on the list must have served, with an interval of
five years, as consuls or pretors. In the case of Syria we find
an Imperial province exposed to inroads from warlike peoples
on its Northern and Eastern borders, and therefore in need of a
military more than a civil commander over it to act as its
hegemon. The term answers best to our Viceroy. This was the
position which Quirinius probably held, and he would have
power from Augustus to allow in Herod’s dominions a census
that would as little as possible offend Jewish prejudices.
Each set of provinces had its own separate treasury. The
AUGUSTUS
AUGUSTUS 145
revenues from the Imperial provinces flowed into the Emperor’s
jiscus, and out of it were taken the enormous sums spent
on the great military roads, which became the highways for
Christianity. To the Senate, Augustus granted the right of
minting copper only, reserving gold and silver for the Imperial
treasury. As the result of these and other measures the Em-
pire enjoyed unusual prosperity. Augustus also bestowed great
care on the selection of his legates, closely watched over their
administration, and made it all but impossible for a corrupt
governor to escape swift punishment. To this in great measure
the Empire owed its popularity in Augustus’ time.
There was another remarkable preparation for
the world-census in the ordnance survey initiated
by Julius Cesar, and completed only after 25 years
of labour on the part of four of the greatest sur-
veyors of the age. The main object of it, no
doubt, was the taxation of Jand, the most. profit-
able source of revenue under the Empire. Thus a
completely organized and a world-wide Empire, in
absolute dependence upon its supreme ruler in
Rome, had become an accomplished fact ere the
Christian era had dawned.
As this new era approached, signs were multi-
plying of a desire for peace on the part of ruler
and ruled, though it is scarcely true that the actual
ear of the birth at Bethlehem was distinguished
y the prevalence of universal peace. To the im-
mediately preceding period, B.C. 13-9, belongs the
famous ‘ Altar of Peace,’ whose actual site has
been laid bare within very recent years (1903-
1904) under the Via in Lucina, a little way off
from the Corso, the old Flaminian Way. The
very same year in which Augustus became Ponti-
fex Maximus owing to the death of his former
co-triumvir Lepidus, the Senate decreed the erec-
tion of an ‘ Altar of Peace,’ which at first was to
have been set up in the Senate-house, but was
afterwards placed on the edge of the Campus
Martius. One of the chief features of the period
to which it belongs was the closing of the temple
of Janus. Horace, writing in B.C. 13 (1. IL. 1.
255 and Odes Iv. xv. 9), speaks of the closing as a
recent occurrence. Twice before in the reign of
Augustus, in B.C. 29 and B.c. 25, this temple had
been closed (Mon. Anc. 13), ‘ when peace throughout
the whole dominions of the Roman people by land
and sea had been obtained by victories,’ and ‘only
twice before his birth since the foundation of the
city,’ in all five times up to the Christian era.
The Gades (Cadiz) inscription is a remarkable
confirmation of B.c. 13 as the date of the third
closing of the temple of Janus in Augustus’ time.
The monument entitled the ‘ Ara Pacis Augusti’ is of unusual
proportions and of exquisite workmanship. Within the walls of
a massive marble screen there was placed the altar on an ele-
vated base, pyramidal, and having marble steps leading up to
it. The screen was splendidly decorated both within and
without with sculptures in high relief. The outer side of the
screen had two distinct bands of ornamentation: the lower
floral, the upper a procession with figures, many of which might
have been actual portraits. The best known of these proces-
sional reliefs are to be found in the Gallery of the Uffizi at
Florence, one is in the Cortile Belvedere of the Vatican, and one
in the Louvre, Paris.
The altar was a splendid tribute to Peace, but it
was a peace after many and bloody victories, re-
minding us of the saying, ‘where they make a
desert they call it peace’ (Tac. Agricola, 30), and it
was also a peace that was not to last. Yet there
the altar stood on the field of Mars, as the reign of
the ‘ Prince of Peace’ was ushered in, and became
for ages thereafter a witness to the Pax Romana of
the Augustan age. Far more of it remains to the
present time than of the triple arch of Augustus
set up in celebration of bis victories, of which
only the bare foundations can be seen between the
temple of Julius and that of Castor and Pollux.
The energies of Augustus found scope for them-
selves in other lines, and all with the object of
building up his world-wide Empire that he meant
to last in the ages to come. At the beginning of
VOL. I.—IO
his reign he put his hand to the restoration of the
State religion. In B.c. 28 he claims to have ‘re-
paired 82 temples of the gods’ (Mon. Anc. 20),
earning for himself the title given him by Livy
(Hist. Iv. xx. 7), ‘the builder or restorer of all
the temples.’ The sacred images, we are told,
had become actually ‘foul with smoke’ or were
‘mouldering with mildew.’ ‘The ancestral reli-
gion was dead, belief in the gods had all but dis-
appeared. Nor was it only the repair of edifices
for religious worship that he took in hand ; from
him the sacred colleges and brotherhoods received
a new impulse by his becoming a member himself
of one and all of them. Through him their en-
dowments were greatly increased. With great cere-
mony was observed the centenary of the city, for
which Horace prepared his well-known ode, as the
inscription found in the Tiber in 1871 so strikingly
confirms (‘carmen composuit Q. Horatius Flac-
cus’). The worship of the Lares was restored.
At crossways and street corners three hundred
small shrines were set up, whose altars were
adorned twice a year with flowers. One of the
latest discoveries 1s that of a shrine of the Lares
Publici in front of the Arch of Titus, on the
branch of the Via Sacra leading up to the Pala-
tine by the old Mugonian Gate. New temples
were erected, the most notable being that of
Apollo behind his own ‘Domus.’ A new spirit
also was infused into the rites and ceremonies of
the old worship, to which the writings of Virgil
contributed in a special degree.
The hardest ἘΔ yet remained in the social and
moral reformation of his people. As early as
B.C. 25 we find Horace (Od. II. vi.), in this retlect-
ing probably the opinion of his master, affirming
the necessity of ‘a reformation of morals as well as
a restoration of temples and a revival of religion.’
In a later ode (xxiv.) he promises immortality to
the statesman who shall bring back the morality
of the olden time. The action taken by Augustus
about that time was effective, temporarily at least,
for his praises were celebrated as ‘one who by his
presence had cleansed the family from its foul
stains, had curbed the licence of the age, and
recalled the old morality.’ The text of his laws
enacted for this purpose has not come down to
us, but their date may be taken as from B.C. 18 to
17, or about 12 years before the Christian era.
His own example, unfortunately, did not enable
him to take up a very high position on the subject
of marriage. He had put away Seribonia in order
to marry Livia, whom he took from her husband
Tiberius Nero. Again and again he interposed to
dissolve existing marriages, when his policy as to
the succession required it. High motives, there-
fore, we do not expect to find in his legislation on
marriage. Nothing could have brought out more
clearly the impotence of such legislation than the
openly scandalous character of his daughter Julia.
In B.c. 2, the very year when he was hailed by the
Senate as the father of his country, he became
aware of what had long been in everyone’s know-
ledge. So keenly did he feel the scandal that he
shunned society for a time, and even absented
himself from the city. His only remedy was her
banishment to Pandataria, Never afterwards was
she allowed to set foot im Rome. Nor did she see
again the face of her father, whom she outlived
only by a few short weeks. There were not
wanting schools of philosophy that vied with each
other in leading men to virtue. Greek philosophers
of note were welcomed to the halls of the ‘ Domus
Augusti.’ But no system of morals or philosophy
had yet appeared that could show the way of
attaining to the Divine likeness by the bestowal
of a new nature, until Christianity came upon the
scene.
AUGUSTUS
The same moulding hand that built up the
Empire can be traced in the modification through
which Czsar- worship passed under Augustus.
The deification of Julius by the Senate in B.c. 42
was only what was to be expected. The decree
ran: ‘To the Genius of the divine Julius, father
of his country, whom the Senate and Roman
people placed among the number of the gods.’
In the very heart of the Roman Forum, from
B.c. 29, there was to be seen, on an elevated plat-
form, a most beautiful marble temple proclaiming
the deification of the great Julius. Augustus
never allowed such worship of himself during his
lifetime as had been the case with Julius. From
the earliest period of his reign there is evidence
that he allowed it in the provinces, but only in
conjunction with ‘Rome,’ and the formula en-
joined for all that were not Roman citizens was
‘Rome and Augustus.’ In the case of citizens the
one name allowed, along with Rome, was that of
‘the divine Julius.’ For his Roman subjects he
would be neither ‘rex’ nor ‘divus,’ but outside
the favoured circle of Roman citizenship he had
less scruple in receiving for himself a share of
divine honour, believing that it formed the binding
link that was needed to knit all the parts of his
wide Empire into one great unity.
As to the permanence of this ‘cult’ in the provinces, under
the joint title of ‘Rome and Augustus,’ there is still a measure
of uncertainty. Dr. Lindsay believes the balance of evidence
is in favour of ‘Rome’ having been left out even in Augustus’
lifetime. In that ease ‘ Augustus’ signified ‘not the person of
the Emperor, but the symbol of the deification of the Roman
State, personified in its ruler.’ Certainly that might have
admirably served to establish his State policy, and make him
believe that he had accomplished all that human ingenuity
could to make his Empire as enduring as it was world-wide.
On his death in a.p, 14 a modification necessarily
came, when the Senate decreed that thereafter he
should be known as ‘ Divus Augustus.’
The priesthood of this Imperial ‘ cult’ was di-
vided into two classes, the one representing the
State religion in a province, and the other having
charge of religious ceremonies in the cities. The
provincial priests were responsible only to the Em-
peror as Pontifex Maximus, and had, in the West
at least, jurisdiction over the municipal priests.
The way was thus prepared for the development of
a full hierarchical system, which became afterwards
the model for the Roman Church, with its Pontifex
Maximus in Rome, its Metropolitans in each pro-
vince, and the municipal priests in the cities. ‘The
‘cult’ itself spread with great rapidity, was bind-
ing on every Roman subject with the exception of
the Jews only, and prepared the way for the appli-
cation of the prime test for the Christians of the
early ages: ‘Sacrifice to the Emperor or death.’
‘The man of all others, who created the conditions
in which Christianity was to find that supreme
test, was Augustus. The Universal Empire, with
its ruler as an object of worship, had not long be-
come an accomplished fact when the God-man, in
contrast with the man-god, appeared,—‘ the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us.’ No contrast
could well be greater than that which distinguished
(in B.c, 6-a.p, 14) this world-ruler from the Founder
of Christianity :—Augustus, a perfect master in
State-craft, merciful to his foes only when he had
made his position absolutely sure, only somewhat
more advanced in his morality than the men of his
age, full of self-esteem, as the last scene of his life
reveals, yet entitled to be considered by the world
in which he lived as its ‘ chief benefactor’? (Lk 22%
Jesus, though in His twelfth year able to claim a
relationship with the Father in heaven such as
distinguishes Him from every other son of man
yet remaining for those 20
20 years of His life at
Nazareth as the carpenter’s son, all unknown to
the great world without, subject to His reputed
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
father and His ‘ highly favoured’ mother, ‘ advanc-
ing in wisdom’ as in stature, and above all ‘in
favour with God and man.’ Of the whole of
Augustus’ work there now remains little but crum-
bling or half-buried ruins, but the name of Jesus
‘endures,’ and gives evidence of the truth of the
prophecy which points to the world’s kingdom as
becoming His, and His reign as being ‘for ever
and ever’ (Rev 1115).
LireraturE.—Mommeen, —es Gestw Divi Augusti, also The
Roman Provinces, and History of Rome; Schiver, 7/P Index,
s.v. ‘Octavianus Augustus’; W. M. Ramsay, Was Christ born
at Bethlehem?, The Churchinthe Roman Empire; Shuckburgh,
The Life and Times of the Founder of the Roman Empire ;
John B. Firth, Augustus Cesar and the Organization of the
Empire of Rome; Baring Gould, The Tragedy of the Cesars ;
T. M. Lindsay, The Church and the Ministry in the Early Cen-
turies ; Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire.
J. GORDON GRAY.
**RUTHORITY OF CHRIST.—The first recorded
comment on the teaching of Jesus is that of
Mt 728 (||Mk 122, Lk 432): ‘They were astonished
at his teaching, for he taught them as one having
authority, and not as their scribes.’ The scribes
said nothing of themselves: they appealed in
every utterance to tradition (παράδοσις) ; the mes-
sage they delivered was not self-authenticating ; it
had not the moral weight of the speaker’s person-
ality behind it ; it was a deduction or application
of some legal maxim connected with a respectable
name. They claimed authority, of course, but
men had no immediate and irresistible conscious-
ness that the claim was just. With Jesus it was
the opposite. He appealed to no tradition, shel-
tered Himself behind no venerable name, claimed
no Official status ; but those who heard Him could
not escape the consciousness that His word was
with authority (Lk 4533). He spoke a final truth,
laid down an ultimate law.
In one respect, He continued, in so doing, the
work and power of the prophets. There was a
succession of prophets in Israel, but not a pro-
phetic tradition. It was a mark of degeneration
and of insincerity when self-styled prophets re-
peated each other, stealing God’s words every one
from his neighbour (Jer 23%). The true prophet |
may have his mind nourished on earlier inspired
utterances, but his own message must spring from
an immediate prompting of God. It is only when
his message is of this kind that his word is with
power. No mind was ever more full than the
mind of Jesus of all that God had spoken in the past,
but no one was ever so spontaneous as He, so free
from mere reminiscence, so completely determined
in His utterance by the conditions to which it was
addressed. It is necessary to keep both things in
view in considering His authority as a teacher.
Abstract formule about the seat of authority in
religion are not of much service in this connexion,
It is, of course, always true to say that truth and
the mind are made for each other, and that the
mind recognizes the authority of truth because in
truth it meets its counterpart, that which enables
it to realize its proper being. It is always correct,
also, to apply this in the region of morals and
religion, and to say that the words of Jesus and
the prophets are authoritative because our moral
personality instinctively responds to them. We
have no choice, as beings made for morality and
religion, to do anything but bow before them.
The difficulty is that the ‘mind,’ or ‘conscience,’
or ‘moral personality,’ on which our recognition of
the truth and authority of Jesus’ teaching is here
made dependent, is not a fixed quantity, and still
less a ready-made faculty ; it is rather a possibility
| or potentiality in our nature, which needs to be
evoked into actual existence; and among the
powers which are to evoke it and make it actual
|and valuable, by far the most important is that
** Copyright, 1906, by Charles Scribner’s Sons
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
teaching of Jesus which it is in some sense allowed
tojudge. We may say in Coleridge’s phrase that
we believe the teaching of Jesus, or acknowledge
its (or His) authority, because it ‘ finds’ us more
deeply than anything else; but any Christian will
admit that ‘find’ is an inadequate expression.
The teaching of Jesus does not simply find, it
evokes or creates the personality by which it is
acknowledged. Weare born again by the words
of eternal life which come from His lips, and it is
the new man so born to whom His word is known
in all its power. There is a real analogy between
this truth and the familiar phenomenon that a
new poet or artist has to create the taste which is
necessary for the appreciation of his work. Dis-
missing, therefore, the abstract and general con-
sideration of the idea of authority in religion (see
next art.), our course must be (1) to examine the
actual exercise of authority by Jesus in the
Gospels, referring especially to occasions on which
His authority was challenged, or on which He gave
hints as to the conditions on which alone it could
be recognized ; (2) by way of supplement we can
consider the authority of the exalted Christ as it
is asserted in the Epistles and exercised in the
Church through the NT as a whole.
1. The exercise of authority by Jesus on earth.—
(a) The simplest but most far-reaching form in
which Jesus exercised authority was the practical
one. He claimed other men, other moral person-
alities, for Himself and His work, and required
their unconditional renunciation of all other ties
and interests that they might become His dis-
ciples. He said, ‘ Follow me,’ and they rose, and
left all and followed Him (Mt 418-2799), He made
this kind of claim because He identified Himself
with the gospel (Mk 8% 1029) or with the cause of
God and His Kingdom in the world, and for this
cause no sacrifice could be too great, no devotion
too profound. ‘He that loveth father or mother
more than me is not worthy of me. He that
loveth son or daughter more than me is not
worthy of me. Whosoever he be of you that
renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be my
disciple’ (Mt 1037, Lk 143%), Nothing is less like
Jesus than to do violence to anyone’s liberty, or to
invade the sacredness of conscience and of personal
responsibility ; but the broad fact is unquestion-
able, that without coercing others Jesus dominated
them, without breaking their wills He imposed
His own will upon them, and became for them a
supreme moral authority to which they submitted
absolutely, and by which they were inspired. His
authority was unconditionally acknowledged be-
cause men in His presence were conscious of His
moral ascendency, of His own devotion to and
identification with what they could not but feel to
be the supreme good. We cannot explain this
kind of moral or practical authority further than
by saying that it is one with the authority which
the right and the good exercise over all moral
beings.
Not that Jesus was able in every case to carry
His own will through in the wills of other men.
Moral ascendency has to be exercised under moral
conditions, and it is always possible, even for one
who acknowledges its right, to fail to give it
practical recognition by obedience, When Jesus
said to the rich ruler, ‘Sell all that thou hast, and
give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven: and come, follow me’ (Mk 1031), He failed
to win the will of one who nevertheless was con-
scious that in refusing obedience he chose the
worse part. ‘He went away sorrowful ’— bis
sorrow implying that it was within the right on
the part of Jesus to put him to this tremendous
test. He acknowledges by his sorrow that he
would have been a better man—in the sense of
--- SS
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 147
the gospel a perfect man—if he had allowed the
authority of Jesus to have its perfect work in him.
These are the facts of the case, and they are
ignored by those who argue that it is no man’s busi-
ness to part with all he has for the sake of the
poor; that property is a trust which we have to ad-
minister, not to renounce ; that the commandment
to sell all cannot be generalized, and is therefore
not moral ; and that it is, in short, an instance of
fanaticism in Jesus, due to His belief in the near-
ness of the Kingdom, and the literal worthlessness
of everything in comparison with entering into it
at His side. There is nothing here to generalize
about. There is a single case of conscience which
Jesus diagnoses, and for which He prescribes heroic
treatment ; but it is not in the patient to rise to
such treatment. The high calling of God in Christ
Jesus is too high for him; he counts himself un-
worthy of the eternal life (Ac 13). The authority
of Jesus is in a sense acknowledged in this man;
it is felt and owned though it is declined. Where
the authority lay is clear enough. It lay in the
Good Master Himself, in His own identification
with the good cause, in His own renunciation of
all things for the Kingdom of God’s sake ; it lay
in His power to reveal to this man the weak spot
in his moral constitution, and in the inward
witness of the man’s conscience (attested by his
sorrow as he turned away) that the voice of Jesus
was the voice of God, and that through obedience
to it he would have entered into life. It lay in the
whole relation of these two concrete personalities
to each other, and it cannot be reduced to an
abstract formula.
This holds true whenever we think of the moral
or practical authority of Jesus. It is never legal:
that is, we can never take the letter in which it is
expressed and regard it as a statute, incapable of
interpretation or modification, and binding in its
literal meaning for all persons, all times, all social
conditions, ‘This is plain in regard to such a com-
mand of Jesus as the one given to the rich ruler:
no one will say that this is to be obeyed to the
letter by all who would enter into the Kingdom of
God. But it is equally true of precepts which are
addressed to a far wider circle, and which are
sometimes supposed (like this one) to rest in a
peculiar sense on the authority of Jesus. Take,
e.g., the case of the Sermon on the Mount in Mt
52148, From beginning to end this may be read as
an assertion of the moral authority of Jesus, an
authority which is conscious of transcending the
highest yet known in Israel. ‘It was said to them
of old time . . . but I say unto you.’ On what do
the words of Jesus throughout this passage depend
for their actual weight with men? ‘They depend
on the consciousness of men that through these
words the principle of morality, for which our
nature has an abiding affinity, is finding expres-
sion. But just because we are conscious of this
principle and of the affinity of our nature for it, we
are free with regard to any particular expression
of it ; the particular words in which it is embodied
even by Jesus do not possess the authority of a
statute to which we can only conform, but about
which we must not think, When Jesus says,
‘ Whoso shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn
to him also the other ; to him that would go to law
with thee and take thy coat, leave also thy cloak’ :
it is not to keep us from thinking about moral
problems by giving us a rule to be blindly obeyed,
it is rather to stimulate thought and deliver us
trom rules. His precepts are legal in form, but
He came to abolish legalism, and therefore they
were never meant to be literally read. When they
are literally read, conscience simply refuses to
take them in. ‘They are casuistic in form, but
anti-casuistic in intention, and their authority lies
148 AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
in the intention, not in the form. What the pre-
cepts of non-resistance and non-retaliation mean 15
that under no circumstances, under no provoca-
tion, must the disciple of Jesus allow his conduct
to be determined by any other motive than that of
love. He must be prepared to go all lengths with
love, and no matter how love is tried, he must
never renounce it for an inferior principle, still less
for an instinctive natural passion, such as the
desire for revenge. Put thus, the moral authority
of Jesus is unquestionable, and it asserts itself
over us the more, the more we feel that He em-
bodied in His own life and conduct the principle
which He proclaims. But there is nothing in this
which binds us to take in the letter what Jesus
says about oaths, or non-resistance, or revenge ;
and still less is there anything to support the idea
| that His words on these subjects are part of a
fanatical renunciation of the world in the region
of honour as well as of property,—a literal sur-
render, in view of the imminence of the Kingdom,
of all that makes life on earth worth having. It
is not uncommon now for those who regard the
Kingdom of God as purely transcendent and
eschatological to match this paradoxical doctrine
with an ethical system equally paradoxical, a
system made up purely of renunciation and nega-
tion, and to fasten it also upon Jesus; but it is
hardly necessary to refute either the one paradox
or the other. What commands conscience in the
most startling words of Jesus is the truth and love
which dictate them, but to recognize the truth and
love is to recognize that no form of words is bind-
ing of itself. It is the supreme task of the moral
being to discover what in his own situation truth
and love require ; and there is no short cut to the
discovery of this, even in the Sermon on the
Mount. Jesus is our authority, but His words are
not our statutes: we are not under law, even the
law of His words, but under grace—that is, under
the inspiration of His personality; and though His
words are one of the ways in which His moral
ascendency is established over us, they are only
one. There is an authority in Him to which no
words, not even His own, can ever be equal.
The final form which this practical or moral
authority of Jesus assumes in the NT is the re-
cognition of Him as Judge of all. Probably in the
generation before that in which He lived the Jews
had come to regard the Messiah as God’s vice-
gerent in the great judgment which ushered in the
world to come; but what we find in the NT in
this connexion is not the formal transference of a
piece of Messianic dogmatic to Jesus; it is the
moral recognition of the moral supremacy of
Jesus, and of His right to pronounce finally on
the moral worth of men and things. Experiences
like that which inspired Lk 58 (‘ Depart from me,
for 1 am asinfulman, O Lord’), Jn 429 (‘Come see a
man which told me all things that ever I did’), 2117
(‘Thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I
love thee *), are the basis on which the soul recog-
nizes Christ as Judge. The claim to be Judge ap-
pears also in His own teaching (Mt 722f, Lk 1325f.,
Mt 25%"); and if the form of the words in the first
of these passages has been modified in tradition in
order to bring out their bearing for those for whom
the Evangelist wrote, no one doubts that their
substance goes back to Jesus. It is He who con-
templates the vain pleas which men will address
to Him ‘in that day’—men who with religious
profession and service to the Church have never-
theless been morally unsound. The standard of
judgment 1s variously represented: it is ‘the will
τς ποτα ἐδ. Σ ἢ.
: Sayings oO (/**) or it is what we
might call in a word ‘humanity’ (25° 42): and in
its way each of these is a synonym for the moral
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
authority of Jesus. As far as we are sensitive to
their demands we are sensitive to His moral claim.
Into the representations of Jesus as Judge outside
of the Gospels it is not necessary to enter.
(b) The authority of Jesus comes before us in
another aspect when we think of Him not as com-
manding but as teaching, not as Legislator or
Judge, but as Revealer. In the first case, authority
means His title to obedience ; in this case, it may
be said to mean His title to belief.
Perhaps of all theological questions the nature
and limits of this last authority are those which
have excited the keenest discussion in recent
times. On the one hand, there are those who,
fixing their minds on the Divinity of Jesus, regard
it as essentially un-Christian to question His utter-
ances at any point. Whatever Jesus believed, or
seemed to believe, on any subject is by that very
fact raised above question. The mind has simply
to receive it on His authority. Thus when He
refers to Jonah (Mt 12%#., Lk 112), the literal
historicity of the Book of Jonah is guaranteed ;
when He ascribes the 110th Psalm to David (Mt
2241ff. and || ), critical discussion of the authorship
is foreclosed ; when He recognizes possession by
unclean spirits (Mk 1555. and often), possession is
no longer a theory to explain certain facts, and
therefore open to revision ; it is itself a fact: it
gives us a glimpse into the constitution of the
spiritual universe which we are not at liberty to
question. On the other hand, there are those
who, while they declare their faith in the Incarna-
tion, argue that it belongs to the very truth of the
Incarnation that Jesus should not merely be man,
but man of a particular time and environment ;
not man in the abstract, but man defined (and
therefore in some sense limited) by the conditions
which constitute reality. He had not simply
intelligence, but intelligence which had been
moulded by a certain education, and could only
reveal itself through a certain language; and both
of these are conditions which (while essential to
historical reality) nevertheless involve limitation.
Hence with regard to the class of subjects just
referred to, those who are here in question feel
quite at liberty to form their own opinions on
relevant grounds. They do not, as they think,
set aside the authority of Jesus in doing so: their
idea rather is that in these regions Jesus never
claimed to have or to exercise any authority.
Thus in the first two instances adduced above, He
simply takes the OT as it stands, and He appeals
to it to confirm a spiritual truth which He is teach-
ing on itsown merits. In Mt 1238. He is reproach-
ing an impenitent people, and He refers to the
Book of Jonah for a great example of repentance,
and that on the part of a heathen race; the men
of Nineveh who repented will condemn His un-
repentant contemporaries in the day of judgment.
In Mt 2241f. He is teaching that the essential thing
in Messiahship is not a relation to David, but a
relation to God; and He refers to the 110th Psalm,
and to David as its author, as unintelligible except
on this hypothesis. In both cases (it is argued)
the truths which rest on the authority of Jesus
are independent of the OT appeal which is associ-
ated with them. That repentance is an essential
condition of entering into the Kingdom of God,
and that there is no responsibility so heavy as that
of those who will not repent even when Jesus
calls, are truths which are not affected though
the Book of Jonah is read as an allegory or a
poem ; that the fundamental thing in the person
of Jesus is not His relation to David (which He
shared with others) but His relation to God (which
belonged to Him alone), is a truth which is not
affected though the 110th Psalm is ascribed to the
Maccabean period. In other words, the authority
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
of Jesus as a revealer of God and of the laws of
His Kingdom is not touched, though we suppose
Him to share on such matters as are here in
question the views which were current among His
contemporaries. It is not denying His Divinity to
say this; it is rather denying His humanity if we
say the opposite. Parallel considerations apply to
the belief in possession which Jesus undoubtedly
shared with His fellow-countrymen, and in fact
with His contemporaries generally. Possession
was the current theory of certain morbid condi-
tions of human nature, physical, mental, and
probably in some cases also moral; but the one
thing of consequence in the Gospel is not that
Jesus held this or any other theory about these
morbid conditions, but that.in Him the power of
God was present to heal them. Our theory of
them may be different, but that only means that
we belong to a different age ; it does not touch the
truth that from these terrible and mysterious woes
Jesus was mighty to save. It does not matter that
His notions of medicine and psychology were
different from ours; He did not come to reveal
medicine or psychology—to ‘reveal’ such things
is a contradiction in terms; He came to reveal
the Father, and His authority has its centre
there.
There is, no doubt, great possibility of error in
arguing from such abstract ideas as ‘ Divinity’
and ‘ humanity,’ especially when they are in some
way opposed to one another in our minds: how-
ever we may define them, we must remember that
they were in no sense opposed or inconsistent in
Christ. _He was at once and consistently all that
we mean by Divine and all that we mean. by
human, but we cannot learn what that was by
looking up ‘ divine’ and ‘human’ in the dictionary,
or in a book of dogmatic theology. We must look
at Jesus Himself as He is presented to us in the
Gospels. And further, we must consider that
there is a vast region of things in which there
neither is nor can be any such thing as authority
—the region, namely, which is covered by science.
Now questions of the kind to which reference has
just been made all belong to the domain of science.
The nature of the Book of Jonah, the date and
authorship of the 110th Psalm, the explanation of
the morbid phenomena which the ancients ascribed
to evil spirits inhabiting the bodies of men: these
are questions for literary, for historical, for medical
science. It is a misleading way of speaking about
them, and needlessly hurts some Christian feel-
ings, to say that the authority of Jesus was
limited, and did not extend to such matters. The
truth rather is that such matters belong to a
region where there is no such thing as authority,
or where the only authority is that of facts, which
those in quest of knowledge must apprehend and
interpret for themselves. It is a negation of the
very idea of science to suppose that any con-
stituent of it could be revealed, or could rest upon
authority, even the authority of Jesus. Hence in
regard to all such subjects the question of Jesus’
authority ought never to be raised: it is not only
misleading, but unreal. On the other hand, when
we come to the authority which Jesus actually
claims as a revealer of God, and of the things of
His Kingdom, we find that it is not only real but
absolute—an authority to which the soul renders
unreserved acknowledgment.
This is brought out most clearly in Mt 1157,
Here Jesus speaks in explicit terms of His function
as Revealer, and we see at once the absoluteness
of His authority, and its sphere. ‘All things
have been delivered unto me by my Father, and
no one knoweth the Son save the Father, neither
doth any know the Father save the Son, and
he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.’
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 149
Whatever else these words express, they express
Jesus’ sense of absolute competence in His vocation:
He had everything given to Him which belonged to
the work He had to do, and He was conscious of
being equal to His task. If we try to interpret
‘all things’ by reference to the context, then
whether we look before or after we must say that
the ‘all things’ in view are those involved in the
revelation of God: in the work of revelation, and
especially in the revelation of Himself as Father,
God has no organ but Christ, and in Christ He
has an adequate organ. The passage anticipates
Jn 1451 am the way, the truth, and the life: no
man cometh unto the Father but by me.’ [10 is in
a word like this—JZ am the truth—that we find the
key to the problems which have been raised about
the authority of Jesus as a Teacher or Revealer.
The truth which we accept on His authority is
the truth which we recognize in Him. It is not
announced by Him from a world into which we
cannot enter: it is present here, in Him, in the
world in which we live. It is not declared on
authority to which we blindly surrender; it is
exhibited ina Person and a Life which pass before
us and win our hearts. To put it otherwise, the
truth which we owe to Jesus, and for which He
is our authority, is not information ; it is not a
contribution to science, physical or historical—for
this we are cast by God on our own resources ;
it is the truth which is identical with His own
being and life in the world, which is embodied or
incarnate in Him. It is the truth which is in-
volved in His own relation to God and man, and
in His perfect consciousness of that relation: it is
the truth of His own personality, not any casual
scientific fact. He does not claim to know every-
thing, and it would be difficult to reconcile such
a claim with true manhood; but He does claim
full knowledge of the Father, and not His words
only, but His whole being and life are the justi-
fication of His claim.*
The authority of Christ asa Teacher and Revealer
has been called in question mainly in connexion
with His words about the future. There is no
doubt that these present great difficulty to those
who believe in Him. They seem tosay quite un-
mistakably that certain things will happen, and
happen within a comparatively short time, which
(if we are to read literally) have not happened
yet. ‘Ye shall not have gone through the cities of
Israel till the Son of man be come’ (Mt 10°);
‘Verily I say unto you, there be some of them that
stand here which shall in no wise taste of death till
they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom’
(Mt 1625s ci) Mit 2429355 ΜΠῸ 1sss Lik 2120) ee
coming of the Son of man in His kingdom was
conceived quite definitely by the Apostolic Church
as a supernatural visible coming on the clouds of
*Loisy (L’Evangile et L’Eglise, 45f., Autour dun petit
Livre, 130f.) has attacked Mt 1127 on the ground that the unique
Divine Sonship which it ascribes to Jesus is of a sort which
it was not historically possible for Him to conceive or assert.
Jesus, he holds, could only have used ‘Son of God’ in the
Messianic official sense of Ps 27; here, therefore, where the
meaning is clearly more than official, it cannot be the voice of
a Jewish Messiah which is heard, but the voice of the Christian
consciousness in a Gentile environment: the larger Church has
universalized the Jewish conception, elevated the official Son—
the Messianic King—into a Son by nature, and put its own
faith and its own experience of Jesus into Jesus’ own lips.
Perhaps it is enough to say in refutation of this, that the words
here in question, as found both in Mt. and Lk., in all probability
belong to Weiss’s ‘ apostolic source,’ the oldest record of words
of Jesus; and that the same unique relation of ‘the Father’
and ‘the Son’ is implied in Mk 1882, the genuineness of which
no one doubts. Schmiedel (Zneye. Bibl. ii. 2527), without dis-
puting the words in Mt 1157, tries by recurring to the Western
text to reduce them to the “ official’ Messianic meaning which
Loisy could recognize as possibly historical. Harnack, on the
other hand, treats them as authentic, and indeed as the most
important and characteristic words of Jesus on record for
determining His thought regarding Himself (Das Wesen des
Christentwms, p. 51).
ee ——— ee ee
150 AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
heaven, and it is a strong measure to assume that
in cherishing this hope, by which the NT is in-
spired from beginning to end, the early Church
was completely misapprehending the Master. He
must have said something—when we consider the
intensity of the Apostolic hope, surely we may say
He must have said much—to create and sustain
an expectation so keen. But there are considera-
tions we must keep in mind if we would do justice
to all the facts. (1) The final triumph of His cause,
which was the cause of God and His kingdom, was
not for Jesus an item in a list of dogmas, but a
living personal faith and hope ; in this sense it has
the authority of His personality behind it. It was
as sure to Him as His own being that the cause
for which He stood in the world would triumph ;
and it is as sure for everyone who believes in
Him. (2) He Himself, with all this assurance of
faith, explicitly declares His ignorance of the day
and hour at which the final triumph comes. . He
longed for it intensely ; He felt that it was urgent
that it should come; and urgency, when expressed
in terms of time, means imminence; but the dis-
claimer of knowledge remains. ‘The one thing cer-
tain is that He spoke of the time as uncertain, as
sometimes sooner than men would expect, and
sometimes later: the moral attitude required being
always that of watching (Bruce, Aingdom of God,
p. 278 ff. ; Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, i. Ὁ. 127). (8)
When Jesus bodied forth this hope of the future
triumph of His cause, and of His own glorious com-
ing, He did it in language borrowed mainly from
the OT apocalypse, the Book of Daniel. It would
be hard to say that the Apostles completely mis-
understood Him when He did so, but it is hard
for anyone in using such language to say what is
literal in it and what has to be spiritualized. No
one in reading Dn 7 takes the four great beasts,
and the sea out of which they rise, literally; why,
then, must we be compelled to take the human
form and the clouds of heaven, literally ? The
Book of Acts (2162!) sees in the experience of the
Church at Pentecost the fulfilment of a prophecy
in Joel (259) which speaks of ‘blood and fire and
vapour of smoke, of the sun turning into dark-
ness and the moon into blood,’ though no such
phenomena actually accompanied the gift of the
Spirit. May not modern Christians, and even the
early believers, have taken poetic expressions of
the living hope of Jesus more prosaically than
He meant them? (4) We must allow for the pos-
sibility that in the reports of Jesus’ words which
we possess, the reporters may sometimes have
allowed the hopes kindled in their own hearts
by Jesus to give a turn or a colour, quite in-
voluntarily, to what they tell us. ‘They might not
be able to distinguish precisely between the hopes
they owed to Him and the very words in which
He had declared His own assurance of victory.
And finally (5), we must remember that in a
spiritual sense the prophecies of Jesus have been
fulfilled, He came again in power. He came in
the resurrection, and He came at Pentecost. He
filled Jerusalem with His presence in the early
days of the Church as He had never done while
He lived on earth; from the very hour when they
condemned Him (Mt 26%) it was possible for His
judges to be conscious of His exaltation and of His
coming 1n power, It may be that in all prophecy,
even in the prophecy of Jesus, there is the element
which we can call illusive, without having to call
it delusive. To be intelligible, it must speak the
language of the age, but it is going to be fulfilled
in another age, the realities and experiences of
which transcend the conceptions and the speech
of the present. Even if this be so; it does not
shake our faith in Jesus and His authority. The
truth which is incarnate in His person is the truth
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
nn ee —— — —_—
of the final—and who will not sometimes say the
speedy ?—triumph of His cause. We may mis-
conceive the mode of it, even when we try to guide
ourselves by His words; but the important thing
is not the mode but the fact, and of that we are as
sure as we are sure of Him.
(c) Besides the authority which He exercised in
establishing His ascendency over men, and that
which we recognize in Him as the Truth, we may
distinguish (though it is but part of His revelation
of the Father) the gracious authority exercised by
Christ in forgiving sins. That He did forgive sins
is not to be doubted. The narrative in Mk 21:15
makes this clear. Jesus no more declared that the
paralytic’s sins were forgiven than He declared
that he was not lame: the meaning of the whole
incident is that His word conferred with equal
power the gift of pardon and the gift of bodily
strength. The one miracle of redemption— who
forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy
diseases ’—reaches through the whole of human
nature, and Jesus has authority to perform it all.
It is in this sense that we must interpret passages
like Lk 747ff. 2348 as well as Mk 217, Lk 15, and
ultimately Mt 1818 and Jn 2023, There is not any-
thing to be said of this authority but that it must
vindicate itself. No one can believe that Jesus
has authority to forgive sins except the man who
through Jesus has had the experience of forgive-
ness. The Divine love that dwelt in Jesus, that
received sinners and ate with them, that spent
itself to seek and save the lost, that saw what was
of God in men and touched it: that Divine love
made forgiveness not only credible to sinners, but
real. It entered into their hearts with God’s own
authority, and in penitent faith and love the
burden passed from their consciences and they
were born again. When He was challenged by
the scribes, Jesus appealed to the physical miracle,
which was indisputable, in support of the spiritual
one, which lay beyond the reach of sense; but it
was only the scribes, not the forgiven man, who
needed this seal of His authority to pardon.
Those whom He forgave had the witness in them-
selves, and ultimately there can be no other. The
authority which Jesus exercised in this gracious
sense He extended to His disciples alike during
their brief mission while He was on earth (Mk 918
671), and in view of their wider calling when He
was exalted (Mt 1818, Jn 2038}.
Some light is thrown upon the authority of
Jesus if we consider the occasions on which it was
challenged, and the way in which Jesus met them.
(a) It was tacitly challenged wherever men were
‘offended’ in Him. To be offended (σκανδαλίζεσθαι)
is to stumble at His claims, to find something in
Him which one cannot get over and which is in-
compatible with absolute surrender to Him ; it is
to deny His right to impose upon men the conse-
quences (persecution, poverty, even death) which
may be involved in accepting His authority (see
Mt 116 1521. 2885. 1512 2410 9631 ; the other Gospels here
add nothing to Mt.). Sometimes Jesus met this
tacit challenge by pointing to the general charac-
ter of His work as vindicating His claims. This
is what He does in the case of John the Baptist
(Mt 11°). Whether we read this passage—‘ the
blind receive their sight, the lame walk,’ ete.—in
the physical or the spiritual sense, the works in
question are the signs that God’s Anointed has
come, and it can only mean loss and ruin to men
if they fail to see and to acknowledge Him as
what He is. Sometimes, again, Jesus encountered
those who were ‘offended’ in Him with a sever-
ity amounting to scorn. When the Pharisees
‘stumbled’ because His word about things that
do and do not defile cut straight across their tra-
ditional prejudices, He did nothing to conciliate
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
them. ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father
hath not planted shall be rooted up. Let them
alone. ‘They are blind guides of blind men. And
if the blind man leads the blind, both shall fall
into the ditch’ (Mt 15f-). In reality the ‘ offence’
in this case meant that sham holiness would not
acknowledge true; and in this situation it can
only be war ἃ lV’outrance. As a rule, however,
Jesus only speaks of men being offended, or
offended in Him, by way of warning; and He
assumes that to the solemn tones of His warning
conscience will respond. His authority is inherent
in Himself and His actions, and cannot with a
good conscience be repudiated by any one who
sees what He is. This is the tone of Mt 132! 2410
2631,
(8) It isa more explicit challenge of His authority
when Jesus is asked to show a sign, or a sign from
heaven (Mt 12°5f- 16!f-, Lk 238, Jn 689), This was the
recurrence of the temptation of the pinnacle, and
Jesus consistently rejected it. He never consented
(not even in the case of the paralytic of Mk 219,
see above) to present the physical as evidence for
the spiritual. The proof of the authority with
which He spoke did not lie outside of His word, in
something which could be attached to it, but in
the word itself; if it was not self-attesting, nothing
else could attest it. This is put with peculiar force
in the Fourth Gospel. It is true that an evidential
value is recognized in the miracles, but it is only
by an afterthought, or as a second best: ‘though
ye believe not me, believe the works’ (Jn 1038) ;
‘believe that I am in the Father and the Father
in me; or else, believe for the very works’ sake’
(144). The main line of thought is that which
deprecates faith based on signs and wonders (435).
When the multitudes ask, ‘ What sign doest thou
then ? our fathers did eat the manna in the wilder-
ness,’ the answer of Jesus virtually is, ‘Z am the
bread of life. . . . He that eateth me shall live by
me... the words that I speak unto you are
spirit and are life’ (Jn 6f-). In other words, the
authority of Jesus does not depend upon any ex-
ternal credentials ; it is involved in what He is,
and must be immediately apprehended and _ re-
sponded to by the soul. What enables men to re-
cognize Jesus as what He is, and so to acknowledge
His authority, is, according to the representation
of the central chapters in John (chs. 6-10), a need
in their nature or state which He can supply. If
we wish to be sure that He is the Christ, the King
in the Kingdom of God, the way to certainty is not
to prove that He was born at Bethlehem of the
seed of David (74%), nor that He came into the
world mysteriously (727), nor that He has done
many miracles (72!) : it is to see in Him the living
bread (ch. 6), the living water (ch. 4 and 72"), the
light of the world (chs. 8 and 9), the Good Shepherd
(ch. 10), the Giver of Life (chs. 5and 11). These
are ideas or experiences which are relative to
universal human needs, and therefore they are
universally intelligible ; every one who knows what
it is to be hungry, thirsty, forlorn, in the dark,
dead, knows how to appreciate Jesus ; and apart
from these experiences no cleverness in applying
prophetic or other theological signs to Him 1s of
any value. All this is strictly relevant, for it is
through experiences in which we become debtors
to Jesus for meat and drink, for light and life,
that we become conscious of what His authority
means.
(vy) Once, at least, the authority of Jesus was
challenged in a quasi-legal fashion. When He
drove the traders from the Temple, the chief
priests and the elders of the people came to Him,
saying, ‘By what authority doest thon these
things, and who gave thee this authority ?’ (Mt
ME 11°7f., Lk 2018.).
21251. Formally, by His
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 151
counter question about the Baptist, Jesus only
silences His adversaries; but more than this is
meant. If, He suggests, they had been true to the
earlier messenger of God, they would have had
no difficulty about His claims. If they had re-
pented at John’s summons, and been right with
God, then to their simple and humble hearts Jesus’
action would have vindicated itself; as it is, to
their insincere souls He has no advance to make.
The ambassador of an earthly king has creden-
tials external to his person and his message, but
not the ambassador in whom God Himself visits
His people. His actions like His words speak for
themselves. Throughout the Fourth Gospel it is
an affinity of spirit with Jesus on which the recog-
nition of His authority depends. It is those who
are of God (Jn 8#"), of the truth (1 851). those who are
His sheep (10#: 26), who hear His voice: those who
are not of God, especially the insincere, who seek
honour from one another (5%), are inevitably
offended in Him.
2. Thus far we have considered the authority of
Christ as it was exercised, acknowledged, or de-
clined during His life on earth. But the NT
exhibits much more than this. It is not merely
as historical, but as exalted, that Christ exercises
authority—in the Church. In all its aspects the
authority which we have studied in the Gospels
reappears in the Epistles. It is perpetuated in the
Christian society in an effective, if somewhat unde-
finable way.
What strikes one first in the NT literature,
apart from the Gospels, is the almost complete
absence of literal appeal to Jesus. The Apostles,
whatever be the explanation, do not, except on
rare occasions, quote the Lord. It is true that
when they do so, His word is regarded as decisive
in a sense in which even the word of an apostle is
not (cf. 1 Co 119 with vv.12. 25, 40). It is true also
that passages like Ro 12. 18, and much in the Epistle
of James, could only have been written (in all
probability) by men who not only had the Spirit
of Christ, but whose minds were full of echoes of
His words. Nevertheless the fact remains that
Jesus is hardly appealed to formally as an autho-
rity in the NT writings. There could be no more
striking proof of the fact that Christianity was
apprehended from the first as a free and spiritual
religion to which everything statutory was alien.
Not even the word of Jesus had legal character for
it. What Jesus sought and found in His disciples
was a spiritual remembrance of Himself. His
words were preserved not in a phonograph, or in a
stenographic report, but in the impression they
made, in the insight they gave, in the thoughts
and experiences they produced in the lives of
living men. They were perpetuated not merely
by being put on record, but still more by being
preached. Now to preach is not only to report,
but to apply; and the application of the word of
Christ to new circumstances inevitably and uncon-
sciously brings with it a certain or rather an
uncertain amount of interpretation, of bringing
out the point, of emphasis on this or that which
at the moment demands it. What we wish to
know is whether the men whose ministry perpet-
uated the word of Christ, and perpetuated it in
this free and spiritual fashion, had the qualifica-
tions demanded by their task. Could Christ so tit
them for their ministry that they should be under
no legal constraint, and yet should never be unfaith-
ful to His meaning, or misrepresent Him or His
work ? In other words, could He in any sense
transmit His authority to His witnesses, so that it
should be felt in them as in Him ?
The answer of the NT is in the affirmative, and
it is not too much to say that the NT as a whole
is the proof that this answer is right. ‘ We have
— .
152 AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
the mind of Christ,’ says St. Paul (1 Co 216), and
again (in 2 Co 13%), ‘Ye seek a proof of Christ
speaking in me’—a proof which he is quite ready
to give. He was conscious that in the discharge
of his Apostolic ministry he was not alone: Christ
was in him pleading His own cause. Of course
the authority of Christ in this case cannot be other
than we have already seen it to be in the earthly
life of Christ. Its range is the same, and its re-
cognition is conditioned in the same way. The
Apostle is no more bound literally to reproduce
Jesus than Jesus is bound literally to reproduce
Himself. He is no more bound than Jesus is to
prove the truth of his message by credentials ex-
ternal to it. He no more hesitates than Jesus
does to trace the rejection of his message, the
refusal to call Jesus Lord, to a want of moral
affinity with Jesus which is the final definition of
sin. ‘If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them
that are perishing, in whom the god of this world
hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving’ (2 Co
43t-), It is not possible to say beforehand, on
the basis of any doctrine of inspiration, whether
there are elements in the Apostolic writings, and
if so what, which have no authority for us.
Nothing in them has legal or statutory authority,
and spiritual authority must be trusted to win for
itself the recognition which is its due. ‘There is
something to be said for the distinction that while
the testimony of the Apostles to Jesus—a testi-
mony resting on their experience of what He was
and of what He had done for them—is perennially
authoritative, the theology of the Apostles—a
theology conditioned by the intellectual environ-
ment in which they lived and to which they had
to vindicate their message—has only a transient
importance. The difficulty is just to draw the
distinction between testimony and theology; as a
matter of fact, the two things interpenetrate in the
NT, and there is a point at which the distinction
disappears. ΤῸ insist upon it as if it were absolute
is really to introduce again into Christianity (under
the form of the Apostolic testimony) that legal or
statutory or dogmatic element from which Jesus
set all religion free. It is better to read the
Apostles as men through whose minds Christ
pleads His own cause in the Spirit. The minds
may be more or less adequate instruments for His
service; they may be more adequate in some rela-
tions, and less so in others; but they are indi-
visible, and it is not helpful in the long run to
introduce into them the schism of testimony and
theology. We must let them tell upon us in their
integrity, and acknowledge their authority when-
ever it proves irresistible. (More detailed con-
sideration of this point will be found in the article
on PREACHING CHRIST.)
The part of the NT which raises in the acutest
form the question of the authority of Christ—or
perhaps we should say here of His Apostle—is the
Fourth Gospel. It is practically agreed among
scholars that the style of the discourses in that
Gospel is due to the author, not to the speakers.
Every one speaks in the same style—John the
Baptist, Jesus, the Evangelist himself. ‘The words
oF an actor in the history (Jesus, for example, in
the first part of ch. 3, and the Baptist in the latter
part) pass over insensibly into words of the his-
torlan. The first person plural is used by Jesus
(6.0. 81} 91) where it is tempting to say that it is
the Christian consci Ὶ
᾿ ὶ isclousness which is expressed, the
common mind of the Church whieh owes its being
. > Ὰ ε . . =)
to Him, | Further, Jesus says things about Himself
in the Fourth Gospel to which there is no parallel
in the other three. He speaks plainly of His pre-
existence, of the glory which He had with the
Fath r before the world was, of an éternal beine
‘vhich was His before Abraham was born; He
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
——— LE enn σοι εν
makes Himself the content and the subject of His
teaching—‘ I am the bread of life, the light of the
world, the resurrection and the life’ ; He identifies
Himself in a mysterious way with the redeeming
purpose and power of God—‘ I and the Father are
one,’ ‘ He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.’
It may be difficult for the historian, on purely his-
torical grounds, to prove that Jesus uttered all the
words thus ascribed to Him, and if the difticulty
presses, the authority of the words may seem to
disappear. But is this really so? May not the
Fourth Gospel itself be the fulfilment of one of the
words in question— I have many things to say unto
you, but ye cannot bear them now. But when he
is come, the Spirit of truth, he shall guide you into
all the truth: for he shall not speak from himself,
but whatsoever things he shall hear, these shall
he speak ... He shall take of mine, and shall
announce it to you’(Jn 16!2"), These words would
not be satisfied by a merely literal reproduction of
what Jesus had uttered: they imply that with the
gift of the Spirit will come a profounder insight into
all that He had meant, and ability to render a more
adequate testimony to the truth embodied in Him.
Twice in the Gospel (27? 1216) the writer tells us
expressly that after Jesus was glorified the disciples
remembered incidents in His career and saw a
meaning in them unnoticed at the time; and this
principle may well reach further. When Jesus
fed the multitudes, He did not, so far as the Syn-
optics record, say anything to explain His act; all
they were conscious of was that He had com-
passion on their hunger. But the Spirit-taught
Apostle, long afterwards, saw what He meant, and
felt that if they had only had ears to hear as the
bread passed from hand to hand, they would have
caught the voice of Jesus—‘ Iam the bread of life.’
So when He opened the eyes of the blind, what
He meant was, ‘I am the light of the world’; and
when He raised the dead, ‘I am the resurrection
and the life.’ If John did not hear Him say so at
the moment, he heard Him afterwards, and the
authority of the words need not be less though we
have to think of them as spoken, not by the his-
torical Christ in Galilee or Judea, but by the
exalted Christ through His Spirit in the soul of
the beloved disciple. They would be in this case
a sublime illustration of what St. Paul calls
‘Christ speaking in me.’ The peculiarity that
they are put into the lips of Jesus Himself, in
connexion with definite scenes and incidents in
His earthly life, was possibly quite intelligible to
those who first read the Gospel; they knew that
it was a spiritual Gospel, and that it was never
intended to be taken as a literal record of Jesus’
discourses, but as an inspired interpretation of all
that He was and did. Read in this light, it has
its authority in itself, as the other NT books have,
and as Jesus Himself had when He spoke with
men face to face; and it is an authority, as ex-
perience proves, not less potent than that which is
claimed and wielded by Christ in any other of
His witnesses. If we compare it with the other
Gospels, which have in a higher degree the char-
acter of literal transcripts of word and deed, we
may even say that it is a fulfilment of the words
found in the lips of Jesus in 1412 ‘ He that be-
lieveth on me, the works that I do shall he also
do: and greater works than these shall he do;
because I go to the Father.’ Faith in Jesus has
never achieved anything surpassing the witness—
the true witness—of this Gospel to the Son of
God. The final and supremely authoritative testi-
mony to Jesus is no doubt that which is given in
His being and in His work in the world; but so
dull of eye and slow of heart were the disciples,
that had He put all the import of this into words
they could not have taken it in. What He could
I
]
;
é
ν
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
not say on earth, however, He was able to say by
His Spirit from heaven; and when that one of the
disciples who was able to hear puts what he has
heard into the Master’s lips, he is only giving Him
His own. The authority of the word of Jesus
here, as everywhere in the NT, lies in itself, and
in the fact which it interprets. It is an authority
which has never failed to win recognition, and it
may be said of it with emphasis, ‘Every one that
is of the truth heareth this voice.’
LITERATURE.—H. P. Liddon, Bampton Lectures, 166 ff.; C.
Gore, Bampton Lectures, ch. vii.; A. B. Bruce, Training of
the Twelve, 536 ff., Apologetics, 492 ff.; J. Denney, Studies in
Theology, ii., tii.; A. Sabatier, Religions of Authority and
Religion of the Spirit, 292 ff.; H. H. Henson, Value of the
Bible, 250 ff.; M. Fuller, Jn Terra Pax, 124 ff.
JAMES DENNEY.
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION.—1. Various conno-
tations of the word ‘ authority.,-—The familiar dis-
tinction between legislative, judicial, and executive
authority is one that is not only convenient, but
rational and necessary. These several kinds of
authority differ in their respective sources and
appropriate modes of expression, and may differ also
in their respective repositories. Again, authority
may be original or delegated. The latter, more-
over, while on a different plane, is not one whit
less real than the former. And, passing by other
uses of the word, it will be found that the idea
lying at the heart of them all is that of @ right on
the part of somebody to submission of some sort
and in some degree on the part of somebody else.
In other words, the use of the term ‘authority’
implies the existence of an ethical standard. We
shall not, therefore, have reached the ultimate
authority along any line until we have arrived at
this ultimate standard of right, by which the reality
of all other authorities is tested. To avoid con-
fusion, then, in considering Christ’s teachings re-
garding authority in religion, we shall have at
every step to take account of the particular kind
of authority then being dealt with.
2. Christ’s conception of religion.—That Christ’s
conception of religion must have conditioned and
shaped His teachings upon authority in religion is
too obvious to be questioned. Hence we must at
least glance at His conception of religion ; but as
this subject is itself a large one, we can at most
merely glance at it. Our Lord, of course, has no-
where given us a formal definition of religion, nor
has He anywhere formally discussed its nature.
At the same time, few, we presume, will affirm
that Christ has left us wholly at sea upon such a
point. By common consent, religion is a term of
relation. For present purposes we may, without
unwarrantable assumption, say that the terms of
this relation are God and man. Further, without
undue assumption, we may add that true religion
and right relation between God and man are
equivalent expressions. Our present question,
then, resolves itself into this, What, according to
Christ, are the essentials of right relation between
God and man ?
Now, for answering this question, three state-
ments of our Lord seem to the writer to be of
fundamental importance. (1) The first of these
occurs in His high priestly prayer. ‘This,’ says
He, ‘is eternal life, that they should know thee
the only true God, and him whom thou didst send,
even Jesus Christ’ (Jn 17%). Here the last clause
may be an epexegetical addition of the Evangelist
himself. With this statement naturally associate
themselves, among others, those in Jn 1010 3°, Mt
1127, Now, certainly no one will even for a moment
suppose that our Lord here lends any countenance
to anything that can properly be called intel-
lectualism. And yet it would be violent exegesis
indeed that eradicated from His words the idea
that right relations to God invariably imply, and
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 153
ground themselves on, right conceptions of God.
On any other view, what would be the propriety
of the pronoun ‘thee,’ which certainly singles out
from all other possible individuals or entitles Him
in the knowledge of whom Christ declares that
‘eternal life’ consists? If right conceptions of God
are not essential to right relation between God and
man, where, again, would be the propriety of the
words ‘the only true,’ and the emphasis evidently
centred upon them ? (cf. also Mt 1127).
(2) A second passage of fundamental significance
for Christ’s conception of religion is Mt 22°7f-||Mk
1258. ¢Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, etc.
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ete.
On these two commandments hangeth the whole
law and the prophets.’ But that, according to the
teaching of Christ, there is an emotional element
in religion, is so generally recognized that it would
be superfluous to multiply references, especially
in such an incidental treatment of the subject as
the present.
(8) The third passage that may be regarded as
fundamental for our Lord’s conception of religion
is Mt 721 ‘Not every one that saith unto me,
Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ;
but he that doeth the will of my Father which is
in heaven.’ ‘This, like the last passage cited, is
typical. It represents a group of statements that
need not be reproduced here.
While, therefore, the first of these three great
passages implicates man’s understanding in re-
ligion, and the second his emotions, this last
implicates his will, as controlling his conduct and
finding its legitimate expression through it.
What may be called, then, a qualitative analysis
of Christ’s conception of religion reveals the fact,
that it contains this trinity of elements bound
together in the indissoluble unity of the rational
soul. Were any of them totally lacking, there
would be no real religion. On the other hand,
the necessary interrelation and interaction between
them are recognized by Christ in such declarations
as, ‘If any man willeth to do his will, he shall
know of the teaching whether it be of God, or
whether I speak from myself’? (Jn 71") ; ‘ How can
ye believe which receive glory one of another, and
the glory that cometh from the only God ye seek
not?’ (Jn 5#) ; *‘ While ye have the light, believe
on the light, that ye may become sons of light’
(Jn 12%), Such is the essential unity of the soul,
that it cannot experience depravation in one of its
functions without all of the others being more or
less affected thereby.
While, however, we can with a measure both of
ease and of certainty make what we have ventured
to call a qualitative analysis of Christ’s conception
of religion, it would not be so easy to arrive at
a quantitative analysis of it, and say just how
much knowledge, how much emotion, and how
much volitional activity must be present in order
to the existence in the soul of any real religion.
Indeed, it is hard to conceive of Christ as elaborat-
ing any views upon such a subject. We may re-
frain, then, from pressing our investigation into
what would only be a region of arid and empty
speculation. It is enough, if it has been shown that
Christ’s conception of religion recognizes the essen-
tial unity of the soul, and involves its right rela-
tion to God in all its several powers or functions.
To this conception His teachings regarding author-
ity in religion will be found to conform. See,
further, art. RELIGION.
i, CHRIST’S TEACHING AS TO THE ULTIMATE
STANDARD OF RIGHT, AND THE ULTIMATE SOURCE
OF RIGHTS.—Obviously we need not expect to find
Christ dealing with the ultimate standard of right
under the forms of Western dialectics, or in the
abstract terms of philosophy. At the same time, |
154 AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
we need not despair of obtaining some insight into
His mind even upon this question. For one thing,
His mode of addressing His Father is significant.
Especially is it so when we take into account
the circumstances under which it was employed.
‘Holy Father,’ He says in His intercessory prayer ;
and again, ‘O righteous Father.’ Now, under the
circumstances, this language is more, far more,
than the ascription to His Father of the possession
of the qualities expressed by the words ‘holy’ and
‘righteous.’ For we must not forget that Christ’s
intercessory prayer was oflered at the very crisis
of His career. We cannot pretend to fathom the
experiences of His soul in that hour. The prayer
itself, however, as recorded in Jn 17, is tense with
the emotions that wrought in our Lord’s soul as
He poured it forth. He was, so to speak, getting
His footing as the floods of great waters gatherec
around Him in their mysterious energy. And the
bed-rock upon which He plants Himself is one lying
out of sight so far as the visible providence of God
is concerned. He assures Himself of its existence
as a reality by turning away from what is taking
place under the providence of God, and fixing His
mind upon the nature of God. God’s nature is
His voucher for the righteousness of the course of
God’s providence towards Himself. In the time of
stress that was upon Him, He fixes His eye upon
God’s holiness and righteousness as His sole ba
suflicient guarantee for the existence of the quali-
ties for which these words stand.
But, further, that Christ found the ultimate
standard of right in God’s nature as expressed
through God’s will, is clear also from such state-
ments as these: ‘Now is my soul troubled; and
what shall | say? Father, save me from this hour ?
but for this cause came, I unto this hour. Father,
glorify thy name’ (Jn 12°). Here, it will be seen,
our Lord places Himself absolutely at the disposal
of the Divine will. But this would have been sheer
moral insanity, unless God’s nature contained the
final norm of righteousness. And this language is
by no means exceptional; for, as all know, the
Gospel of Jolin abounds with expressions of Christ
making the will of God the standard to which
everything is to be referred (e.g. 4% 5° 6%). Nor
is the case different when we turn to the Synoptics
(cf. Mt 5 6! 11%6, Lk 224). All these passages
and others leave no room to doubt that Christ
taught that the nature of God, as finding expres-
sion through His will, is the ultimate standard of
right.
And as, for Christ, God’s nature is the ultimate
norm of right, so for Him God’s willis the fountain
and source of all particular rights. Wherever there |
exists a right upon the part of anybody to sub-
mission of any kind or degree from anybody else,
such right exists in virtue of God’s ordering, and
is delimited by God’s will. These statements, it
seems to us, are involved in the passages already
cited, All authority, in other words, is simpl
wuthor-ity writ short and differently ἀπ πατῇ
A free creature, like man, may be, in a limited
sense, an original source of power, but never of
rights. His rights are all derived from, and bear the
stump of, the author of his being. Not only the
primary and all-comprehending dependence, but
all subordinate dependences and interdependences
ground themselves ultimately on the relation that
subsists between the Creator, as Creator, and the
creature, as creature.
_ i. LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. -—4,
Term di fined.—Whiat we have called legislative
authority is concerned primarily with duty. Its
‘hiss 1 ipt ions, While mediated at least so far as the
<nowledge of them voes, throueh the uncderstand-
Inv, terminate upon thie conscience and the will It
is the right to require or to forbid. It is the right
ee ee EE δ eee
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
to establish relations and define the duties or the
privileges attaching to them. It is the first and
most fundamental form of authority, cleaving
closest to the etymological and logical sense of
the word, which as already noted is simply author-
ity. Legislative authority is really or approxi-
mately a creative function. In the case of God,
of course, it is really creative. Behind it lies only
the Divine nature, which alone conditions and
regulates its exercise. From it arise all the re-
lations of the creature to the Creator, and to his
fellow - creatures, with the duties and the privi-
leges that inhere in them, or that, in the wisdom
of God, are, from time to time and under the par-
ticular circumstances, attached to them.
Now, according to our Lord’s teaching, all legis-
lative authority in religion vests exclusively in
God. He represents God asin the most absolute
sense ‘ Lord of the conscience.’ To Him it belongs
to say, ‘Thou shalt,’ and to Him also to say,
‘Thou shalt not.” As He has determined the re-
lations between Himself and His creatures (‘ Father,
Lord of heaven and earth,’ Mt 11°; ef. also 194),
it is for Him to define the duties emerging from
those relations.
2. If, now, we pass to Christ’s teaching as to how
this legislative authority belonging exclusively to
God comes to expression, we find (1) That our
Lord is wholly silent as to the manifestation of
God’s legislative authority in what we call ‘the
laws of nature,’ using this phrase so as to include
not only the laws of matter, Lut of mind as well,
and also so as to include what St. Paul calls ‘the
law written in the heart.’ For instance, nowhere
does He directly advert to ‘the ordinance of heaven’
(Jer 31°", Job 38) as an expression of the Divine
will; nowhere does He refer His hearers to the
constitution of their own nature, physical, mental,
or moral, as embodying an expression of the Divine
will regarding this or that. There is, it may be,
the glimmer of such a reference in passages like
Jn 10 1.5... Mt 10“, but it is at most a climmer,
and need not detain us
(2) But that the legislative authority of God is
exercised mediately as well as inimediately is also
taught by Christ (a) Thus the preceptive portions
of the OT, though mediated by ‘ Moses and the
provuetey are really ‘ the commandments of God.’
Toses and the prophets, guoud this matter, are, so
to speak, merely ἐπ heralds of the ‘Great King,’
or, to borrow an OT account of the relation be-
tween the prophet and God, the former is the
‘mouth’ of the latter (Ex 416, cf. 7). And so,
while ‘Moses said, Honour thy father and thy
mother’ (Mk 110), this is still for Christ ‘the com-
mandment of God.’ Further, that ‘the law of
Moses’ was for Him the law of God appears from
the fact that, when He was Himself tempted, and
had to choose between two courses, what was
written in Deuteronomy prescribed for Him the
path of duty (Mt 4%7-3°-"). In the parable of
Dives and Lazarus, our Lord puts these very sig-
nificant words into the mouth of Abraham, ‘ They
have Moses and the prophets; let them hear
them’ (Lk 165). The Ee in Nu 28% 1° (or per-
haps in 1 Ch 955), according to which ‘the priests
in the temple profane’ (ironical thrust at His ad-
versaries) ‘ the Sabbath and are guiltless’ (Mt 12°),
was for Christ determinative of duty and of privi-
lege. Indeed, He virtually puts it upon the same
plane for authority as the primary intuition and
verdict of conscience, namely, that ‘it is lawful to
do good—on the Sabbath day’ (Mt 1913). Further,
Christ’s summaries of ‘ the law and the prophets’
(Mt 7'* 22°") bear impressive testimony to the
fact that He regarded the whole preceptive por-
tion of the OT as an expression of the will of God.
‘ Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
155
even so do ye also unto them,’ is, according to
our Lord, but a just summary of ‘the law and
the prophets’ in terms that may be appreciated
by the moral sense of all men. He teaches that
the whole OT, so far as it has to do with duty
towards man, is but an unfolding, in relation to
this or that set of circumstances, of the ‘ Golden
Rule,’ whose Divine origin and authority are self-
evidencing (cf. Mk 12%5#-),
(6) Whether Christ represents the Apostles also
as organs through whom God exercises His legis-
lative authority is, perhaps, not quite so clear.
Doubtless they were. But even passages such as
Mt 10” 1018, Jn 20% 16 may refer to a grant of
judicial rather than of strictly legislative authority.
The authority conferred in these passages is, in-
deed, large and significant, but none of them neces-
sarily implies that the Apostles were to be organs
through whom God would make substantive addi-
tions to the commands laid upon the human con-
science. Nor has the writer been able to satisfy
himself that Christ anywhere uses of them lan-
guage either demanding, or even susceptible of
such an interpretation. In other words, while he
thinks it unquestionable that the Apostles were
media through whom God exercised His legislative
authority, he is of opinion that we have to go
outside of the Gospels for the evidence of this
fact.
(ὁ) With Christ Himself, however, the ease is
different. No doubt much of the authority we
find Him using in the Gospels is judicial and not
legislative. At the same time, intermingled with
His judicial expositions of the law of God, we hear
Him lay His own commands upon the conscience.
Not only does He declare what is the Law, and
what its meaning (see above), but He enunciates
many specific precepts that stand related to His
comprehensive summaries very much as_ the
statutes of the land stand related to its constitu-
tion.
‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,’ etc. (Mt
619.) ; ‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast
your pearls before the swine,’ etc. (Mt 7) ; ‘ Love your enemies,
do good to them that hate you,’ etc. (Lk 627); ‘ Repent ye, and
believe in the gospel’ (Mk 115)—will serve as samples. Very
significant for Christ’s claims to be a special organ of the legis-
lative authority of the Godhead is such a statement as, ‘The
Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath’ (Mt 128), and equally so
this other, ‘ Ye call me Teacher and Lord: and ye say well; for
so I am’ (Jn 1313). In both these instances it is clear that
Christ asserts for Himself an authority going beyond any that
can with propriety be considered as merely judicial. The
‘Lord’ is a giver of law, not simply its interpreter. The same
conclusion follows even more stringently, perhaps, when our
Lord says, ‘I and the Father are one,’ thereby, as the Jews
affirmed, and He Himself did not deny, ‘ making himself (thy-
self) equal with God’ (Jn 1029, cf. 1033, Mt 1127. 29 note the word
‘yoke’). And, finally, here we must not overlook Mt 2815b ‘All
authority is given to me in heaven and on earth,’ which cer-
tainly constitutes a claim comprehensive enough to include the
authority to prescribe laws to the conscience. See preceding
article.
(3) But to say that Christ teaches that all legis-
lative authority in religion vests exclusively in
God, is hardly to put the case either as fully or as
strongly as it needs to be put. For not only does
our Lord represent God as ‘ Lord of the conscience,
but with equal emphasis and great explicitness He
teaches that ‘God alone is Lord of the conscience,
and hath left it free from the doctrines and com-
mandments of men which are in anything contrary
to His word, or beside it in matters of’ religious
truth and duty. (For the purposes of this article
‘His word’ here may be taken quite broadly for
any form in which God has made His will known).
This explains His word at the baptism, when the Baptist
‘would have hindered him,’ and He said, ‘Suffer it now : for
thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness’ (Mt 31). So
saying, He denies to the human reason the prerogative, by
annulling or setting them aside, to pass judgment upon the
propriety or the expediency of Divine prescriptions. Recog-
nizing what is praiseworthy in the spirit of the Baptist, He at
the same time sets the seal of His disapprobation upon all
man-devised substitutions for, or modifications of, Divine ordi-
nances. These are all either acts of open rebellion, or well
meant but real usurpations of legislative functions pertaining
exclusively to God. The same view finds yet more palpable
and pungent expression in His rebuke to the Pharisees (Mk
76), And, as is well known, it was His resistance in word and
deed to the traditions of the elders regarding the Sabbath—
these being ‘beside’ God’s word —that earned for Him, with
the Pharisees, the odium of being Himself a Sabbath-breaker
(Jn 5, Mt 12, Mk 8).
Indeed, at the beginning of His Galilean ministry,
our Lord is careful to disclaim, even for Himself,
either purpose or authority to disannul any of
God’s commandments. ‘Think not,’ said He,
‘that I am come to destroy the law or the pro-
phets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil’ (Mt
5"). See, further, article COMMANDMENT, below.
Thus He, as it were, anticipated and forestalled
the malice of His own, and the mistaken zeal
of a later day. The former made it a charge
against Him that He taught contrary to Moses
and the prophets ; and the latter, strangely enough,
has supposed that it honours Him by aflirming the
same. And, lofty as were the claims that He made
for Himself, Christ still impressed it upon His
hearers that He not only did not assume to lay
upon them anything contrary to God’s revealed
will but that He taught, and could teach nothing
that was ‘beside’ that will (Jn 5*, cf. 519 8%8:).
And that nothing ‘contrary to or beside’ the
Scriptures correctly interpreted was to be toler-
ated, is abundantly evident from the finality
attached to them in all Christ’s appeals to the
OT. For Him its declarations were an end of
controversy (Mt 229 19? 125#-, Jn 1055).
111. JUDICIAL AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. — 1.
Term defined.—As legislative authority has par-
ticularly to do with duty, so judicial authority
has particularly to do with truth: the former
prescribes what one is to do or to be; the latter,
what he is to believe: the former creates and
defines relation and obligations ; the latter declares
and interprets them: the former is mainly con-
cerned with the conscience; the latter, with the
understanding. It is worth noting further that
legislative differs from judicial authority in that
the former is original and the latter derivative.
Legislative authority, along with other things,
prescribes who is to interpret the laws it makes,
and how much of finality shall attach to their
interpretation by different persons. At the same
time, we should not overlook the fact that the
most limited judicial authority, so far as it goes,
is no less real than the most absolute. Further,
judicial authority, though derived, is just as real
authority as is legislative anthority. And, finally,
when the judicial function vests in the same
person as the legislative, then the maxim, ‘ The
interpretation of the law is the law,’ receives its
highest exemplification ; for then the law and the
interpretation of the law are but different modal
manifestations of one and the same personal will
or author-ity. For, in this case, the same char-
acter that guarantees to the conscience the right-
eousness of the relation or obligation created by
the will of the lawgiver, guarantees also to the
understanding the truth of the finding of the
judge. And this, be it observed, is precisely the
function of judicial authority, namely, not to
create a right, not to make an idea correspond
with reality, but to certify to the understanding
the existence or non-existence of a right, the truth
or the falsity of an idea or a statement. The vital
importance of this distinction will appear more
and more as the discussion proceeds.
2. Repositories.—As to judicial authority, our
Lord teaches that it is distributed among a
number of repositories, somewhat as the same
kind of authority in a modern State is distributed
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
156
among a number of courts from the lowest to the
highest.
In the case of such courts, no one thinks of denying to the
least and lowest of them the character of a true court. Its
jurisdiction may be limited, its decisions liable to reversal, but
so long as it keeps within its jurisdiction, so long as the appeal
from its decisions is pending, its authority is not only as real
but as absolute as that of the highest court. Further, even
the lowest court possesses a genuine independence: its functions
cannot be discharged for it, nor can they be wrested from it by
anv other court. Further still, it is for each court, at least in
the first instance, to interpret and declare the law by which
it was created, and its duties and prerogatives under the law.
Nor does the fact that it may err in the exercise of this right
either nullify or invaiidate the right itself. We elaborate this
analovy thus in detail, because we believe that it will prove
helpful in enabling us to understand our Lord’s teachings con-
cerning judicial authority in the sphere of religion.
Proceeding now to note His distribution itself,
we find that He accords the fullest recognition (1)
to what is commonly known as the right of private
judgment. For Him each individual is clothed
with a large, though not an absolute or final,
judicial authority. Indeed, it is safe to say that
no one has surpassed Christ in the honour, and
even—if such words may be used of Him—in the
deference with which in practice He treated the
judicial rights of the darkest and humblest human
souls. Despite the supreme claims that He made
for Himself, He habitually permitted both Himself
and His claims to be put upon proof at the bar of
such souls. Not only did He consent, like any
other man of His day, to plead at the bar of the
ecclesiastical and civil authorities, but, while He
always spake as one having authority, He never
failed to submit His credentials along with His
claims at the bar of the individual reason and con-
science. But here we must particularize.
Christ taught, then, (2) That it is the inalien-
able prerogative of every man to verify for himself
the truth of a proposition before assenting to it as
true; and to verify for himself the rectitude of a
command before yielding obedience to it as right
(cf. Jn 15%, Mt 164 1144 9° 1129).
(Ὁ) Further, as is involved in what has been
already said, Christ teaches that the conclusions
reached in the exercise of this prerogative are not
to be, if, indeed, we should not say cannot be,
dictated by any form of external compulsion. In
many ways He emphasizes the position that the
individual is to be left wholly untrammelled in
the exercise of his judicial rights. What else,
after all, is the meaning of His words to Pilate,
‘My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom
were of this world, then would my servants fight,
that 1 should not be delivered to the Jews: but
now is my kingdom not from hence’ (Jn 18%)? If
men were to be left free to deal with His own
claims, including, of course, His teachings, with-
out constraint or compulsion of any kind, and to
do this even when the decision reached affected
not only His liberty but His very life, certainly
He would have them no less untrammelled in
dealing with every other question of truth or of
duty with which they might find themselves con-
fronted. Nor was it only the compulsion of
physical force that Christ declined to countenance.
He set the seal of His disapproval upon the more
subtle and spiritual, but no less Foal compulsion
of a tyrannical public or ecclesiastical opinion,
whether formulated into a tradition or into a
usacve,
His ‘ Do not your alms before men, to be seen of them’ (Mt61),
was designed hardly more to eradicate pride from the souls of
His disciples, than it was to hearten them to throw off the
incubus of a perverted public and ecclesiastical sentiment
which threatened to stifle Christian humility and Godwardness
in their very birth It was to disenthrall the souls of His
disciples from all fear tending to paralyze the free action of the
spirit in its quest for truth and in its witness to the tru 3
He said, " Be not afraid of them that kill the body, Sit ae
able to kill the soul: but rather fear him,’ éte. (Mt 1028); οἱ
Mk 1029 79, Mt 121@, Jn 5. 9. i Caen
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
(c) If what has been said be true, we are not
surprised to find Christ teaching that every mind
is equipped for the exercise of this high preroga-
tive, that in a certain very true sense the mind has
‘the supreme norm of its ideas and acts, not out-
side of itself, but within itself, in its very con-
stitution’ (Sabatier, Religions of Authority, p. Xvi).
This also is involved in the passages already quoted. And
what else can we make of such statements as these: ‘Ought
not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan
hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, to be loosed from this bond
on the day of the Sabbath’ (Lk 1316)? Where would have been
the use of submitting such a case to ‘the stupid country archi-
synagogos’ (Edersheim), unless, stupid as he was, even he was
so equipped as to be able to subject it to some sort of process of
‘inner verification’? Or, take the question put to the disciples,
“Who do the multitudes say that I am?’ and what propriety
would there be in it, unless it carried with it the implication
that men generally—‘ the multitudes’—were equipped for the
forming of a rational judgment upon the truthand righteous-
ness of His claims, and had some touchstone each within him-
self by which he could determine the truth or falsity of those
claims, and the moral quality of the character and of the
teachings that lay behind thei? The possession of such a norm
is involved in every argument framed, in every appeal. made,
and in every rebuke administered by Christ.
Not only does Christ recognize in every man the
existence of such a norm, but He goes farther, and
shows that He regards this norm as ‘ supreme,’ in
the sense, at least, that for the individual man
there is no standard of truth or of right more
ultimate than that embedded in his very constitu-
tion. Nothing can be substituted for it. Nothing
can be used to supplement or to correct it. No
appeal lies from it. Man has nought that he can
do but to abide by the decisions reached in the use
of it. ‘If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die
in your sins’ (Jn 8*4) is no arbitrary sentence ; but
simply the announcement of the momentous truth,
that the beliefs or unbeliefs of those whom He
addressed would involve certain consequences for
them, precisely because those beliefs or unbeliefs
were theirs. Christ does not teach, of course, that
men can make or unmake truth or right for them-
selves any more than for others. But He does
teach that the conclusions that men reach in the
use of the norm that is embedded in ‘the very
constitution of the mind are for them severally
and individually final. It is this fact that con-
stitutes the very heart of the solemnity of His
words, when He says, ‘If the light that 15 in thee
be darkness, how great is that darkness’ (Mt 6°).
The light that is in a man is the only light that is
available for him. It is the light in which he sees
light. It cannot itself be tested, so far, at least,
as the user of it is concerned, by any other light
(cf. also Mt 13° and the principle laid down in
to 14°),
(d) Christ, moreover, is equally clear in teaching
that in the proper use of the equipment given
them, men may and always will arrive at correct
judgments in regard both to truth and to duty—
that is, in all cases and as regards all matters in
reference to which they are called upon, or indeed
are entitled, to form judgments. He recognizes, to
be sure, the sad fact that men not only may, but as
a matter of fact often do, give hospitable entertain-
ment both to error and to evil. He is very em-
phatic, however, in asserting that this is their
fault, and in no sense their misfortune. Whatever
the difficulties of the teaching, they need not leave
the soul in error or even in doubt. ‘If any man
willeth to do his will,’ says our Lord, ‘he shall
know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or
whether I speak from myself’ (Jn 717).
Any account of Christ’s teachings as to the judicial authority
vested in the individual would be fatally defective if it over-
looked a saying like Mt 1127 (cf. Jn 149. 819b. 1726), ‘No one
knoweth the Son,’ says Christ, ‘save the Father; neither doth
any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son willeth to reveal him.’ This is not the place for a detailed
exposition of these remarkable words. So much, however, is
clear upon their very face, namely, that there is a knowledge of
SS eee eee
ec eee
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
ee τ στ στ τι
God for which men are wholly dependent upon Christ. Again,
it is evident from Jn 1490. that whatever other elements this
knowledge of God contains, it is a knowledge that is mediated
through the understanding. ‘He that hath seen me, says our
Lord, ‘hath seen the Father.’ The same conclusion follows
inevitably from the great emphasis which Christ laid upon
His teaching function. But how is a man to test the correct-
ness of propositions for the very knowledge of the contents
of which, and much more for their accuracy, he is ex hypothesi
wholly dependent upon Christ? We have said that Christ
teaches that it is the prerogative of every man _ to bring
every proposition, to the truth of which he is expected to
assent, to some sort of process of ‘inner verification’ ; but here
are matters which, ex hypothest, men must accept upon testi-
mony, albeit it is the testimony of no less a witness than Christ
Himself. Have we here, then, an inconsistency in Christ’s
teaching? We think not. We test our telescope ; we satisfy
ourselves that the laws of its structure are the same as those
that obtain in the structure of the eye itself. It is just as truly
an organ of vision as is the eye itself, though, of course, an
organ of vastly greater range. What it discloses to us we could
not apprehend without it. Much that it discloses to us, we
either only gradually come to comprehend, or find to be at
present incomprehensible to us. But whether we comprehend
what we apprehend through the telescope or not, we accept its
disclosures, and at least refer them to the large and vague
category of what we call facts of existence, and wait expecting
to be able to make a closer classification with our advancing
knowledge, or the further development of our powers. And,
while we never reach the point where we are able with our own
eyes to verify the facts given us through the telescope, yet,
when we have used the norm in our eye upon the norm in the
telescope, and have thus proved a complete correspondence
between the two, we have an unshakable conviction that they
are not two but one, and that what has been disclosed by
the norm in the telescope is assented to by the norm in our
eye, as much so as if we had been in a position to bring the
norm in our eye to bear directly upon the phenomena revealed
to us through the telescope. Just so itis in the case of the
individual and Christ For the knowledge of certain facts re-
garding God and Christ, and concerning God in Christ, we are
absolutely dependent upon the testimony of Christ. We can-
not verify the correspondence between that testimony and
reality by ourselves comparing it with the reality. The reality
here is as inaccessible to our immediate inspection as the
phenomena of stellar space would be, apart from the telescope.
What then? Does Christ call upon us to surrender the very
badge of our individuality, when we are dealing with His state-
ments? Does He claim that His statements must be accepted
without our being able to subject them to any process of ‘inner
verification,’ the latter being, of course, the only possible real
verification? Not at all. What He does claim, however, is that
when we have assented to His trustworthiness, we have assented
to the trustworthiness of His statements. Obviously, if He is
as He claims to be, ‘the Truth,’ and we have satisfied ourselves
of this by the same rational and moral processes by which we
satisfy ourselves of any other propositions whatever, then in
verifying Him, so to speak, we have verified His statements, as
truly and as certainly as if we were capable of cornperine those
statements with the great realities to which they relate. Other-
wise, where would be the sense in examining witnesses in our
courts? And how else do we verify the ultimate facts given us,
in the frame of nature and in the constitution of our own being—
which, be it observed, are after all but the testimony of God,—
except by verifying God? That we can do, of which proposition
the simple proof is that we doit. For nothing is more certain
than that ‘it is impossible for God to lie.’ This is the ultimate
axiom upon which not only all certainty, but the possibility of
any certainty depends,
Christ’s teaching in reference to an external revelation, and
our absolute dependence upon His veracity for the truth and
the righteousness of its contents, do not impinge in the least
either upon His teaching as to the judicial authority with which
each individual is invested, or upon the true and proper
autonomy of the soul. For He constantly teaches both by
implication and by direct assertion that it is possible for
men to verify Him, so to speak, and that it is at once their
privilege and their duty to do so. And how exquisitely
tender is His subtle appeal to His disciples to apply to His
moral being that norm embedded in the constitution of their
minds, when He says, ‘In my Father’s house are many
mansions ; if it were not so, I would have told you’ (14%).
(2) While Christ accords a large judicial authority
to the individual, it is, as already stated, neither
an unlimited, nor an absolutely final authority.
In His famous words to St. Peter, He speaks of ‘my
church’ (Mt 1638), and in His equally celebrated
words to Pilate, of ‘my kingdom’ (Jn 18%). Now
it is no doubt true, as Dr. Vos has shown (7he
Kingdom of God and the Church, ch. ix.), that
these expressions are not absolutely coterminous
in their respective connotations, the ‘church’ being
but one phase of the ‘kingdom.’ Still, even this
being true, it follows that the Church is an organ-
sei body: with officers, laws, and members. Now
it is clear, from what Christ says of the Church,
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157
that the authority vested in her, and exercised
through her officers, is a purely judicial authority.
The Lord is her lawgiver. From Him alone she
receives all the laws by which she binds the con-
sciences of men. Her sole functions are to declare
and to apply the law of Christ. To make any laws
for her own members or for others is beyond her
prerogative.
That such is her authority as set forth in the teachings of
Christ appears from such statements as, ‘If thy brother sin
against thee, go show him his fault between thee and him
alone: . . . But if he hear thee not, take with thee one or two
more, etc. And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the
church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be
unto thee as the Gentile and the publican’ (Mt 1815); ‘Go ye,
therefore, and make disciples of all nations, etc. : teaching them
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,’ etc.
(Mt 2819f.),
The criticism of the former passage by B. Weiss can hardly
be regarded as invalidating it as a proper source of information
as to our Lord’s teaching concerning the Church (see his ΝΎ
Theol. i. p. 141). It is fair, we think, to assume that the charge
contained in the latter passage was addressed to the Apostles,
not as such, but as representatives of the Church in all ages.
As will be observed, the judicial authority
ascribed to the Church in these sayings of our
Lord has a twofold aspect. In Mt 28 she is author-
ized to declare the law of Christ to those without
her fold with a view to bringing them into subjec-
tion to Him. And in both sayings she is empowered
to unfold that law to those within her pale. The
necessity for both aspects of her judicial authority
is as obvious as is the grant of it. If it be her
function to extend the Kingdom, then it must also
be her prerogative authoritatively to declare the
nature and laws of the Kingdom. And again, if
the term ‘kingdom’ as applied to the Churel is
not a hopeless misnomer, then she must have
authority to determine what the law of Christ
demands of the citizens of the Kingdom, and when
this or that citizen is conforming to the law. See,
further, art. CHURCH.
(3) The supreme and final judicial authority be-
longs to the Holy Spirit, whose findings are medi-
ated proimntely through the Scriptures, and
ultimately through the Prophets, Apostles, and
Christ Himself. We have seen that, while both
the individual and the Church may, in the proper
use of their respective equipments, arrive at a
knowledge of truth and right in reference to all
matters of truth and duty upon which they are
respectively entitled to formulatea judgment ; yet,
as a matter of fact, neither the Church nor the
individual does always arrive at such knowledge.
Now the very statement of this position implies
the existence of some standard by the use of which
faulty judgments, when reached, may be detected
as such, and corrected. This standard, according
to Christ, is, in the last resort, to be found nowhere
else than in the teachings of the Prophets, Apostles,
and Himself. The finality and the infallibility of
these teachings are, so our Lord teaches, guaranteed
by the fact that they proceed directly from the
Godhead, through the immediate agency of its
great executive, the Holy Spirit, whose instru-
ments or organs the Prophets, Apostles, and He
Himself were. If we may use the term ‘Serip-
tures’ as a somewhat loose synonym for the teach-
ings of the Prophets, Apostles, and Christ, then
the Scriptures are, or, as with admirable accuracy
the Westminster Confession puts it, ‘the Holy
Spirit speaking in the Scripture’ is, ‘ the Supreme
Judge by which all controversies of religion are
to be determined . . . and in whose sentence we
are to rest’ (ch. i. see. x.).
(a) That Christ conceived of the teachings of
the Prophets, or the OT, as constituting, as far as
it went, a court of last appeal in matters of re-
ligion, is strikingly evinced in His two summaries
of those teachings already referred to: ‘Thou
shalt love the Lord thy Ged, ete. . . . Thou shalt
158 AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
love thy neighbour, etc. . . . On these two com-
mandments hangeth the whole law and_ the pro-
phets’ (Mt 224#-, Mk 12°57, Mt 7). But God being
love, it is just in love that religion finds its highest
and fullest expression. That standard, therefore,
which being adhered to leads to love, is the final
standard.
The same point of view as regards the OT finds expression in
the words, ‘They have Moses and the prophets ; let them hear
them. ... If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither
will they be persuaded, if one rise from the dead’ (Lk
1629. 31). The implication in Dives’ plea was that it was his
misfortune that he had come to that place of torment. These
words distinctly disallow that implication. They affirm both
the sufficiency and the finality of the OT in all matters con-
nected with the salvation of those to whom that revelation was
given. And so the Sadducees are told (Mt 2229), ‘ Ye do err, not
knowing the Scriptures,’ etc., which means, of course, that they
need not have erred had they only gone to the Scriptures in the
right spirit. Upon all questions raised by His adversaries, it
was to the teachings of the OT that Christ Himself continually
appealed as the final authority. Quoting Hosea, He said to the
Pharisees, ‘If ye had known what this meaneth, I desire mercy
and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless’
(Mt 127). Thus the standard to which He brings their judgment
of Himself and by which He exposes its falsity and wickedness,
is the teaching of the OT. His ‘Woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin,
and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, judg-
ment, mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and
not to have left the other undone’ (Mt 232%), is but an_applica-
tion of the standard of the OT for the testing of Pharisaic
teachings and practice. Further, He recognizes the oughtness
of these teachings, when they concern the tithing of mint,
anise, and cummin, as truly as in the weightier matters of
judgment, mercy, and faith. Especially significant are words
like those in Mk 1285 (cf. Mt 2241ff, Lk 20411): ‘ How say the
scribes that the Christ is the son of David? David himself said
in the Holy Spirit, The Lord said unto my Lord, etc. David
himself calleth him Lord, and whence is he his son?’
(6) Besides the passages already cited, the fol-
lowing show that Grist represents His Apostles as
being the organs of the Holy Spirit in such sense
that their teachings, gua Apostles, are ultimate
and infallible in all matters of faith and duty :
‘And I also say unto thee, That thou art Peter,
etc. .. . I will give unto thee the keys of the
kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and
whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth shall be
loosed in heaven’ (Mt 161), The same promise
is made to the Apostles, no doubt to all of them,
in Mt 183. In Jn 207! we read, ‘And when he
had said this he breathed on them, and saith unto
them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit : whose soever
sins ye forgive, they are forgiven ; whose soever
sins ye retain, they are retained.’
B. Weiss (NT Theol. i. 142, footnote) regards Mt 1818 as ad-
dressed to ‘the disciples in the wider sense,’ 2nd avoids bring-
ing the statement into collision with the facts of history only
by finding in them ‘nothing else than the authorization of the
Apostles to proclaim the message by means of which men are
called into the Kingdom’ (ib. p. 139, where he is commenting
more particularly upon Mt 16!9. On the other side see art.
* Power of the Keys" in Hastings’ DB, vol. iv.). To most per-
sons, however, such a view of this passage will appear inade-
quate. Dr. Chas. Hodge, believing that the grant of power
made in these words was not designed to be limited to the
Apostles, seeks to avoid collision with the facts of history by
representing it as made to the invisible Church (Church Polity,
p. S5ff.). This, however, will seem to many as little satisfactory
as is Weiss’ view. That the words were addressed to the
Apostles, and to no others, appears probable, not only from
Mt 161 εὖ and Jn 2022f., but even more so from a comparison of
Mt 1816. with Mk gvsf., That the Church also, according to
Christ, was cn ipa with a limited judicial authority, has
ἢ SHOwnNn.
already
The full character and extent of the power with
which Christ represents His Apostles as being
clothed appear conspicuously in the words, “And
Whosoever shall not receive you nor hear your
words, as ye go forth out of that house or that
city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I
say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the
land of Sedom and Gomorrah in the day of jude-
ment than for that city’ (Mt 1014. With? this
should be compared Mt 11%), The sutfticient |
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
ground for such a statement is furnished by the
words also spoken of the Apostles (and subse-
quently of ‘ the seventy,’ who received a similar,
but more temporary coinmission, Lk 10'*)—‘ He
that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that re-
ceiveth me receiveth him that sent me’ (Mt 10”,
cf. Jn 13”).
(c) That Christ claimed for Himself a judicial
authority that was absolute and final, needs hardly
to be illustrated. It appears from such facts as
that He taught as one having authority (Mk 1° *,
Lk 4°) ; He always commanded and never merely
counselled (Mt 28”, Lk 8°, Mt 105) ; while unfail-
ingly tender, He did not tolerate even well-meant
correction (Mt 1073); He invited, expected, and
demanded of His disciples the most complete and
Barer surrender to His teachings and to His
will.
His ‘hypocoristic expressions’ er ‘endearing diminutives’
(see art. by Professor B. B. Warfield in Bible Student and
Teacher, Sept. 1904, p. 515 ff.) indicate not only His attitude
towards His disciples, but, indirectly, that He expected their
attitude towards Him to be one of unquestioning docility,
dependence, and submission (Lk 1222 103, Jn 107-16 1315, Mt 1819
et passim). Both His authority and the nature of it are less
veiled behind the very common designation of ‘disciples.’ ‘A
disciple,’ says our Lord, using the figure of mezosis, ‘is not
above his teacher’ (Mt 1024). The very terms of discipleship
demand the same absolute self-abnegation upon the disciple’s
part that Christ Himself had manifested towards His Father.
‘If any man,’ says He, ‘will come after me, let him deny him-
self, and take up his cross and follow me’ (Mk 834, Lk 929). In
the saying, ‘ Ye call me Teacher and Lord : and ye say well : for
so Iam’ (Jn 1313), ‘ teacher’ is suggestively united with ‘ Lord.’
And not less suited to arrest the attention is the statement,
‘But be ye not called Rabbi: for one is your teacher, and all ye
are brethren’ (Mt 238).
Once more, Christ declared Himself to be ‘The
Way, and the Truth, and the Life’ (Jn 14°); He
invited men to believe in Himself just as they
believed in God (v.!); He conditioned His bless-
ings upon the acceptance of His ‘yoke’ and His
teachings (Mt 113). Nay, He conditioned men’s
everlasting salvation upon their unquestioning
acceptance of His statements about Himself (Jn
84; for the repetition of this thought in a slightly
different form see Mt 23%7!, Lk 13%! 19#f). The
word that He spake was to judge them at the last
day (Jn 12%). His words are God’s words: ‘The
words that I say unto you, I speak not from
myself: but the Father abiding in me he doeth
the works’ (Jn 14°). In a word, He and the
Father are one (Jn 1030) ; seeing Him, one sees the
Father (14°); the ‘Spirit of truth’ in guiding into
all truth was to glorify Him, ‘for,’ said our Lord,
‘he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto
you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are
mine: therefore said I that he shall take of mine
and shall declare it unto you’ (1011).
Thus when we reach Christ in the matter of
religion, we have reached the fountainhead. — It
were idle to look for a court in which to review
and put to the test His findings in regard either
to truth or to duty. Such, certainly, is His own
teaching upon the subject. See preceding article.
iv. EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. — 1.
Term defined.—The function of executive autho-
rity, as needs scarcely be said, is simply and solely
to give effect to the legislative will and to judicial
findings. Of itself it originates nothing, interprets
and declares nothing. It simply does. More need
not be said, because executive authority is so ob-
viously and so markedly distinct from both legis-
lative and judicial, that there is no danger of its
being confused with either the one or the other.
2. Kepositories.—(1) Our Lord obviously teaches
that as every individual is a repository of judicial
authority, so every individual was designed to be,
and every individual Christian is, an executive
agent of the Godhead. It is His constant conten-
tion that it is for doing the will of God that men
AUTHORITY IN RELIGION
AVE MARIA 159
SS ee 00 τ a EE π τ νυ eee
exist, whether as creatures or as Christians. The
end of His whole teaching function was to set men
doing, and to guide them in doing, the will of
God. It was the gravamen of His complaint
against those, like the Pharisees, who ought to
have been His disciples, but were not, that instead
of doing the will of God, they did the lusts of their
father, the devil (Jn 8“). The end that He set
before those professing to be His disciples was,
‘So let your light shine before men, that they
may see your good works, and glorify your Father
which is in heaven’ (Mt 51°). The first three peti-
tions that He puts on their lips are, ‘Hallowed be
thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,
as in heaven, so on earth.’ The badge of disciple-
ship (Mt 12%), the only accepted evidence of love
and of loyalty (Jn 14"), a condition sine qua non
to salvation (Mt 7°24), was that His followers
should do the will of God. It was His ceaseless
theme, elaborated now in this form and now in
that, that the end of life is not getting, or having,
or being ministered unto, or thinking, but being
and doing the will of God. To go into details here
would require the incorporation in this article of
a very considerable part. of all four Gospels, and
would be superfluous.
(2) The passages already cited show that Christ
represents the Church in her corporate capacity as
the great executive agency of God for the preach-
ing of the gospel of the Kingdom as a witness
among all nations, making disciples of all nations,
and teaching them to observe all things whatso-
ever He has commanded. Executive and judicial
authority here complement each other.
(3) That Christ ascribes executive authority to
the Prophets is perhaps a fair inference from such
a passage as Mk 7°, in which our Lord refers to
Isaiah not merely as an interpreter of God’s law,
but as a teacher of God’s people. But the inference
is not to be strained. And for evidence of the
executive authority unquestionably exercised by
the Prophets, we have to turn elsewhere than to the
Gospels. The case is different with the Apostles.
The mission of ‘the Twelve’ (Mt 10) points clearly
to the fact that they were invested with authority
to diffuse the knowledge of the gospel, and to use
a variety of agencies to gain men’s attention and
win their allegiance to it. The same follows from
Lk 24:15. and Ac 18, But as to the details of their
executive functions we learn but little from the
Gospels. It is different, however, in the case of
Christ. He applies to Himself (Lk 4118.) the famous
passage from Is 61, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me,’ ete. This is not the place to unfold in
detail the several features of the wondrous pro-
gramme outlined in the words of the prophet: it
is hardly necessary, for they are as plain as they
are precious. The title of ‘The Good Shepherd,’
which our Lord appropriated to Himself (perhaps
from Ezk 34), is evidence both of the fact and of
the nature of His executive functions (Jn 10). The
same fact underlies such statements as ‘I have
a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I
straitened until it be accomplished’ (Lk 12%).
This last passage also brings before us the central
feature of the work committed to Christ. Here,
again, we must forbear from going into details,
which belong properly to another field of discussion.
It must suffice merely to recall to the reader’s
mind such sayings of our Lord as ‘Therefore doth
my Father love me, because I lay down my life,
that I may take it again. No one taketh it away
from me, but 1 lay it down of myself. I have
authority to lay it down, and I have authority to
take it again. This commandment received I from
my Father’ (Jn 10!-); ‘This is my body . . . for
this is my blood of the covenant, which 15 shed for
many unto the remission of sins’ (Mt 267° 38), and
the word from the cross, ‘It is accomplished’ (Jn
1959. Surely the prophet went not amiss when he
spoke of Him as the great'Ebhedh Jahweh (7}7: 733).
(4) According to our Lord, the great executive
of the Godhead is the Holy Spirit. It belongs to
another article (see HOLY Spirit) to unfold His
doctrine of the Holy Spirit. But we may, without
intruding into that discussion, call attention to
passages like Jn 31% 1416 167 198. Q022f.) Ag 141-8,
LITERATURE.—The literature bearing formally upon the teach-
ings of Christ concerning authority in religion is very much
scattered and somewhat meagre. We must content ourselves,
therefore, with mentioning some works and articles that deal
with the question of authority in religion without treating
specifically of the teachings of our Lord upon this point. Dr.
James Martineau’s The Seat of Authority in Religion is still the
first in its class. (Dr. Martineau denies, of course, the existence
of any external authority in religion ; and supports his conten-
tion with an acuteness and vigour that still remain not only
unsurpassed, but wholly unequalled by any who have given in
their adhesion to his general position). More recent works, re-
presenting substantially Dr. Martineau’s view, but adding little
to what may be called his historical, and nothing whatever to
his psychological and philosophical defence of it, are: Religions
of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit, by the late Prof.
Auguste Sabatier; Liberal Christianity, by his pupil and after
colleague, Prof. Jean Réville; The Religion of a Mature Mind,
by Prof. George A. Coe. Prof. Sabatier and Dr. Coe both claim
the support of Christ for their position. But Prof. Sabatier’s
presentation of the teachings of Christ is lacking not only in
completeness, but in cogency, and Prof. Coe’s comes perilously
near being mere caricature. For an (in some vital particulars)
opposite view of the general subject, the reader may be referred
to Stanton, The Place of Authority in Matters of Religious
Belief; Dale, Protestantism (ch. ii.); Ellicott, Christus Com-
probator ; Oman, Vision and Authority; Strong, Authority
in the Church; and also to the following articles: ‘The Phi-
losophy of Authority in Religion,’ by Wilfrid Ward in The
Hibbert Journal, vol. i. pp. 677-692; ‘The Right of Systematic
Theology,’ by Prof. B. B. Warfield in The Presbyterian and
Reformed Review, July 1896; ‘ Authority in Religion,’ by Dr.
Henry Collin Minton, 7b. April 1900. Dr. Warfield’s article,
besides the always valuable matter from his own pen, contains
a number of useful references and extracts,
W. M. M‘PHEETERS.
AVARICE.—See COVETOUSNEssS.
AYE MARIA.—This well-known devotion of the
Latin Church is based upon the salutations ad-
dressed to the Virgin Mary by the angel Gabriel
and by Elisabeth the mother of John the Baptist
(Lk 178-4), Its earlier and shorter form follows
closely the words of Scripture, with the addition
only of the names ‘Mary’ and ‘Jesus’; ‘ Hail
(Mary), full of grace; blessed art thou among
women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb
(Jesus).’ As thus recited, it cannot be called a
prayer, but may be considered either as a memorial
of thanksgiving for the Incarnation ; or as one of
those devotional apostrophes of departed saints
which are found even in the writings of the Chris-
tian Fathers and in early Christian inscriptions.
The use of the Ave Maria in the fixed liturgical
services of the Latin Church is of comparative]
late origin. Its devotional use is, however, finch
older : it is even said to be traceable as far back as
the 7th century. In the 14th cent. it is found in
the popular handbooks of devotion. The Mirror of
our Lady (first half of the 15th cent.) alludes to it
as forming part of the preliminary prayers said
privately by the worshipper before the office began.
An interesting example of its use is given by
Maskell (Monumenta Ritualia, ii. 71). The founda-
tion statutes of the Abbey of Maxstoke in the reign
of Edward ΠΙ. order its recital daily.
But the Ave was not definitely placed in the
offices of the Breviary until the 16th cent. ; and
curiously enough by the liturgical reformer, Car-
dinal Quignonez. In the present Roman Breviary,
dating from Pope Pius v. (1568), it is directed to
be said with the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning
of each office, and after Compline.
The pre-Reformation Ave was usually the shorter
and Scriptural form as given above. But as it
stands now in the Breviary, it ends with a direct
160 AWE
AWE
prayer addressed to the Virgin, said to date from
the middle of the 15th cent.: ‘Holy Mary, mother
of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of
our death.’
It is fair to remember that, whatever lines the
devotions to Mary ultimately followed, they were,
in their original intention, undoubtedly devotions
to Christ. Like the title Theotokos, sanctioned by
the Third Gicumenical Council (Ephesus 431), they
were intended to safeguard and emphasize the true
humanity of Christ. Not only was Christ perfect
God, but He was truly conceived and born of a
human mother, so that the Son of Mary is indis-
solubly God and man in one person. The devotions
addressed to His mother were therefore a com-
memoration of the intimate union between the
Godhead and human nature, of which union Mary
was both the willing instrument and the sign.
LITERATURE.—Addis and Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary, 1897 ;
Wright and Neil, A Protestant Dictionary, 1904; Bodington,
Books of Devotion, 1903; Procter, A History of the Book of
Common Prayer, 1884; Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia, 1846;
the Breviarium Romanum; The Hours of the Blessed Virgin
Mary (Preface), Percival & Co. 1892; Bengel, Meyer, and
Alford on Lk 138, A. R. WHITHAM.
AWE.—The adoration of what is mysterious and
sublime is an essential element in religion. When
expressed towards unworthy objects the result is
superstition, but the motive itself is the soul of
worship. As the feeling is thus fundamental to
the relationship between the human and_ the
Divine, increase of knowledge, while testing and
purifying this relationship, should protect and
strengthen it.
In the service of the missionary gospel, the
complaint is made to-day by Eastern heathen
religions that our Western Christianity, which
comes to them as the aggressive herald of a higher
life, is gravely deficient in religious veneration.
It becomes, therefore, of practical interest to in-
quire how Christ’s first disciples were influenced
in this direction by His presence among them, and
to what extent the same feeling towards the person
of the living Christ pervades the Church of modern
times.
When Christ took-upon Him our nature, it was
under such circumstances of poverty and humble
birth as could not inspire the conventional regard
which the world bestows upon rank and title.
Further, His life was lived in such daily intimacy
with those around Him, and was so thoroughly
affected by the local customs of Israel and the
social conditions of the time, that His disciples
could speak of their fellowship with Him in terms
of exact knowledge and distinct impression. They
could afterwards refer to His life as something
that they had seen with their eyes and their hands
had handled (1 Jn 11).
Nevertheless, there is nothing more evident in
the story of the Evangelists than the fact that
“permanent and increasing mystery, passing into
reverence and awe, accompanied that familiar ac-
quaintance. The feeling was usually called forth
by some manifestation of knowledge or power,
and deeper even than the impression thus pro-
duced by His wonderful teaching and ΠΑΟΒῚΣ ΝΕ
works was the trustful consciousness of their being
In contact with a personality that was altogether
holy and separate from sin. Finally, the reverent
submission thus instilled into the’ minds of the
disciples was exemplified in Christ Himself to-
wards the will of God, as in the temptation in
the w ilderness and in the Garden of Gethsemane
gprs power of spiritual perception increased,
- I ep oar aha aa ee ἈΠῈ mes ie
᾿ ᾿ sud fen depth, and the
delightful expansion that the Master gave to old
religious truths, but there were always Ineanines
ω ve Θ᾽
about which they had to seek an interpretation
in private, and to the end of their fellowship they
had often to confess that they knew not what He
said. The difficulty thus created by His person-
ality and actions was so far recognized by the Lord
Jesus, that on one occasion He encouraged His
disciples to make known their own thoughts and
the thoughts of others about Himself (Mt 1603).
Thus Nathanael was overawed by the knowledge
that He had been watching him in his place of
seclusion (Jn 14°); and this feeling soon became
a general persuasion that He knew all men and
what was in man (2™-*), Peter felt himself so
immediately in the presence of Divine power that
he confessed his own sinfulness, and he and James
and John decided to leave all and follow Him
(Lk 5‘). The bereaved sisters at Bethany repeat
the conviction that if He had been there, their
brother would not have died (Jn 117-8), And
among those who came into more incidental con-
tact with Him by simple inquiry or importunate
need, Nicodemus was attracted by the persuasion
that He was a teacher come from God (Jn 3?) ; an
admission to the same effect was made on one occa-
sion by the Pharisees and Herodians (Mk 121) ;
the chief priests and scribes were driven to assign
a Satanic origin to His unquestionable power (Mt
12°4) ; while the Pharisees reached a stage in their
controversy with Him after which no man durst
ask Him any question (Mt 22%, Mk 12%). The
privileged traffickers in the temple quailed under
His exposure and rebuke (Mt 211", and to the end
the challenge to convict Him of sin remained un-
answered (Jn 84). All the miracles of Christ,
while expressing His pity and love, accentuated
this Divine power, and His teaching bore the dis-
tinguishing mark of authority (Mt 7%).
To His first Jewish disciples the name Messiah
was the unveiling of a historical mystery, the jus-
tification of the calling, preservation, and discipline
of Israel. They found in Him the fulfilment of
the prophecy ‘and his name shall be called
Wonderful’ (Is 96). With so much that attracted
them to His person and depended upon His presence,
it is doubtful if they could have ventured upon our
depersonalized formule about ‘the plan of salva-
tion.’ And so, while the Fourth Gospel, like the
ancient epics, begins with the intrcduction of its
principal theme, namely, ‘The Word became flesh,
and dwelt among us’ (Jn 14), the Evangelist could
add that even through that obscuring medium
Christ’s disciples were enabled to behold His
glory (i.).
After the Resurrection this veil was so completely
removed, and the awe of Christ’s presence became
so unclonded and continuous, that one of the
Apostles could write, ‘Though we have known
Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no
more’ (2 Co 518),
Thereafter it became the commission of the
Church to proclaim and teach and exemplify how
the flesh may in turn become the Word, and every
believer be a dwelling-place for the Spirit of Christ.
The reverence that once gathered around His own
visible person could still influence men through
every witness in whom His Spirit dwelt. The con-
dition of life and service was fixed, namely, ‘As
he is, so are we in this world’ (1 Jn 41). And so
in the Apostolic preaching of the gospel the living
personality of Christ was never lost in the analysis
of His mind and nature. Instead of the parched
abstractions that with us so often take the place of
the mystical indwelling, they preached ‘ Jesus and
the resurrection’ (Ac 1718), ‘Jesus Christ and him
crucified’ (1 Co 93).
Can it be said to-day of Christian sainthood and
the service of the missionary gospel, that the per-
son of Christ is thus central, His presence an indis-
AXE
BACK TO CHRIST 161
pensable necessity, likeness to Him the recognition
mark of His Church, and the conquest of the world
the consummation of its appointed labours? If it
be otherwise, certain signs may be expected to
manifest themselves. Christ will be little more
than a beautiful name in His Church, an idea
developed and resident in our minds. The work of
the Holy Spirit in bringing and revealing the
things of Christ will be shadowy and almost super-
fluous to those who have already reached a com-
plete conception of Christ by philosophical method
applied to the study of doctrine. The question, ‘Is
Christ divided ?’ (1 Co 1:5) will cease to startle and
distress, and the loyalty due to the Head of the
Church and to the universal kingdom will be
pledged to sectarian trusts and the watchwords of
exhausted controversy. When the one standard
of elevation, the stature of Christ, is withdrawn,
Church distinctions will be restricted to the super-
ficial dimensions of mere historical length and
doctrinal width. In the ideal picture of the future
fold, the one flock still needs the presence of the
one Shepherd (Jn 10°). Through this visible union
in Him, Christ will be glorified (171), and solely to
its manifestation is promised the conquest of the
world (v.7!).
LITERATURE. —Fowler and Wilson’s Principles of Morals, Oxf.
1894, p. 101; Kidd, Morality and Religion, Edin. 1895, p. 187 ;
Davidson, Theism and Human Nature, p. 279; and on
Christ’s awe, Swete’s St. Mark?, 1902, p. 342 (on Mk 1439).
G. M. MACKIE.
AXE.—This word occurs twice in the Gospels
(Mt 3”, Lk 39), each time in the report of the
preaching of the Baptist. The old familiar tool of
eace and weapon of war (1 Καὶ ὁ", Ps 74°, Jer 515)
as become a metaphor for the ministry of men
with a mission of reform. This suits the spirit of
one who, like John the Baptist, is filled with the
teaching of the OT. For the axe gleams in its
histories and flashes in its songs, while in prophetic
mood the tool is changed to the person—the wielder
is himself the weapon (Is 10°, Dn 41, Jer 51°).
All this is the forerunner’s inherited world of ideas
on this implement of industry and weapon of
attack. He is a part of all that his race has been.
He sees the men of old times ‘as men that lifted
up axes upon a thicket of trees’ (Ps 74’). ‘The
Messiah, the Coming One, is the last of the line.
Nor are all in that line of the lineage of the house
of David. ‘As the Assyrian axe in the days of
old, so now the Roman axe was laid at the root of
Israel’ (Philuchristus, ch. 4). Thoroughly as these
powers had done their part, yet more drastic was
to be the work of the future (‘ every tree,’ Mt 3!°).
Under this image of the axe, the road-maker
(Mt 33) has his vision of the wood-cutter and his
effectual working (v.?°).
But ‘God fulfils Himself in many ways.’ And
when the Carpenter laid aside the axe of the work-
shop in Nazareth, the wood-cutter, ‘thoroughly
furnished unto every good work, a workman that
needeth not to be ashamed,’ was already prepared
for going up against the trees. Jesus had been
tempered by waiting, in solitude and temptation.
And the stroke of His axe, when it fell, was de-
liberate, radical, universal (cf. He 4). Men
and institutions, the priests, the temple felt it. He
would save the tree of humanity, even ‘as a tree
whose stock remaineth when they are felled’ (Is 6").
Therefore He struck at the root of the evil in man
and nature—sin. And because the strokes were
meant to be regenerating and reforming, they
were clean, swift, sharp, and stout (Jn 211 8:3»,
Tike V3}2-):
Finally, the axe is not only the sign-manual of
the mission of the forerunner and the Fulfiller,
it is that of reformers in general. As the axe
of the backwoodsman has been tempered in fire
and water past the useless state of brittleness and
beyond the extremity of hardness, so the temper-
ing of the reformer is done, on the one hand, in
a series of Divine and delicate processes in the
personality of him who is being touched to fine
issues by the Spirit, for the service of God and
man, and, on the other hand, in a parallel series of
providential dispensations in the mind and environ-
ment of the people, the race, or the institution
with which he has to deal.
LITERATURE.—LHece Homo, ch. 1; Reynolds, John the Baptist,
Lecture 4; Tennyson, Jdylls of the King, ‘The Coming of
Arthur,’ ap. jin. ; Morley, Life of Gladstone, ii. 252.
JOHN R. LEGGE.
AZOR.—An ancestor of Jesus, according to the
genealogy in the First Gospel (Mt 1155).
B
BABE.—1. βρέφος, lit. ‘nourished’—by the
mother, is used of an unborn infant (Lk 14-4), of an
infant still in swaddling-bands (2-16), and also of
young children brought by their mothers to Jesus
that He might touch them (1815). 2. νήπιος, liter-
ally, ‘one that cannot yet speak’ (vj7= ‘not,’ and
ἔπος, ‘word’); ef. Lat. in-fans, ‘infant,’ which is
a better rendering of νήπιος, though neither AV
nor RV is consistent in the translation of the two
Greek words. νήπιος is a child as contrasted with
an older person, ¢.9. with ‘the wise and prudent’
in Lk 102% and Mt 11° (cf. Gal 45, Eph 415). It is
used also with θηλάζοντες, ‘sucklings,’ in Mt 217%, in
which passage the root meaning of νήπιος is speci-
ally suggestive, ‘Out of the mouth of speechless
(babes) thou hast perfected praise.’
Jesus’ fondness for these little ones was shown,
both by His rebuke of the disciples who would
have sent them and their mothers away when
they came to Him for a blessing (Lk 18%, cf.
Mt 19%), and by His frequent use of children to
illustrate the Christian disposition (cf. Mt 182°,
VOL 1---- -͵ἸῚ
Mk 1015, Lk 1816. 1).
CHILD.
The word ‘babe (βρέφος) is twice used of the infant Jesus
Himself (Lk 212-16), And it is worth noting that in v.12 RV
brings out a significance of meaning which is lost in AV. In
the Gr. there is no art. prefixed to βρέφος in this verse; the sign
given to the shepherds was ‘the sign of @ babe.’ Moreover,
according to the reading which is most strongly supported,
σημέιον Should have the art., so that what the shepherds were
told was ‘ 7'he sign is a babe.’ The meaning therefore is, not as
AV suggests, ‘ you shall find the babe you are looking for in such
and such a condition,’ but rather this ‘most extraordinary and
suggestive one, You shall find the Saviour you are looking for,
Christ the Lord, in the form of a babe, wrapped in swaddling-
clothes, and lying in a manger.’ See Dr. Monro Gibson in
Sunday Mag., Dec. 1891; and cf. Dr. Hastings in Expos. Times,
iii. [1892] 196, and [1894] 147. E. B. POLLARD.
BACK TO CHRIST.—The movement or tendency
described in the phrase ‘back to Christ’ belongs
mainly to the past half century, and both its wide
extent and its far-reaching consequences for re-
ligious thought justify us in regarding it as the
most By elces theological event of the period.
The phrase can be received as a correct descrip-
See, further, artt. INFANCY,
BACK TO CHRIST
162
tion of the movement, only under the explanation
that the return has not been to the Christ of
dogma, but to the Christ of history. This dis-
tinction must be kept clearly in view. The Christ
of dogma is Christ as exhibited in the creeds—the
eternally begotten Son of God, the second Person
in the ‘Trinity, who, for our redemption, assumed
our iuman nature and submitted to death as an
atonement for our sins. He is the God-man, a
Divine Person with two natures and two wills. It
is evident that these determinations move in a
different region from that of empirical reality.
They cannot be established on merely historical
evidence; they have their ground in a judgment
of faith. What we have in dogma is not a portrait
of the historical Jesus in the religious and ethical
traits of His character, but a speculative construc-
tion of His Person ; not an account of His historical
ministry, but a doctrinal interpretation of it. The
Christ of history is the concrete. Person whose
image meets us in the Gospels; the Christ of
dogma is the complex of metaphysical or doctrinal
characters which the Church, on the ground of its
faith, attributed to this Person. So far the dis-
tinction is clear enough, and meets with general
acceptance. The difticulty begins when we raise
the question whether such facts as the Virgin-
birth, the Miracles (in the strict sense of the word),
and the Resurrection are to be included in our
conception of the historical Christ as resting upon
historical evidence, or whether they are not rather
to be transferred from the domain of history to
that of faith. The question will come up again ;
in the meantime it may be suflicient to call
attention to the ambiguity which must attach to
the term ‘historical Christ’ so long as it remains
undecided.
When we speak of a return to the Christ of
history, we imply that His image has been lost
sight of, or at least obscured. It was not doubtless
the intention of the Church that its doctrinal
determinations should supplant the concrete
reality in the thought and faith of the community.
But this was what actually happened. More and
more the historical Person was overshadowed by
the speculative construction, the historical minj-
stry by the formulas in which its significance was
summed up. The figure of Jesus disappeared be-
hind the pre-existent Logos, the earthly ministry
behind the idea of the Incarnation, the cross behind
the doctrine of the Atonement. This result is
not to be explained by the fact that dogma, from
its controversial character, attracted to itself an
undue share of attention and interest as com-
pared with matters that had never been in dispute.
he cause lay deeper. It is to be found in the
conception ot Revelation and of Faith that has
dominated the Catholic and also, toa large extent,
the Protestant Church. Revelation has been un-
derstood as the supernatural communication of a
ystem of doctrine ; Faith, as the submission of the
inind to doctrine on the ground of its authority.
’ oe re thus been thrown, not on the
1 he hist oieat life on the dogmatic construction.
" torical life has oceupied only a secondary
place, its signihcance being found mainly in the
basis if upplies for this construction or interpre-
tation,
1, Causes of the movement. —What are the
causes that have contributed to restore the figure
of Jesus to its place in the centre of relicious
thous ht ’ We shall mention three as the chief.
: (α The first is the applteation of historical
riticism to the Gospel narrative. In 1835, D. F
Strauss published his Led n Jesu, and this boak
proved the startine point of a critical movement
the end of which is not yet in sieht, The results
Of Strauss’ criticism were
almost purely negative; |
BACK TO CHRIST
the Gospel story was resolved into a tissue of
myths. There are still writers who find in that
story only the most meagre basis of fact ; but their
conclusions are far from representing the general
results of the movement, which are much more
positive than negative in their character, much
more constructive than destructive. If doubt has
been cast on some of the facts related about Jesus,
and if the influence of subsequent ideas has been
detected here and there in the presentation of His
life and teaching, the substantial truth of the
Gospel narrative has been amply vindicated.
Moreover, the critical study of the NT has done
for Christ what that of the OT has done for the
prophets. It has reconstructed the contemporary
background, given us a better understanding of
His teaching, and enabled us to see the Man and
His work in their human environment. To this
enlarged historical knowledge and new feeling for
the historical, we owe the recognition of the fact
that the Christ of history is one thing and the con-
ception of His Person that sprang up on the soil
of the Church’s faith another. As early as the
Fourth Gospel the two images had been blended
into one. Still further, criticism has contributed
to the return to Christ by the mere fact that it
has brought the problem of His historical reality
and significance into the centre of attention and
interest. Up to the appearance of the Leben Jesu
the problems that-occupied the theological field
were almost purely speculative: when Christ was
considered, it was as the vehicle or symbol of certain
speculative ideas. The retirement of the specu-
lative behind the historical is one of the signs of
the times.
(6) A second and even more important factor in
the movement ‘back to Christ’ is the widespread
dissatisfaction with the traditional statements of
Christianity. Since the rationalistic movement of
the 18th cent. the history of dogma has been in
the main a history of disintegration. Those who
seek to go behind the creeds, back to the source
of our religion, proceed on the ground that the
creeds do not represent, with any sufticient correct-
ness or adequacy, either the conceptions that Jesus
taught or the significance that His Person has for
faith. All we can do here is to indicate the main
lines which the criticism of dogma has followed.
When we examine the formulas of Nicwea and
Chalcedon, in which the Being of God and the
Person of Christ are determined, we find one basal
conception underlying them all. It is the con-
ception of Substance. God is conceived primarily
as the Absolute Substance; that is to say, as the
indeterminate, unchanging and permanent ground
of the knowable world of variety, change, and
transience. Christ is true God because He shares
in the Divine Substance; and because He has
taken up human nature or substance into union
with His Divine substance, He is also true man.
The inner relations of the Godhead— Fatherhood,
Sonship, the Procession of the Holy Spirit—are
all expressed in terms of this category. It is
true that the Church had other things to say
about God and Christ than those of its formulas ;
still the formulas were regarded as conveying the
deepest and most vital truths, and their acceptance
was made the criterion of orthodoxy and the
condition of salvation. If the ethical was recog-
nized, it occupied only a subordinate position in
comparison with the metaphysical. Now, what
is this idea of Substance which plays so great a
role in the creeds? It was not derived from Christ
or the New Testament. It was borrowed from
Hellenistic philesophy; and what it originally
answered was not any religious need, but the
purely intellectual demand that all the manifold-
ness of this time-world shall be reducible to the
BACK TO CHRIST
unity of a single principle. Even from a philo-
sophical point of view the idea of Substance is
open to fatal objections as a principle by which
to explain personal or, indeed, any relations. To
modern thought Substance is not a concrete
reality ; it is nothing more than the most abstract
of all ideas. To hypostatize abstractions, equip
them with causal power, and employ them as
principles of explanation, was ἃ peculiarity of
Greek thought, and one that it is hopeless to
revive. The use which the creeds make of this
idea is even more objectionable when considered
from the standpoint of religion. Absolute Sub-
stance has nothing in common with the holy,
personal Will of the prophets, or with the gracious
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. One cannot, on
such a foundation, build up a Christian conception
of God. And to say that Christ is Divine in
virtue of His participation in the Divine Sub-
stance, is not to present Him in any character that
makes Him the object of our trust. What gives
Christ His significance for faith is the fact that
in His Person and ministry faith recognizes the
revelation of God’s gracious will towards sinful
men. ΤῸ substitute a divinity of Substance for
a divinity of Revelation is to remove Clirist from
the realm of faith into that of speculation; and,
further, since the category of substance is at
bottom a physical category, it is to rank the
physical above the peisonal and ethical.
In formulating these metaphysical doctrines, the
Church no doubt believed that it was safeguarding
vital religious interests. What seemed at stake
was nothing less than the reality of the salvation
mediated by Christ. But, it is contended, the con-
ception of salvation that the Nicene and Chalcedon
formulas were designed to safeguard is not an
ethical, but a metaphysical, or, more correctly,
physical, conception. The evil from which deliver-
ance is sought is not primarily sin; it is the mor-
tality that belongs to our fallen nature; and the
good salvation brings is not ethical communion
with God, but participation in eternal life, which
is thought of as a natural quality of the Divine
substance. Human substance is deified, invested
with the quality of immortality, by being taken
up into and penetrated by Divine substance. — It
is this metaphysical conception of salvation that
requires a metaphysical Christ. Christ must be
God and man in the substantial sense, since it was
in His Person that the penetration (ἐπιχώρησις) of
human substance by Divine took place. [Ὁ is
obvious that such a conception of Christ’s Person
can have little or no significance for those who
regard religious relationships as being at their
deepest and highest personal and etlical. An
ethical conception of Redemption, as a change in
our relation to God etlected within our conscious-
ness, requires us to seek the significance of Christ
not in the metaphysical background of His nature,
but in the ethical and religious traits of His charac-
ter, which disclose to us the heart of God, and have
the power to awaken within us the response of
love and faith.
In the theology of the Greek Church the work
of Christ was summed up in His Incarnation. In
that act salvation was already achieved. A more
practical and ethical conception entered the Church
with the great figure of Augustine. The meta-
physical antithesis of mortal, creaturely life and
eternal, Divine life retired before the ethical an-
tithesis of sin and grace. There was a transference
of emphasis from the metaphysical Incarnation to
the ethical Atonement. The change marked an
important advance. Yet in the doctrine of the
Atonement as formulated by Anselm, and even as
subsequently modified, the ethical does not appear
In its purity, but only under the form of the
BACK TO CHRIST 163
The work of Christ is interpreted by
means of: categories borrowed from the legal dis-
juristic.
cipline of the Roman Church. But ethical re-
lationships and ethical ends cannot be adequately
expressed in terms of criminal law. The Jjuristic
no less than the metaphysical conceptions of the
old theology have lost their hold on the modern
mind. We interpret religious relations now in
terms of ethics and psychology.
(c) The third cause that has operated in bringing
the historical Person and work of Christ into the
foreground, has been the new sense—reflected in
the writings of men like Goethe, Emerson, and
Carlyle—ot the importance of great personalities
as factors of historical change and progress. Neither
Catholicism nor traditional Protestantism can be
said to have shown much appreciation of the re-
ligious and ethical forces that radiate from Jesus
as a historical personality. The saving activity of
God in Christ has been conceived either in a mysti-
cal, semi-mechanical way, as affecting us through
an operation in the substance or background of our
being; or, again, rationalistically, as mediated
through ideas or doctrines. The Rationalism of
the 18th century and the speculative philosophy of
the 19th, while rejecting the former ot these views,
only accentuated the latter. History was resolved
into a dialectic of ideas : not personalities but ideas
were regarded as the creative forces. In the specu-
lative theology of the Hegelian period, the religious
importance of Jesus was found almost solely in the
fact that He was the introducer or the symbol of
the supreme religious idea. This idea—the essen-
tial oneness of God and man, man as the eternal
Son of God—is the active and creative thing.
There is still a large and important school, repre-
sented by writers like Green, Edward Caird,
Pfleiderer, A. Dorner, which continues the Hege-
lian tradition. But the past half century has
witnessed a reaction from this exaggerated in-
tellectualism. It is being more and more widely
recognized that the elevation and enrichment of
man’s spiritual life have been effected far less by the
movements and instincts of the mass, or by the
introduction and development of ideas, than by the
appearance on the stage of history of great creative
personalities. Such personalities are fountains of
life for many succeeding generations. In no pro-
vince is their importance so marked as in that of
religion, And Christ is the supreme personality.
It was the impression produced by His Person,
even more than the new ideas He taught, that
created the Christian Chureh. ‘The life was the
light of men.’ And in whatever way we account
for it, it is certain that Christian ideas cannot be
separated from Christ without being stripped of
much of their power to maintain themselves in
men’s minds and hearts. The recognition of such
facts has had no small share in bringing the
Person of Christ into the centre of religious
thought.
2. Theological reconstruction.—We pass from the
sauses that have brought about a return to the
historical Christ, to consider some of the attempts
at theological reconstruction or revision to which
the movement has led. What is its dogmatic
significance? —The movement is not a uniform one ;
it has taken various directions ; and while most of
the thought of the day confesses its influence, this
influence is much more marked in some cases than
in others. We need not take into account a writer
like Gore, who, though insisting on the importance
of a knowledge of the historical Christ, yet derives
his theology not from Christ, but from the Cfcu-
menical Councils; or like Loisy, who, indeed, dis-
tinguishes between the Christ of history and the
Christ of faith, but yet allows the former little
significance except as the starting-point of the
BACK TO CHRIST
164
movement known as Christianity. Our attention
must be limited to the theologies in which the new
feeling for the historical Christ has exerted some
marked influence.
(1) We begin with that form of the movement
which departs least from traditional orthodoxy,
and to which the term ‘ Christo-centric’ is usually
applied. In this ease the return to Christ has not
led to anything like a reconstruction of doctrine ;
the most that has been undertaken is a revision.
The traditional doctrines receive a reinterpretation
and a fresh grounding in the light of the fuller
knowledge of, and keener feeling for, the Christ of
history. In the words of the most distinguished
representative of the Christo-centric movement, in
this country, ‘We cannot conceive and describe
the supreme historical Person without coming face
to face with the profoundest of all the problems in
theology ; but then we may come to them from an
entirely changed point of view, through the Person
that has to be interpreted rather than through the
interpretations of His Person. When this change
has been effected, theology ceases to be scholastic
and becomes historical.’ *
This claim to break with the scholastic method
is partially, but only partially, justified. The
doctrines of the Church are no longer treated as
sacrosanct, and as the first principles of theological
construction, Still further, it is recognized that
even Scripture cannot be received as the ultimate
source and norm of doctrine. The Apostolic con-
ception of Christianity is not formally authori-
tative. We must not look at Christ merely through
St. Paul's eyes; it is possible for us to see the
Christ whom St. Paul saw, and to estimate St.
Paul's thoughts from the vantage ground of this
immediate knowledge. The idea of an external
authority is not, however, surrendered ; it is only
varried back to the last possible resort, the con-
sciousness of Christ. Whatever can be derived
from the consciousness of Christ has an authori-
tative claim on our acceptance. And since His
history is of a piece with His consciousness, the
two must be taken together. The theological task
is therefore to interpret. God through the history
and the consciousness of the historical Christ.
But here the question postponed at the beginning
presses forananswer. The term ‘historical Christ’
is not unambiguous. What are the contents of
His consciousness, what are the facts in His history,
which give to Him His meaning for faith, and which
must be regarded as constituting His historical
personality? We know Jesus from the Synoptic
Gospels as the teacher of an ethical ideal supreme
in its depth and height, and of a religion of pure
inwardness and spirituality. We obtain glimpses
into an inner life of intimate and unbroken fellow-
ship with God. He was conscious of a unique
vocation, to bring men to the knowledge and ser-
vice of the Father in heaven, and to introduce the
Rei n of God on earth. In His consciousness of
His vocation and of His equipment for it, He
mecepted the title of Messiah. He carried out His
vocation with an obedience to God that never
wr r ed, with a trust in God that no storm could
shake, with a love that shrank from no sacrifice,
and 1] it never grew cold. He accepted the cross
in the confidence that God’s purpose would not be
overthrown by His death, but established. This at
least criticism leave untouched ; and for some this
human Jesus is the Jesus of hi tory, and, at the
same time, the Divine Christ. the Saviour of the
world. The constitutive facts in His Person and
history are the rel ms and ethical facts. But
such is not t! iew of tho | position we are
now describ \ccepting these facts, they do
not 1 them ; plyi n adequate ‘con-
Fair » 4 V rn ΤΊ) »p.8
| Christ’s lips.
BACK TO CHRIST
ception of the Christ of history, or as disclosing the
deepest meaning of His life. For Christo-centrie
as for traditional theology, the elements of cardinal
importance in Christ’s consciousness and_ history
are the miraculous elements. The facts that give
to His inner life its character are His moral
perfection and consciousness of sinlessness, His
assertion of a unique knowledge of God, and of a
Sonship different in kind from that possible to His
disciples, His assertion of His Messiahship and pre-
existence, His demand for absolute devotion to His
Person, His claim to a superhuman authority in
forgiving sins and in dealing with OT institu-
tions and laws, His claim to be the Saviour of the
world, the arbiter of human destiny, the final
Judge. Similarly His outer life receives its char-
acter from the Virgin-birth, the Miracles (inter-
preted in the strict sense), and, above all, from the
dily Resurrection. The historical Christ is the
transcendent and miraculous Christ, the Christ
who was conscious of a superhuman dignity, and
who was declared by the resurrection from the
dead to be the Son of God with power (Ro 14).
This conception of Christ, with its subordination
of the an and religious in His consciousness
and history to the miraculous, carries with it two
momentous consequences. In the first place, it in-
volves the view, is indeed founded upon it, that
the Revelation of God is to be found not primarily
in Christ’s Person and ministry, but in the doe-
trines in which these are interpreted. Christ is
brought before us as primarily a ‘problem that
demands solution. What constitute Him a prob-
lem are the above-mentioned facts in His con-
sciousness and history, which cannot be accounted
for except on the hypothesis that He was a super-
human, supernatural Being—a Being that stood
in a relation to God beyond any that can be
described in ethical terms. These facts are singled
out as the essential ones, just because they set the
problem and provide the basis for the transcen-
dental hypothesis. The solution of the problem
is given in the NT doctrines of Christ’s Person
and work. The Person and work constitute the
facts; the doctrines supply their explanation or
interpretation. Apart from the doctrinal inter.
pretation the facts might still retain a certain
ethico-religious significance, but they would lose
their highest, their essential, meaning. It is the
interpretation or construction that is the essential
thing in Christianity. The gospel is not given
with the character, teaching, and ministry of
Christ, in their direct appeal to the heart and
conscience ; only the doctrinal interpretation of
these facts—that the pre-existent Son of God
assumed human nature, lived among men, and
atoned by His death for their sin—has a right to
the name. Christianity is given only when Christ
is speculatively construed. *
Though the need for such a construction can be
demonstrated, the construction itself is not to be
regarded as a work of human freedom. We re-
ceive it as authoritatively given. To traditional
theology the authority is inspired Scripture, the
witness of the Apostolic writers no less than
Christ’s self-witness. It is characteristic of the
Christo-centric school that, with a freer view of
inspiration, it admits only the self-witness as the
ultimate authority. Only Christ Himself could
know and reveal the secret of His unique person-
ality. The doctrine of the Apostolic writers is
not to be regarded as the product of a religious
experience created by Christ, but as the repro-
duction or development of ideas received from
These writers are only the channel
by which the interpretation has reached us, not
its source.
* Fairbairn, Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 306.
BACK TO CHRIST
A doctrinal conception of Revelation requires
as its correlate a conception of Faith as primarily
an intellectual act. Faith must be defined as the
assent of the mind to a proposition on the ground
of authority. This assent, however, though the
primary element in faith, is not treated as the
whole of it; it becomes effective only when re-
inforced by the practical elements of feeling and
will.
More fruitful, perhaps, than its attempt at a
fresh grounding of doctrine has been the contribu-
tion of the Christo-centric school to the revision of
doctrine. It has sought to free the formulas that
describe the Triune Being of God and the Person
and work of Christ from their over-retinement,
to translate them into the categories of modern
thought, and to make them more ethical and less
metaphysical.
(2) We pass to a second, and much more radical
phase of the movement. To many, ‘ back to Christ’
means back from historical Christianity, the re-
ligion founded upon Christ, to the religion which
Christ taught, and which we see embodied in His
life. More than a century ago the position was
summed up by Lessing in his famous saying,
‘The Christian religion has been tried for eighteen
centuries; the religion of Christ remains to be
tried.’
That the stream of religion flows purer at its
fountainhead than at its lower reaches is a fact
which the study of every historical religion con-
firms. As a religion advances through history, it
loses something of its idealism and becomes more
secular, takes up foreign elements, accumulates
dogmas and ceremonies, parts with its simplicity
and spontaneity, and becomes more and more a
human construction. And every religious reform
has signified a throwing off of foreign accretions,
and a return to the simplicity and purity of the
source. Did not Christ Himself represent a re-
action from the elaborate legal and ceremonial
system of Judaism to the simpler and more ethical
faith of the prophets? The Reformation was a
return to primitive Christianity, but less to Christ
than to St. Paul. But we must, it is maintained,
go behind even St. Paul and the early disciples.
It is true, indeed, that, in the NT, Christianity
is not the complex thing it afterwards became;
still, the process of intellectual and ceremonial
elaboration has begun. If we have not the fully-
developed system of dogina and sacrament, we
have at least the germs out of which it arose ; and
while much must be regarded as the legitimate
development of principles implicit in Christ’s
gospel, there is also the introduction of a foreign
element.
Let us contrast at one or two points the gospel
as proclaimed by Jesus with the Church’s render-
ing of it. Jesus’ gospel contains no Christology.
It is the glad tidings of a Father in heaven, whose
love and care embrace all His creatures, in whose
eyes every human soul is precious, and who is at
once the righteous Judge and the pitiful, forgiving
Saviour. Jesus was conscious of His unique posi-
tion as the Mediator of salvation, but He never
(according to the Synoptic tradition) required faith
in Himself in the same sense as He required faith
in God. God was the one object of faith; and if
Jesus called men to Himself, it was only that He
might lead them to God, and teach them to love,
trust, and obey God. Turning to the gospel of
the Church, we find a doctrine of Christ’s Person
at the heart of it. To believe the gospel is no
longer, in the first place at least, to receive God’s
message of love and forgiveness, and to obey His
summons to repentance, trust, and service; it is
to believe that Jesus is Messiah, a pre-existent,
heavenly Being, the second Person in the Trinity.
BACK TO CHRIST 165
A doctrine of Jesus’ Person is substituted for the
Heavenly Father as the immediate object of faith.
Again, Jesus’ gospel contains nothing like a
developed doctrine of Redemption. The question
as to the rationale of forgiveness is never raised,
and there is no hint of the inability of God to
forgive without a propitiation. Forgiveness is
presented as flowing directly from God’s fatherly
love (Lk 15) And as little do we tind the other
propositions included in the Church’s doctrine of
tedemption. Jesus, indeed, teaches that none is
good (Mt 1917), that even at the best we are un-
protitable servants, who have done no more than
our duty (Lk 17); but He knows nothing of
inherited guilt, radical corruption of human
nature, human inability to do any good work.
In the gospel of Jesus we are in the region of
direct moral intuition; nothing is there merely
because apologetic or system required it. We
are also in the region of moral sanity. There
is nothing of asceticism, and no attempt to culti-
vate a feeling of sinfulness. Men are bidden
strive to be perfect as their Father in heaven
is perfect (Mt 5*). Comparing the gospel of
the Church with that of Christ, we find com-
plication instead of simplicity, theological con-
struction instead of intuition, and sometimes
morbidness and exaggeration in place of sanity.
Finally, while the teaching of Jesus places the
centre of gravity in the will, the Church transfers
it to the intellect. ‘This do and thou shalt live’
(Lk 10%) is the command of Jesus: what the
Church requires is belief rather than conduct.
The gospel of Jesus represents the crown of
religion ; it is the highest and, in its innermost
nature, the final stage of religious development.
No other historical religion can endure a moment’s
comparison with it. And the religions manu-
factured out of a few philosophical principles have
still less claim to serious consideration, since they
are wholly lacking in everything that gives a
religion vitality. Tt can be said with literal truth
that, for any civilized community, the choice is
not between Christianity and some other religion,
but between Christianity and no religion at all.
While the religion of Jesus is regarded as the
one faith capable of meeting the need of this and
of every age, it is not meant that it can be re-
produced in every detail. We must distinguish
between central and peripheral elements, and
between the enduring spirit and the passing
form of manifestation. We cannot, for example,
revive the primitive expectation of the world’s
speedy end, or the ideas about angels, Satan,
unclean spirits as the agents in disease, which
Jesus shared with His contemporaries. The
gospel must be translated into the language of
to-day, and its spirit applied to the relations of
our modern life.
How is Jesus Himself regarded by those who
represent this type of thought? All speculative
Christology, whether Biblical or ecclesiastical, is
rejected, and it is asserted that such Christology
has no basis in the language which Jesus used
about Himself. Further, it is held that not Jesus,
but the God whom Jesus revealed, is the imme-
diate object of our faith. At the same time, the
unique significance of Jesus, not only in the history
of religion but also for the individual, is earnestly
recognized. We quote the confession of Bousset :
‘Thou art our leader, to whom there is none like,
the leader in the highest things, the leader of our
soul to God, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’ *
The figure of Jesus is the grandest and most per-
fect that God has bestowed on humanity through-
out the long course of its upward journey. Bousset
can even adopt the confession of St. Paul, ‘God
* Bousset, Das Wesen der Religion, p. 267.
166 BACK TO CHRIST
was in Christ’ (2 Co 5”). Harnack goes a step
further. ‘Jesus,’ he says, ‘is the way to the
‘ather, and He is also the judge ordained by
the Father. Notas a constituent does He belong
to the Gospel, but He has been its personal relizi-
tion and power, and will always be felt as such.’ *
But in thus insisting on the dependence of the
gospel on the Person behind it for its power in
awakening faith, Harnack is to be regarded as
representing the type of thought to be described
in the next section rather than that described here.
(3) The last type of theological thought which
has to be considered, as bearing upon it the impress
of the modern feeling for the historical Christ, is
the most important of all. It is that represented
by the great name of Ritschl. For Ritschlianism,
even more than for traditional orthodoxy, Christ is
the sum and substance of Christianity. In Him
the living God reveals Himself to men; He is the
fact in history in which God meets us, to awaken
our faith and lead us into the blessedness of His
fellowship. What is it in Christ that gives Him
His so momentous significance ἢ The answer which
Kitschlianism gives to this question involves a
new interpretation of the great Christian ideas, —
Revelation, Gospel, Doctrine, Faith,—only it is
claimed that this interpretation is nothing more
than a carrying out of the fundamental principles
of the Reformation.
In Catholic, and not less in traditional Pro-
testant, theology the significance of Christ is con-
centrated in the doctrines in which His Person
and work have received their interpretation.
Christianity is summed up in the great speculative
ideas of the eternal Sonship, the Incarnation, and
the atoning Death. These ideas are regarded as
constituting the content of Revelation and the
object of faith; into them the meaning and power
of Jesus’ life are gathered, and to believe them is
to believe the gospel. Doctrine, Gospel, Revela-
tion are treated as one and the same thing. For
Ritschlianism, on the other hand, it is not the
doctrinal interpretation that is the vital thing, but
the Person and work interpreted. Doctrine has
its own importance, but it must not be identi-
fied with Revelation or with the Gospel ; and con-
sequently it is not the object of faith. The im-
portance of doctrine lies in this, that it brings to
expression what faith has found in Christ. The
appropriation of the Revelation of God in Christ
results in a new knowledge of God and of human
life, and it is the task of dogmaties to exhibit this
knowledge in its purity, free from any admixture
of philosophical speculation, and in its connexion
with the inner life. Doctrine is the explicitly
formulated knowledge of faith. But the doctrines
" which another’s faith has expressed itself cannot
Ὁ received by us as the ground of our faith. Ti is
pe αν ea St. Paul’s thoughts about
or ey φεὶ ca dete propitiatory offering, a pre-
“anlage y, co ete. — that we become
na cry i ee yi ry prnsting: Christ as St. Paul
with Christ Ἢ Past? avai this direct contact
as the frnit sf pag te ae its will be reproduced
eerie Salle 0 vn experience, and only then
ul meaning for us. To substitute
for ( ΤῊ as the object of faith a doctrine of His
Person and work is to remove faith from its genetic
ground. For the creative thing in Christianity is
not the coctrines which, with more or less truth
and tulness, describe Clirist’s Significance ; it is the
personal life in its inexhaustible wealth of mean-
in and power, and as it manifests itself to us in
word and deed. Doctrine is a product of faith, not
its causal ground: Moreoy: r, the substitution of
doctrine for Christ ha this furtin j
t has 5. further resu f
carries with it κα sie oe
faise view of faith. Faith is then
Harnack, Das VW n des Christentums, p. 91.
ee EE ee
BACK TO CHRIST
necessarily conceived in the Catholic manner as
the submission of the mind to a proposition on the
ground of its authority. But if the Reformation
has taught us anything, it is that faith is not
assent to a doctrine, but trust in the living God.
Faith is no product of our own activity ; it 1s God-
created—the result of the contact of the soul with
Divine reality. In the Person of Christ, God so
reveals Himself to us as to command our reverence,
trust, and devotion.
Not a doctrine, therefore, but a life is for
Ritschlian theology the medium of Revelation
and the object of faith. But the further question
arises, What are the facts in the life that clothe
it with Divine meaning and power? In traditional
theology the main emphasis falls upon the element
of the miraculous. This follows necessarily from
the position assigned to doctrine. Doctrine is the
object of faith, and it is the miraculous facts—
Virgin-birth, Miracles, Sinlessness, unique Know-
ledge of God, bodily Resurrection—that supply
the basis for the dogmatic structure. But in the
titschlian system no importance is attached to
the miraculous as such. The attempt to demon-
strate the Divine significance of Jesus in a theo-
retical (or causal) way is abandoned as at once
impossible and mistaken. It is not possible, it is
maintained, by means of the facts to which tradi-
tional theology appeals, to prove scientifically that
Jesus cannot be explained by the causes operative
in history, and that the hypothesis of a transcen-
dental origin and nature must be brought into the
field. Only for faith is a miracle a proof of God’s
working ; for science it is either an unexplained
fact or a deceptive appearance. Moreover, it is
not through breaches in the continuity of nature
or of history that God makes His presence and
activity certain to us. The religious view of
nature or history is no product of causal explana-
tion. To faith alone does God reveal Himself,
and the judgment that God is in Christ is a judg-
ment of faith. To consider Jesus in the light of a
problem that has to be explained is to abandon
the religious attitude for the scientifie.
The vital facts in Christ’s life are, for Ritsch-
lianism, those that exhibit the living Person,
and His activity in His vocation. The Christ who
knew God as Father, who never turned aside from
doing the Father’s will, who never in the darkest
vicissitudes of His life lost His confidence in the
Father’s wisdom, power, and love, and who by His
faith overcame the world and conquered death ;
the Christ who, understanding and feeling the
evil of sin as none else, in holy love and pity
sought out the sinful, making them His com-
panions and opening for them the door into the
Kingdom of God, and who for their sakes sur-
rendered His life as an offering, enduring the cross
and despising the shame—this is at once the Christ
of history and the Christ of faith. His unique
consciousness of God and His sinlessness—or, as it
is better described, His moral perfection—do not
owe their religious importance to their serviceable-
ness as proofs of a transcendental ‘nature’; their
importance lies in their inherent worth and power
as elements in His personality. That there is
something inscrutable in Jesus’ consciousness of
God is strongly maintained; only it is not our
inability to account for Him that gives Him His
religious signilicance. Similarly the miracles are
not to be viewed as proofs, but as exhibiting His
gracious activity in His vocation. What of the
Resurrection ? Within the Ritschlian school there
are some who include this as part of the historically
given ground of faith. The view of the majority,
however, and the one that seems most consistent
with the general position, is that belief in Jesus’
eternal existence is rather the final outcome of
BACK TO CHRIST
faith than its preliminary condition. Apart from
the difficulties which the Resurrection narratives
present, our belief that Jesus lives is not one that
rests on human testimony. It depends on the
impression produced on us by His Person,—He
could not be holden of death (Ac 2%),—and on our
acceptance of His revelation of the Father-God.
The question has been raised whether it is the
historical or the exalted Christ that is the object
of faith. These alternatives are not, however, so
opposed as they seem. Most would admit that
our conception of the exalted Christ, if it is not to
pass into the region of pure phantasy, must derive
its content from the historical life; and also, that
the historical Christ must be thought of, not
merely as a figure of the past, but as alive for
evermore. The exalted Christ is the Christ of
history, with the superadded thought that He is
not dead but risen, and at the right hand of God.
The gospel, the glad message of God’s Fatherly
love and forgiveness, is, according to Ritschlian
thought, already given in the simple proclamation
of Jesus. To complicate this simple proclamation
with doctrine is to pervert it. But this is not to
say that Christ has no place in His gospel. In the
first place, it is from Christ’s Personality, and from
His activity in His vocation, that the gospel de-
rives its meaning. Apart from His ministry of
love, our conception ot the Fatherly love of God
can have but little living content. ‘That historical
ministry in its inexhaustible richness stands as the
enduring exhibition of what Divine love means.
The dogmatic conception of the Father surrender-
ing His eternal Son to death is much poorer as an
exhibition of love than the historical reality. So
also one can rise to the height of the gospel con-
ception of God’s righteousness and mercy only as
one keeps in view the mind and character of Christ,
and His treatment of sinners. The reconciliation
of these two attributes is not a matter of juris-
prudence, as the Atonement doctrine makes it ; it
is the secret of a personal life. We see them re-
conciled in the mind and ministry of Jesus, who,
undefiled and separate from sinners, yet received
them into His fellowship.
But this is not all. In analyzing Christ’s sig-
nificance, Ritschlian theology attaches even greater
importance to the idea of Power. Christ is that
fact through which God enters as a force into
history, to awaken and sustain faith. It is not
natural for us to believe the gospel of God’s for-
iveness and Fatherly love and care. Rather does
aith arise as a victory over nature. When we
contemplate the iron system of mechanical forces
and laws that beset us behind and before, and
beyond which no theoretical knowledge can con-
duct us, it is a hard matter to persuade ourselves
that these forces and laws are but the angels and
ministers of a gracious personal will. It is su-
premely through Christ that we reach this assur-
ance. He is the Divine fact that so masters us as
to convince us that not mechanism, but the Good
is the ultimate reality. The spiritual might of
God becomes real to us as we contemplate the
poe of the Good in Jesus’ life. lorgiveness
ecomes real and guilt becomes real when we feel
behind them the throb of Jesus’ holy love. The
great redemptive forces—faith, love, self-sacrifice,
moral fidelity—have their supreme seat and centre
in the Person and life and cross of the man Christ
Jesus. We may sum up the position by saying
that in Him the will of God for man’s salvation
becomes effective.
Such are the three theological types in which
the influence of the movement ‘back to Christ’ is
most apparent. It would be premature to forecast
the ultimate issue of the movement. But one
thing is certain. So momentous an event as the
BAND
167
recovery of the historical figure of Christ cannot
leave theology exactly as it found it.
LITERATURE :—I. (1) Distinction between the historical and
dogmatic Christ: Kahler, Der sogenannte historische Jesus
und der geschichtliche biblische Christus ; Fairbairn, Christ in
Modern Theology, p. 186; Loisy, Autour Mun petit livre, pp.
111, 90, 134; Sabatier, Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion,
Ρ. 141f. (2) Criticism of dogma: Histories of Dogma, by
Harnack [Eng. tr.], Loofs, and A. Dorner ; Kattenbusch, Cor-
Jessions-Kunde ; Kaftan, The Truth of the Christian Religion,
vol. i. ; Fairbairn, op. cit. (3) Religion and history : Harnack,
Das Christentum und die Geschichte; O. Kirn, Glaube und
Geschichte.
II. (1) Christo-centric theology : Fairbairn, Christ in Modern
Theology, and The Philosophy of the Christian Religion;
Denney, Studies in Theology; Forrest, The Christ of History
and of Experience.—(2) Religion of Jesus theology : Channing,
Sermons on Love to Christ and on Preaching Christ; Seeley,
Ecce Homo; A. B. Bruce, With Open Face ; The Thinker, 1893,
p. 38; Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888, pp. 333, 349, 351; Watson,
The Mind of the Master ; Tolstoi, My Religion ; Harnack, What
is Christianity 2; J. Weiss, Die Nachfolge Christi und die
Predigt der Gegenwart ; Bousset, Wesen der Religion, p. 192 ff.
ΠῚ. Ritschlianism: Ritschl, Justijication and Reconciliation ;
Garvie, Ritschlian Theology ; Swing, The Theology of Albrecht
Kitschl ; Herrmann, The Communion of the Christian with God,
also Ethik, and der Begriff der Ofenbarung ; Kaftan, Dogiatik.
W. MorGAN.
BAG (Jn 12° 1339 γλωσσύκομον ; in Lk 12% βαλάντια
is tr. ‘bags’ in AV, but RV ‘purses’; see PURSE).
TAwrcczousy (in NT peculiar to St. John) meant originally a
case for keeping the mouth-pieces of wind instruments (γλῶσσα,
zo4:w); SO Phrynicus, who gives γλωσσοκοικεῖον as the proper
form, rejecting that of NT, which, however, is found in an old
Doric inscription, in later Comic writers and in LXX (see Liddell
and Scott). The RVm ‘box’ seems the better rendering.
Field (ON) has a very full note, in which he concludes that
ya., both in its general and in its special sense, means not a
bag, but a box or chest, always of wood or other hard material.
Thus Hesychius defines it as a wooden receptacle of remnants
(copes ξυλίνη τῶν λειψ νων) ; Arrian mentions γλωσσόκομα made of
tortoise-shell ; inthe Anthology yA. is apparently a coffin (‘ when
I look at Nicanor the cottin-maker [σοροτηγόν], and consider for
what purpose he makes these wooden boxes [yAwraczoua]’); and
in an inscription quoted by Hatch (Essays in Biblical Greek)
yA. means the strong box or muniment chest of an association.
The LXX translates ΟΝ in 2 Ch 248f by 7a. (the chest for the
offerings, but κιβωτός in 2 Καὶ 129f as usually), which Cod. A also
gives in 2 8 6 (the Ark). Aquila uses yA. for ]11N in all its
significations, e.g. coffin (Gn 5026), the Ark (Ex 371,18 51,28
611). Ancient Versions of Jn. agree with this view ; Vulg. gives
loculos, the plural, says Field, ‘indicating several partitions,’
a small portable cash-box ; D lat. loculum; Nonnus δουρατέην
χηλόν, ligneam arculam. In favour of EV it may be urged that
something small and easily carried is required by the context,
whereas the above instances are chiefly larger boxes (but note
use of yA. by Hesychius and Arrian above). Again, in 1 68f-
τὰν (EV ‘ coffer’) is tr. γλωσσήκομον by Josephus, and is from
a root ‘to tremble, wag, move to and fro,’ whence in Arabic
there is a similar word meaning a bag filled with stones hung
at the sides of camels to preserve equilibrium (see Gesenius,
Lex.). In modern Greek also 7a. means purse or bag (Hatch).
The yA. was the receptacle for the money of Jesus
and the disciples; it contained, no doubt, the
proceeds of the sale of their goods, and gave the
idea later of the common fund (Ac 4°*f-); it was
replenished by the gifts of friends (Lk 85); and
from it the poor were helped (Jn 13%). Judas
may have been entrusted with it as being the best
fitted for such work ; but what might have proved
a blessing, as giving useful employment for his
talents, became the means of his ruin. Other sug-
gested explanations are: that Christ thought fit
to call forth a manifestation of his sin as the only
means of cure (Hengstenberg); or that it was
simply a private arrangement between the disciples
(Godet). The ‘bag’ could not have been taken
from him, as Edersheim (Life and Times, ii. 472)
remarks, without exposing him to the others, and
precipitating his moral destruction. See JUDAS
IsCARIOT. W. H. Dunpas.
BAND.—A Roman legion, the full strength of
which was about 6000 men, was divided into ten
cohorts (600), and each cohort into three maniples
(200). Greek writers use the word σπεῖρα, rendered
‘band’ in our versions, sometimes for maniple but
usually for cohort; hence RVm has regularly
‘cohort.’ The troops in Juda, however, as in
168 BANK
other provinces governed by a procurator, con-
sisted simply of auxiliaries, not Noman citizens,
but provineials; these were not formed into
legions, but merely into cohorts, of strength vee
ing from 500 to 1000, sometimes consisting purely
of infantry, sometimes including cavalry also.
The forces in Palestine seem to have been
originally Herod’s troops, taken over by _the
Romans; they were recruited in the Greek cities
in or around the country, such as Ceesarea,
Ascalon, Sebaste. One such cohort formed the
garrison of Jerusalem, stationed in the fortress of
Antonia, adjoining the Temple, under a chiliarch
or tribune (‘the chief captain of the band,’ Ac 21°),
From the account of the force at the disposal of
Lysias (Ac 23%), his cohort must have been a
cohors miliaria equestris, consisting of 760 infantry
and 240 cavalry ; but this may not have been the
case in our Lord’s time, some 30 years earlier. This
Roman force was probably granted by Pilate to
effect our Lord’s arrest (Jn 18% 1°, where ‘the
band’ under its ‘chief captain’ [RV] seems dis-
tinguished from ‘the officers of the Jews,’ 2.6. the
Temple police ; see Westcott, ad loc.). Of course,
only a portion of the whole cohort would be
needed. In Mt 275} Mk 1516, the soldiers gather
together ‘the whole band’ to mock our Lord ;
obviously all who were at hand and not on duty.
LITERATURE.—Grimm-Thayer, 8.0. σπεῖρα; Schiirer, HJP 1.
ii, 49-56; Marquardt, Rémische Staatsverwaltung (1884), ii.
408 ff., 534 ff. HAROLD SMITH.
BANK.—4. In the parable of the Pounds, Christ
upbraids the slothful servant because he had not
given his pound to the bank (ἐπὶ τράπεζαν), i.e.
the office of the money-changers (Lk 19%), who
would have kept it safe, and also paid interest for
it. ‘Bankers’ (τραπεζῖται) is used in RV of Mt
25% for ‘money-changers’ of the AV. In Greek
cities the bankers sat at their tables (τράπεζα) in
the market-place. They changed coins, but also
took money on deposit, giving what would now
seem very high interest (see articles ‘Money-
Changers’ and ‘Usury’ in vols. iii. and iv. of
Hastings’ DB).
In this parable some suppose that Christ meant
by ‘the bank’ to indicate the Synagogue, or the
Christian Church as an organized body, which
night use the gifts or powers of a disciple, when
he could not, through timidity or lack of energy,
exercise them himself. Others have supposed that
He pointed to prayer as a substitute for good
works, when the disciple was unable to do such.
But all this is very precarious. (Cf. Bruce, Para-
bolic Teaching of Christ, p. 209 f.).
There is an apocryphal saying of Christ which may be con-
nected with this parable. Origen (in Joann. xix. etc.) gives it
thus: γίνεσθε τραπεζῖται δόκιμοι, ‘Be ye tried money-changers.’
This 18 explained in the Clementine Homilies (iii. 61) to mean
that Christians should prove the words of Christ, as the bankers
test and approve the gold and silver on their tables. But it
may perhaps be looked at rather as connected with the steward-
‘ip of gifts and talents by the Lord’s disciples, finding its
such sayings as Lk 1612 ‘If ye have not been faithful
] i I
In that wi
‘1s another man’s, who shall give you that which
Γ own Che duty of a timid servant may be to use his
ler the cuidance and authority of others, but growing
rence might advance him to bea τραπεζίτης himself, who
) trade boldly with that which has been entrusted to
Ὁ Ἰ (ι ‘ ; Υ
2. In Lk 19 ‘bank,’ AV ‘trench’ (Gr. χάραξ),
probably stands for a palisade (so RVm) of stakes,
engthened with branches and earth, with a
aiteh behind, used by besiegers as a protection
JAINSt ATTOWS ΟἹ tackine parties { ,
τι ραν = at acking partic 5 (Lat. vallum).
i a | seid vias actually employed by the
ee of Titus in the siege of Jerusalem, A.D. 70
(Jos, BJ Vv, vi, 9). DAVID Μ. W. Larrp.
_ BANQUET.—The people of Palestine in Christ’s
Gday—as, indeed, througho the Ey ‘ rally—
j ε throughout the East generally—
BAPTISM
were fond of social feasting. The word δοχή, ren-
dered ‘feast,’ from δέχομαι, ‘to receive’ (ct. Eng.
‘reception’), is used with ποιέω, ‘to make’ (cf.
Heb. angn τ Job 14). This is the social feast or
banquet, as distinguished from the religious feast
(ἑορτή). Levi made a great feast in his house (Lk
5”) ; and Christ advised His followers, when they
gave a banquet, to invite the poor and _ afflicted
rather than the rich and influential (1413). Such
banquets were usually given in the house of the
host to invited guests (Lk 1415, Jn 2?), but there
was more freedom accorded the uninvited than is
common in Western social life (Lk 7°68), Guests
reclined on couches, leaning upon the left arm, and
eating with the aid of the right hand, as in ordinary
meals. Eating, and especially drinking of wine
(cf. Heb. προ ‘drink,’ and j~ ‘ wine,’ used for ‘ ban-
quet,’ and Gr. συμπόσιον, ‘drinking together’),
music, dancing, joyous conversation, merriment,
usually characterized such a festivity. Such a
banquet was a part of wedding occasions. Jesus
accepted an invitation to one of these at Cana in
Galilee (Jn 2?-). Levi gave a banquet in His honour
(Lk 5°). There were often large numbers present
(5%), and gradations in the places (Mt 23°, Lh 14?
20", Mk 12%). One of the guests was usually
appointed ‘ruler of the feast,’ or ἀρχιτρίκλινος (Jn
2°-*), who superintended the drinking, ete. (cf.
Lk 2256), E. B. POLLARD.
BAPTISM (βάπτισμα = ‘the rite of Baptism,’
always in NT distinguished from βαπτισμός, ‘a
washing,’ Mk 74, He 6? 9!" [but see Lightfoot, Com.
on Colossians, p. 184]; but this distinction is not
maintained in Josephus [ef. Ant. ΧνΠΙ. v. 2];
and in the Latin versions and Fathers buptisma
and baptismus and even baptismum are used in-
discriminately, see Plummer’s art. ‘Baptism’ in
Hastings’ D&).—A rite wherein by immersion in
water the participant symbolizes and signalizes
his transition from an impure to a pure life, his
death to a past he abandons, and his new birth to
a future he desires.
The points for consideration are (1) the Origin
of Baptism, (2) its Mode, (3) John’s Baptism of the
people, (4) John’s Baptism of Jesus, (5) Baptism by
the disciples of Jesus.
1. The Origin of Baptism.—Baptism, as we find it
in the Gospels, may be traced to a threefold source,
natural symbolism, the lustrations of the Mosaic
Law, and the baptism of proselytes. In many
of the appointments of non-Christian religious
the cleansing of the soul from sin is symbolized
by the washing of the body (see the Vendidad,
Fargard, ix. ; Williams, Religious Thought in
India, 347; Vergil, Aneid, ii. 720; Ovid, Fusti,
v. 680; and esp. MacCulloch, Compar. Theol.).
As in other religions, so in Israel washings were
the means appointed for restoring the person
who had incurred ceremonial defilement to his
place among the worshipping congregation. The
Mosaic Law prescribed certain regulations for the
removal of uncleanness by washing with water ;
Ly 155 8-13.16 (λούσεται. ὕδατι πᾶν τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ)
1056. 388. ete. But if the Jew himself needed almost
daily washing (‘Judzeus quotidie lavat, quia quo-
tidie inquinatur,’ Tertull. de Baptismo, xv.), much
more was the bath of purification necessary for the
Gentile who desired to pass into Judaism. * For the
proselyte this baptism (ab 2») seemed the appro-
priate Initiation. ‘Whensoever any heathen will
betake himself and be joined to the covenant of
Israel, and place himself under the wings of the
Divine Majesty, and take the yoke of the Law
voluntary circumcision, baptism, and
(See this and other pas-
Schiirer,
and Edersheim’s Life and Vimes of
upon him,
oblation are required.’
sages in Lightfoot, Hore Heb. on Mt 36:
HJP § 31;
q
᾿
BAPTISM
Jesus, Appendix xii. on ‘Baptism of Proselytes.’
The question whether the baptism of proselytes
was in vogue as early as the time of the Baptist
has been Jaid to rest by Edersheim and Schiirer).
It may almost be said, then, that when John
baptized the people, he meant to impress them
with the idea that they must be re-born before
they could enter the kingdom. He, as it were,
excommunicated them, and by requiring them to
submit to Baptism, declared that their natural
birth as Jews was insufficient for participation
in the Messianic blessings. No doubt also he
believed himself to be fulfilling the predictions of
Zec 13}, Ezk 36”, as well as the craving expressed
in Ps 51’.
2. The Mode of Baptism.—That the normal mode
was by immersion of the whole body may be in-
ferred (a) from the meaning of Barrifw, which is
the intensive or frequentative form of βάπτω, “1
dip,’ and denotes to immerse or submerge. In Poly-
bius, 111. 72, it is used of soldiers wading through a
flooded river, ‘immersed’ to their breast (ἕως τῶν
μαστῶν οἱ πεζοὶ βαπτιζόμενοι). It is used also of
sinking ships (in 1. 51, the Carthaginians sank
many of the Roman ships, πολλὰ τῶν σκαφῶν ἐβάπ-
τιζον). [Many examples are given in Stephanus,
and esp. in Classic baptism: An enquiry into the
meaning of the word βαπτίζω, by James W. Dale,
4th ed. Philadelphia, 1872]. The point is that
‘dip’ or ‘immerse’ is the primary, ‘wash’ the
secondary meaning of βάπτω and βαπτίζω. (b) The
same inference may be drawn from the law laid
down regarding the baptism of proselytes: ‘As
soon as he grows whole of the wound of cireum-
cision, they bring him to Baptism, and_ being
placed in the water, they again instruct him in
some weightier and in some lighter commands of
the Law. Which being heard, he plunges himself
and comes up, and behold, he is an Israelite in
all things.’ (See Lightfoot, /.c.). To use Pauline
language, his old man is dead and buried in the
water, and he rises from this cleansing grave a
new man. The full significance of the rite would
have been lost had immersion not been practised.
Again, it was required in proselyte baptism that
‘every person baptized must dip his whole body,
now stripped and made naked, at one dipping.
And wheresoever in the Law washing of the body
or garments is mentioned, it means nothing else
than the washing of the whole body.’ (ὁ) That
immersion was the mode of Baptism adopted by
Jolin is the natural conelusion from his choosing
the neighbourhood of the Jordan as the scene of
his labours ; and from the statement of Jn 8:9 that
he was baptizing in Afnon ‘ because there was much
water there.’ (d) That this form was continued
into the Christian Church appears from the ex-
pression λουτρὸν παλινγενεσίας (‘Tit 3°), and from the
use made by St. Paul in Ro 6 of the symbolism.
This is well put by Bingham (Antig. xi. 11):
‘The ancients thought that immersion, or burying
under water, did more likely represent the death
and burial and resurrection of Christ as well as
our own death unto sin and rising again unto
righteousness: and the divesting or unclothing
the person to be baptized did also represent the
putting off the body of sin in order to put on the
new man, which is created in righteousness and
true holiness. For which reason they observed the
way of baptizing all persons naked and divested,
by a total immersion under water, except in some
particular cases of great exigence, wherein they
allow of sprinkling, as in the case of clinic Bap-
tism, or where there is a scarcity of water.’ This
statement exactly reflects the ideas of the Pauline
Epistles and the Didache. This early document
enjoins that Baptism be performed in running
water ; but if that is not to be had, then in other
BAPTISM 169
water: ‘And if thou canst not in cold, then in
warm; but if thou hast neither, pour water thrice
upon the head.’ Here it is obvious that affusion
is to be practised only where immersion is incon-
venient or impossible. The Eastern Chureh has
in the main adhered to the primitive form. But in
the Western Church the exigencies of climate and
the alteration of manners have favoured affusion
and sprinkling. Judging from the representations
of the performance of the rite collected by Mr.
C. I. Rogers (Studia Bibl. et Eceles. vol. v. pt. iv.),
—whose collection is more valuable than his in-
ferences,—it would seem that at an early period
a common form of administration required that
the baptized person should stand in some kind
of bath or tub, naked or nearly so, while the
baptizer poured water three times over him.
This restricted form gradually gave place to the
still more meagre sprinkling of the head. But
theoretically the form of Baptism by immersion
was retained alike in the Roman, the Anglican,
and the Presbyterian Churches. ‘Thus Aquinas
(Summa, 111. Ixvi. 7) determines: ‘si totum corpus
aqua non possit perfundi propter aque pauci-
tatem, vel propter aliquam aliam causam, oportet
caput perfundere, in quo manifestatur principium
animalis vite.’ The Anglican Church in her
rubric for Baptism directs the ministrant to dip
the child discreetly and warily, if the sponsors
certify him that the child may well endure it; if
not, ‘it shall suffice to pour water upon it.’ And
the Westminster Confession guardedly says: ‘ Dip-
ping of the person into water is not necessary ;
but Baptism is rightly administered by pouring
or sprinkling water upon the person’ (cf. Calvin,
Inst. iv. 15, 19). This form of Baptism by sprink-
ling gives prominence to the ‘ pouring out’ of the
Spirit (cf. Tit 3°), but fails to indicate the dying to
sin and rising to righteousness.
3. John’s Baptism of the people.—The message
of the Baptist as herald of the Messiah was, ‘The
kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ The imminence
of the kingdom produced in the people a sense of
their unpreparedness for its enjoyment. A new
sense of sin was created within them, answering
to the forerunner’s cry, ‘Repent ye: for the king-
dom of heaven is at hand’ (Mt 8339. The hunger
for cleanness of conscience thus awakened within
them was responded to by John’s Baptism of
repentance ‘for (e/s) remission of sins’ (Mk 1}.
True repentance cleanses the soul, and Baptism
represented and sealed this inward cleansing.
The reality of the repentance, as John insisted,
would be delermined by its fruits. Many writers
(cf. Reynolds, John the Baptist, pp. 288-289; and
Lambert, The Sacraments, p. 60) hold that the
preposition εἰς denotes that the remission of sins
was not actually bestowed, but only guaranteed in
John’s Baptism. ‘Jolm proclaimed, with the voice
of thunder, the need of repentance as a condition
of the remission of sins; his Baptism was the ex-
ternal symbol of the frame of mind with which
the penitent approached the great forerunner.’
This seems, both exegetically and psychologically,
untenable. The whole expression, ‘ Baptism of
repentance for forgiveness of sins,’ denotes a Bap-
tism which the penitent submitted to that he
might therein receive the pledge and assurance
that he was forgiven. The Baptism meant the
cleansing of the people from past sin that they
might be fitted for entrance on the kingdom.
But John’s Baptism had a forward look also.
It was the formal incorporation of the individual
into the new community, his initiation into the
kingdom. It was therefore in a very true sense
Christian Baptism. That is, it pledged the re-
cipient to the acceptance of Christ,—a feature of it
which perhaps accounts for the Baptist continuing
170 BAPTISM
to baptize after Jesus had been proclaimed the
Christ. In the same act, then, John excommuni-
cated the whole people, putting them in the posi-
tion of Gentiles who required to be re-born in
Baptism, and gave them entrance to the coming
kingdom.
The propriety of Baptism as the symbol of such
initiation is obvious, and finds illustration in the
forms of initiation commonly used in various races.
The ceremonies which mark, among rude tribes,
the transition from boyhood to manhood, fre-
quently take the form of a pretended death and
resurrection (Frazer, Vhe Golden Bough’, iii. 422 ff.).
Among ourselves we have titles which preserve a
memory of the old customs, though the customs
themselves have died out. We still have ‘ Knights
of the Bath.’ Originally, the bath to purify from
the past was first taken, and the novice then
vassed the night in a church with his armour
foie him, as if he were dead, until in the
morning he was raised to life by the touch of
his sovereign, ‘ Rise, Sir M. or N.’
4. John’s Baptism of Jesus.—When John began
to baptize, Jesus was still an unknown artisan in
Nazareth. But in this new movement He hears
a call He cannot resist. He is conscious that He
must attach Himself to it; possibly already con-
scious that He can guide, utilize, and prosper it.
He appears, therefore, as a candidate for Baptism.
But to the Baptist this presented a difficulty he
had not foreseen: ‘I have need to be baptized of
thee, and comest thou to me?’ (Mt 34). Evidently
what was in John’s mind was not the initiatory,
but the cleansing aspect of the rite. To this,
therefore, the answer of Jesus must apply when
He said, ‘Thus it becometh us to fulfil all
righteousness.’ It would seem, therefore, that
Jesus felt so keen a sympathy with His fellow-men
that, as one with an unclean race, He judged
Baptism to be appropriate. It is idle to tell the
wite that she need not be ashamed though her
husband is committed for fraud ; idle to tell Jesus
that He need not be baptized because He has no
personal guilt. And it is to be noted that it is
precisely at this point of truest union with men
and of deepest humiliation that Jesus is recognized
as King. It seems to have flashed upon John,
‘Why, this is the very spirit of the Messiah.
Here is the fulness of the Divine Spirit.’
The account given in the Fourth Gospel is
different. The Baptist is there (Jn 133) represented
as saying, ‘I knew him not (which, as the context
shows, means, ‘I did not know that he was the
Messiah’), but he that sent me to baptize with
water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou
shalt see the Spirit descending and abiding on him,
the same is he that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit.’
In this Gospel there is no mention of an actual
dove being seen. John merely affirms that he saw
the Spirit descending ‘like a dove’ (Ws περιστεράν).
He wishes to emphasize two things, that he saw
the Spirit so clearly that it almost seemed a
nsible presence, and that it was a Spirit of
entlene Nat urally, the Messianic Spirit might
have been more appropriately symbolized by an
eagle, but at the moment it was the overcoming
humility and meekness of Jesus that convinced
John that He was the Messiah.
lhe Baptism of Jesus thus became His anointing
ns Kin Jesus becomes the Christ, the Anointed
of God, not only nominated to the Messianic
throne, but actually equipped with the fulness of
the Divine Spirit, Here two points are to be
noted Ι Althouch Son of God, Jesus yet lived
in ουπ χων form ἘΠῚ u a human conditions, and
therefore needed the indwelling of > Spiri
His body was sustained δ᾿ sie 9. es ee
all human
bodies are, so did His soul require the aids of the
BAPTISM
EEE
Divine Spirit, as all human souls do. (‘Why
callest thou me good? There is none good but
one, that is, God,’ Mk 1018). His human nature,
by which He manifested God to men, was now en-
dowed with the fulness of God’s Spirit. (2) It was
not a new thing that was conferred upon Jesus at
His Baptism. From the first the Divine Spirit
was His. But now, having reached the flower of
manhood and being called to the greatest work,
His human nature expands and girds itself to the
most strenuous endeavour, and so gives scope to
the fullest energy of the indwelling God.
5. Baptism by the disciples of Jesus.—Of Christian
Baptism very little mention 1s made in the Gospels.
That it was in use during the life of Jesus is
apparent from the references to it in Jn 3 and 4.
These references are interesting as showing that
Baptism by the disciples of Jesus existed alongside
of Baptism by John. The Baptist himself appar-
ently never renounced his position as forerunner
nor merged himself in the kingdom. The re-
baptism of those mentioned in Ac 19'%, who had
been baptized with John’s Baptism, suggests the
question whether all who had originally been
baptized as disciples of John were _re-baptized
when they professed allegiance to Jesus. And
although this can searcely be considered likely,
this case has been used as sanctioning re-baptism
in certain circumstances. Calvin’s answer is rather
an evasion. He denies that the persons spoken of
in Ac 19 were re-baptized. They only had the
Apostle’s hands laid upon them. The text no
doubt says, ‘They were baptized into the name of
the Lord Jesus ; and when Paul had laid his hands
upon them,’ ete. But ‘hac posteriori locutione
describitur, qualis ille fuerit Baptismus.’ That is
possible, but barely. It is more likely that those
concerned, troubled by no questions as to the
legitimacy of the renewal of baptient and accus-
tomed to the many lustrations then in use, were
re-baptized and were conscious of no inconsistency.
Apparently they had only seen one half, and that
the less important half, of the significance of
John’s Baptism, its relation to repentance, and not
its efficacy as the ordinance of initiation into the
kingdom of Jesus. This defect was now supplied.
Baptism could scarcely have gained so universal
a currency as the initiatory rite of the Christian
Church had it not been instituted by Christ Him-
self. No other initial ordinance seems ever to
have been suggested. Yet it is expressly said
(Jn 4°) that He Himself did not baptize ; and it is
doubted whether the explicit injunction of Mt 28%
can be accepted as uttered by Jesus. Thus Har-
nack (Hist. of Dogma, i. 79 note) says: ‘It cannot
be directly proved that Jesus instituted Baptism,
for Mt 28 is not a saying of the Lord. The
reasons for this assertion are: (1) It is only a later
stage of the tradition that represents the risen
Christ as delivering speeches and giving command-
ments. Paul knows nothing of it. (2) The Trini-
tarian formula is foreign to the mouth of Jesus,
and has not the authority in the Apostolic age
which it must have had if it had descended from
Jesus Himself.’ (See the literature in Holtzmann’s
NT Theol. i. 379). That our Lord appeared to His
disciples after the Resurrection and said nothing
is inconceivable. Better deny the Resurrection
altogether than think of a dumb, unsociable ghost
floating before the eyes of the disciples. But the
Trinitarian formula in the mouth of Jesus is cer-
tainly unexpected. For what may be said in its
favour Lambert (The Sacraments, pp. 49-51) may
be consulted. In any case the essential feature of
Baptism was its marking the union of the soul to
Christ, and therefore it sufficed to call it “ Baptism
into the name of the Lord Jesus.’ Further discus-
sion of the genuineness of the ascription of these
BARABBAS BARACHIAH
171
words to our Lord belongs rather to the Trinitarian
than to the Baptismal problems.
LiTERATURE.—MacCulloch, Comparative Theology, 235; An-
rich, Das antike Mysterienwesen ; Lightfoot, Hore Hebraice ;
Schurer, HJP § 31; Suicer, Lexicon, s.v.; Calvin, Institutio,
iv. 15, ‘de Baptismo’; Reynolds, John the Baptist ; Feather,
John the Baptist; Lambert, The Sacraments in the New Testa-
ment; Holtzmann’s NT’ Theol. and the literature mentioned
there, as above; Edersheim’s Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah; C. F. Rogers, Studia Bibl. et Eccles. vol. v. pt. iv.
‘Baptism and Christian Archeology’; Didaskalie fragmenta
Veronensia Latina (Lips. 1900); A. C. McGiffert, The Apostles’
Creed, 1902, p.175; J. F. Bethune-Baker, Early Hist. of Chris-
tian Doctrine, 1905, p. 376. Marcus Dops.
BARABBAS (Aramaic Bar-Alba, ‘son of Abba’
or ‘son of father.’ There is very slight documen-
tary authority for the reading Bar-Rahbban, ‘son
of a Rabbi,’ which is adopted by Ewald and
Renan. On the other hand, if Bar-Abba=< son of
father,’ it would hardly differ in meaning from
Bar-Rabban ; for in the time of Jesus ‘ Abba’ was
a common appellation of honour given to a Rabbi.
But after all ‘Abba’ may have been a proper
name ; for though it is sometimes affirmed [e.g. by
Schiniedel in his article ‘ Barabbas’ in Encyc. Bibl.)
that it was not till after the time of our Lord that
the word began to be used in this way, the authors
of the corresponding article in the Jewish Encyclo-
pedia assure us that ‘Abba is found as a pre-
nomen as early as Tannaitic times’).
Only one Barabbas meets us in the Gospels, the
criminal whom Pilate released instead of Jesus at
the demand of the people. All the four Evan-
gelists relate the incident (Mt 27%, Mk 15°”, Lk
2317-5, Jn 184°), which is again referred to in
Acts in the account of St. Peter’s sermon in the
Temple portico (Ac 34). From these narratives
we gather that Barabbas was ‘a notable prisoner,’
‘a robber,’ one who had taken part in ‘a certain
insurrection made in the city,’ and who in this
disturbance had ‘committed murder.’ It had
probably been an old Jewish custom to release a
prisoner at the Passover feast (Jn 18%). Accord-
ing to the Roman habit in such matters, the pro-
curators of Judea had accommodated themselves
to the Jewish practice. In his desire to save Jesus,
Pilate bethought himself of this custom as offer-
ing a loophole of escape from the dilemma in
which he found himself between his own sense of
justice and his unwillingness to give offence to
the multitude. So he offered them the choice be-
tween the life of Jesus and the life of Barabbas,
probably never doubting that to Jesus the prefer-
ence would be given. The fact that he seems to
have expected this precludes the view which some
have held that Barabbas was a_ pseudo-Messiah,
and even the notion that he was no vulgar bandit,
but the leader of a party of Zealots, since popular
sympathy might have been anticipated on behalf
of a bold Zealot or insurrectionary Messiah. ‘The
probability accordingly is that Barabbas was
simply a criminal of the lowest type, a hater of
the Romans it may be, but at the same time a
pest to society at Jarge. And unless we are to
suppose, on the ground of the possible etymology,
‘son of father’=‘son of teacher,’ and the ‘ filius
magistrt eorum’ which Jerome quotes from the
account of the incident in the Gospel of the
Hebrews, that he was popular among the people
because he was the son of a Rabbi, we have no
reason to think that either the Jewish leaders or
the multitude had any ground for preferring him to
Jesus except their passionate hatred of the latter.
According to an old reading of Mt 27!* 17, the
name ‘ Jesus’ in both verses is prefixed to Barabbas,
so that Pilate’s question runs, ‘Whom will ye
that I release unto you? Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus
which is called Christ?’ If this reading were
accepted, Barabbas would not have the force of a |
proper name (like Bartimaeus), but would be only
a patronymic added for the sake of distinction
(cf. ‘Simon Bar-jona’). In his exposition of the
passage, Origen refers to this reading, which is
tavoured by some cursive MSS and by the Armenian
and Jerusalem Syriac Versions, and has been de-
fended by Ewald, Lange, Meyer, and others, who
have supposed that the accidental similarity of
the name may have helped to suggest to Pilate
the alternative which he presented to the Jews.
Olshausen not only adopts this view, but finds a
mournful significance in both of the (supposed)
names of the condemned criminal—‘ Jesus’ and
‘son of the father,’ and in the fact that the nation
preferred this caricature of Jesus to the heavenly
reality. Both dramatically and homiletically, no
doubt, these ideas are tempting—the meeting of
the two Jesuses, the irony of the popular choice,
the sense of a Divine ‘lusus’ in lhuman affairs.
But the truth remains that the grounds on which
this construction rests are very inadequate. There
is ingenuity certainly in the suggestion, first made
by Origen (who, however, prefers the ordinary
reading), that ‘Jesus’ may have been dropped out
of the early MSS of Matthew after the name had
become a sacred one, because it appeared unseemly
that it should be borne by a murderer ; but it is of
too hypothetical a kind to counterbalance the im-
mense weight of the documentary evidence against
the presence of the name ‘Jesus’ at all. The fact
that, even in the scanty MSS and VSS in which
‘Jesus Barabbas’ is found in vv. and 1, ‘ Bar-
abbas’ and ‘Jesus’ are set in direct antithesis in
v.”. tells strongly against the reading, as well as
the circumstance that no trace of it is found in
any MS of the other three Gospels. There is much
to be said for the suggestion of Tregelles, by way
of explaining the appearance of the ‘Jesus’ in
some copies of Matthew, that at a very early date
a careless transcriber repeated the last two fatter
of ὑμῖν (v.17), and that the IN was afterwards taken
to be the familiar abbreviation of Ἰησοῦν.
LITERATURE.—The Commentaries of Mever, Alford, and Ols-
hausen ; Ewald, History of Israel, vol. vi.; Lange’s and Renan’s
Life of Christ; art. ‘ Barabbas’ in Hastings’ DB, Encyc. Bibl.,
and Jewish Encycl.; Merkel, ‘Die Begnadigung am Passah-
feste’ in ΖΝ ΤΉ, 1905, p. 293 ff. J. C. LAMBERT.
BARACHIAH.— Mt 23° (om. 8* andi4 cursives),
Lk 11° (ins. DS* and 2 cursives). The name
occurs in Mt. in a passage, recorded in substantial
agreement by Mt. and Lk., in which the Lord
declares that the blood of all the prophets (Lk.)
or all the righteous blood (Mt.) will be sought
from or come upon that generation, from the blood
of Abel to the blood of Zachariah. In 2 Ch 94:08.
is an account of the stoning of Zechariah the son
of Jehoiada (LXX B has ‘ Azariah’ for ‘ Zechar-
iah,’ but Lagarde prints ‘ Zechariah’) in the court
of the house of the Lord. This incident is re-
peatedly referred to in the later Jewish litera-
ture. In the Babylonian Talmud (Sanh. 966;
Gittin, 576), in the Jerusalem Talmud (Zaanith,
69a), and in the Midrashim (e.g. Echa Rabbati,
Introd. w ii. 2; Koheleth ni. 16; Pesikta Rab.
Kahana xv.) it is recorded that Nebuzaradan
slew many Jews in order to quiet ‘the blood of
Zechariah, who is called a prophet’ (Sanh. 966 ;
Midr. Echa R., Koheleth) with reference to 2 Ch
24", It seems natural, therefore, to suppose that
the Zachariah of the Gospels is the Zechariah of
2 Chronicles. Abel’s was the first murder of a
righteous man recorded in the OT, Zechariah’s the
last (2 Chron. is the last book of the Hebrew
Canon). Abel’s blood cried from the ground (Gn
410). Zechariah when dying said, ‘The Lord look
upon it and require it’ (2 Ch 9453).
But how are we to account for Mt.’s ‘son of
172 BAR-JONA(H)
BARTHOLOMEW
Barachiah,’ when we should expect ‘son of Je-
hoiada’? In Is 8? we read of Zechariah ‘son of
Jeberechiah’ (the LXX has ὑιόν Βαραχίου), in Zee 1!
of Zechariah the son of Berechiah the son of Iddo
(LXX, τὸν τοῦ Βαραχίου ὑιὸν ᾿Αδδώ). The later
Jewish tradition identified the two. So the Baby-
lonian Talmud (Makkoth, 24b; cf. Pesikta Rab.
Kahana xv., Targum of Is 8%, Rashi on Is 8°).
Further, there seems to have been a tendency to
identify Zechariah son of Berechiah son of Iddo
with Zechariah son of Jehoiada, for the Targum
of La 3” calls the Zechariah of Chronicles ‘son
of Το. We might therefore suppose that Christ
spoke of Zachariah, who was really son of Jehoiada,
as son of Barachiah, beeause the Jewish tradition
of His age identified or confused the priest and the
wrophet ; cf. the ‘priest and prophet’ applied to
Pack ah son of Jehoiada in Sanh. 970. [πὶ this
ease the omission of υἱοῦ Βαραχίου from Mt 23” in
ΝΛ would be due to someone who wondered at the
‘Barachiah’ instead of ‘Jehoiada.’ Or the ‘son
of Barachiah’ might be an insertion on the part of
the editor of the Gospel, either on the ground of
Jewish tradition, or in remembrance of the two
LXX passages, Is 8", Zec 11. The fact that this
editor elsewhere employs LXX forms of proper
names, asin ‘Acad, ᾿Αμώς (18: 10). is in favour of the
latter. Or ‘son of Barachiah’ may be a later in-
sertion in the Gospel (so Merx). The insertion of
the clause in Western texts in Lk. is due to as-
similation to the text of Matthew.
The dithiculty of the appearance of ‘ Barachiah’
in Mt. has led to other and less probable identifi-
cations. Origen (de la Rue, iv. 845) supposed that
Zacharias the father of John the Baptist was
referred to, and quotes a tradition that this
Zacharias was murdered in the temple. Cf. the
Protev. Jacobi, 23, 24, which has a different account
of the cause of the murder. Others refer to
Jos. BJ ty. v. 4, where it is recorded that shortly
before the last siege of Jerusalem one Zacharias
the son of Baruch or Bariscaeus was murdered in
the temple by the Zealots. It is therefore argued
that the Evangelist has either blundered by writ-
ing ‘of Barachiah’ in reminiscence of this event,
when he should have written ‘of Jehoiada,’ or
that he is responsible for the whole of the clause
in which this phrase occurs, and. has put into
Christ's mouth an anachronistic statement. But,
apart from the difference between the Βαραχίου of
the Gospels and the Bapovxou or Βάρεις- or Βαρισχαίου
of Josephus, the reference to 2 Chron. seems to
satisfy the data better. The reckoning from Abel
to Zechariah is Jewish in character, the ‘of Bara-
chiah’ may be due to Jewish tradition, and the
‘between the temple and the altar’ is perhaps also
due to current Jewish speculation or tradition. In
the Jerusalem Talmud (Taanith 69a) the question
is raised where Zechariah was killed, with the
answer that it was in the court of the priests (ef.
also the same tradition in Midr. Koheleth iii. 16
Pesikta R. Kahana xv., Echa Rabbati, Introd. w).
ATURE.—Lightfoot, Hore Hebraic; Merx, Die vier Evan-
: Wellhausen and Zahn in their commentaries on Matthew.
W. C. ALLEN
BAR-JONA(H).—Sce Peter.
BARLEY. In the ¢ rospels, barley is mentioned
ony in the account riven by st John (G5-44) of the
miraculous feeding of the five thousand with five |
barley loaves and two fishes. The word oceurs
twice VV » and in both CASES represents the
adjectival form κρίθινος in the original. The noun
ca) (in ordinary Gr. usage almost invariably in
the plur. κριθαί), which is employed in the LXX to
render the Heb. mye, ocen ‘only once in NT (Rev
ῦ Barley was one of the n
most importaat. of |
Biblical food . products,
ae
ee
According to the elder | ‘
Pliny (ΗΝ xviii. 72), it was the most ancient nutri-
ment of mankind. It certainly dates back to a
very remote antiquity. It was cultivated by the
Canaanites prior to the time of the Hebrew con-
quest (Dt 85), and by the ancient Egyptians, as
appears from Ex 9*! and from the representations
on the oldest Egyptian monuments. Among the
Jews it was used for making bread (Ezk 49), and
it seems to have been the Lees food of the
poorer classes (Ru 2! 3%, 1 K 4, Jn 6%). This is
confirmed by Jg 7'*, where a cake of barley-bread
is the symbol of an army of peasants, and is
also in accordance with modern usage. Thus Dr.
Thomson says: ‘Barley bread is only eaten by
the poor and the unfortunate. Nothing is more
common than for these people, at this day, to com-
plain that their oppressors have left them nothing
but barley bread to eat’ (Land and Book (1878 ed. },
p. 449). He also mentions that the Bedawin often
ridicule their enemies by calling them ‘eaters of
barley bread’ (/.c.). Barley was also grown as a
forage crop. Its employment as provender for
horses is mentioned in 1 Καὶ 4%, and the chopped
straw from the threshing-floor was likewise used
as fodder. This practice continues to the present
day, oats and hay being unknown.
In Palestine the normal time for sowing barley
is about the beginning of October : when the winter
is exceptionally cold and wet, sowing takes place
early in February. In the Jordan Valley, the
harvest begins in April, but it varies according
to the elevation of the different regions. At the
highest altitudes the crop is not ripe till July or
even August. HuGu DUNCAN.
BARN.— The same word (ἀποθήκη) is rendered
‘barn’ in Mt 6°6 13°, Lk 1218. *4, and ‘garner’ in
Mt 3”, Lk 3%. In Graeco-Roman times, buildings
above ground were probably in use. καθαιρέω, ‘ to
pull down’ (Lk 1218) could apply only to such. But
from ancient times until now Palestinian farmers
have stored their grain in cistern-like pits. These
are dug in dry places, often out of the solid rock,
carefully cemented to keep out damp, with a
circular opening at the top, through which a man
may pass. When the mouth is plastered over and
made air-tight, the corn will keep sound for several
years. For security in a lawless country, the
‘barn’ is sometimes under the floor of the inmost
part of the house, that of the women (cf. 2S 4°).
To escape the tax-gatherer, again, it is frequently
made in a secluded spot, and so skilfully turfed
over that discovery is almost impossible (cf. Jer
418). Pits found near ruined sites, in districts that
have lain desolate for ages, prove the antiquity of
this method. Natural caves in the limestone rock,
improved by art, with heavy stone doors blocking
the entrance, have also served as‘ barns,’ and may
be seen in use at Gadara to-day. W. EwING.
BARTHOLOMEW (Βαρθολομαῖος) appears as an
apostle in all four lists of the Twelve (Mt 10)":
Mk 815, Lk 64, Ac 118), always in the second of the
three groups of four. In the Gospels he comes
next after Philip (who in all four lists heads the
second quaternion), and is followed by Matthew
and ‘Thomas: in Acts the order is ‘Philip and
Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew.’ The name,
as the first syllable indicates, is a patronymie, and
it is commonly interpreted ‘son of Taimai.’ In
the LXX Talmai has many variants (Θολμέ, Θολμεί,
Θαλαμεί, Θολομεί, Θολμαίλημ): and in Josephus
(Ant. XX. i. 1) we have a bandit chief named
Θολομαῖος. It is often assumed that ‘Talmai’ re-
presents ‘Ptolemy,’ and that Bartholomew means
‘son of Ptolemy’; but the © is against this.
Edersheim (Messiah, i. p. 521) makes it mean
son of Telamyon.’ Bartholomew may be either
τὶ 18. Ὁ.
gences between the three narratives which have
caused difficulty. Thus St. Matthew, while agree-
ing with St. Mark that the miracle took place on
BARTIMZUS
BASKET
a genuine patronymic used in addition to a proper
name, like Simon Bar-jona; or it may have be-
come an independent proper name, like Barnabas.
If the apostle Bartholomew had no other name, we
know nothing about him from Scripture, and the
later traditions about him are very untrustworthy
(Lipsius, Apokryphen A postelgeschichten und A pos-
tellegenden, 111. pp. 54-108). ‘These traditions begin
with Eusebius (HF v. x. 3), and ascribe to him
widely different fields of missionary labour, with
different apostles as his companions, and ditlerent
forms of martyrdom. He is often made to be one
of the Seventy.*
But both by the early Church and by most
modern writers Bartholomew is commonly identi-
fied with Nathanael. To treat this as almost cer-
tain (Schatl-Herzog) is to go beyond the evidence ;
to call it ‘the merest conjecture’ (Zncyc. Bibl.) is
to err in the opposite direction.
In favour of the identification are the following
ints. (1) Bartholomew being a patronymic, the
Fete: may easily have had another name; (2)
the Synoptists never mention Nathanael, St. John
never mentions Bartholomew ; (3) the Synoptists
in their lists place Bartholomew next to Philip, as
James next to his probable caller John, and Peter
(in Mt. and Lk.) next to his caller Andrew ; (4) all
the other disciples mentioned in Jn 1553 became
apostles, and none of them is so commended as
τι ἠδ ζει, (5) all the companions of Nathanael
who are named in Jn 21? are apostles. But all
these reasons do not make the identification more
than probable St. John nowhere calls Nathanael
an apostle, and we are not obliged to find room for
him among the Twelve. The ue that he
is Matthew or Matthias (Hilgenfeld) is supported
by no reasonable evidence ; and that he is Jolin
himself under a symbolical name (Spath) is con-
tradicted by Jn 21°, where the sons of Zebedee
are mentioned in addition to Nathanael.
On the other hand, there is nothing against the
identification: it creates no difficulty. To say
that a Galilean would have remembered Is 9}, and
therefore would not have asked whether any good
could come out of Nazareth, is unsound criticism.
A person with Is 9! in his mind, and convinced
that rich blessings would come from Galilee, might
nevertheless think that Nazareth was not a likely
place to be the dwelling-place of the Messiah.
And who can tell whether a particular Galilean
would or would not remember a particular text?
LITERATURE.—In addition to the works cited above, refer-
ence may be made to artt. ‘ Bartholomew’ and ‘ Nathanael’ in
Hastings’ DB; and to Garrett Horder, The Poet’s Bible, NT,
p. 102 ff. A. PLUMMER.
BARTIMAUS (Bapriuacos).—Named only in Mk
1046-52, where he is described as a blind beggar who
was cured by Jesus as He left Jericho on His last
journey to Jerusalem. But there can be little
doubt that we have also accounts of the same
miracle in the closely parallel narratives Mt 20°-*4,
There are, however, various diver-
the Lord’s departure from Jericho, speaks of two
blind men as haviie been healed ; but St. Luke, re-
to the mention of a single sutferer, says his
cure took place as the Lord drew nigh to the city.
And again, while St. Mark is content to describe
the healing as the result of a word of comfort, ‘Go
thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole,’ St.
Matthew tells us that it was effected by a touch,
. . touched their eyes’; and St. Luke
verting
‘Jesus .
*On the possibility that there was another Bartholomew,
identical with the apostle Matthias, among the Seventy, see
note by Dr. Nestle in Expus. Times, ix. [1898] p. 566 f.
assigns it to a direct command, ‘Receive thy
sight.” The divergences, no doubt, are very con-
siderable, and have taxed the ingenuity of the
harmonists both in ancient and modern times,
Thus it has been supposed that St. Matthew com-
bines the cure of one blind man at the entrance
into Jericho (so St. Luke) with the cure of another
at the departure from Jericho (so St. Mark), or
that Bartimzeus, begging at the gate, became
aware of Jesus’ entrance into the city, and, seeking
out a blind companion, along with him intercepted
the Saviour the next day as He was leaving
Jericho, and was then healed. But it cannot be
said that any such explanations are very satis-
factory. And it is better simply to content our-
selves with noting the divergences between the
three accounts as an additional proof of the inde-
pendence of the Evangelists in matters of detail,
without, however, abandoning our belief in the
general trustworthiness of their narratives. There
are few miracles, indeed, in the Gospel story better
vouched for than the one before us, authenticated
as it is by the triple Synoptic tradition and by the
preciseness of the details, while the very mention
of the name of the healed man has been regarded
as a proof that he must still have been known in
the time of the Apostles (‘valde notus Aposto-
lorum tempore Bartimzus,’ Bengel).
It has been conjectured, indeed, that Bartimeus is not really
a proper name, but a designation derived from an Aramaic
root samya, ‘blind,’ so that ‘ Bartimzus the son of Timzus’
might mean no more than ‘the blind son of a blind father’
(see Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. on Mk 1046; and for the various deriva-
tions that have been proposed, Keim, Jesus ef Nazara, Eng. tr.
v. p. 61f.). But the word, as St. Mark interprets it for us, is
clearly a patronymic (cf. Βαρθολομεαῖος), and the defining clause
ὁ υἱὸς Τιμαίου is quite in the style of the Second Evangelist,
though it is placed before the patronymic and not after it as
usually (cf., however, v.43; and see Swete, St. Mark, p. 228).
It is unnecessary to recall further the details of
the Gospel narrative ; but, from whatever point of
view we regard it, it is full of instruction. Thus,
in the case of Bartimzeus himself, we have a notable
instance of a determination that resolved to let no
opportunity of being healed escape it ; of a perse-
verance that continued its efforts notwithstanding
the difficulties placed in its path; of an eagerness
that cast off ail that hindered its free approach ;
of a faith that recognized in Jesus the Divinely-
appointed Messiah (‘Thou Son of David’) before
and not after the cure; and of a thankfulness that
showed itself in ready obedience and triumphant
prelee when the cure was complete (‘followed
um, glorifying God’). And if thus the narrative
has much to tell us regarding Bartimzeus, no less
does it throw a vivid light on the character of our
Lord Himself, when we remember the sympathy
with which, notwithstanding His own approaching
sufferings, He regarded the beggar’s cry; the
readiness with which He placed Himself at his
disposal (‘ What wilt thou . . .?’); and the saving
power with which He bestowed on the sufferer even
more than he asked.
LITERATURE.—In addition to the relative sections in the well-
known works on our Lord’s Miracles by Trench, Laidlaw, and
W. M. Taylor, see, for the above and other homiletic details, S.
Cox, Biblical Expositions, pp. 155-167, and The Miracles uf
Jesus by Various Authors (J. Robinson, Manchester). We may
refer also to Longfellow’s poem ‘ Blind Bartimeus.’
GEORGE MILLIGAN.
BASKET. — All four Evangelists, in narrating
the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand,
describe the baskets in which the fragments were
placed as κόφινοι (Mt 14°= Mk 68=Lk 9!7=Jn 63) ;
while the two who report the other miracle of feed-
ing the four thousand, state that the fragments
were placed in σπυρίδες (Mt 15°7=Mk 88). It is clear
from Mt 16% (=Mk 8) that the variation is in-
tentional. The baskets used on the one occasion
differed either in size, shape, or material from
| those used on the other (cf. RVm in Mt 16% and
174
ee EE EEE EE————————E——————e
BASKET
Mk8"™-). Our Lord preserved the distinction, and
our present Gospels have also done so.
‘Basket’ occurs in the EV Gospels in the above passages only.
The older English versions use the confusing rendering of
‘baskets’ for both words, except that Wyclif has ‘coffyns’
and ‘leepis.’ By ‘coffyn’ he evidently meant a small basket.
Rheims renders ¢rve/dwv, ‘maundes,’ i.e. hand-baskets. David-
son (.Y7', 1875) at Mk 819.20 has ‘ basketfuls’ for κοφίνους and
‘walletsful’ for σστυρίδων, as if he had found rzpayv.
The authors of such renderings as the above for-
got that St. Paul (Ac 9%) made his escape in a
σπυρίς. This fact at once excludes wallets or hand-
baskets. If the distinction was one of size at all,
which is not certain, we should perhaps have to
assume that the σπυρίς was the larger. Bevan
(Smith’s DB! i. 172) says that the κόφινος was the
larger, quoting Ltym. Mag., βαθὺ καὶ κοῖλον χώρημα,
and the use of cophinus in Latin, e.g. Colum. xi. 3,
», 460, as containing manure enough to make a
ΠΣ Greswell (Diss. viii. pt. 4, vol. ii.) thought
that the cophinus was big enough to sleep in. He
probably misunderstood the passage in Juvenal
quoted below ; for though the hay may have been
used as a bed, it is not said that it was in the
cophinus. Nor is it clear that the Latin cophinus
and the Greek κόφινος were at all times identical
in meaning (so the French dalle is not a cannon-
ball but a musket διε οί, while our cannon-ball is
a boulet), Let us examine the two words more
closely.
(1) χόφινος is said to be derived from zerrw; but this appears
to be more than doubtful, and the grammarians considered it
less Attic than ἀρριχος, which was clearly a wicker or flag
basket. In the Gr. OT it is used by LXX and Symm. for Heb.
dud in Ps 80 (81]6, and by Symm. only in Jer 241-2 (where LXX
has zaAallos), and for sal by Aq. in Gn 4016 (where LXX has
κανα). Oertainly in the two latter passayes a small basket,
carried in the hand, or on the head, would suit the contexts.
Suidas defines z. as ἀγγεῖον σλεκτόν. In CIG 1625, lines 44-46,
it is clearly a corn-basket of a recognized size; cf. also C/G
2347 Κι In Xen. Anab. iii. 8. 6 it occurs as a dung-basket (see
the Latin cophinus in Columella, as cited above). It is said that
the Jews at Rome carried cophini about with them to avoid
the chance of food contracting any Levitical pollution ‘in
heathen places. The reason given appears fanciful, and any-
how would hardly apply to the journeys of our Lord and His
apostles. But the fact is vouched for by Juvenal (Sat. iii.
14: ‘Judwis, quorum cophinus fenumque supellex’; vi. 542:
‘Cophino twenoque relicto | Arcanam Judea tremens mendicat
in aurem’) and Martial (Hpig. ν. 7).
(2) στυρις (or σφυρίς, as WH prefer) is not found in the LXX.
It is generally connected with ortipa=anything twisted (Vulg.
sporta, of which the diminutives sportella and sportula occur,
as small fruit- or provision-baskets). Hesychius explains σπυρίς
GS τὸ τῶν πυρῶν ἀγγοξ, as though from πυρός ; cf. δεῖπνον ἀπὸ
στυρίδος (Athenwus, viii. 17). Hence Greswell thought that be-
fore Pentecost, the season of wheat harvest, when the second
miracle took place, the disciples were able to use corn-baskets,
while the first miracle happening before Passover time, they
used another kind of basket! Besides the improbability of
this, we may note that there is no proof that in either case the
baskets belonged to or were carried about by the disciples, for
they may have been borrowed when needed. Yet Trench
(Miracles, p. 380 note 2) inquires why the apostles should have
been provided with either kind, and mentions (a) that perhaps
they carried their provisions with them while travelling through
ἃ polluted land, such as Samaria (yet cf. Jn 48 431 440, Lk 952) ;
snd (4) he also mentions Greswell’s theory, that the disciples
carried these baskets in order to sleep in them sub dio. This
rN wes from applying to the Twelve in the Holy Land what
Roman satirists said about Jewish beggars at Rome.
As erupis in Ac 9
tin both place
σαργάνη in 2 Co 11%, and as the Vulg. has
3(and also in the Gospels for στυρίς but not
led to inquire as to the force of σαργάνη. It
twisted like a rope, or woven of rope (Esch
J Ah τί (ἐκ σχοινίων, Suid.).
>| 4 { T
fives), We are
ed of anything
τ Fish-baskets were
an oat 4 "ὦ τλεγμαατων εἰξ ὑποδοχὴν ἰχθύων,
), #8 rush-baskets are used in London.
Mi y er CONSI(
n. Ma
lered the difference between σπυρίς
nd xogxvos to lie not in size, but in κόφινος being a
term, and σπυρίς specially a food-basket.
bps the true force of the words we have dis-
+ to be discovered in the use made of them
k speaking working people at the present
day Che writer of this article has therefore con-
apap agi ale ᾿ς τὰ ἜΣ HA. Teknopoulos.
stantinople om porters eall τὸς τὰ Choe tie ΤῊΣ
deep basket in they carry dilferer h τῆς
} , l it things.
«αἰτοῦ i Greek pric
vl 1
16
BASON
Σπυρίς is a smaller and round and shallow basket.
Σαργάνη is a long bag, knitted by (1.6. of) rope,
which is in one way very like the δίκτυον of fish,
but is different from it in other way(s).’
One might ask whether the σπυρίς of Ac 925 is not an error of
memory on the part of St. Luke. St. Paul in his own account
of his escape would surely use the right word. If so, the sup-
posed need for a στυρίς being big enough to hold a person dis-
appears, and we may accept the decision of those who consider
it the smaller of the two kinds mentioned in the Gospels.
GEORGE FARMER.
BASON™ (νιπτήρ only in Jn 13° εἶτα βάλλει ὕδωρ εἰς
τὸν νιπτῆρα : Vuly. deinde mittit aquam in pelvim:
AV ‘after that he poureth water into a bason’:
RV ‘then he poureth water into the bason ἢ).
The Gr. νιττήρ is not found elsewhere in NT, nor in LXX, nor
in Gr. profane literature (except in Eccl. writers dealing with
this passage). Hence Liddell and Scott, s.v., refer only to this
instance. The Vulg. pelvis, though found in Juvenal, etc.,
occurs in the Bible only in Jer 5219,
The general sense of νιπτήρ is, of course, plain,
both from the context and from the cognate verbs
virrew and νίζειν both in the Bible and in profane
Greek. (The former is the Biblical form, 17 times
in NT, including our passage (8 times), and 25 times
in LXX). It is usually ‘to wash a part of the body’
—e.g. the face, Mt 67; the hands, Mt 15? = Mk
7°; the feeé, 1 Ti 5,—so Ex 30% ete. Jn 971-35
seem to be exceptions, because the washing was in
the Pool of Siloam ; but here it is only the eyes that
are concerned, and therefore we need not assume
that the man ‘bathed.’ A real exception is Lv 1513,
where the wooden vessel νιφήσεται ; but note con-
trasted use of νίπτειν, πλύνειν, and λούεσθαι in 151}.
The noun νιπτήρ therefore denotes an article (not
necessarily a vessel) specially suitable or intended
for use in washing part of the body. We note the
article τὸν νιπτῆρα, neglected by AV (a bason) but
noticed by RV (the bason). Was it the ordinary
νιπτήρ of the house? In that case the use of the
article is like that in τὸν μόδιον, τὴν λυχνίαν in Mt
5 ete. Or was it a vessel set apart for ceremonial
ablution, such as would be required by the religious
feast in which they were engaged ?
But, in spite of the Vulg. and modern versions,
it is doubtful if the word ‘bason’ conveys to us a
good idea of the article and of the scene.
The Eastern mode of washing either hands or
feet, when performed by an attendant, seems to
have been always by the attendant pouring water
on the member, not by dipping the member in the
water. Cf. 2 K 3" ‘Elisha the son of Shaphat,
which poured water on the hands of Elijah.’
Kitto’s note in Pictorial Bible?, ii. 330, with two
illustrations, is convincing on this point.
‘The Hebrews were accustomed to wash their hands in the
manner which is now universal in the East, and which, what-
ever may be thought of its convenience, is unquestionably more
refreshing and cleanly than washing in the water as it stands
in a basin—-which is a process regarded by Orientals with great
disgust. The hands are therefore held over a basin, the use of
which is only to receive the water which has been poured upon
the hands from the jug or ewer which is held above them.
This cannot very conveniently be managed without the aid of a
servant or some other person.’
Of course, this extract refers only to the washing
of hands.
(1) The incident of the sinful woman who wept
over our Lord’s feet, and wiped them with the
hairs of her head (Lk 757: 88). is much better ex-
plained by comparing her action with that of the
host or his servant pouring water on a guest’s
feet, than by supposing that the guest immersed
his feet in a footbath (Lk 7). (2)slt 15 true, that
ποδανιπτήρ is found in Pollux, Onom. x. 78, but here
_ *In the appendix to Revised OT of ‘ Readines and Render-
ings preferred by the American Revisers,’ § Viii., we read:
‘The modern spelling is preferred for the following words:
“basin” for ‘‘bason,”’ etc., but no such note appears in the
appendix to Revised NT.
8.
κα ἀν ᾿ς κὐδν τὶ ὅτ
ὦ λὰκ δὲ. ee el
“ον Χς....Ψ
BASON
BEACH 175
a definition of the νιπτήρ is contained in the word.
‘ Basins’ are such common articles, that if St. John
had meant to name one he need not have used an
unique word. (3) The position of the Apostles
and of the guests at the feast of Lk 7 was a re-
clining one. This would not be compatible with
the use of a basin or footbath in the ordinary
sense of even partially immersing the foot. (4)
Dr. A. R. 5. Kennedy (art. ‘Bath, Bathing’ in
Hastings’ DB 1. 257”) shows that ‘ affusion, pouring
on’ of water, was probably meant in many cases
where we read ‘ bathe’ or ‘ wash.’
We therefore think that the νιπτήρ was a jug or
ewer, with a dish, saucer or basin, under it to catch
the drippings, but that the stress of the word is not
on this under-basin. We also think that it was
kept chiefly in the house, and used for the many
‘hand-washings’ which the Jews practised (Mt
15°, Mk 7? ete.), but also for any ceremonial ab-
lution. Hence it was ready in the upper room, as
part of the preparation made by the ‘ goodman of
the house’ (Mk 14}5, Lk 9215), and therefore is dis-
tinguished by the article.
It may be asked whether the feet-washing in Jn 13 was
ceremonial. As we understand the matter, the Galilean dis-
ciples, either because they had never adopted the Pharisaic
strictness about ‘ washings,’ or (less probably) because our Lord
had condemned them, were not in the habit of observing them
(Mt 152, Mk 714). Our Lord defended His followers (Mk 79-23,
Mt 153-20), Inthe upper room they found all things ready for
the observance. Whether they did observe it betore a meal
which was not an ordinary one, we do not know. But there
was another observance, not of ceremony but of courtesy and
comfort (Lk 74), in which eaca might have acted as host or as
servant to the other if the spirit of love had ruled in their
hearts. Christ would teach them this lesson (Jn 1312.16), In-
cidentally He taught them other lessons, which they could not
fully understand at the time, about the cleansing of the soul,
daily defilement, and the duty of preparation before receiving |
the Eucharist. In this Christian sense the feet-washing was
ceremonial, or rather typical, but it was not a recognition of
any validity in the ‘ traditions of the elders.’ The main lessons
for the time were those of humility, self-abasement, and love.
Our Lord used the ν»πττήρ standing by to teach these.
Kitto (Pictorial Bible”, ii. 331) says: ‘In the
East, the basin, which, as well as the ewer, is
usually of tinned copper, has commonly a sort of
cover, rising in the middle, and sunk into the basin
at the margin, which, being pierced with holes,
allows the water to pass through, thus concealing
it after being defiled by use. The ewer has a long
spout, and a long narrow neck, with a cover, and
is altogether not unlike our coffee-pots in general
appearance: it is the same which the Orientals use
in all their ablutions.’
We notice that the assistance of a servant or of a
friend is necessary. This is sometimes mentioned,
e.g. 1 Ti 5, 18 254, and is probably implied in Gn
184 19? 24%" etc. But in the cases where the English
versions suggest nothing of the kind, the Heb. is
the Kal of po as in 1 ἢ 25% (οἵ. Dr. Kennedy’s
article cited above).
Lane’s account (Modern Egyptians, ch. 5) is
similar: ‘A servant brings him a basin and ewer
(called tisht and ibreck) of tinned copper or brass.
The former of these has a cover pierced with holes,
with a raised receptacle for the soap in the middle ;
and the water being poured upon the hands, passes
through this cover into the space below, so that when
the basin is brought to a second person the water
with which the former one has washed is not seen.’
Our conclusion therefore is that the νιπτήρ was
most probably not a ‘large basin,’ but the set of
ewer and basin combined, kept in every Jewish
house for the purpose of cleansing either the hands
or the feet by means of affusion.
Dr. Anton Tien,* in a full communication to the writer of this
article, which we abridge, says tesht is the most correct render-
* Oriental Secretary to Lord Raglan during the Crimean War,
translator of the Turkish Prayer-Book, and reviser of the
Arabic Prayer-Book, author of Turkish, Arabic, and Modern
Greek Grammars.
ing of wrrzp. The Bible Society’s Arabic NT has maghsal, a
noun of time and place= ‘ washing’ and ‘a place for washing,’
not a correct rendering. The SPCK version has mathar (cf.
Heb. 178)=‘ purification,’ ‘ place or time of purification,’ also an
incorrect rendering. The word tesht is the exact rendering of
the Gr. word νιττήρ. It comes from a root=‘to pour or rain
slightly.’
The tesht and ibreeg are made of either metal or earthenware,
with a strainer of the same material placed inside the tesht (or
basin), never outside or under, and in the middle of the strainer
there is a small raised place for the soap. The ibreeg (Syrian
and Egyptian Arabic) is a water-jug, with a spout for the water
to come through like a coffee-pot, from which the water is
poured on the hands or feet, which are held over the basin.
They are to be found in every Eastern house, especially in
Mohammedan houses ; they are used continually in the morn-
ings. There are no washstands in the houses. The servant
holds the tesht on the palm of his left hand and the ibreek in
his right hand, and a clean towel placed on his left shoulder for
each person (Jn 13+), who washes his face and hands, taking the
towel from off the servant’s shoulder. The towel is thrown
down, and the servant puts a fresh one for the next person to
use. GEORGE FARMER.
BATH, BATHING.—The immersing or washing
of the whole person may be a matter of cleanli-
ness, or of luxury, or of religious observance, or of
health.
(1) Cleanliness per se may be set aside. It is
possible to be cleanly with less elaborate apparatus ;
and the majority in OT (or even NT) times would
have ‘neither privacy nor inclination’ for bathing.
(2) Luxury in the classical world (diffused even
among the people, under Roman influence, at least
subsequently to NT times) included plunge-baths
and much besides. When Greek culture tried to in-
vade Judiea under Antiochus Epiphanes (c. 168 B.C.),
it doubtless brought Greek bathing establishments
with it. And when Western culture came in resist-
lessly under Herod (B.c. 40-4), it must have intro-
duced the practice in many places ; cf. an anecdote
of Gamaliel 11. in Schiirer, HJP τι. i. 18, 53. (3
Religious observance, under OT law, according
to Professor Kennedy (art. ‘Bath, Bathing’ in
Hastings’ DB i. 257°), required a partial washing,
or a Washing with water rather than bathing. ‘The
Heb. of the OT does not distinguish’ between bath-
ing and a partial washing. ‘ Both are expressed by
ὑπ. However, Schiirer insists that Talmudic usage
codifies the custom which had long been in vogue ;
and Kennedy grants that ‘the bath became,’ even
‘for the laity . . . an all-important factor in the
religious life.’ Nay, proselyte baptism must be
earlier than the NT, and it requires a bath, ¢ébilah
(tabal is used in one unambiguous OT passage, the
miracle of Naaman’s cleansing, 2 Καὶ 54). We hear
also of daily bathing among the Essenes (Jos. BJ
1. viii. 5). And, finally, John’s baptism was by
immersion (as was that also of the early Christian
Church, Ac 858, Ro 60 ἢ. (4) The use of mineral
baths for health’s sake is always popular. There
are remains of such baths near Tiberias; those at
Gadara and at Callirrhoé were very celebrated in
ancient times. Jn 5°? gives us an example of such
bathing, though Christ’s miracle dispensed with
the waters of Bethesda. In another passage (Jn 97)
we have a partial washing (at the Pool of Siloam)
as a stage towards completion of a miracle.
Thus bathing was well enough known in NT
times. Our Lord’s language in Jn 13! turns on
the distinction between bathing (the whole per-
son) and washing (the feet). Quite conceivably a
Christian sacrament might have grown out of this
incident, Nothing is more impressive at Oberam-
mergau than the threefold journey of the Christus
round the company—so it is represented—aiminister-
ing to the disciples (1) the feet-washing, (2) the
bread, (3) the cup. See, further, artt. BAson,
PURIFICATION. ROBERT MACKINTOSH.
BATH KOL.—See Voice.
BEACH.—The RV tr. of αἰγιαλός, which the AV
BEAM AND MOTE
176
renders ‘shore.’ In the Gospels the word occurs
only in Mt 13% 4 and Jn 915. In classical Greek
αἰγιαλός usually, though not always, means that
part of the seashore on which the tide ebbs and
flows, and in the above passages in the Gospels it
stands for the sandy or pebbly part of the shore of
the Lake of Galilee washed by the waves. The
derivation is doubtful, but is probably from ἄγνυμι
and ds, i.e. the place where the sea: breaks.
The greater part of the western margin of the
Lake of Galilee is girdled with a belt of ‘silver
strand’ composed of pebbles and sand mingled
with delicate white shells. On such a beach, if
the traditional scene be correct, the multitude
was gathered listening as Jesus spoke from the
boat; and on such a ‘beach’ He stood waiting
for the disciples to come ashore in the morning,
when for ‘the third time he was manifested to
them after that he was risen from the dead’
(Jn 2114), J. CROMARTY SMITH.
BEAM AND MOTE.—The proverb of the ‘ beam’
and the ‘mote’ occurs in Mt 7%5 and in the
parallel passage Lk 651: #, It condemns the man
who looks at the ‘mote’ in another’s eye while a
“beam? unconsidered is in his own; and it points
out the futility and hypocrisy of the attempt to
cast out the mote from the eye of a brother while
the beam remains in one’s own eye. The proverb
appears to have been current in various forms
among Jews and Arabs. Tholuck, in his Com-
mentary on the Sermon on the Mount, gives several
illustrations ; e.g. from the Baba Bathra: ‘In the
days when the judges were judged themselves, said
the judge to one of them, Take the splinter out of
thine eye ; whereat he made reply, Take thou the
beam out of thine eye’; and πόδι Meidani (ap.
Freytag): ‘How seest thou the splinter in thy
brother’s eye and seest not the cross-beam in thine
eye?’
There is no obscurity in the terms used. The
word doxés is common in classical writers for a
beam of wood, and is used in the LXX (Gn 198,
1 K ὁ", Ca 117) to translate 7p, a beam used in
the roof of a house. Grimm-Thayer derives from
δέκομαι Ion. for δέχομαι with the idea of bearing , so
that δοκός is that which supports a building. So
Plummer (‘St. Luke’ in Internat. Crit. Com.) Says:
‘The doxés is the bearing beam, the main beam,
that which receives the other beams in a roof or
floor.’ A. B. Bruce (‘St. Matthew’ in Expositor’s
Greek Test.) says: ‘doxés, a wooden beam (‘let in,’
Irom δέχομαι) or joist.’ Clearly a large piece of
timber is suggested, such as could not literally be
in the eye. The symbol has the touch of exaggera-
tion familiar in Oriental proverbs, as, ¢.g., In the
camel and the needle’s eye. ;
Che ‘mote’ (τὸ κάρφος, from κάρφω, ‘to contract,’
dry up,’ ‘ wither’) may be a dry stalk or twig, or
Bar Rtg sat “The word is used in the
ΠῈΣ (αὶ δ an εἶ er Ap, the adj. applied to
oli ght by the dove. Weymouth
(NT in Modern Speech) renders ‘ speck.” *
[t is clear, therefore, that the point of the pro-
verb lies in the contrast between a smaller fault
in the person criticised and a greater one in the
eritic. Che heures chosen express the contrast in
‘
& very emphatic way, pushing it, indeed, to the
verge of absurdity, to survest the essential folly
of the unbrotherly and insincere faultfinder Ἢ
Various illustrations are given by commentators
of the possibly greater defect of the man who is
finding fault with his τι ehbour, Vorison €.9..
quotes Aucustine iS (ὉΠ aring * Se ttled hatred?
(the beam) with a passing burst of anger (the
mote) A. B. Bruce (1...) say s: ‘The taults may
be of the same kind: 7 petty theft. ὃ che
cenmercial dishonesty on a | rge scale ᾿ς δὲ 4
4 ᾿ ἀν ον, t
BEATITUDE
different sort: moral laxity in the publican, pride
and inhumanity in the Pharisee who despised
him.’
All such illustrations are to the point, for the
proverb is capable of many applications; and it is
very often true that men eager to correct others
have great and obvious faults of their own which
disqualify them for the office. It seems clear,
however, that ‘the beam’ is very definitely the
censorious spirit. Our passage, as it stands in
St. Matthew, follows immediately upon the general
exhortation ‘judge not,’ and the warning, ‘with
what measure ye mete it shall be measured unto
you.’ There is a spirit which sees and notes faults
in others where true goodness would be blind.
The ‘ beholding’ is in the judgment of Jesus often
a much greater evil than the fault it beholds.
Such a spirit leads a man on to the ofticious
attempt to correct others, and makes him doubly
unfit for the task. To cast out the mote from
another’s eye is always difficult. It needs clear
sight and wonderful delicacy of touch. To the
censorious man, blind in his fancied superiority, it
is of all tasks the most impossible. Moreover, the
censorious spirit is closely akin to hypocrisy. It
pretends to zeal for righteousness, but really cares
only for personal superiority. A sincere man
begins with that humble self-judgment which is
fatal to uncharitable judgments of others. A zeal
for righteousness which degins with correction of
others stands convicted of dishonesty at the outset.
If a man has once taken the true ground of lowly
penitence, if he has cast out the proud, self-sufficient,
censorious spirit, he will leave no other beam un-
noticed in his own eye. He will be too much
occupied with the task of self-discipline to be the
quick and eager censor of others. Yet he will not
be blind to moral distinctions. On the contrary,
the single eye will be full of light; and while he
will have no wish to ‘behold’ the mote in his
brother’s, he will see clearly to cast it out. Love
and pride are both quick to observe; but with
what different results !
In St. Luke’s Gospel our passage stands in a
slightly different connexion. There the command
‘judge not’ is separated from the proverb of the
Mote and the Beam by the verses which speak of
the reward of generous giving, of blind leaders of
the blind, of the disciple not above his master.
A. B. Bruce suggests that the parable comes in
at this point, because censoriousness is a natural
fault of young disciples. In any case the essential
meaning of the passage remains unchanged.
LitERATURE.—Dykes, Manifesto of the King, 536ff.; Dale,
Laws of Christ for Common Life, 93 ff.
E. H. TITCHMARSH.
BEATITUDE.—
i. Derivation and Meaning.
li. Significance of μακάριος.
ili. The NT Beatitudes.
1. Single Sayings.
2. The Group of Sayings.
iv. The ‘ Beatitudes’ in Matthew and Luke.
1. Their number in Matthew.
2. The relation of the two versions.
3. Order and connexion of thought.
i. DERIVATION AND MEANING.—The Latin word
beatitudo is derived from beatus, the past participle
of beare, ‘to make happy,’ ‘to bless’ (ef. bene and
bonus). Trench says that beatitas and beatitudo
are both words of Cicero’s coining ; yet, ‘as he
owns himself, with something strange and un-
attractive about them.’?* On this account they
‘found alinost no acceptance at all in the classical
literature of Rome. Beatitudo, indeed, found a
*The only passage in which Cicero appears to use the two
words is de Natura Deorum, i. 34: “Ista sive beatitas, sive beati-
twio dicenda sunt (utrumque omnino durum, sed usu mollienda
nobis verba sunt).’
BEATITUDE
home, as it deserved to do, in the Christian
Church, but beatitas none’(Study of Words", p.
210).
The primary meaning of ‘ beatitude’ is blessed-
ness. In the earliest example of its use quoted in
Murray’s Dictionary (1491, Caxton), it signifies
supreme blessedness ; hence it was frequently
used to describe the bliss of heaven. Cf. Milton,
Par. Lost, iii. 62—
‘ About Him all the Sanctities of Heaven
Stood thick as stars, and from His sight received
Beatitude past utterance.’
Trapp applies the word to ‘such as are set out of
the reach of evil in the most joyous condition,
having just cause to be everlastingly merry as
being beati re et spe, ‘blessed in hand and in hope.” ’
But there is nothing in the connotation of the
word itself to suggest whether the blessedness is
enjoyed on earth or in heaven; the context must
show whether it refers to an experience in the
present or to a hope for the future.
The secondary meaning of ‘ beatitude’ is a de-
claration of blessedness. This declaration may be
made of glorified saints in heaven, as in the Beati-
tudes of the Apocalypse ; or of disciples on earth,
as in nearly all the Beatitudes of the Gospels.
But the word is unduly restricted in its signi-
ficance when it is used as a synonym for beatifi-
cation,—a Roman Catholic ceremony wherein an
inferior degree of canonization is conferred on a
deceased person. The Pope considers his claims to
beatitude ; and if these are approved, proclaims his
admission to the Beatific Vision, and sanctions the
ascription to him by the faithful of the title
* Blessed.’
ii. SIGNIFICANCE OF μακάριος. --- [ἢ our Lord’s
declarations of blessedness He used a word (μακά-
ptos) Which has an instructive history, and passed
by the pagan word for ‘ happiness’ or ‘ well-being’
(εὐδαιμονία) which is not found in the New Testa-
ment. In Homer the gods are the blessed (μάκαρες)
ones, because they excel mortal men in power or
in knowledge rather than in virtue. ‘As com-
pared with men, in conduct they are generally
characterized by superior force and intellect, but
by inferior morality’ (Gladstone, Homer and the
Homeric Age). The Greek despair of attaining
blessedness on earth led to the frequent use of
‘blessed’ as synonymous with dead; Aristotle
also distinguishes between μακαρισμός or Divine
blessedness, and εὐδαιμονία or human blessedness
(Ethic. Nicom. x. 8). It is therefore suggestive
that the Christian conception of beatitude should
find expression in a word closely associated with
descriptions of the blessedness of the gods and
‘originally stronger and more ideal than εὐδαίμων.
... Thisis manifest in Aristotle, with whom the
μακάριος as opposed to ἐνδεής is he who lacks no
good’ (Cremer, Biblico-Theol. Lex. of NI’ Greek,
440).
But the word which describes the blessedness of
those who lack no good is ennobled by our Lord’s
use of it. Heturns the thoughts of His disciples
from outward to inward good ; He teaches that
blessedness is determined not by fortune, but by
goodness, and that it is attainable on earth by all
who put themselves into right relation to God.
In His Beatitudes, therefore, it is desirable to
translate μακάριοι ‘blessed’ rather than ‘happy.’ |
(Cf. the saying of Carlyle that those who ‘find |
blessedness’ can ‘do without happiness’). Since
the word ‘blessed’ fell from the lips of Christ,
His Beatitudes have worthily set forth an ideal of
character loftier than the aristocratic virtue of
the Platonists, a joy unknown to the most noble-
minded of the pleasure-seeking Epicureans, a
satisfaction of soul beyond the reach of the self-
sufficient Stoic. Like the chiming of sweet bells,
VOL. I.—I12
BEATITUDE
1i7
the Beatitudes call men to enter the kingdom in
which to be righteous is to be blessed ; they appeal
to a universal longing of the human heart, and
they promise a satisfaction of soul which can be
found only in obedience to the law which the Son
of Man proclaims in order that His brethren may
be blessed. Beatitude is the final purpose of the
most perfect law ; beatitude is the experience of
the humble in whose heart there reigns the grace
which came by Jesus Christ. The Beatitudes of
our Lord bring the word ‘blessed’ down to earth
and there set up the kingdom of heaven; they
portray no remote bliss, nor even a pleasure near
at hand, but a fulness of joy within the soul.
Henceforth blessedness is seen to be the privilege
not only of those who are exalted above all earthly
care and suffering, but also of those who still share
the limitations of this mortal life ; it depends not
on outward conditions such as wealth or education
(cf. Plato, Republic, 354 A, 335 E), but on inward
conditions such as meekness of spirit and purity of
heart; it is not the prerogative of the tew who
have been initiated into the secrets of a Divine
philosophy, but the privilege of all who become
loyal disciples of Him in whose life the perfect
Law was perfectly fulfilled.
iii. THE NT BEATITUDES.—‘ Beatitude’ is not a
Biblical word, but it is properly applied to all the
sayings of our Lord which contain a declaration of
the conditions of human blessedness.
1. Single Sayings.—lsolated Beatitudes are re-
corded in Matthew, Luke, and John. They
describe a blissful state which is the accompant-
ment of certain conditions of soul, or the reward
of virtuous acts; but the blissful state is almost
always represented as attainable in this life. (The
exceptions are Lk 144-15). The following is a list
(omitting Lk 14: 15) of the single sayings of Jesus in
which He declares the blessedness of those who
possess spiritual graces, or who exemplify some
quality of virtue in their actions :—
‘Blessed is he, whosoever shall find none occa-
sion of stumbling in me.’ (Mt 11°, cf. Lk 7539).
‘Blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your
ears, for they hear.’ (Mt 131, οἵ. Lk 105).
‘Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: for flesh
and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but
my Father which is in heaven.’ (Mt 16").
‘ Blessed are they that hear the word of God and
keep it.? (Lk 11%).
‘Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord
when he cometh shall find watching.’ (Lk
1997, ef. vv. 38:43, Mt 2445),
‘If ye know these things, blessed are ye if ye do
them.’ (Jn 13!%).
‘Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet
have believed.’ (Jn 20"),
{In Mt 25* a ditferent word (εὐλογημένοι) is used}.
These scattered sayings suffice to indicate how
often our Lord’s teaching was expressed in words
of blessing. With these Beatitudes in the canoni-
cal Gospels should be compared one preserved by
St. Paul, and one found in the Codex Bezze—
‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’
(Ac 2055).
‘If thou knowest what thou doest, thou art
blessed ; but if thou knowest not, thou art
under a curse, and a transgressor of the law.’
(Lk 64 Dy:
The latter saying is addressed to a man who was
working on the Sabbath ; probably it embodies a
genuine tradition, but certainly it bears witness to
the early recognition of the Beatitude as one οἱ
our Lord’s favourite methods of imparting truth.
In the fifth of the New Sayings of Jesus (see
Grenfell and Hunt’s ed. 1904) the word μακάριος
can be restored, although the subject of the Beati-
tude has been lost. Prof. Adeney directs atten-
178 BEATITUDE
BEATITUDE
tion to the presence in the Acts of Paul and
Thekla of anumber of fresh Beatitudes. St.
Paul is represented as giving utterance not only to
some of the Beatitudes of Jesus, but also to such
sayings as these—
‘Blessed are they that keep themselves chaste,
because they shall be called the temple of
God.’ ἢ
‘Blessed be they who keep the baptism, for
they shall rest in Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit.’
The writer of this apocryphal book imitates our
Lord’s Beatitudes, and expresses in this form both
Pauline teaching and his own ascetic doctrine
(Expositor, 5th series [1895], vol. 11. p. 375).
2. The Group of Sayings. — When the word
‘Beatitude’ is used in the plural, it refers as a
rule to those sayings of Jesus, grouped at the
beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, in which
He solemnly announces who are the blessed in the
Kingdom of heaven. Early examples of its use in
this significance are—‘ The eight beatitudes that
... spryngeth of grace’ (1531, Pilgr. Perf.) ;
‘This quhilk $8. Ambrose callis our Lord’s beati-
tudes’ (1588, H. King Canisius’ Catech.). In his
de Offic. (i. 6) Ambrose says: ‘He octo Christi
Beatitudines sunt quasi Christi Paradoxa.’
iv. THE BEATITUDES IN MATTHEW -AND LUKE.
—1. Their number in Matthew.—The ‘ Beatitudes’
are recorded in Mt 5511} and Lk 6-2. In regard
to the number of Beatitudes in Matthew there
have been diverse opinions ; the decision depends
upon the view taken of vy.!0-!2—
y.'". ‘Blessed are they that have been _per-
secuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.’
γος ‘Blessed are ye when men shall reproach
you, and persecute you, and say all manner of
evil against you falsely, for my sake.’
v."*. ‘Rejoice, and be exceeding glad : for great
is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted
they the prophets which were before you.’
The seven Beatitudes in νν. 9 describe the graces
of the Christian character ; these are followed in
y."° by another Beatitude which assumes that those
who possess these graces, and are, therefore, not
of the world, will, so long as they are in the world,
be exposed to its hatred. This generai truth is
lirst expressed; it is immediately afterwards
brought home to the disciples as our Lord, using
‘ye’ instead of ‘ they,’ reattirms (v.") the blessed-
ness of His hearers, should they endure reproach
for His sake. If this interpretation be correct,
there are eight Beatitudes in Matthew. In the
iirst seven we behold the several rainbow hues of
the light which reflects in human conduct the glory
of the heavenly Father (v.!*); in the eighth that
light is seen in conflict with the darkness it is
destined to overcome,
If Mt 5’ is not counted as a Beatitude, the
number of perfection—seven—is obtained. This
course Is followed by some because the eighth
Beatitude is not a declaration of the blessedness
of character, and by others because its promise of
the Kingdom of heaven merely repeats what has
wready been said, Augustine speaks of a ‘heptad
of Beatitudes,’ and regards the eighth as returning
ΡΟΝ the first (‘octava tanquam ad caput redit Ty
Lruce refers to the ‘ seven volden sentences’ which
sum up the felicity of the Ningdom, though he
atterwards enumerates eight classes of the blessed
(Lhe Training of the Twelve. Wordsworth
p. 42),
Wc.) preters the mystical significance of eicht to
Slmilar inter pretations of seven ; for if seven 18 the
number of rest after labour, ‘ eicht is the number
oft blessedness and glory after rest’: he also dwells
on the annexing of the promise of the Kingdom of
heaven to the eighth Beatitude as well as to the
{1} {{
first: ‘This is the consummation of blessedness ;
the recurring note of the beatific octave; also in
the eighth Beatitude the word ‘‘blessed” is re-
peated for the sake of greater certainty and
emphasis.’
This repetition of the word ‘blessed’ in what is
here called the eighth Beatitude is the ground
assigned by some for dividing it into two Beati-
tudes. Wright (Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek,
p. 161) speaks of nine Beatitudes. In his judg-
ment, however, the ninth, which is longer and in
the second person, is an ‘explanatory enlargement’ ;
he is also disposed to regard the eighth short
Beatitude as ‘an editorial compilation, for the
second half of it is repeated from the first Beati-
tude, and the commencement is an abbreviation
of the ninth.’ The so-called ninth Beatitude is
best regarded as an enlargement of the eighth,
but no sufficient reason is given for rejecting the
eighth.
Delitzsch is alone in holding that there are ten
Beatitudes in Matthew to correspond with the
Decalogue. To obtain the number ten he not
only counts vv.!” and 11 as the eighth and ninth
Beatitudes respectively, but also treats v. as the
tenth Beatitude. The words ‘rejoice and be ex-
ceeding glad’ (v.!*) are regarded as equivalent to
“blessed.”
2. The relation of the two versions.—Only four
Beatitudes are eiven in Lk 6?’*?; the relation of
these to the eight Beatitudes in Matthew is one of
the unsoived problems in NT criticism. The dif-
ference between Matthew and Luke is shown in
the following table, the variations in Luke being
printed in italics :—
‘ Blessed are
1. ‘the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven.’
(1.) ‘ye poor : for yours is the kingdom of God.’
2. ‘they that mourn: for they shall be com-
forted.’
(3.) ‘ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh,
3. ‘the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.’
4. ‘they that hunger and thirst after righteous-
ness : for they shall be filled.’
(2)K ve that hunger now: for ye shall be filled.’
5. ‘the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy.’
6. ‘the pure in heart : for they shall see God.’
7. ‘the peacemakers: for they shall be called
sons of God.’
8. ‘they that have been persecuted for right-
eousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven.
ye when men shall reproach you, and perse-
cute you, and say all manner of evil against
you falsely, for my sake.
rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is
your reward in heaven: for so persecuted
they the prophets which were before you.’
(4.) ‘ye when men shall hate you, and when they
shall separate you from their company, and
reproach you, and cast out your name as
evil, for the Son of Man’s sake.
Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy: for
behold, your reward is great in heaven:
for in the same manner did their fathers
unto the prophets.’
The chief elements in the problem to be solved
are: the presence in Matthew alone of Beatitudes
3, 5, 6, 7; Luke’s variations from Matthew’s
wording of Beatitudes.1,.2, 4, 8, especially (7)
the absence from 1 and 4 of words which make
blessedness depend upon spiritual conditions, and
(6) the use of the second person throughout. This
problem is part of a larger problem, viz., Do
Matthew and Luke report the same discourse ?
and if they do, which account is the more primi-
tive? (See art. SERMON ON THE MOUNT).
BEATITUDE
BEATITUDE 179
The view that Matthew and Luke narrate two
different discourses is now generally abandoned.
This theory accounts for all the variations, but it
leaves unexplained the remarkable resemblances
in the general purport of the teaching, the frequent
identity of phraseology, and the close agreement
of the introductory narratives and of the closing
parables. Therefore, the question to be asked in
regard to the two versions of the Beatitudes is
part of the larger question: How is it that in
two reports of the same discourse there are so
many variations ?
Some modern critics distinguish between primary
and secondary Beatitudes, though different reasons
are assigned in support of this distinction. (1)
Wright (op. cit.) regards Beatitudes 1, 2, 4 as
primary; they belong to ‘the proto-Matthieus,’
because they are also found in Luke. The other
Beatitudes have been ‘added at different dates as
recollections occurred.’ But the non-occurrence of
a saying in Luke is no proof that it is ‘secondary,’
unless it is certain that Luke is more primitive,
and not a selection from the more original tradi-
tion in Matthew. (2) Weiss (in Meyer’s Com.)
describes the same three Beatitudes as authentic,
because they point to the righteousness of the
Kingdom as the summum bonum; the first to
righteousness as not yet possessed, the second to
the want of righteousness as a cause of sorrow,
and the fourth to righteousness as an object of de-
sire. The reasoning is entirely subjective. Weiss
tests the authenticity of a Beatitude by its accord
with his theory that the theme of the discourse is
the nature of true and false righteousness ; on his
own principles other Beatitudes might be proved
authentic. The seventh might be said to point to
the righteousness whose work is peace.
When the narratives in Matthew and Luke are
taken as they stand, the question remains : Which
version of the Beatitudes more correctly repre-
sents the actual words of Christ ?
That the shorter form in Luke is more genuine
is the opinion of many scholars. Dr. E. A. Abbott
thinks ‘it is more probable that Luke represents
the letter of the original words of Jesus more
ey than Matthew, however much the latter
may better represent the Eppa of them’ (Ene.
Brit. x. 798"). But the words which better repre-
sent the spirit of the teaching may also rest on the
authority of Jesus. Though the two versions
represent the same discourse, the one discourse
may not have been delivered with such formality
as many theories imply. It is more than probable
that the longer form in Matthew emits some of
our Lord’s comments on these sayings. The dif-
ferent versions of the eighth Beatitude in Matthew
noint to this conclusion. The declaration of
lessedness having been made in its most general
form, it is then reatlirmed and expounded in its
special bearing upon the men to whom our Lord
was speaking. ‘The Apostles will have the privi-
lege of bearing ‘the reproach of Christ,’ and as
sharers in the experience of the prophets they
shall receive the prophets’ reward (cf. He 1150).
Other Beatitudes may in like manner have been
restated in a more specific form. Vor example, all
who would enter the Kingdom of heaven need to
be told that its blessings are bestowed on the poor
in 1" but it is to His true disciples and ποῦ
to the multitude that Jesus says, ‘Ye, in your
poverty, are blessed.’ The argument for the
primitive character of Luke is stated (Lazpositor,
5th series [1895], vol. ii.) succinctly and forcefully
by Professor Adeney. The sayings of which
Matthew gives a longer version than Luke are
described as expositions of ‘the hidden truth con-
tained in the shorter utterances.’ The Beatitudes
peculiar to Matthew are not relegated to an
editor, but are held to be the true teaching of
our Lord, though probably not in their original
context. The literary problem is complicated by
the absence from Matthew of the four Woes,
which in Luke (674-*) correspond to the four
Beatitudes. The theory that Luke gives the
more primitive form involves the assumption that
Matthew omitted the Woes and inserted an equal
number of Blessings. Yet Wright’s conclusion,
after a thorough study of the Synoptic problem,
is that the Woes in Luke are either ‘ contlated
from another source’ or ‘editorial inversions of
the Blessings.’
The theory that Matthew gives the Beatitudes
in their more primitive form has the support of
Tholuck and Meyer among older writers, and more
recently of H. Holtzmann and Beyschlag. On
the authority of one who probably heard these
words of Blessing, the Beatitudes peculiar to
Matthew are regarded not only as authentic say-
ings of Jesus, but also as parts of the original
discourse. Holtzmann also holds that Luke modi-
fied the language of Matthew in accordance with
his own ascetic views (Hand-Comm., ‘ Die Synop.,’
p- 100); but this supposition is not essential to
the theory. The shorter form of some Beatitudes
in Luke may faithfully represent the words of
Christ, perhaps His own special application of a
general truth to His disciples. Dr. Bruce, who
has no bias in favour of ‘antiquated Harmonistic,’
suggests that, as a critical description of Mt 5-7,
‘The Teaching on the Hill’ is probably more
correct than ‘The Sermon on the Mount’; ‘ teach-
ing’ (διδαχή) as distinguished from ‘ preaching’
(κήρυγμα) unplies both the announcement of a
theme and its expansion. It follows that two
forms of a Beatitude may be authentic, ‘the one
as theme, the other as comment.’ According to
this view, the theme of the first Beatitude is given
in Luke, but in Matthew ‘one of the expansions,
not necessarily the only one.’ It is of little
moment whether the shorter form is primary,
i.e. the enunciation of a theme afterwards ex-
pounded by our Lord ; or secondary, ¢.e. His own
narrowing of a general assertion previously made.
On either supposition, Luke, ‘ while faithtully re-
producing at least a part of our Lord’s teaching
on the hill,’ may state that teaching ‘not in its
origina |setting, but readapted so as to serve the
practical purpose of Christian instruction’ (Zhe
Expositor’s Greck Test., vol. i. pp. 94 f., 509).
3. Order and connexion of thought.—The order
of the second and third Beatitudes is reversed in
Codex Beze and the Vulgate; so also Clem.
Alex., Aug., Orig., Eus., Greg. of Nyssa. Tholuck
thinks that this change from the best authenti-
cated order was made on mystical grounds ; either
because the promise of the lower good should im-
mediately follow that of heaven (Orig.), or because
γῆ represents mystically a higher stage of blessed-
ness (Greg. of Nyssa).
In the generally accepted order of the Beatitudes
a sequence of thought may be traced, though the
‘scale of grace and glory’ is perhaps not so care-
fully ‘graduated’ as some have supposed (cf, Amb.
on Lk6). The first grace—poverty of spirit—is the
germ of all the rest ; the first and last Beatitude is
the all-comprising word—‘ theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.’ The six Beatitudes that intervene unfold
different aspects of Christian virtue and set forth
its pele blessedness, for each blessing promised
is the fitting reward of the inward grace, and each
is included in the promise of the Kingdom. Dr.
Fairbairn (Studies in the Life of Christ) divides the
3eatitudes into two classes—‘ those of resignation
and those of hope’; the first four Beatitudes are
placed in the former class, the last four in the
latter class. This division is simple, and serves to
been written :
BEAUTY
180
emphasize the distinction between the passive and
active graces of the Christian character. Yet it
seems better to distinguish the eighth Beatitude
from the other seven; it differs from them essenti-
ally, for it attaches blessedness to endurance of
opposition and not to inward qualities, to conduct
and not to character, to something a man does and
not to what he is. In the seven Beatitudes on
character, there are two triads. The first three,
as Dr. Dykes points out (The Manifesto of the King,
p. 101), are closely connected and refer to negative
graces; in the last three, positive graces are In-
timately combined as elements of righteousness ;
the fourth or central Beatitude is the link between
these first groups. ‘As the first three, the trilogy
of spiritual humiliation, lead up to and produce
that blessed hunger after Divine righteousness ;
so the second three, a trilogy of characteristic
Christian graces, are the fulfilment of the soul’s
hunger.’
With a ‘proposal of the end—blessedness,’ says
Jeremy Taylor, ‘our excellent and gracious Law-
giver begins His sermon’ (7he Great Exemplar,
pt. 2, sec. xi.). Beatitude is the essence of
Christianity, its beginning and end. The ‘ Beati-
tudes’ reveal the nature of true blessedness and
the conditions of its attainment; they reflect the
light which shines from the Hebrew Scriptures
that declare the blessedness of the righteous ; but
they are illumined not only by the Prophets and
Psalmists who went before, but also by the
Apostles and Teachers who come after. Wernle
says with true insight: ‘Jesus Himself made of
Christianity a religion of hope... . If Paul in a
later age preaches the religion of longing in words
of enthralling eloquence, he is merely continuing
in his own language the Beatitudes of Jesus’ (The
Beginnings of Christianity, i. 68).
LITERATURE.—In addition to the works already quoted, see
art. SERMON ON THE Mount, below; Hastings’ DB, Extra Vol.
p. 14 ff. ; Gore, Sermon on the Mount; Bruce, Galilean Gospel,
89-72; Leckie, Life and Religion, 209-270; Stanley, Serm. to
Childven, 95-131 ; Matheson, Landmarks of NT Morality, 143 fi.
J. G. TASKER.
BEAUTY.—This term is applied alike to the
physical grace of men and animals, to external
nature and works of art, and to moral character
and action. In every relationship it is a quality
capable of imparting exquisite pleasure, and a
power that commands and captivates. The appre-
ciation of beauty for its own intrinsic charm was
a special characteristic of the Greeks, to whom the
world was a wonder of order and adaptation, and
who found an element of worshipin the beauty that
Was a prerogative of the gods. With the Israelites,
and in the East generally, beauty was esteemed
rather as a sien of dignity and noble birth (J@ 818),
and beautiful things were valued as the accessories
of official decoration. Much in the Gospels that
we feel to be beautiful and describe by that name,
is there specialized by such terms as ‘orace,” ‘olory,’
‘ excellency,’ as indicating in each particular case
the arresting feature of charm, sublimity, or pre-
eminence that makes it beautiful. Thus in the
appeal, “Τί God so clothe the erass of the field’
a < mph eee Ἢ Age po ae concerning the
11:65 OF the field, that Solomon in all his glory was
nob arrayed like one of them (orcas eels
Was cue to external investiture rather than to any
inherent fact or and proportion. So
described as seeking
Christ's diesinloe ven and the righteousness of
‘selples 1s expected to exceed that of the
ΒΟῚ and Pharisees (Mt δ), the quality of
veauty arises from the surprising rarity and recor.
nized pre eminence of the thinws referred to. iP
1. Personal appea ce of Christ. — Much has
face of Christ. Tradition,
symimetrs
vhen the merchantman js
goodly pearls (Mt 13%).
; ance
bout the
BEAUTY
gathering its data from the apocryphal ‘ Letter of
Lentulus,’ the portrait which Jesus is said to have
sent to king Abgar of Edessa, the story of Veronica’s
veil, the pictures and eikons of the early and medi-
wval Church, and accumulated literary traditions,
has given to Art its typical presentation of Christ’s
countenance. The subject, however, is one about
which there is no certain information. On the
mount of Transfiguration the three disciples had a
brief glimpse of the heavenly beauty that then
shone out from the face of Christ. But those who
were then eye-witnesses of His majesty (2 P 16)
tell us that the glorious vision surpassed all de-
seription. It remained with them as a restful and
inspiring memory, like the ‘unspeakable words’ of
St. Paul’s eestatie experience (2 Co 192).
2. Beauty in external nature.—It is profoundly
suggestive of the reality of the Incarnation that
He by whom the worlds were made spoke so little
about them. When He called Himself and His
disciples ‘ the light of the world’ (Jn 813, Mt5!4), the
allusion to light was not in the spirit of Milton’s
sublime apostrophe (Par. Lost, ili. 1ff.), but with
reference to its conflict with darkness. When He
pointed to the redness of the evening sky (Mt 162),
it was not to speak of a Presence immanent in the
light of setting suns, but to express the feeling of
wonder that those who could draw ἃ practical
lesson from something so remote could not hear
the footsteps of moral destiny so close behind
themselves. And so in the instances of the frail,
beautiful grass and the lilies of the field (Mt 678"),
the allusion served as an argument for God’s still
greater care of things more precious.
3. Ethical beauty.—The life of Christ witnessed
in every detail to His inspiring and impressive per-
sonality. It is surely a torso presentation of that
life that would make ‘sweet reasonableness’ its
prevailing characteristic. Rather it is marked by
the absence of that philosophic detachment that
would live and Jet live. In His mind truth took
precedence even of the heavenly hope, and He
assured His disciples that if that hope were a sweet
but baseless imagination, He would have told them
(Jn 14°). He had come as light into the world, and
questionings not only of the defiant darkness (Jn
15), but of the bewildering twilight (16'7-), sprang
up around His path. In His presence men were
greater and less than they had been before. Even
in the days of His flesh those who were Christ’s
were impelled to put on Christ, and were after-
wards recognized as having been with Him (Ac 45).
He exemplitied in His own life the principle by
which His disciples were to live and extend His
kingdom. His outward power was the measure of
His inward submission. He came not to do His
own will (Jn 058). It was when He was lifted up
that He would draw all men unto Himself (12°).
Even so the life of the Christian has its condition
of complete and continuous surrender, and in the
service of the gospel it is found that men do not
yield to the messenger, but to what they see that
he yields to.
In the course of Christ’s life on earth, along with
the general impression of His teaching and mini-
stry there were various incidents that showed in a
special manner with what tender sympathy He
took upon Him our nature and bore our infirmities.
Among these may be mentioned the conversation
with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well (Jn 4),
the blessing of the little children that were almost
sent away (Mt 19! ||) the touching of the leper in
the act of healing (Mt 88), and the words of hope
concerning Nineveh (Mt 12) and Tyre (Lk 10%),
and those who should come inte the Kingdom from
the distant East and West (Mt 8"). On the cross
we have the prayer for His perseeutors (Lk 23*4),
His comradeship with the penitent thief (v.42), and
BED
the commending of His mother to the care of the
disciple John (Jn 19°).
Also in the lives of others, chiefly of women, He
met with intuitions and actions which through His
affinity of soul were noticed and commended by
Him as bearing the stamp of moral and spiritual
beauty. Such were the return of the Samaritan
leper to give glory to God (Lk 17'*) ; the humble
insistency of the Syro-Pheenician woman (Mk 7***:);
the courage and consecration of the widow who
gave her mites to the Lord (12"*-); the act of the
sinful woman who bathed His feet with her tears |
(Lk 7#), and of her also who unsealed, as for His
burial, the alabaster vase of precious ointment
(Jn 12’).
With regard to things physically and morally
loathsome, on the other hand, the disease of leprosy
(Mt 82, Lk 7217/2) and ‘the affliction of demoniac
possession (Mt 953, Mk 7°, Lk 859 ete.) could always
claim His healing power; there was discriminating
pity towards those who had sinned in ignorance
(Lk 234), or who had been overcome by some swift
and overmastering temptation (Mt 267, Lk 7%, Jn
416 5118), or by the difficulties of outward circum.
stance (Mk 107%, Lk 138); while in sharp contrast
with the above, there was His denunciation by
descriptive parable and stern rebuke of the hope-
less ottensiveness of the Pharisaic type (Mt 2]! 23,
Lk 20” etc.).
LiterATURE.—Under (1) Hauck-Herzog, PRE, art. ‘Christus-
bilder’; Schaff-Herzog, Encyc. of Relig. Knowledge, art. ‘ Christ,
Pictures of’, Farrar, Christ in Art, pp. 67-95. Under (2) Wendt,
Teaching of Jesus, i. 151 ff.; Expositor, 3rd ser. ii. [1885] 224 ff.
Under! (3) Liddon, Bampton Lectures’, p. 192 ff.; Channing,
Complete Works [1884], pp. 237-243. G. M. MACKIE.
BED.—The word ‘bed’ (κλίνη, κράββατος, κοίτη)
is found in the Gospels only in Mt 9%°, Mk 21:1:
421 720 Tk 518 816 117 1744, In 65:15,
here to indicate the kind of bed, or beds, that were
in use among the Hebrews in the time of Christ.
Among the ancient Hebrews, however, as among
other Oriental peoples of that day, the bed usually |
consisted of a wadded quilt, or thin mattress, to be |
used, according to the season, or the condition of
the owner, with or without covering (cf. Ex 22°
‘Vor that [the outer garment worn in the daytime] |
is his only covering: it is his garment for his skin :
wherein shall he sleep?’). The very poor often
made their bed of the skins of animals, old cloaks
or rugs, or slept in their ordinary clothing on the
bare ground floor, as they do to-day in the East.
The hedding ordinarily in use among Orientals
now is, doubtless, much the same as it wasin Christ’s
day: a mat made of rushes or straw to be laid
down first ; sheep or goat skins, or a quilt stuffed
with hair or vegetable fibre, or both, to lie upon ;
and a covering consisting often only of the ‘ cloak,’
or outer garment, of the poor man, but sometimes
in summer of some light stuff in addition, or in
winter of skins, or some heavier quilted stuff.
Various allusions are made in the Gospels to beds
that could be carried : ‘ Arise, take up thy bed, and
go unto thine house’ (Mt 9°); ‘ Rise, take up thy
bed, and walk’; ‘And immediately the man. . .
took up his bed, and walked’ (Jn 5* 5) ; ‘ Behold
men bringing on a bed a man that was palsied’
(Lk5'8 RV). St. Lukeand St. Mark tell us that on
this occasion, when, because of the crowd in the
house, the four men could not reach Jesus with the
paralytic, they took him up on the house-top,
broke through the roof, and ‘let him down through
the tiling with the couch (κλινίδιον ; in v.18, however,
the word κλίνη, ‘bed,’ is used) into the midst before
Jesus’ (Lk 519), or, as St. Mark puts it, ‘let down
the bed (κράββατος) wherein the sick of the palsy
lay ’ (24).
For ordinary use at night the bed was laid on
*the floor, generally on the mat, which served to
There is little |
BEELZEBUB OR BEELZEBUL 181
keep it off the ground, frequently on a light
portable frame of wood which served a like pur-
pose ; but sometimes on a more elevated bedstead
(‘under the bed,’ Mk 45: RV). In the morning the
bedding was all rolled up, and, after being aired
and sunned, was put aside on the raised platform,
or packed away for the day ina chest or closet. A
bedstead of any pretensions was rare among the
Hebrews, and was looked upon as a luxury ; the
nearest approach to it being in general the raised
platform on the side of the room. The richness of
beds and of bedsteads amone some of the Asiatic
peoples, however, was at least equal to that of the
Greeks and Romans (ef. Pr 7'* !7, 1 S 28"). The
degree of richness would depend, of course, upon
the wealth of the family and the style of the house
or tent, as it does to-day among the Bedawin.
Usually a room was set apart as a bedroom,
where the whole family slept. ‘My children are
with me in bed, I cannot rise and give thee’ (Lk
11°5). Among the poorest a portion of the single
room occupied by the family was set apart for
sleeping, and, generally, this was raised above the
level of the floor. When the house was of two
storeys, the beds were laid in one of the rooms of
the upper storey, or, during the summer, prefer-
ably, on the flat roof. See, further, art. COUCH.
GEO. B. EAGER.
BEELZEBUB or BEELZEBUL.—-It is strange
that this name has never yet been satisfactorily
explained; stranger still that no trace of it has
been found as yet among the scores of Jewish
names for angels and spirits. The first part of the
name is clear enough; it is the Aramaic form of
the Hebrew ‘ Baal’; nor is there anything strange
in the dropping of ἃ before fin the MSS followed
by modern editors like Westcott-Hort_ and Weiss
[Cheyne in his art. ‘ Beelzebul’ in the Encye. Bibl,
finds ‘this scepticism as to ἃ in BeeX paradoxical,’
‘the word βεεζεβουλ inexplicable and hardly pro-
nounceable,’ and urges against it ‘the famous
passage Mt 10°, where the οἰκοδεσπότης implies
the speaker’s consciousness that 5.3 is one element
in the title,’ but his objection completely misses
the mark. The dropping of the \ is merely pho-
netical ; ef. in Josephus βεζέδελ in codd. MV RC for
βελζέδεκ (BJ iii. 25), Βάξωρος for Βαλέζωρος (ὁ. Apion.
i. 124), Βαζαφράνης for Βαρζαφρ. (Ant. xiv. 330) ;
᾿Αμεσάδ in Cod. Q of Dn 11} [Theod.] for ᾿Αμελσάδ ;
‘Philadephia’ in the Syriac Version of Euseb.’s
HE, ete.* More ditticult is the change of β into ἃ
at the end of the word, supposing the common ex-
planation to be correct, that the name comes from
2K 12. It has been explained as an intentional
cacophonic corruption (=‘ god of the dung’) or a
dialectical or phonetic variation (cf. Belias for
Belial or Bab el-Manded for Manded). The spelling
with ὁ was retained in the NT by Luther, though
his Greek text had A, and by RV in text; it was
introduced by Jerome in the Vulgate, see the Index
of Wordsworth-White, where 15 Latin spellings of
the name are given, and cf. Jerome’s remark in
OS 66, 11: ‘in fine ergo nominis b litera legenda
est, non 1; musca enim zebub vocatur.’ 2 is even
found in Cod. 243 of the text of Symmachus in
2K 12; but see the Syriac Hexapla in y.°, and
note, what has generally been overlooked, that
the Septuagint took 231 not 3131 >y2 for the name
of the god of Ekron: ἐπιζητῆσαι ἐν τῇ Baad (dative)
Μυῖαν (accusative) θεὸν ᾿Ακκαρών ; likewise Jos.: πρὸς
τὴν ᾿Ακκαρὼν θεὸν Μυῖαν, τοῦτο yap ἣν ὄνομα τῷ θεῷ.
On the fly in worship and legend see Plin. HN
x. 28. 75; Pausan. Descr. Gr. V. xiv. 1; Atlian,
Nat. Anim. v. 17, xi. 8; Usener, Gétternamen,
p. 260. There were Jewish legends about flies,
such as that there were none in the temple (Adoth
* The best analogy is the Syr. name ]*2vy172, ‘son of the Bel
of heaven,’ explained by Barheb. as ‘he with four names.’
182 BEGETTING
v. 8); Elisha was recognized as a prophet by the
woman of Shunem, because no fly crept over his
place at the table (Berakh. 10b); on the yezer
es as a fly see Berakh. 61a, Varg. Jer. on Ec
10'). The supposition that the name corresponds
to Aramaic xaaadya=‘enemy’ is not very sare
nor the other that it is the Baal of the heavenly
mansion who became the Baal of the nether world
(JAS, 1878, pp. 220-221). Later Jews identified
Baal-zehub with Baal-berith, and told that some
would carry an image of him (in the shape of a fly)
in their pockets, producing it and kissing it from
time to time (Shab. 836. 636). Procopius states
(“εἰ 21K 1): πλὴν ἔστι μαθεῖν ἐξ ὧν EdoéBios ἐν ἀρχῇ τῆς
᾿ὐὐαγγελικὴης ἹΪροπαρασκευῆς ἐκ τῶν Φίλωνος παρατίθεται,
ὡς δαίμων ἣν, οὕτω λεγόμενος" μᾶλλον δὲ γυνὴ παλαιά
τις, ἣν ἐθεοποίησαν. Zalin (on Mt 12*4) lays stress
on the fact that the article is missing before
ἄρχοντι τῶν δαιμόνων (‘a prince of the devils, not
the prince’); but the delinite article is found in
Mark and Luke, and in Mt 9* (if this verse be
not a later addition) where several Latin docu-
ments have the name.
How scanty is our knowledge of NT times, when
sucha name, which appears quite popular in the
NT, defies as yet all explanation, and is not found
anywhere else! Origen on John xix. (p. 315, ed.
Preuschen) remarks: πάντως yap περὶ δαιμόνων τι
μεμαθήκεισαν καὶ τοῦ ἄρχοντος αὐτῶν, ᾧ ὄνομα Βεελ-
ζεβούλ᾽ ταῦτα δὲ οὐ πάνυ τι ἐν τοῖς φερομένοις κεῖται
βιβλίοις.
LITERATURE.—In addition to works cited above, see A. Loisy,
‘Beelzeboul’ (Rev. d’hist. et de lit. rel. 1904, v. 434-466).
ἘΠ. NESTLE.
BEGETTING.—
The idea of begetting, as applied in the natural or in a meta-
phorical or spiritual sense, is expressed in the Gospels by the
common words γεννάω, ‘to beget’ (which occurs in the LXX as
the equivalent of the Heb. 15), meaning either ‘to beget’ or
‘to bear,’ and is similarly used in the NT); γεννητός, properly
‘begotten,’ but which, like the verb, is also found in the sense
of ‘born’; μονογενής, ‘only-begotten.’ The common word yevvew,
with its derivatives, is, as might be expected, used to express
natural begetting and natural birth. So μονογενής, used in the
Fourth Gospel only of the relation of Christ to God the Father,
occurs in Lk ΤΙΣ of the son of the widow of Nain, meaning
simply ‘only son’ (cf. 842 Jairus’ daughter, and 938 the demoniac
boy); and γεννητές in the sense of ‘born’ in Mt 1111, Lk 7283
(‘ among those that are born of women ’). In Matthew and
Luke again, τὸ γεννηθέν and τὸ γεννώμενον are used to describe the
miraculous conception of our Lord in the womb of the Virgin
Mary; Mt 129 has ‘that which is conceived in her (AVm ‘be-
gotten’) is of the Holy Ghost,’ and Lk 190 ‘that which shall be
horn of thee (Vm ‘is begotten’) shall be called the Son of God.’
In both cases obviously the expression will bear the rendering
‘which is begotten’ or ‘which is conceived,’ accordine to the
ordinary sense in which the verb is known to occur.
The Messianic and the spiritual uses of the
words for begetting are those which alone eall for
remark in connexion with the Gospels and the NT
xenerally. In the Gospels, and there particularly
in the Gospel of John, we find them applied to
Christ and His relation to God the Father, and,
in connexion with that reference, to the case of
bellevers who, receiving Christ by faith, are, in
virtue of the new principle of life thus imparted to
them, born again, become children of God. This
latter thought is suggested in the Gospels, and
awelt upon at leneth in the Epistles.
We may regard as the locus classicus of the
theological or sj iritual application of the idea of
ln ting, as we find it in the Gospels, the well-
known passage in the Prologue to the Fourth
Go pel No man hath seen God at any time; the
only -be otten Son (ὁ nove yevns υἱός) ἢ who is in the
bosom of the Father, he hath declared him’ (Jn 138),
Here the use of the ts rin μονογεν ἧς in this connexion
{ once raises the question as to the precise sense
in Which i i iD lied te Clirist, whether it refers
to His being by Divine nature and essence Son of
God, or merely to His ma iulestation in time as
“WH read μονογενὴς θεός, following X*BC*L,
BEGETTING
Messiah, as one specially chosen to reveal to man-
kind the will of the invisible God. Α little study
of the history of the term ‘only-begotten’ shows
that it is by no means peculiar to the Gospels, but
is rather a familiar Messianic term, which depends,
for a clear understanding of the thoughts denoted
and connoted by it, upon what, we may gather
from other sources, was the national belief as to
God’s self-revelation in the history of grace. We
are reminded, for instance, that Israel (Ex 4533, Hos
1”), the kings of Israel (1 Ch 28°), and the Messiah
(Ps 27), of whom the latter were types, were suc-
cessively called sons of God, or God’s firstborn.
Again, St. Paul (in Ac 1359) and the Epistle to the
Hebrews (1° 5°) quote Ps 27 as a Messianic pro-
pheey which had been fulfilled in the mission of
Jesus: ‘Thou art my Son; this day have I be-
gotten thee’ (σήμερον γεγέννηκά oe).
In view of this Messianic, spiritual application of
the idea referred to, the words of Ps 27 have been
supposed to allude to some typical king like David
or Solomon, and the expression, ‘Thou art my Son,
this day have I begotten thee,’ to denote an act
performed by God on the person addressed, as by
constituting him king, He had moulded his life
afresh and set him in a special relation to Himself.
Applied to Christ, this might be taken as _re-
ferring to such an event as the Resurrection,
with reference to which St. Paul says in Ro 15
that by it God ‘declared him to be the Son of God
with power.’ This might be accepted as a fairly
adequate account of the Messianic ideas held b
the early disciples, and of the interpretation whic
they were likely to put upon the passage in the
Second Psalm, when they studied it, as St. Paul did,
by the light of the Resurrection of Jesus. They
must have been largely influenced by traditional
opinions on the subject of the Messiah, and would
therefore interpret the words, ‘This day have I
begotten thee,’ as referring not to any event in a
past eternity or to any period prior to the Incar-
nation of the Son of God, but to some definite
point in the history of His manifestation to the
world, as, for example, to the period of the birth
of Jesus, or of the Baptism, when the voice from
heaven declared Him to be God’s Beloved Son, or,
as St. Paul appears to teach in his discourse in
Acts (13) and in his Epistle to the Romans, to
the period of the Resurrection.
Such an interpretation, however, of the passage
referred to as we find in the teachings of St. Paul
and of the Epistle to the Hebrews, does not ade-
quately explain the language of the Fourth Gospel
or the author’s allusions to the pre-existence of
Christ as Logos, and to His relation to the Father
as the Only-begotten Son. The Evangelist speaks
in such a way of the nature and mission of the Logos
or the Son of God as plainly to assume the eternal
pre-existence of that Logos or Son. When John,
speaking for himself, says in the Prologue (113),
“The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-
begotten of the Father,’ the subject of the sentence
is He of whom he has just spoken as having been
in the beginning with God, and as having been
God’s agent in the work of Creation. Again, in
v.!° “No man hath seen God at any time ; the only-
| begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father,
he hath declared him,’ the expression ‘which is
in the bosom of the Father’ is apparently meant
for a further explanation or definition of the ex-
pression ‘only-begotten Son,’ the present participle
ὁ ὧν signifying, as Alford puts it, ‘essential truth
without any particular regard to time,’ while the
peculiar construction εἰς τὸν κόλπον, literally ‘into’
not ‘in’ ‘the bosom’ (as might have been expected
—év τῷ κόλπῳ), is, as that commentator again points
out, ‘a pregnant construction, involving the beget--*
BEGETTING
BEGETTING 183
ting of the Son and His being the λόγος of the
Father,—His proceeding forth from God.’ ‘It isa
similar expression on the side of His Unity with
the Father to eiui mapa τοῦ θεοῦ on the side of His
manifestation to men.’ The meaning of the pas-
sage is that Christ, who is by nature the Son of
God, begotten before all worlds, is He who alone
could and did declare the nature and the will of
that God whom no man hath seen or could have
known apart from such a revelation. Here it is
evident that the begetting referred to by the use
of the word ‘only-begotten’ (μονογενής) is different
from that which is spoken of in the Second Psalm.
Again, in His discourse to Nicodemus, Jesus
Himself alludes clearly to His pre-existence and
essential Sonship when He says that God ‘gave
his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life’ ;
and in the next sentence it is added, ‘For God
sent not his Son into the world to condemn the
world’ (Jn 3! 1"), There the words ‘ gave’ and
‘sent’ imply pre-existence on the part of the Son.
Similar references occur elsewhere in the discourses
of Jesus as recorded in the Fourth Gospel, for
example, that of Jn 6% ‘Not that any man hath
seen the Father, save he which is of God (lit. ‘from
God,’ παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ), he hath seen the Father,’ with
which ef. v.*8 ‘I came down from heaven,’ and ν. Ὁ:
‘What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend
up where he was before?’ passages which, as H.
Holtzmann points out, ‘connect the historie with
the preter-historic being of the pre-existent Logos
—the Son of God, that is, in the theological, not
the Messianic sense.’
A comparison of these passages in the Fourth
Gospel with Ps 27 shows that the thought of ‘be-
getting,’ as it affects the relations between the
Father and the Son, has more than one meaning.
Dorner notes even in the Synoptic Gospels three
senses in which it is applied —the physical, the
ethical, and the official. If we ἢϑι, Νὴ our view
so as to include the fourth Gospel, a similar divi-
sion suggests itself: the theological, or, as it is
sometimes called, the metaphysical ; the official or
Messianic; and the ethical or spiritual, Jesus
as Logos is Son of God by nature. Essential Son-
ship, eternal generation, is predicated of Him.
Then, in a special official sense, His setting apart
to the Messianic office is, according to a familiar
Scripture figure (cf. Ps 27), regarded as ‘a beget-
ting,’ that is, the inauguration of a new vocation
or a new order of things. This notion of beget-
ting is practically the idea conveyed by the word
‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ’ itself, and by what Jesus
Himself says, according to Jn 10°, ‘Say ye of him,
whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the
world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the
Son of God?’ Lastly, the thought of begetting
is applied in the sense of a Divine communication
of life, as when the Spirit of God descended and
abode upon Christ. Thus when the Baptist saw
the sign, the dove from heaven alighting upon
Jesus, he teils us, ‘ And I saw, and bare record that
this is the Son of God’ (Jn 15. This third aspect
is important as illustrating the point of connexion
between the Sonship of Christ and that of believers,
the Divine Sonship based on a generation, that
is, a Divine communication of life. Each of these
aspects has its own significance.
1. The theological is associated with the apologetic
aim of the Fourth Gospel. It was an important
part of the object of the Evangelist to enable the
Church to rid herself of the influence of the mis-
chievous speculations of the time, of a humani-
tarian Ebionism on the one side, and of Gnosticism
on the other. That Jesus is God from the begin-
ning, —eternally God,—was his answer to those
who would detract from the Divine dignity of
Jesus. Again, by his doctrine of Sonship, the
application of the thought of generation to the
relation of God the Father to Christ the Son, St.
John gave a new meaning to the expression
‘Logos,’ which represented a well-known _philo-
sophical conception long current in the East and
among the later Platonists and Stoics, while the
speculations of Philo and the Alexandrian School
had brought it into still greater prominence.
According to the Fourth Gospel, Christ as Logos
is the Revealer of the Father, not as Philo and
others imagined, as being an ‘emanation,’ an out-
flow from the Inaccessible Deity, a shadowy
existence to be described only by analogies and
metaphors, or by mere negations, but as being
the Son of God, who shared the Divine nature
and glory, One who came at the Father’s bidding
to do the Father’s will. What that mysterious
‘begetting’ meant, in virtue of which the Son of
God was Son of God, John did not attempt to
explain. To him it was a Divine mystery which
none could penetrate. It was enough for him that
God so loved the world as to send forth His Son,
sharer of His Divine nature, for that world’s sal-
vation. Thus, according to the testimony of St.
John, Jesus ‘ts μονογενής, the Only - begotten, as
Logos ; He appears as μονογενής through the In-
carnation’ (Beyschlag).
2. Again, in all four Gospels the idea of beget-
ting is applied in an official or Messianic sense in
connexion with Christ’s actual appearing among
men and with His redemptive mission. The three
Synoptists record the Divine proclamation with
which, at the Baptism, the first stage of Christ’s
ministry was solemnly inaugurated: ‘This is my
beloved Son, in whom [ am well pleased’ (Mt 3!7 |).
The same Evangelists testify to the events of the
Transfiguration, when again the voice from heaven
addressed the disciples in similar language, as if to
inaugurate the final stage of Christ’s ministry
(Mt 17°||). In the latter case the addition of the
words ‘hear ye him’ to the original form of the
Divine testimony would naturally suggest to per-
sons familiar, as the disciples probably were, with
the current Messianic interpretation of Ps 2%, the
thought of the Divine decree there spoken of,
which constituted the subject of the prophecy
King of God’s people, having a Divine right to
their loyalty and obedience. In the Fourth Gospel
this official aspect of the idea of begetting in con-
nexion with Christ is expressed in those passages
in which Jesus speaks of Himself as One sent of
God, and by that mission brought into a new rela-
tion to God and to mankind. That ‘sanctifica-
tion’ and that ‘sending’ of which He speaks (10°°)
correspond to the begetting referred to by the
Psalmist, though in this case they point to the
Incarnation, and not, as in Ro 14, to the Resurrec-
tion. In illustration of this we may compare with
the passages already quoted in another connexion
(Jn 317 6%: 46. 6) such utterances as these: ‘I pro-
ceeded and came forth from God ; neither came [
of myself, but he sent me’ (83) ; ‘ Ye have believed
that I came out from God . . . [came forth from
the Father, and am come into the world’ (1677: 35),
‘Sending forth’ and ‘ coming forth’ appear, accord-
ing to the Fourth Gospel, to have been favourite
expressions in the mouth of Jesus with which to
describe His Messianic commission, and that act
of Divine grace which was, as it were, the genesis
of the New Dispensation—the reign of ‘ grace and
truth’ inaugurated by Christ as Messiah; as St.
John himself laid special stress upon the Inearna-
tion of the Logos as an event which meant the
manifestation of that ‘life’ (14) which ‘was the
light of men.’ The thought is the same. The
idea—coming from heaven, being sent of God—is
practically identical with that of ‘became flesh.’
184 BEGGAR
In this Messianic sense, then, the thought of ‘ beget-
ting’ may fitly apply to the beginning of Christ’s
manifestation in history. ᾿
3. The third aspect is the spiritual or ethical.
In Christ, as the Only-begotten, the proofs of the
Divine Sonship are found in His absolute sinless-
ness (Jn 8#), in that He did alway those things
which pleased God (8%); that there was perfect har-
mony between Christ and the Father in all things,
in willing and in working, and in the fact that Jesus
was habitually conscious of the Father’s presence,
so that during the season of His sorest trial, when
He was deserted by His disciples, He was ‘not
alone, for the Father was with him’ (Jn 16*). This
aspect of the doctrine of the Divine Sonship of
Jesus is of great interest and importance in con-
nexion with the idea of ‘begetting,’ being the
wint at which the doctrine of the sonship of be-
ievers is linked on to that of the Sonship of Christ
Himself. It is in this connexion that St. John
introduces at once the conception of Christ as the
Word made flesh, and that of the regeneration of
believers. The two thoughts are indeed, in the
Prologue and elsewhere, so closely related that the
one almost imperceptibly shades off into the other.
Thus (115) we read, ‘As many as received him, to
them gave he power to become the sons of God’ ;
(v.!) ‘which were born, not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God.’ At this point the Evangelist proceeds at
once to state the doctrine of the Incarnation of
the Divine Logos. As has been remarked, ‘the
subject of the μονογενής is introduced only after we
have learned what is involved in the thought of
believers becoming children of God.’ The same
idea of the relation between the Divine descent
of Christ, the Only-begotten of the Father, and
the sonship of believers, is noted and emphasized
in the First Epistle of John (in which the teach-
ing of John’s Gospel on this subject is worked out
in greater detail), as when we read, ‘If ye know
that he is righteous, ye know that every one that
doeth righteousness is born of him’ (1 Jn 2”); and
again, ‘ Whosoever is born of God doth not commit
sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot
sin, because he is born of God’ (339). The relation
of the Son to the Father, His Divine setting apart
for the accomplishment of the Father’s will, the
absolute oneness of Father and Son in respect of
will and of work, and the mystery of Christ’s
miraculous entrance into the world, being con-
ceived by the power of the Divine Spirit, are,
throughout the Gospel of John, treated as ana-
logues of the regeneration which must be wrought
ont in the heart and life of all who would enter
the Kingdom of God. Thus those expressions
which, in the case of Christ as the Incarnate Word,
or in the case of believers who share the life and
the grace of Christ, speak of a Divine begetting,
of a birth irom above, of regeneration by the
Spirit, “denote a new commencement of the per-
sonal life, traceable back to a (creative) operation
ot God
Litt a he.—Cremer, Bib.-Theol. Leaicon, s.vv.; H. Holtz-
ich der Neutes
t. Theologie, i. p.436; commentaries
5 Beyschlag, N7' Theol. i. pp. 68 ff., 242, ii.
Dorner, D belopment of the Doctrine of the Person of
I 7 vol. 1 P. sf. ; Reuss, Christian Theology in the
- δϑνὶ, 1 » p. 410 17: Delitzsch, Commentary on
H. H. CurRIE.
{ Alford, Mever, etc
BEGGAR.—Thouch beggars are seldom spoken
of in the Go pel harratives (Nit Zv0-s4 « et Mk
iL | is] ν19-ῷ ; ;
I ᾿ k 18 yond, and Lk 16! parable of
hi lan and La; ru they undoubtedly formed
) erable cl in the Gospel age.* This is
find two radi-
f 1 the one
AUN, Lk 18°), ἐφα τίω (Lk 163), and
' BELIEF
evident both from the references to almsgiving in
the Sermon on the Mount and from the mention
of beggars in connexion with places of a public
character: the entrance to Jericho (Mt 20° and
parallels), a city through which so many pilgrims
went at festival seasons, the neighbourhood of rich
men’s houses (Lk 1050), and the gates of the temple
(Ac 82).
The prevalence of the beggar class was due to
various causes besides indolence—to the want of
any system of poor relief, to the ignorance of
proper medical remedies for common diseases like
ophthalmia, and to the impoverishment of Pales-
tine under the Romans owing to cruel and excessive
taxation. (For the last, see Hausrath, History
of NT Times, vol. i. 188 [Eng. tr., Williams &
Norgate]). Edersheim thinks that the beggar’s
appeal for alms may have been enforced by some
such ery as ‘Gain merit by me,’ “Ὁ tender-hearted,
by me gain merit; to thine own benefit’ (Life and
Times of Jesus, vol. ii. 178). It is worthy of notice,
however, that no beggar is recorded to have en-
forced his appeal to Christ by any reference to the
merit to be gained by a favourable response to his
appeal (though it must be remembered, on the
other hand, that the appeal of a blind beggar to
one who had power to restore his sight would
naturally differ from his attitude to those from
whom he merely sought an alms). It is also
observable that the begging ‘saint’ of Moham-
medan countries is not found in the Gospels.
The remark of the unjust steward in the parable
(Lk 16°)—‘To beg I am ashamed ’—favours the
conclusion that begging, under any circumstances,
was regarded as an unfortunate mode of existence,
and, in the ease of the indolent, was condemned as
strongly by public opinion as it was in the days of
Jesus the son of Sirach (Sir 407°),
LITERATURE.—The standard Lives of Christ; G. M. Mackie’s
Bible Manners and Customs; The Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. ;
cf. Day’s Social Life of the Hebrews.
MORISON BRYCE.
BELIEF.— Belief is the mental action, condition,
or habit of trusting in or confiding in a person or
a thing. Trust, confidence, reliance, dependence,
faith are from this point of view aspects of belief.
More narrowly considered, belief is the mental
acceptance of a proposition, statement, or fact on
the testimony of another, or on the ground of
authority. The fact may be beyond our observa-
tion, or the statement beyond our powers of verifi-
cation, yet we may believe that Britain is an island
though we may never have sailed round it, and we
may believe in the law of gravitation though we
may not be able to follow the reasoning which
proves it.
This is not the place to deal with all the phases
or aspects of belief, or to trace the history of
pyres on the question. It is an interesting
chapter in the history of human thought, and it
is of the highest importance in its practical
reference. But we may only indicate the main
outline of it in both respects. The contributions
towards the right understanding of the province
and character of belief in more recent years have
been of great value. Recent psychology has
become aware of the magnitude and complexity
of the problem, and in the hands of such writers
as Bain, James, Stout, Baldwin, and others it has
received a treatment which may be described as
adequate. Nor should we omit the name of Dr.
James Ward, whose work in this relation is of the
highest merit. These have endeavoured to mark
the noun τροσαίΐτης (Jn 98 Revised Text); on the other, the adj.
πτῶχ ἐς (Lik 1620.22). In the former case the root idea is that of
asking («iréw), while πτωχός suggests the cringing or crouching
(ττώσσωλ) of a beggar. But πτωχός is the ordinary NT word for
* poor,’ whether in the sense of needy (Mt 1921) or humble (Mt 53).
‘BELIEF
BELIEF 185
-off the field of belief, and to distinguish it from
other mental states. Is it active or passive? Is it
a state of mind which belongs to the sphere of
feeling ? or is it a state of mind which belongs to in-
telligence? or is it something which belongs to the
sphere of action ? and is it a result of the ‘ will to be-
lieve’? Weighty names may be adduced in favour
of each of these views. But before the question is
asked to what sphere of human nature belief is to
be assigned, there is a previous question to be
settled. Are we to give the name of belief to
every mental state which relates to an object?
Is every state of consciousness which arises in
response to a stimulus and in relation to an object
to be described as a state of belief? Can we say
we believe in our sensations as we say we believe
in our reasoned conclusions? The state of the
question may be set forth most vividly in two
characteristic descriptions of the nature of belief.
Hume says: ‘A belief may be most accurately
described asa lively idea related to or associated
with a present impression.’ Professor Stout says:
‘ All belief involves objective control of subjective
activity > (Manual of Psychology, ii. 544).
According to Hume, ‘an opinion or belief is
nothing but an idea that is different from a
fiction, not in the nature or in the order of its
parts, but in the manner of its being conceived.
But when I would explain this manner, I scarce
find any word that fully answers the case, but am
obliged to have recourse to every one’s feeling, in
order to give him a perfect notion of this operation
of the mind. An idea assented to feels different
from a fictitious idea that the fancy presents to
us; and this feeling I endeavour to explain by
calling it a superior force, or vivacity, or solidity
or firmness, or steadiness’ (Hume’s Works, i. 397 f.,
Green’s ed.). The description of belief given by
Hume is distinguished by the absence of that
‘objective control of subjective activity’ which,
according to Professor Stout, is the mark of all
belief. A closer examination of Hume’s state-
ment enables us to see that the superior force or
vivacity of a belief is due not merely to the
manner of conceiving it, but to a certain coercive-
ness which fact has and which a fancy has not.
The feeling of belief is not a gratuitous addition
made by the mind to the experience, it is dictated
by the fact itself.
Without entering into the discussion in any
detail, it is sufficient for the present Bue to
say that all belief in the first place is teleological,
that it is the tendency of the mind to make itself
at home in the world in which it has to live. This
general description includes the naive uncritical
belief of the child, and the reasoned critical belief
of the mature man. In its simplicity it is a pos-
tulate. It may be almost called an instinet, an
expectation that the world will afford to man a
place in which to live and grow and work. Be the
origin and character of instinct what they may, be
they due to original endowment or to the accumu-
lated and transmitted inheritance of the race, yet
the instincts are there, and are of a kind to enable
life to act before individual experience has had
time to work. Our organic nature is related to its
environment, and it postulates an environment
with which it can interact. Thus all our organic
instincts which find expression in appropriate acts,
such as sucking, eating, moving our limbs in re-
sponse to a stimulus, and so on, are called into
action on the presentation of their appropriate
objects. Action begets belief, and belief is again
the mental situation which leads to further action.
At the outset belief is dominated by our practical
needs, In truth, the new school of Humanism
holds that all activities whatsoever are in the
interest of the practical needs of man, and by
With experience.
the emphasis it has Jaid on this aspect it has
called attention to a factor of human experience
which has been too much neglected. For there
is no doubt that the character of belief is to be
explained, in the first place at all events, from its
function in relation to the practical needs of man.
And all through the experience of man, belief is
an expression of human need, and is the demand
which a living creature makes on the Universe for
a place to live in, to grow in, and to furnish itself
with what shall satisfy its need. Thus the initial
postulate of belief is that it is in a world in which
it may make itself at home, and the tinal demand
of belief in developed humanity is that it shall
find itself in a rational, intelligible world, in which
its ideals of unity, intelligibility, beauty, and
worth may and will tind their realization.
Our beliefs, then, in their generality are our
postulates. They set forth our expectations, our
desires, our wishes. They proceed on the assump-
tion that our needs are related to reality, and that
reality has a way of satisfying our needs. In all
belief there is, of course, a certain risk. We may
mistake our real needs, and we may make mistakes
as to the nature of reality. But the postulate is
there notwithstanding. In fact, to believe that a
thing exists is to act as if it existed. To believe
that the properties of a thing are so and so, is to act
on that supposition. Thus, apart from any theory,
we all postulate a kind of uniformity of nature.
From this point of view all axioms are pos-
tulates. They are unavoidable assumptions.
Students of science are familiar with these. We
do not at present raise the question whether the
universal formule of science are more than pos-
tulates. They are postulates, and are demands
which our nature makes on the Univegse.
Our postulates, however, may mislead ; they may
be unwarrantable, and not unavoidable. Along,
therefore, with the predisposition to believe in
the reality and modes of being of the objects of
experience, there goes the necessity of verification,
criticism, and investigation. For postulates may
be too readily made. Passing needs may be taken
for permanent, and beliefs may be based on wrong
impressions. Subjective hopes or fears may ob-
jectity their objects, and attribute reality to
objects which have none. Thus we have beliefs
which are irresistible and unavoidable. They are
absolutely based in the constitution of the mind
itself, and are the assumptions without which
experience is impossible. Students of Kant will
readily recognize them. They lie at the basis of
our life and activity, they are acted on before we
are conscious of them, and when they arise into
clear consciousness we recognize that they are
unavoidable and inevitable. In like manner there
are other principles arising out of our intercourse
with the external world which strike us as in-
evitable and unavoidable. To enumerate these
would lead us too far atield.
Between the necessary and universal beliefs on
the one hand, and the practical necessity which
coerces our beliefs on the other hand, there lies a
wide field of beliefs, the validity of which depends
on our ability to sift, examine, and criticise them.
The process of sifting and criticism is coextensive
Man is ever sifting his beliefs,
is ever criticising them, and is, more or less, suc-
cessfully active in the endeavour to make them
correspond with reality as he is able to apprehend
and conceive reality. He ventures in the belief
that there is a correspondence between his inward
nature and the world in which he lives; he believes
that there is a constancy in things, that the quali-
ties of things will remain constant. He makes the
venture, and the venture is justified, and his faith
increases as his expectation is verilied. Beginning
ι-
186
BELIEF
with the need to live and to make himself at home
in the world, going on to satisfy his dominant and
controlling need to obtain some mastery of the
world, he reaches the time when he pursues know-
ledge for its own sake, and, in a disinterested
manner, seeks to obtain a consistent and complete
view of the scheme of things. So the sciences,
the philosophies, the poesies of the world arise,
and all the manifold works of the human spirit.
The beliefs of man can, as we see, be looked at as
movements of the human spirit arising out of his
intercourse with the world in which he lives. Our
account of the matter would be most imperfect were
we to confine our attention to man considered only
asan individual. Belief is largely a social product.
The working beliefs of the civilized man are
largely due to inheritance. Without entering on
the mysterious question of heredity, and without
inquiry into the amount or quality of our organic
inheritance, there is no doubt that a large propor-
tion of our working beliefs arise out of our social
environment, and out of the intellectual, moral,
and spiritual atmosphere of the society around us.
The language we learn to speak is the registration
of the beliefs of those who made and used it; it
tells the meaning which men found in the world
and in their own life. It throbs with the life of
all the past, is directive of the life of the present
and the future. We learn the meanings as we
learn to speak, and the meanings of those who
speak to us become our meanings. Our beliefs
and our meanings belong together. And ere we
know it, we are furnished with a working body of
beliefs which mainly represent the experience of
ourancestors. Assve speak with the accent of the
family and the district, as our voices repeat the
swing and eadence of the sentence, so we take
over also the beliefs which sway the minds of those
with whom we live. It is a mixed inheritance
which we receive and actively appropriate.
Beliefs unsifted, uncriticized, results of prejudice
often, often of superstition, form part of the inherit-
ance we receive. And the mind assents readil
enough to the strange amalgam. For behind the
beliefs are the trust which the young have in the
old, and the natural homage which they yield to
experience,
_ the persistence of beliefs from age to age is
itself a proof that they have a certain correspond-
ence with reality. As all belief is a venture and a
risk, failure to realize an expectation is a question-
ins of its validity, and gives oceasion for inquiry.
Thus belief is always under the criticism of
reality, and the stress of cireumstance and the
strain of living compel us to revise our beliefs and
strive to make them correspond with the facts.
It is process that never ends; and as experience
widens and knowledge grows, the circle of our
beliefs may contract in one direction and expand
manother. Beliefs may take the rank of universal
necessary convictions, or they may be classed
merely probable, or may sink to the level of
bare bility. Our postulates may pass into the
certainty, or may have to be abandoned
&s mere possibilities,
Looking at the matter from a historical point of
view, perhaps the most striking factor in the
growth ef belief is that of trust in a
this of mind many elements
maniestation ot belief among
revion of
ana
] Into state
rhe earliest
human bein Is thy
a6 Which we call Animism, or
the beli iat all things have an inward life, and
hy re their own nature and activity A spirit
dwells iy | objects ‘ther it is j 10]
di na ujyects, whether it is in them origin-
Deen put ints
them
by some process or
belief is
1t yet has in it the
and by retin
lement of its terms
and by the removal of its erosser elements it has
thi
germs of growth):
BELIEF
become the spirit and the meaning of the higher
philosophy of to-day. What is the Hegelian con-
ception of the final correspondence of thought and
reality, but a higher form of the original belief of
man that the world around him, and the objects
with which he came into contact, had a thought
and meaning in them akin to those which he found
in himself? It were an easy task to extend this
observation to other philesophies, but space
forbids. R 5
Animism itself was a form of belief which came
to higher issues in the social intercourse of man
with man. The belief which man came to hold as
to the animistic character of all objects whatsoever
attained to vividness and certainty when applied
to his fellow-men. In this sphere there was cer-
tainty, for was there not the interchange of in-
fluence, of feeling and thought, between himself
and his fellows? Mutual help, power of working
together, concerted action with friends and against
enemies, the need of increased adaptation to the
conditions of life, all conspired to raise belief in
one’s fellow-men to a dominant height. Out of
this social co-operation have arisen the sciences,
the arts, the philosophies, and especially the in-
stitutions of civilized life. But in considering the
rise and growth of these achievements of human
life, we must always remember that they are the
outcome of the striving of conscious beings. This
has been so well put by Professor Villa that we
quote his statement.
‘The mainspring of the mental development of the individual
and the species thus consists in two contrary forces, on whose
equilibrium both individual and social progress depend. One—
namely, ‘‘ imitation ””—is a conservative, the other—‘ invention”
—is a progressive force. The former corresponds to biological
heredity, and is responsible for social and individual habits and
instincts ; the latter corresponds to the biological law of varia-
tions, and finds its highest expression in ‘‘genius.” The
naturalistic and positive schools of the nineteenth century were
too much inclined to consider social development as a purely
natural and unconscious evolution, and omitted accordingly to
take these two forces into consideration. Instead of considering
social institutions, ideas, and phenomena as spontaneous pro-
ducts of the nameless multitude, modern Psychology rightly
considers them the outcome of individual genius, subsequently
consolidated, diffused, and preserved for the whole species by
imitation. This idea, admirably developed by Tarde, on which
Baldwin founds his studies of social Psychology, has transformed
the theories which were current with regard to the evolution of
the collective mind, which is thus presented in the light of a
conscious, and not of an unconscious evolution like that of
geological phenomena. Genius, therefore, is not to be under-
stood as a degeneration, a violation of the natural and conserva-
tive law of heredity, but as the integrating factor of the latter,
expressive of variation, impulse, and motion, as a dynamic
force, without which evolution itself would be impossible’
(Contemporary Psychology, by Guido Villa, Eng. tr. p. 256),
Thus the whirligig of time brings about its
revenges, and the uniform tradition of history
as to the influence of great personalities on the
race is being justified by modein Psychology. In
this tradition every movement of advance was
ascribed to great men. Advances in the prac-
tical control of nature, the making of tools, the
use of fire, the sowing of grain, and so en, are
in the tradition of the race ascribed to indi-
vidual men. More particularly is this the case
with regard to the founders of cities, the makers
of laws, the founders or the reformers of religions,
and the framers of institutions. The 19th cent. was
celebrated for its endeavours to disintegrate great
men, to minimize their influence, and to trace
great historic movements to a process and not to a
fern How much influence this predilection has
iad on historic criticism we shall not here inquire.
But in the light of modern Psychology, perhaps,
Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Solon, Lycurgus, and
many others may be looked at as real persons,
benefactors of the race, whose names represent
real forces in the development of humanity.
| Perhaps modern Psychology may help men_ to
have some real apprehension of Moses, as ancient
BELIEF
BELIEF
Psychology had so much to do with his disintegra-
tion.
In the sphere of religious belief we have clear
and overwhelming evidence of the weight and
influence of personality in the shaping of belief,
and in the advance of men to clearer thought and
urer embodiment of the religious ideals. It has
een through the striving, the toil, the agony of
great men that the ideals of religion have attained
to form and reality. ‘To them it was given to toil
for the race, and the vision they saw and the
moral and spiritual truth they won became the
inheritance of other men, and through them were
conserved for the good of the race. Nor is it the
fact that the work and influence of great person-
alities on other persons have been of a narrow and
cramping kind. On the contrary, all the religious
truth we possess may be traced back to the moral,
spiritual, and intellectual insight of great men,
just as every great discovery of science is associ-
ated with some great historic name. ‘This personal
element in our belief is of universal validity. As
a matter of fact, only those religions which have
had a personal founder have become universal, or
at least international. For, after all, personality
is our highest category of thought and life.
Belief in great personalities may be historically
and scientifically vindicated. They were needed
to make the new departure, they were the first to
see the vision, they made the discovery, or thought
out the truth; but those unfitted to be pioneers
may be quite able to think over again what is
made plain to them by him who was the first to
think out that truth. The insight of a great man
may be verified by the experience of other men,
In fact, we have daily illustrations of this in our
own experience. We use telephones, we drive by
means of steam or electricity, we command nature
by using the means which others have placed at
our disposal, though we may not have the power
of making these discoveries. Plato, Aristotle,
Kant opened out paths on which the feet of others
may safely tread, and we may rise to the height
of the vision of Dante, and rejoice in the univer-
sality of Shakespeare, though these would have
remained undiscovered countries had not those
great personalities opened the gates of entrance
to us.
Yet the man in the street has something in
common with the greatest and the highest. If he
cannot initiate he may imitate, and if he cannot
make the discovery he may appreciate and act on
it when it has been made. For in the long-run the
achievements of great men in any sphere, just in
yroportion to their truth and value, turn out to
have elements of permanent value. Though the
discoveries of a person, they have no mere personal
value. They are objective, and because objective
they may become the possession of every man.
We have spoken up to this point of the work of
great personalities only so far as that work was a
help towards the discovery of truth and a help to
life. LGelief in them, trust in them, is thus far
justified. But no great personality answers to the
ideal of greatness in all the aspects of greatness.
Great men have had their limitations, and great-
ness from one point of view has been accompanied
with littleness in other respects. The leaders of
men have had their limitations. Some have been
great in action, some in thought, some in inven-
tion, some in power of poetic or prophetic visicn,
and some in other ways. Others have been great in
gathering into a system the results of the work of
former generations, and have thus marked out the
stage to which humanity has come. But the
limitations of great men have had their effect, and
their achievements may come to hinder and not
to help progress. In all spheres of human thought
and action this has been true, and the imitative
mind of man has striven to live in formule which
have become outworn and effete. There has been
also imitation of great men in those aspects of
their activity in which they were not good or
great. Illustrations of these facts abound, and
need not be dwelt on at length.
But trust in personality as one of the greatest
forces of human progress and one of the strongest
elements in belief is justified notwithstanding. It
alone can give the enthusiasm which confronts
difficulties, the personal devotion and love which
make men willing to live and die for a great cause.
The great epochs of human life, the times which
stand out in history as full of heroic endeavour, of
far-reaching aspiration, and of substantial gain for
other ages. have been pre-eminently periods of
akounding trust in great ideals; and these ideals
appear in all their grandeur as embodied in some
great personality. The imitative mind found its
ideal embodied in the great man of its time; and
was touched as with a flame, and followed on
and became greater than it knew. The great
personality became fer the lesser men the embodi-
ment of the highest ideal they had ever known ;
and they, so far as they saw it, embodied it in
their own action and character, and wrought it so
far into the very constitution of humanity. So
the vision grew; and as one personality after
another revealed to men the possible synthesis of
the ideal greatness of a perfect personality, men
were educated to perceive what they ought to
demand in the ideal of a perfect personality in
whom they might completely and absolutely trust.
In the perfect personality in whom ian’ may
absolutely trust all kinds of ideals must meet, and
be harmonized in a perfect unity. That is the
postulate of the nature of man. And each part of
man’s complex nature makes its own demand and
contributes its own share towards the realization
of the ideal. Our intelligent nature demands
unity and intelligibility in the Universe, and in
Him in whom the Universe lives and moves and
has its being. Our moral nature demands its
ideal of perfect goodness, righteousness, and holi-
ness in order to meet the needs of our moral
nature, and to give us scope for the exercise of
reverence towards that which is above us, love
towards all that helps and sustains us, and bene-
volence towards all that- needs our help. The
wsthetic nature furnishes its ideal of perfect
beauty and harmony, and demands that reality
shall meet this as it meets every other demand.
The heart demands goodness and love, and furnishes
in its own action the type of what it demands,
The Christian belief is that all these ideals meet
and are realized in God. It is the business of
Theism to show how these ideals are realized in
God, and it is the business of the metaplysician,
the ethicist, the estheticist, and the poet to show
how the various ideals converge to the one great
ideal whom we reverently call God. Our intel-
lectual, ethical, spiritual, artistic, and emotional
ideals agree, must agree, if we are to attain to
harmony of life and fulness of being. We repeat
again that these are our needs, and our needs have
their roots in reality, and reality does not dis-
appoint us.
Is there a Personality who ean be to all men
what some personalities have been to some men
and to some nations? Is there one who can be to
all nations what the national heroes have been to
particular peoples, one who can embody their
highest ideals, and who can so react on them as to
make them work out these ideals in themselves?
That is the claim which histery makes for Christ,
which Christians make for Him, and which they
believe has been verified in human experience by
188 BELIEF
BELOVED
all who have trusted and followed Him. He Him-
self makes the claim: ‘I am the way, the truth,
and the life’ (Jn 146). St. Panl makes it for Him :
‘in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge hidden’ (Col 2%). This is not the place
to unfold the meaning of the claim ef Christ to the
reverence and trust of all men, nor to set forth
His ability to meet all the needs of our nature
and to satisfy all our ideals. It would take many
treatises to do that work, instead of one brief
article. But the scope of the proof may be indi-
cated. Tirst, as to the demands which our needs
make on Christ; and, second, as to His ability to
meet them. The main demands of our nature
may be summed up in the ideals we have noted
above: the demand for unity, the demand for
purity, the longing for beauty and harmony, the
thirst for love and goodness and fulness of life.
The demand for unity, and the belief that unity is
there, have led men on towards the conquest of the
world,—which conquest has embodied itself, so far
as it has gone, in the sciences and their practical
applications and in the philosophies of the world.
The demand for beauty and harmony, and its result
in the poetries, arts, and beautiful human construc-
tions, and in increasing appreciations of the beauty
of the Universe ; the demand for goodness, right-
eousness, love, which has embodied itself in the
ethical and spiritual life of the world, are illus-
trations of the faith of man in the unity, beauty,
goodness, and worth of reality, and his own achieve-
ments are tributes to the validity of his faith.
But the needs of man make this claim on the
perfect human personality. We need One who
can reveal to us what human life ought to be and
what it may become. We need One who gathers
into Himself all the types of greatness that have
ever entered into the thoughts of men; and One
who has realized them in His own life and action.
But we need to be educated and trained toappreciate
the ideal, for it may be, nay, it is, the reversal of
many human ideals. Man has often mistaken his
real needs, and has also mistaken the ideals which
alone can satisfy them. The first must become
last and the last first. The intellectual, moral,
esthetic, and religious needs of man have sought
satisfaction in the pursuit of false ideals, and have
not found it. Yet the needs are real and the
search was good, and the satisfaction is attain-
able. The perfect human Personality reveals to
man how to show reverence to what is above man,
love to all his equals, and benevolence to all that
is subject to him. He has shown it in His own
action, and inspires it in those who trust Him.
Belief in Christ is thus the outcome of the
deepest needs of man’s manifold nature, and the
prophecy of their complete satisfaction. It means
also that there is a revelation to man of what his
real needs are. It means instruction, education,
training into a true and adequate apprehension of
his own nature and calling. He learns from Christ
his own value and worth, and the sphere in which
these may be realized. He learns how this
supreme Personality has thought about hin,
eared for him, suffered for him, lives for him, and
is ever working and striving in him and for him.
Chen, too, he learns, as he trusts Christ, what life
and conduct ought to be, and he learns that it is
possible through union with Christ to live that life
and imitate that conduct. For the further devel-
opment of this part of our theme we have to refer
to Christian dogmaties, and specially to the NT
document We may also refey to the practical
experience of the Christian throuch the Christian
centuries, and to what it has felt and accom-
plished.
As to the ability of Christ to satisfy our needs
and meet our ideals Ι
ἰδ, we have just to make the same
reference. We are beginning to understand the
cosmical significance of Christ. As our knowledge
of the primary revelation of God is widened by
the patient and triumphant labours of scientifie
workers through the ages, we find increased
validity in the process when we reflect that we
are following in the footsteps of Him by whom
every thing was made that was made. ‘In Him
all things consist,’ and our faith in the Eternal
Logos is confirmed as we trace out the logos of
things. Then in the sphere of history we desire
a meaning and a unity, we need the belief that a
purpose runs through the ages, and we find that of
Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things ;
that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to
Himself,’ and that there is a ministry of reconcilia-
tion in history. ‘Then comes the personal know-
ledge of Him, in His perfect grace, love, wisdom,
power; and the union with Him, till He becomes
the atmosphere we breathe, our outlook on life
and its possibilities, the source of all our strivings,
the goal of all our efforts; and the only true
description of it all is that we are ‘in Christ
Jesus.’
The correspondence is perfect between our needs
and their satisfaction in Jesus Christ. Here the
subjective is controlled by the objective, and the
coercive power of Christ over the belief of those
who trust Himis perfect. Much might be said on
the educative power of Christ on man as to the
true needs of man, and much might be said on the
reasonableness of trust in this perfect Personality ;
but enough has been said to indicate the congruity
of this belief with the whole nature of belief in
general, and to show that it is the outcome of all
the factors which enter into and justify that atti-
tude of the human mind which we call belief. See,
further, art. FAITH.
LITERATURE.—The articles ‘ Belief’? and ‘Psychology’ in the
Encyc. Brit.9; James, Principles of Psychology ; Turner,
Knowledge, Belief, and Certitude ; Flint, Agnosticism ; Royce,
The keligious Aspect of Modern Philosophy ; Newman, Gram-
mar of Assent ; Bain, Emotions and the Will, and Mental and
Moral Science; Villa, Contemporary Psychology. It may be
well to refer to Kant in his three great Critiques, and specially
to his treatment of ‘Glaube’ in the Critique of the Practical
Reason. In the works of Sir William Hamilton, Mansel, and
Herbert Spencer the reader will find discussions of some value.
In truth, the literature which in one form or other deals with the
nature and validity of belief is so enormous, that an exhaustive
reference is out of the question. But reference ought to be
made to Balfour’s Foundations of Belief and to Kidd’s Social
Evolution, as these books present a somewhat peculiar view of
the nature and validity of belief, specially in its relation to
knowledge.
As to belief in Christ we need not give any reference, for all
the literature of Christianity would be relevant here.
J. IVERACH.
BELOVED.—Wherever the word rendered ‘be-
loved’ (dyamnrés—in 9 places AV has ‘dearly be-
loved’ and in 3 places ‘well-beloved’; in every
case RV has ‘beloved’ only) is used in the NT, it
seems to imply a love deeper and more intimate
than the common affections, and is therefore but
sparingly employed. In the Epistles it is the in-
dication of the inner brotheckoel and its very
form ‘beloved brethren’ has passed into every
liturgy. St. Paul uses it to distinguish, as with
peculiar honour, those whom he has personally
enlightened with the new faith, as Epzenetus (Ro
16°), Timothy (1 Co 47), or a whole community
(1 Co 10%, Ph 2"), But in the Gospels the word is
used solely concerning Christ, and marks out the
Son’s a Sie relationship to the Father. There
is abundance of love throughout the Gospels :
| whether of Jesus for John and the rest, or of the
disciples and others for Him: and there is no
weakness or timidity in the expression of the love.
But to none other save Himself is the word ‘be-
loved’ applied. He Himself uses it but onee, and
then in the parable of the Lord of the Vineyard,
wherein the ‘ beloved son’ is the evident picture of
BENEDICTION
the Son of Man (Mk 12° {AV ‘well-beloved’], Lk
2015). Elsewhere the Evangelists (Synoptists only),
who give the word, report it as the utterance of
God, the Divine recognition and approval of the
Son. The influence of the OT is plainly visible in
the words heard at the Baptism. Jesus hears the
voice of God pronouncing a benediction in clearest
remembrance of Ps 27, ‘'‘'hou art my son, this day
have I begotten thee,’ and of Is 42! ‘My chosen,
in whom my soul delighteth’ (quoted in Mt 1238;
ef. Bruce, Expos. Gr. Test., in loc.) ; for the Syn-
optists agree in the phrase ‘My beloved son in
(μοῦ ΤΟ am well pleased’ (Mt 3", Mk 1", Lk
3”). And there is something beautifully fitting
in this consecration of the opening of His ministry
by a blended echo of psalm and prophecy. The
other occasion of the word is that record of another
great revealing moment of His life—the Trans-
figuration, when two of the three tell of ‘a voice
out of the cloud (saying), This is my beloved son,
hear ye him’ (Mt 17°, Mk 97; in the |j Lk 935 the
true reading is ἐκλελεγμένο9).
LITERATURE.—The Lezxicons of Cremer and Grimm-Thayer, 8.Ὁ.
ἀγτεπητός ; R. H. Charles, Ascension of Isaiah (100), p. 3 and
passim; J. A. Robinson, Epistle to Ephesians (1904), 229; art.
‘Beloved’ in Hastings’ DB. E. DAPLYN.
BENE DICTION.—Denedictions on the assembled
people pronounced by an officiating priest or
minister were a regular part of the liturgies of the
temple and the synagogue, but no direct mention
is made of these in the Gospel narratives. Quite
similar in character, however, are the benedictions
on persons, which are not a part of the ceremonial
of Divine worship. Of these there are several
examples in the Gospels (Lk 2% 6% 24° and Mk
1016). All such words of blessing are liable to have
magical power attributed to them, but in form and
origin they are simply a prayer addressed to God
for the wellbeing of some person or persons in
whose presence they are uttered. They may be
exemplified from the benediction of the Jewish
liturgy: ‘ The Lord bless thee, and keep thee ; the
Lord make his face to shine ‘upon thee, and be
gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up his counte-
nance upon thee, and give thee peace’ (Nu 05:2.
In the NT the verbs εὐλογεῖν (Lk 253. 67 24°") and
κατευλογεῖν (Mk 1016) denote ‘ to utter a benediction’
in this sense.
εὐλογεῖν properky means to ascribe (to God) praise
and honour (benedicere). In accordance with the
usage of the OT and NT and of the Christian
Church, this act also is termed ‘benediction.’ It
is of the nature of thanksgiving and praise to God
for His goodness, and differs essentially from that
kind of benediction which is a prayer that Divine
favour may Le shown to those whom the speaker
‘blesses.’ In the NT this second kind of benedic-
tion is expressed by εὐχαριστεῖν, ‘give thanks,’ as
well as by εὐλογεῖν. The Jewish custom of blessing
God on every possible occasion (see below) supplies
a probable explanation of the designation of God
in Mk 1401 ὁ εὐλογητύς, ‘the Blessed.’ It does not,
however, appear that this title was current in
Jewish literature (Dalman, Words of Jesus, p.
200).* Elsewhere in the NT εὐλογητός is used as
an epithet of God (e.g. Lk 1%), This is the Jewish
usage of 77322.
The double sense of εὐλογεῖν, just explained, is due to the
meaning of 773 and the LXX use of εὐλογεῖν. It has a third
signification when God is the subject, namely ‘bless,’ 7.e.
prosper. This also isa meaning of 322 (see BLESSING). In the
Gospels the only instances of the third usage are cases where
the participle εὐλογημένος, ‘ blessed,’ is employed. εὐλογεῖν mean-
* Enoch 771 seems to supply a parallel. In Berakhoth vii. 3
(ed. Surenhusius) 77237 is an epithet qualifying ΣΝ,
BENEDICTION 189 ]
ing to pronounce a benediction never occurs in John, but εὐλο-
γημένος appears in Jn 1218,
1. Benedictions on imen.—In Jewish life the
occasicns of pronouncing benedictions on men were
numerous. Besides those of the temple and the
synagogue, and perhaps even older than these,
were the salutations customary at meeting and
parting, entering a house and leaving it, which
were all benedictions. The blessings of the aged
and of parents were specially valued, and were
often a part of the solemn farewell of the dying.
In the temple a benediction was regularly pro-
nounced at the conclusion of the morning and
evening sacrifices. The statement in!Lk 121 that
the people waited for Zacharias may be an indirect
reference to this custom. But the intercessory
benedictions recorded in the Gospels are chiefly of
the nature of greetings or salutations (Lk 15 12
13%=Mt 23°=Ps 118%), Our Lord commends to
His disciples the practice of saluting a house when
they enter it, z.¢., of pronouncing a benediction on
those resident in it (Mt 10!’=Lk 105. The actual
words of such a benediction are given in Lk 10°
‘May peace rest on this house’ (οἵ. Lk 1”).
Christ’s farewell to His disciples before His as-
cension was expressed in words of blessing (Lk
24°), It is to be understood in the light of what
has already been said regarding Jewish customs.
Simeon’s benediction (Lk 2*) was that of an old
man anda priest. But in any circumstances bene-
dictions were appropriate as expressions of good-
will (cf. Lk 658 and Mk 11%).
εὐλογημένος (=7373) in formulas of blessing may
be understood to express a wish, ‘ Blessed be thou.’
This is clearly the meaning in Ps 118**(LXX), and
consequently in Mk 119= Mt 219=Lk 19% =Jn 12%
and Mt 23°=Lk 1355, where the Psalm is quoted.
In the Gospels RV makes the phrase a statement,
and so does AV except in Lk 1998 (cf. Mk 11").
There are similar phrases in Mk 11} and Lk 1%,
μακάριος, although translated in the EV ‘blessed,’
is not used in benedictions, and has a different
meaning (see BLESSING).
There is at least one clear reference to the afti-
tude adopted in the act of benediction (Lk 24°").
The uplitting of the hands there spoken of (ef.
Ly $**) is not peculiar to benedictions ; according
to ancient custom, Babylonian and Egyptian as
well as Hebrew, when prayer was offered in a
standing posture the hands were uplifted or spread
out (Ps 287, Is 115 ete.). It is not equally certain
that the laying of hands upon the children who
were blessed by Christ (Mk 10!*) is directly con-
nected with the act of benediction as such,
although Gn 48% may be quoted in support of
that view. The request made to Christ is that
He should touch the children (Mk 10"=Lk 18";
but cf. || Mt 19'%), and that is something different
from a request that He should bless them (see Mk
5%, and cf. possibly Lk 2%). Mt 19'* may be
regarded as an interpretation of Mk 10!°; benedic-
tions of persons are intercessory prayers on their
behalf.
2. Benedictions of God.—The practice of uttering
benedictions on God is a highly characteristic ex-
pression of Jewish religious life. It is broadly
formulated as a duty in the Talmud in the words,
‘Whoever benefits from this world without (re-
citing) a benediction, acts as if he robbed God’
(Berakhoth, 35a). Any circumstance or event which
recalls or exhibits God’s goodness or power is an
appropriate occasion for ‘blessing’ God. At circum-
cisions, redemptions of the first-born, marriages,
etc., benedictions of this class were employed
along with others invoking blessings on men.
Sometimes unusual experiences and special cir-
cumstances called them forth. But the ordinary
routine of life, and particularly the daily meals of
190 BENEDICTION
BENEDICTUS
the family and the individual, equally fulfil the
conditions which prompt their use. The Jewish
‘grace’ pronounced at meal-times was an act of
thanksgiving to God, that and nothing more. The
procedure is described in the Mishna (Lerakhoth)
and in other Jewish sources. When several sat
down to a meal together, one usually gave thanks
for all, although each in certain circumstances was
expected to do so for himself. A company is said
to be constituted by the presence of three persons.
The meal commenced with a benediction and with
the breaking of bread. Whoever broke the bread
also spoke the benediction. This was the part of
the master of the house, the giver of the feast, or
the most important person in the company. There
were differences in the words of blessing, according
to the formality of the occasion and the character
of the dishes that were served. During one meal
several benedictions might be pronounced, referring
to the various articles of food separately (for the
ordinary formulas used in blessing bread and wine,
see BLESSING). During the Passover meal bene-
dictions were pronounced at several fixed points.
Every meal was concluded with a benediction. In
the Passover meal the last benediction was spoken
before the actual conclusion ; a hymn was sung at
the very end.
It is not easy to draw a line in principle between the thanks-
giving of God which is benediction and that which is denoted
by the word ‘ praise’ (αἰνεῖν). But there is a practical distine-
tion. The use of special formulas, and especially of the word
ΠΥΡῚ * blessed’ (εὐλογημένος), is characteristic of benedictions.
There are only three references in the Gospels to
benedictions of God other than those pronounced
at meal-times. In each case they are prompted
by unusual manifestations of Divine favour to the
speakers (Lk 14% RV, 2538 2453). The actual words of
benediction are not recorded in any case. Lk 229-32
is a prayer supplementing the benediction proper.
Four narratives in the Gospels allude to bless-
ings pronounced at meal-times. The occasions
are the miracles of the feeding of the 5000 and
of the 4000, the institution of the Lord’s Supper,
and the evening meal at Emmaus. The refer-
ence in every case to the breaking of bread is
noteworthy. It emphasizes the character of the
act as one in accordance with Jewish custom. The
Jewish formulas of blessing at meal-times make it
perfectly certain that no blessing on the food is
asked, but that God is thanked for the food.
Illustrations of this meaning of the word ‘bless’
are found in the parallel narratives of the Gospels
themselves. Lk 221% has ‘give thanks’ (evxaptc-
THoas) in place of the ‘ bless’ (εὐλογήσας) of Mk 1422
and Mt 26%; Jn 6" has ‘give thanks’ where the
Synoptists have ‘bless’ (cf. also the parallel ex-
pressions In 1 Co 1416. When the grammatical
object of the verb is an article of food, ‘bless’
then signifies ‘pronounce a benediction over,’ 7.¢€.
agive thanks to God for’ the food in question (so
Mk 8 and Lk 9"), The same construction occurs
in the ( IT (1 S 9), (in the Mishna Sy aa is gener-
y used), Chiist’s blessing of the elements in the
institution of the Lord’s Supper should no doubt be
understood in the light of these facts.
oats ler passage in the NT where a material object
. € bie ed is 1 Co 1016, and it really belongs to the
plaine l. The expression ‘cup... which we
Ὶ p for which we giv e thanks,’ over which
pr our benediction. In Jewish phraseology material
" n i I Lo be blessed.
Mk 6" (and so
the parallels) speaks of Christ
looking up to the
sky, and implies, no doubt, in
accordance with the ¢
while He offered His prayer of thanksgivine, But
the ordinary Jewish practice seems to have been
to sit while grace was being said. In Jn 05 it is
not obvious at first sight why the words ‘ whe n the
=
rated or hallowed, but they cannot be |
Lord gave thanks’ have been added. Perhaps
they were intended to mean ‘when the Lord was
giver of the feast.’ The statement in Lk 24” that
the risen Christ was recognized in the breaking of
bread seems to imply that the disciples were
familiar with the manner in which He acted on
such occasions, and that there was something
peculiar or characteristic in the procedure which
He followed. Doubtless the act as He performed
it was always deliberate and impressive.
The application of the word εὐλογεῖν to meals is
common to the Synoptists, but St. Matthew (15%)
and St. Luke (2915) both substitute on one occasion
εὐχαριστεῖν for St. Mark’s εὐλογεῖν (87 1435). εὐλογεῖν
with God as explicit object occurs in St. Luke only
(184 255 24°83), St. John does not use the word at all
in this sense (see 6" and cf. also 11").
LITERATURE.—See the authorities cited at end of art. BLEssina.
W. L. STEVENSON.
BENEDICTUS.—The Song of Zacharias (wh.
see), preserved in Lk 1%, is usually spoken of
under the name familiar to us in the offices of the
Church—a name derived from its opening word in
the Latin version. St. Luke introduces it immedi-
ately after his narrative of the circumcision and
naming of the future Baptist, with the copulative
and, in these terms: ‘And his father Zacharias
was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied,
saying’ (v.%). But while he thus asserts the
author’s inspiration, and claims the Song as an
outcome thereof, it does not follow either that the
Holy Ghost came on Zacharias then and there,—He
may have rested on him during the whole period
of his miraculous dumbness, teaching him in that
enitential silence, and bringing to his remem-
trainee the dealings and promises of God,—or that
the Song was extempore (it was while the old
psalmist was musing, that the fire burned, Ps 39°).
Zacharias may have had it ready for the long
anticipated moment ; may have recited it then, and
written it afterwards.
Nor, again, does the fullest acceptance of its
inspiration as a fact forbid that it should bear the
marks of the time at which it was composed, and
of the feelings of devout Israelites under the trials
of their age. The Holy Spirit speaks through men,
not through pipes. Their character, proved and
purified by calamities,—public as well as private, —
15 of no small importance to Him. They were ‘ holy
men of God,’ who ‘spake as they were moved by the
Holy Ghost’ (2 P 12). Zacharias was an old man
(Lk 1%); he might easily remember the capture of
Jerusalem by Pompey (B.c. 63), and his pushing
forward, like Antiochus Epiphanes, into the Holy
of Holies. There were chief priests who ‘opened
the gates’ to the heathen conqueror as ‘sons to
receive a father’ (Ps-Sol 815-30). but among the min-
istering priesthood there then lived (as there still
survived in Zacharias himself) a piety so genuine
and fearless that, when the victorious Romans
burst into the Temple courts, the ofliciating priests
went on with the service as if nothing unusual
were happening, and suffered themselves to be cut
down at their posts. That awful day was the end
of Jewish independence. Zacharias had lived
through all the shame that followed, and the
further Roman outrages of Crassus, who robbed
the Temple (B.c. 54), and of Cassius, who sold
30,000 Jews into captivity (B.c. 51). The usurpa-
tions, the feuds, the subserviences to Herod and
the Romans, the Sadducean unbelief of the high-
priestly families, the immoralities which disgraced
| them,—must all have been fresh in his recollection,
ircumstances, that He stood |
and may well have led him, as these things led the
more quiet and religious Pharisees around him, to
turn back for comfort to the Divine promise to
David and his seed for evermore.
That such a terrible state of things should have
a
BENEDICTUS
deeply affected Zacharias was as right as it was
natural. That it wrought within him affections
altogether good and holy is just a sign that it was
the Spirit of Christ who taught him by them. The
book already referred to, the Psalter (or Psalms)
of Solomon, is the nearest Jewish work in point of
time to the Benedictus and its fellows in the first
two chapters of St. Luke: it is also the likest to
them in style and character. Like these Songs, the
Psalms of Solomon are a proof that sacred poetry,
so far from being extinct among the Jews at this
period, was living, and was being made the vehicle
of intensest religious feeling. Nor are these
Psalms deficient in merit. They are forceful,
vivid, full of noble indignation against Roman
oppression and Jewish secularity alike, of shame
for ‘the draggled purples’ of the Hasmonan
princes, of acknowledgments that God is justified
in His chastening of Israel. They look, like the
Benedictus, for a Messiah of the House of David.
They assign to Him the double work of ‘ thrusting’
sinners out of the holy place, ‘ purging Jerusalem
and making it holy as in the days of old,’ and of
avenging her upon the Romans. But with all this,
they lack the characteristic elements of evangelical
prophecy. They have little insight and less fore-
sight. They emanated from the better sort of
Pharisees, and they betray all the elements of
Pharisaism as we see it in the Gospels. The
Messiah they expect is purely human (cf. our
Lord’s contention on this point with the PAarisees,
Mii 2e? > Mio bie 20%)... Their idea of
God’s salvation is political mainly: vengeance on
their enemies rather than undisturbed devotion is
the thing they long for. The whole tone of the
book is fierce, narrow, separatist, self-righteous.
The Benedictus, on the other hand, is in its closing
notes very strikingly predictive: the father fore-
tells, with proud exactness, the future ministry of
his infant son. Even had this element been
wanting, the Song is in the truest sense a prophecy,
for it discerns the spiritual nature of Christ’s
kingdom with a clearness unknown even to the
Apostles after Christ had been some time with
them. It tells of ‘salvation in the remission of
sins’ (v.77 RV) through the mercy of God (v.”, ef.
Tit 3°) in Christ (ν. 9), of human need and darkness,
of reconciliation to life and peace, and of the wor-
ship of God without fear (cf. 1 Jn 41%) as its climax
(v.4). There is deliverance from every enemy, not
from the Romans only, but no hint of revenge
upon them. ‘The tone of the Song is eminently
gentle. The salvation is from God, according to
His promise by the mouth of all His holy prophets
from the beginning of the world; it embraces in
its range our fathers (ν. 72) who are gone, as well as
the living (cf. 1 P 2", and Rev 6°) ; and is all given
us through and in the Horn of Salvation, whom
God has raised up ‘in the house of his servant
David’ (v.®), indeed, but who Himself is ‘the
Most Hich,’ and ‘the Lord’ (v.”), and ‘the Day-
spring from on High’—not rising gradually as does
Nature’s dawn, but bursting, as it were, upon our
wondering eyes, full-orbed from the zenith (v.%).
It is very remarkable how subordinate to Him who
is the subject of his Song is the position assigned
by Zacharias to his own miraculously-born child.
Even while he predicts John’s office, it is in con-
trast with the greater dignity of the Redeemer.
Alford justly remarks that the Benedictus ‘shows
the exact religions view under which John was
educated by his father.’ The fruit may be seen in
all that is recorded οἵ the Baptist (ef. Mt 3% 1?
11°, Mk 11-8, Lk 34:11. Jn 17-8: 15-19-34 310) Tt, is
abundantly clear that the Song was composed in
the light both of the Annunciation made to the
Virgin Mary (Lk 135-38) and of the inspired saluta-
tion wherewith she was greeted by Elisabeth (v.*).
BENEDICTUS 191
The Benedictus is thus emphatically a ‘ Hymn of
the Incarnation ’—‘ Canticum de Evangelio,’ as the
Antiphonary of Bangor styles it.
It differs from the other hymns in these two
chapters of St. Luke mainly in this, that whereas
the Magnificat (St. Mary’s Song) is of Christ’s
kingship, whereby He casts down the proud and
exalts the humble, and the Nune dimittis (Sim-
eon’s) is of His prophetic or enlightening cftice, the
Lenedictus, as beseems the song of the blameless
priest, is of Christ’s priesthood. It is priestly
throughout ; it begins with blessing and ends with
peace. The work of the Deliverer is remission of
sins and reconciliation with God, and its eulmina-
tion is seen in a people of priests ‘serving God (1.6.
worshipping Him—)azpevew, same word as in Rev
22%) in holiness and righteousness before him all the
days of their life.’ It is evident that Zacharias
has in his mind the history of Melchizedek (Gn 14)
and the oracle, even then ascribed to the pen of
David, which forms so important a commentary on
that history (Ps 110).
The ‘sources’ of the Song, as of the two chapters
of which it forms an integral part, will be discussed
in art. LUKE (GOSPEL OF). It may be mentioned
here that the text of the Benedictus varies little
either in MSS or Versions. The one reading which
exhibits an important difference from that of the
Textus Receptus is in v.“, where a future tense
takes the place of a past. This has been adopted
inthe RV, but witha marginal note, ‘ Many ancient
authorities read hath visited us.’
The structure of the Benedictus is simple. It
consists of three stanzas—the first (vv. 7) setting
forth the fact of God's interposition in the approach-
ing birth of the long-looked-for Saviour ; the second
(vv.7-*) telling the purpose of His incarnation ;
and the third (νν. 756-79) an apostrophe to Zacharias’
babe, declaring his office as the forerunner of Christ.
The references in the hymn are marvellous alike
in their number, range, and depth. The opening
words remind us of the opening of Melchizedek’s
address to Abram (Gn 14) ; ‘ visited and redeemed,’
of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt (Ex 4*! 6°); the
‘Horn of Salvation,’ of Hannah’s Sone at the
beginning of the story of the kings (18 2!) ; ‘in
the house of David’ is from 1 Ch 174; in ‘from the
beginning of the world,’ ἀπ᾽ αἰῶνος, we have pos-
sibly an allusion to the Protevangeliwn (Gn 315); in
. %q
a paronomasia on the three names of the parties
chiefly concerned with the Baptist’s birth. The
name of John had been fixed by the Angel (v.!*) ;
Zacharias knew that ἐξ must be significant, and it
means ‘the grace or mercy of God,’ ἔλεος. He could
hardly help reflecting that his own name Zacharias
(from 121 recordatus fuit, and 7; Jah (Jehovah),
means θεὸς ἐμνήσθη ; While Elisabeth (from 5x Deus,
and yay shaba‘ juravit) is Just ὅρκος θεοῦ. He puts
all these together. ‘ . . The tender mercy of our
Gov... in remembrance of his holy covenant
. . . the oath which he sware.’ If the parono-
masia as a literary figure is out of fashion for the
moment, we may remember that neither Dante nor
Shakespeare thought it beneath their genius ; and
Zacharias had sacred precedents for employing it
in the histories of the births and blessings of the
twelve patriarchs (Gn 30 and 49), and still more
strikingly in Is 7 and 8, where, as Matthew Arnold
has observed, the significant names are the keynote
of the whole prophecy,
LITERATURE.—Plummer, ‘St. Luke’ (Jnternat. Crit. Com.),
38 ff. ; Godet, Com. on St. Luke, i. 110ff.; Wilkinson, Johan.
Document in Lk %., p. 17.
JAMES COOPER.
| Jhrist’s compassion on the multitude
BENEFACTOR
192
BETHABARA
BENEFACTOR (evepyérns).—A title conferred by
a grateful sovereign or country for useful service
rendered, often in time of difficulty or danger (Est
23 6%). The names of royal benefactors were en-
rolled in a register (Herod. viii. 85, where see
tawlinson’s note; Thue. i. 129). In the Persian
tongue the king’s benefactors enjoyed a special
title, possibly implying that their names were
recorded. Besides the special appellation given to
all who had done public service, the title ‘bene-
factor’ is occasionally mentioned as a_ perpetual
epithet of kings, merely enhancing their dignity.
So Antiochus vit. of Syria, Ptolemy ΠΙ. of Egypt,
and at a later period Ptolemy vu. (B.c. 145-117),
were called benefactors. It is evidently this latter,
complimentary or official, title to which our Lord
chiefly alludes in Lk 22%, and so RV rightly spells
with a capital, ‘Benefactors.’ In worldly societies
men reiyn in virtue of superior power, and Evepyérns,
‘Benefactor,’ is a title of flattery which may be
applied to the most cruel despot—as in the case of
Ptolemy VIL, otherwise known as Physcon (‘ Big-
Belly’), and also called Kaxepyérns by a play upon
his official designation. But in this new society
which Jesus is instituting, the greatest is to be as
the least, and he that is chief as he that doth serve.
And this after the example of the Lord: Himself,
who, being the true Evepyérys, ‘came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his
life a ransom for many’ (see the parallel passage
Mt 90 55:55. and ef. the ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν διδύμενον, ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν
ἐκχυννόμενον Which Jesus had just spoken at the
Last Supper [Lk 2919. 2°}),
LiTeratuRE.—Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Benefactor’; Comm. of
Alford and Godet, in loc.; Smith, Classical Dict., art. ‘ Ptole-
meus.’ C. H. PRICHARD.
BENEVOLENCE. — The disposition which sets
itself to desire steadfastly the welfare and happiness
of others. Christian benevolence is this disposi-
tion of heart informed by the example and_pre-
cept of Christ, this informing of the heart being
the work of His Holy Spirit. Continual active
benevolence is perhaps the most striking feature
in the whole of the Gospel records. It is the key-
note of the Sermon on the Mount, and merges into
the harmony of love in the final discourses re-
corded in the Fourth Gospel. The sons of thz Most
High ave to do good to their enemies as well as
to their friends (Lk 6%). The sons of the Father
which is in heaven are to be kindly disposed and
actively beneficent both to the just and to the un-
just (Mt 5®). And this benevolence, which is to
reign in the hearts of His disciples, must have been
included in that great last prayer (Jn 1725) that
‘the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in
them.’ A simple rule is given to the follower of
Clirist for securing and testing this attitude of
benevolence; ΑἸ] things whatsoever ye would that
men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto
them’ (Mt 7"). The Divine image is not so marred
in any man as to destroy the intention and desire
to do good to relations and friends (Mt 5% ΠΣ ΜΕ
05.11.9), but the benevolence of the Christian heart
is to be a kindly feeline towards al] Without ex-
ception (Mt 54, Lk 67%) There is to be no single
blot on the ὁ ; Christians are to be per-
cuts hae on
ject, as their Heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5%).
Natural bene volence expresses itself in the ex-
clamation ΟἹ those who heard of the late of the
wicked husband the par “ἃ f i
7 7 = i sg m in thre parable God forbid?
ὦ}. Christian benevolence meets us in the
ston) of oe, t in Gethsemane, when the Lord
ΜΠ re ed Hi ] comrads Ὁ
πα mrad ἑταῖρε, Mt
Such being the intensive chai icter, the exten-
sive character of benevolence ἢ Ly observed in
s(Mk 823, Mt
144), namely, on each individual ; and, again, in
His healing every one of those around Him on a
well-known occasion at Capernaum (Lk 4”). By
precept as well as by example benevolence is en-
joined upon the ministry in the first commission
to the Twelve: ‘Freely ye have received, freely
give’ (Mt 10°). Not least beautiful and consoling
is the assurance that it prevails in the angelic
spheres, even towards poor sinners (Lk 157 10),
LITERATURE.—Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Love’; Butler, Sermons
xi. xii. ; Newman, Ozford Univ. Sermons, p. 104 ff. ; Schulhof,
Law of Forgiveness (1901), 121 ff.
ἣν. B. FRANKLAND.
BETHABARA (72y, ma ‘house of the ford or
crossing ’).-—The name is found in the New Testa-
ment only in Jn 158 (AV): ‘These things were
done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John
was baytizing.” The place was, therefore, one
suitable for the purposes of the Baptist in preach-
ing and baptizing ; and it has been usually identi-
fied, though this is not precisely stated in the text,
with the scene of the baptism of our Lord.
With the great majority of Gr. MSS (including
s*ABC*) the RV has retained here the reading
‘Bethany,’ with marginal alternatives ‘ Beth-
abarah’ and ‘Betharabah.’ The latter (737y, ma
‘house of the prairie,’ cf. Is 408 οὐ al. ; or ‘house of
the Arabah or Jordan Valley,’ cf. Dt 1; or perhaps
‘house of the poplar,’ ef. o2qa 5n3 Is 15%) is
possibly a reminiscence of the Beth-arabah of
Jos 15° 1 in the plain of Jericho, or it may be due
merely to an accidental transposition of letters.
The form ‘ Bethabara,’ on the other hand, is found
in a few extant manuscripts of the Greek text,
both uncial and cursive, and in the Curetonian
and Sinaitic Syriac. Origen adopted this reading,
and it seems to have gained general currency
mainly on his authority. He writes (in Evang.
Joannis, vi. 24) that Bethany is found in almost
all copies and in Heracleon, but after personal
investigation of the district (γενόμενοι ἐν τοῖς τύποις
ἐπὶ ἱστορίαν τῶν ἰχνῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ καὶ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ) he
prefers ‘ Bethabara’ on the twofold ground of the
distance of Bethany, the country of Lazarus and
Martha and Mary, from the Jordan, and of the
non-existence of any place bearing the latter name
within the Jordan Valley. He further reports
(λέγουσι) a place Βηθαρά where he had been told
(ἱστοροῦσι) that John baptized, and says that the
word means oikos κατασκευῆς (possibly a confusion
with aqay, ef. LXX in Ex 35%), Bethany being οἶκος
ὑπακοῆς, adding a play upon the name as befitting
the spot where the messenger sent to prepare (κατα-
σκευάζειν, Mt 1110) the way of the Lord should
baptize.
Origen’s view, therefore, was mainly a priori,
and it has seemed worth while to set it out at
length, because later writers, as Epiphanius, Chry-
sostom, e¢ al., apparently adopt and repeat it with
more or less amplification; nor is it easy to decide
how much weight is due to additional details they
may give. According to Chrysostom, for instance,
the more accurate copies read ‘ Bethabara,’ a result
that might readily be conceived to follow from
Origen’s criticism ; and he adds that Bethany was
neither across the Jordan nor in the wilderness, but
near Jerusalem.* The ancient writers do not seem
to take into account the possibility of the names
occurring more than once in Palestine. It is clear,
however, that either ‘Bethany’ or ‘Bethabara’
would lend itself readily to duplication.
_ The only indication of position which the narra-
tive itself gives is in the phrase πέραν τοῦ ᾿Ιορδάνου,
“across (7.e. east of) the Jordan.’ And if Bethabara
or Bethany is the scene of the Baptism, then it
* Suidas, s.v. Βηθανία, says expressly that the right reading
is Βηθαβαρά; and he also inserts ἐπὶ in uhe text before τοῦ
Ἰορδάνου.
would seem that the site must be looked for in the |
northern part of the Jordan Valley, since Christ
comes hither apparently direct from Galilee (Mt 31,
Mk 1°). Conder finds all the necessary conditions
satisfied by a ford ‘Abdrah on the Jordan E.N.E.
of Beisdn, and at a distance of four or five miles
from the latter place; and he explains the name
‘Bethany’ as equivalent to Batanea, Basanitis,
or Bashan, the district immediately cast of the
Jordan, south and south-east of the Sea of Galilee
(see C. R. Conder in Pal. Expl. Fund Mem. ii.
p. 89f., Quart. Statement, 1875, p. 72, Handbook to
the Bible, p. 8191. ; Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Bethabara’).
Bethabara has also been supposed to be the same
as the Beth-barah (793 ma, LXX Βαιθηρά, of Jg 74)
which lay on or near the Jordan. ‘This is on the
assumption that a guttural has been accidentally
lost from the Hebrew text, and that we ought
to read π|3» m3. Dr. Sanday (Sacred Sites of
the Gospels, p. 23) accepts the identification with
‘Abdrah. But beyond the coincidence of the name,
on which much stress cannot be laid, there is no
direct evidence in its favour; and the indirect
evidence is slight. The inference, moreover, which
has been drawn from Jn 2!, that Bethabara or
Bethany lay not more than a day’s journey from
Cana of Galilee, is precarious. The marriage fes-
tivities at Cana would in all probability extend
over several days, towards the close of which the
supply of wine failed: and the language used is
perhaps intended to convey that Christ and His
disciples were not present at the beginning. (See |
on the prolongation of the ceremonies attendant
on an Eastern wedding, P. Baldensperger, ‘ Woman
in the East’ in PE FSé, 1900 p. 181 ff., 1901 p. 173 Εἰ,
H. B. Tristram, Lastern Custoirs in Bible Lands,
ch. v.).
The traditional site of the baptism of Christ
at Makhidet Hajlah in the τε δα Valley near
Jericho, though defended by Sir Charles Wilson
and others, seems to be too far south. Others
would read, by conjecture, in the text of St. John’s
Gospel, Βηθαναβρά, i.e. Beth-nimrah, on the Wddy
Shoaib, tive miles east of the Jordan, E.N.E. from
Jericho (see Τ᾿. K. Cheyne in Encye. Bibl. s.vv.).
LITERATURE.—See above, and add Smith’s DP2 s.v.; G. A.
Smith, ἘΠ ΘΗ 1, (1894), p. 496; Stanley, Sinai and Palestine,
Ῥ. 310; Farrar, Life of Christ, i. p. 140n.; Weiss, Life of
Christ, i. p. 361f. and note; Edersheim, Life and Times of
Jesus the Messiah, i. pp. 264, 278; Geikie, Life and Words of
Christ, 1. 388, and Holy Land and the Bible, ii. p. 257 ; Sanday,
Sacred Sites of the Gospels, 11, 23, 35, 94; PEF St, 1903, p. 161;
and the Commentaries on Jn 123, A. S. GEDEN.
BETHANY (Byéavia).—1. A village whose in-
terest arises mainly from its having been the
residence of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. As to
this it is well to note the following points. (1) None
of the three Synoptists mentions ΤῊΣ nae (2) St.
Matthew and St. Mark maintain the same silence
as to Martha and Mary. (3) St. Luke (10*-”)
records a sojourn of Jesus in ‘a village’ (κώμη 71s),
which he leaves unnamed. (4) St. John alone
(111. 18. 1918.) names Bethany as the place where the
brother and the two'sisters lived. (5) St. Matthew
and St. Mark state that Bethany afforded hospi-
tality to Jesus during the days that preceded His
death (Mt 217, Mk 11"); but in connexion with
His stay there they make mention only of the
house of ‘Simon the leper’ (Mt 26%, Mk 14%),
and give no name to the woman who anoints the
feet of the Lord. (6) St. Luke does not speak of
this sojourn at Bethany, but simply says in a more
general way that Jesus passed the night ‘at the
mount called the Mt. of Olives’ (21°). (7) The
data usually accepted regarding Bethany and the
family that lived there and entertained Jesus in
their house, are thus derived essentially from the
Fourth Gospel.
VOL. 1.—13
Bethany is mentioned neither in the Canonical
books nor in the Apocrypha of the OT; it makes
its appearance for the first time in the NT, and is
not named in Josephus. Its situation is relatively
easy todetermine. We know (Mk 10*° 111, Lk 191-39)
that it was on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem,
at a distance of 15 furlongs from the latter (Jn 11'°),
lying thus on the E. or rather S.E. side of the Mt.
of Olives. Origen asserts that in his time the posi-
tion of Bethany was known. In the 4th cent. the
Bordeaux Pilgrim (333) mentions a place where
the ‘erypta’ of Lazarus was to be seen. Eusebius
records that ‘the place of Lazarus’ was shown,
and Jerome adds He it was 2 miles from Jeru-
salem (OS? 108. 8, 239. 10). According to Niceph.
Callist. (ΔῈ viii. 30 [Patr. Gr. exlvi. 113]), a church
containing the tomb of Lazarus was built by the
empress Helena. Another sanctuary marked the
spot where Jesus met Mary (Jn 11°). A number
of ecclesiastical buildings have risen at Bethany ;
as many as three churches have been counted there.
In its present condition it is a village without im-
portance or interest, with a population of about
200. It bears the name el- Azariyeh, derived from
‘Lazarus’ or from ‘Lazarium’ (Λαζαρίον), a form
found as early as the Pilgrimage of Silvia (383) ;
the initial L has been taken for the Arab. article.
According to the Talmud, Bethany is= Aram.
Beth-Aineh or Beth-Hini, ‘ place of dates’ (2); but
this etymology is uncertain. The same may be
said of that which traces it to the root my, and
would yield the sense of ‘place of affliction’ or
‘ place of the afilicted one,’ which may be simply a
popular etymology (cf. Nestle, Philologica Sacra,
1896, p. 20).
The buildings which are shown at the present
day as possessing a historical interest are—l. The
‘castle’ of Lazarus, a tower which dates from the
time of the Crusades, and was probably built in
1147 by Queen Melissenda for the Benedictine
nuns; according to others, its construction is still
earlier. The name ‘castle’ is explained by the
fact that the Vulgate renders the NT κώμη by cas-
tellum. 2. The tomb of Lazarus is shown to
modern pilgrims, but its genuineness is so doubtful
that it is questioned even by Roman Catholic
writers, e.g. Mgr. Le Camus, bishop of La Rochelle
(Notre Voyage aux pays brbliques, 1. 245). 3. There
are still shown—or there used to be shown—at e/-
‘Azariych the house of Martha, that of Mary, and
that of Simon the leper.
In Lk 2450 the scene of the Ascension is placed,
if not at Bethany, at least in its immediate
vicinity : ‘ He led them ἕως πρὸς Βηθανίαν’ (AV ‘as
far as to Bethany,’ RV less satisfactorily, ‘until
they were over against Bethany’). On the other
hand, Ac 1” relates that after the Ascension the
Apostles ‘returned unto Jerusalem from the mount
called Olivet, which is nigh unto Jerusalem, a
Sabbath day’s journey off’ The statement in
Luke’s Gospel deserves the ἔπ ΚΕ. ; 1t fixes the
place of the Ascension itself near Bethany, while
the text of Acts simply connects the return of the
Apostles with the Mt. of Olives, on the slope of
which Bethany lies, and does not speak necessarily
of the summit of the mountain, as ecclesiastical
tradition supposed (cf. Tobler, De Siloahquelle
und der Oelberg, p. 83).
LITERATURE.—Robinson, BRP 2 i. 431-433; Guérin, Palestine,
‘Samarie,’ i. 163-181; Buhl, GAP 155; Tobler, Topogr. ii. 422-
464; PHF Men. iii. 27f.; Sanday, Sacred Sites of the Gospels,
24, 49. LUCIEN GAUTIER.
BETHANY.—2. Sec BETHABARA.
BETHESDA.—Jn 5° ‘ Now there is in Jerusalem
by the sheep-gate (ἐπὶ τῇ προβατικῇ) a pool, which is
called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches’
- BETHANY BETHESDA 193 |
|
194 BETHESDA
(RV). Instead of Βηθεσδά (TR), the most ancient
authorities have other spellings, as 8 Βηθζαθά, Land
Ens. Βηζαθά (? for Βηθζαιθά -- ἈΠ 1°32 ‘house of the
olive’), B Βηθσαιδά, D Βελζεθά. As to the deriva.
tion, Delitzsch suggests 2px m3 ‘house of pillars,
and Calvin xx m3 ‘house of outpouring’; but the
most natural etymology is #797 73 ‘house of mercy,’
possibly in allusion to the munificence of some
charitable person who had these porches built to
shelter the sick, or to the goodness of God in pro-
viding this healing spring. ἬΝ ‘
As the adjective προβατικῇ, ‘pertaining to sheep,
requires some substantive to be introduced, the
AY supplies ‘market,’ the RV ‘gate.’ Since there
is no reference to any sheep-market in the OT,
while the sheep- gate is repeatedly referred to
(Neh 3! * 128), the latter method of supplying the
sense is the more probable one. Now the sheep-
wate is known to have been north of the Temple,
and, as Bovet says, ‘the small cattle which entered
Jerusalem came there certainly by the east; for
it is on this side that the immense pastures of
the wilderness of Judsea lie The modern St.
Stephen’s Gate answers to these data. It is at the
north-east angle of the Temple area, and is the
gate through which the Bedawin still lead their
flocks to Jerusalem for sale. We must therefore
look for the Pool of Bethesda in this vicinity, and
may at once eliminate several proposed identifica-
tions elsewhere, such as the Hammam esh-Shifd,
near the ‘Gate of the Cotton Merchants,’ about
the middle of the west side of the Temple area,
where there is a pool with pillars and masonry,
some sixty feet below the present surface, the
waters of which are still supposed to possess heal-
ing properties (Furrer); and the Pool of Siloam,
where the remains of four columns in the east
wall, with four others in the centre, ‘show that a
structure with five openings or porches. might
easily have been erected’ (Alford); and the Foun-
tain of the Virgin, the intermittent spring at the
bottom of a deep cavern at the foot of the Ophel
slope south-east of the Temple (Robinson). These
are all too far from the sheep-gate as probably
identified above.
Conder, who adopts the suggestion of Robinson
that Bethesda was at the present Fountain of the
Virgin, says, ‘This answers the requirements that
it still presents the phenomenon of intermittent
* troubling of the water,’ which overflows from a
natural syphon under the cave, and that it is still
the custom of the Jews to bathe in the waters of
the cave, when this overflow oceurs, for the cure
of rheumatism and of other disorders.’ Against
this view Grove (Smith’s DB?, art. ‘Bethesda’) and
Barclay. City of the Great King, 325) urge the
inaccessibility of the deep subterranean water to
invalids, the confined size of the pool, and the
difficulty of finding room for the five porches
capable of accommodating ‘a multitude’; and to
the present writer, examining the cave in person,
(hese objections seemed conclusive, apart from the
ditheulty of the locality.
lurning now to the neighbourhood of the sheep-
sate, we find three proposed identifications. (1)
Modern tradition identifies Bethesda with the
Bi Ϊ rau, an empty reservoir, 360 feet long,
120 feet wide, and 850 feet deep, half filled with
ΠῚ) Ὁ] hy, Which lies close to St. Ste phen’s Gate and
under the north-east wall of the Haram area.
2) Warren and otters would place Bethesda at
the so led ‘Twin Pools, in the ditch at the north-
west angle o \ntonia, under the convent of the
Si ters of Zi ἢ, Neither of these can be the true
δ, as beth the Dirket Jsrail and the ‘Twin Pools
γ" Ι Η
er the events narrated in Jn 5.
out sy M, Clermont-
{ pointed
{ ine. } +) > j 1
ranneau that ‘the Pool of Bethesda should be
BETHESDA
sought near the Church of St. Anne, where an old
tradition has placed the house of the mother of
Mary, calling it Beit Hannu, ‘‘ House of Anne.”
This expression is exactly identical with Bethesda,
both expressions signifying ‘‘house of mercy, or
compassion.”’ Sixteen years later this anticipation
was verified by the discovery of what is now very
generally conceded to be the ancient Pool of
Bethesda, a short distance north-west of the pre-
sent Church of St. Anne. In the autumn of 1888,
“certain works carried on by the Algerian monks
laid bare a large tank or cistern cut in the rock to
a depth of 30 feet, and Herr Schick recognized this
as the Pool of Bethesda. It is 55 feet long from
east to west, and measures 124 feet in breadth. - A
flight of twenty-four steps leads down into the
pool from the eastern scarp of rock. Herr Schick,
who at once saw the great interest of this dis-
covery, soon found a sister-pool, lying end to end,
60 feet long, and of the same breadth as the first.
The first pool was arched in by five arches, while
five corresponding porches ran along the side of the
pool. At a later period-a chureh was built over
the pool by the Crusaders, and they seem to have
been so far impressed by the fact of five arches
below that they shaped their erypt into five arches
in imitation. They left an opening for getting
down to the water; and further, as the crowning
proof that they regarded the pool as Betiesda,
they painted on the wall of the erypt a fresco
representing the angel troubling the water of the
pool.’ (Geo. St. Clair, Buried Cities and Bible
Countries, 327-328. See also PE δέ, July 1888
and Jan. 1891).
This site is thus supported not only by the
medieval tradition, but by the early tradition as
well. The Bordeaux pilgrim, who visited Jeru-
salem in A.D. 333, after mentioning two large fish-
pools by the side of the temple, one at the right
hand, the other at the left, says in another place
(tin. Hierosol. 589): ‘But farther in the city are
twin fish-pools having five porches which are called
Bethsaida. There the sick of many years were
wont to be healed. But these pools have water
which, when agitated, is of a kind of red colour.’
This is evidently the same place described by
Eusebius (Onomasticon, 240. 15) in the same cen-
tury and called by him Bezatha, though he gives
no other clue to the situation—‘a pool at Jeru-
salem, which is the Piscina Probatica, and had
formerly five porches, and now is pointed out at
the twin pools there, of which one 15 filled by the
rains ot the year, but the other exhibits its water
tinged in an extraordinary manner with red, re-
taining a trace, they say, of the victims that were
formerly cleansed in it.’ Clearly, too, it is of the
same place that Eucherius speaks in the 5th
cent.: ‘Bethsaida, peculiar for being a double
lake, of which one pool is for the most part filled
by winter rains, the other is discoloured by reddish
waters.’ It has been commonly assumed of late
that the two tunnels under the convent of the
Sisters of Zion are the twin pools mentioned by
these writers; but the traditi@ns of the 6th, 7th,
and 8th centuries, to be presently quoted, place
the pool with the five porches and the church
called Probatica (ef. προβατικῇ, Jn 5) at or near
the traditional birthplace of Mary, which is un-
doubtedly under the present Chureh of St. Anne.
Thus Antoninus Martyr (A.D. 570) says: ‘ Return-
ing into the city we come to the Piscina Natatoria,
which has five porches ; and in one of these is the
basilica of St. Mary, in which many miraculous
cures are wrought.’ Sophronius, patriarch of
Jerusalem (A.D. 632), says: ‘I will enter the holy
Probatica, where the illustrious Anna brought
forth Mary.’ John of Damascus (about A.D. 750)
says: ‘May all-things be propitious to thee, Ὁ
BETHLEHEM
BETHLEHEM 195
Probatica, the most holy temple of the Mother of
God! May all things be propitious to thee, O
Probatica, ancestral domicile of a queen! May all
things he propitious to thee, O Probatica, formerly
the fold of Joachim’s flocks, but now a church,
heaven-resembling, of the rational flock of Christ !’
Brocardus also speaks (A.D. 1283) of a large reser-
voir near St. Anne’s Church, called Piscina Interior,
just opposite Birket Israil.
Early tradition, therefore, as well as medizeval,
seems to favour the site discovered in 1888. This
is the site now generally accepted, though some
recent writers are still unconvinced, such as Sanday
(Suered Sites of the Gospels, 55), who rejects Schick's
identification but reaches no positive conclusion
of his own, and Conder (Hastings’ DB, article
‘Bethesda’), who argues for the Virgin’s Pool.
The intermittent troubling of the water at the
Fountain of the Virgin is, indeed, a point in its
favour; but this phenomenon is not uncommon in
the springs of Palestine (Thomson, Land and
Book, iii. 288; Barclay, City of Great King, 560),
and, while nothing of the kind is now seen at the
pool under the Crusaders’ church, it is not, perhaps,
a too violent supposition that the same intermit-
tence now observed in the Virgin’s Fountain may
have characterized this pool also in that early time
of more copious ‘rains of the year,’ as Eusebius
ealls them, especially if, as some think, they both
lie upon the same concealed watercourse.
The last clause of Jn δ᾽ and the whole of v.‘,
containing the account of the troubling of the
water by an angel and the miraculous healing that
followed, are relegated to the margin in RY, on
the ground of their omission by the ancient manu-
scripts NBD, and the exceptional number of vari-
ants in the other MSS. Popular superstition
seems to have attributed the periodic bubbling of
the water to the action of an invisible angel.
These passages were probably at first written on
the margin as an expression of that opinion, and
later were introduced into the body of the text.
W. W. Moore.
BETHLEHEM.—Two towns of this name are
mentioned in the Old Testament. 4. Bethlehem
(079 ma ‘house of bread’) of Zebulun, Jos 19”.
The site is now occupied by a miserable village, 6
miles south-west of Sepphoris and about the same
distance north-west of Nazareth, in a well-wooded
district of country, planted with oaks (Robinson,
Biblical Researches, iii. 113). That this Beth-
lehem cannot have been the scene of the Nativity,
near as it is to Nazareth, is clear from the fact
that both St. Matthew and St. Luke expressly
place the birth of Christ at Bethlehem of Judiea.
These narratives being independent of each other
and derived from different sources, we have for
the southern Bethlehem the convergence of two
distinct traditions. These two Evangelists are
joined in their testimony by the author of the
Fourth Gospel, who assumes acquaintance on the
part of his readers with the story of the birth of
Christ at Bethlehem, the Bethlehem associated
with David and his royal line. ‘Some said, Shall
Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the Scrip-
ture said that Christ cometh of the seed of David,
and out of the town of Bethlehem where David
was?’ (Jn 74:4). It is noteworthy that Beth-
lehem is never mentioned as having been visited
by our Lord or in any way associated with His
ministry. But all Christian history and tradition
maintain that the southern Bethlehem was the
scene of the Nativity.
2. Bethlehem of Judah (a7 “2 δ 177°, Ru 11:3
etc.) or Judwxa (Mt 91, Lk 24). This town (the
modern Beit Lahm) is situated about 6 miles
8.S.W. of Jerusalem, lying high up on a grey
limestone ridge running from east to west, and
occupying the projecting summits at each end,
with a sort of saddle between. The ridge rises to
a height of 2550 ft. above sea-level, and falls away
in terraced slopes on all sides, the descent to the
north and east being specially steep. The terraces,
as they sweep in graceful curves round the ridge
from top to bottom, give to the little town the ap-
pearance of an amphitheatre, and serve to make
to the approaching traveller a picture which closer
acquaintance does not wholly disappoint. The
names by which it has been known for millenniums,
and is still known, are expressive of the fertility
of the place— Beth-lehem, ‘house of bread,’ and
Beit Lahm, ‘house of flesh.’ The hillsides around,
merging into the hill country of Juda, though
they look bare to the eye at a distance, afford
pastures for flocks of shcep and goats. The valleys
below and the fields lying to the east produce crops
of wheat and barley, as in the days when Ruth
gleaned in the fields of Boaz; and the terraced
slopes, under diligent cultivation, bear olives,
alinonds, pomegranates, figs, and vines. Wine and
honey are named among the most notable of its
natural products, and the wine of Bethlehem is
said to be preferable to that of Jerusalem.
_ The modern town is highly picturesque. There
is just one main street or thoroughfare, extending
about half a mile, and largely occupied by work-
shops, which are little better than arches open to
the street. The population is differently given as
from 4000 to S000 souls. Palmer (‘Das Jjetzige
Bethlehem’ in ZDPV xvii. 90), writing in 1893,
and founding upon personally ascertained figures,
gives 8035 as the population, which he classities
in respect of religion as follows: Latins, 3827 ;
Greeks, 3662; Moslems, 260; Armenians, 185;
Protestants, 54; Copts and Syrians, 47. The small
number of Moslems 15 said to be due to the severity
of Ibrahim Pasha, who drove out the Moslem
inhabitants and demolished their houses in the
insurrection of 1834. It will be observed from the
above enumeration that Bethlehem does not con-
tain a single Jew. As in Nazareth so in Beth-
lehem, the associations with Jesus make residence
repugnant to the Jews, and they have accordingly
no desire to settle in the Christian Holy Places.
They are, in fact, tolerated only as temporary
visitors, but not as residents. ‘in the cradle of
his royal race,’ says Canon Tristram (Bible Places,
p. 72), ‘the Jew is even more a stranger than in
any other spot of his own land; and during the
Middle Ages neither Crusader nor Saracen suttered
him to settle there.’ The inhabitauts of Beth-
lehem are of superior physique and comeliness.
The men have a character for energy and even
turbulence; the women are noticeable for their
graceful carriage and becoming attire. In the
crowds which throng the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem at the Easter services, the
women of Bethlehem, wearing a light veil descend-
ing on each side of the face, and closed across the
bosom, with a low but handsome headdress com-
posed of strings of silver coins plaited in among
the hair and hanging down below the chin as a
sort of necklace,—are easily recognizable, and
make a favourable impression. The industries of
Bethlehem, apart from the cultivation of the soil,
are intimately associated with the Nativity, con-
sisting of memorial relics and souvenirs manufac-
tured for sale to the thousands of pilgrims and
tourists who visit Jerusalem and Bethlehem every
year. Models of the cave of the Nativity, figures
of Christ and the Virgin, apostles and saints, are
in great demand. Olive wood, and mother-oi-pearl
obtained from the Red Sea, with basaltic stone
from the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, are
carved and wrought into useful and ornamental
articles with no small degree of skill and taste.
196 BETHLEHEM
Palmer mentions (1.6. p. 91) that an increasing
number of the inhabitants go abroad with their
products,—their mother-of-pearl carvings and
other wares,—and, especially in America, find a
good return for their enterprise. | :
Bethlehem, notwithstanding its royal associa-
tions and its renown as the birthplace of the
-world’s Redeemer, las never been, and is never
likely to be, more in the eye of the world than
‘little among the thousands of Judah’ (Mic 5°).
‘In spite,’ says Palmer, ‘of the numcrous visits of
stranyers and pilgrims, which are year by year on
the increase, and in spite of the market-place
which Bethlehem affords for the whole neighbour-
hood, and especially for the Bedawin, who come
from long distances from the southern end of the
Dead Sea to make their purchases of clothing,
tools, and weapons, and to leave the produce of
their harvest and their pastures, Bethlehem ap-
pears likely to remain, unencumbered by trade
and progress, what it has been for many years
bygone—a shrunken, untidy village.’ Even so, it
can never be deprived of its associations with the
Messianie King of Israel, ‘ whose goings forth have
been from of old, from everlasting’ (Mic 52),
associations which exalt it to the loftiest eminence,
and surround it with a glory that cannot fade.
These associations in their salient features are
now to be set forth.
It is in the early patriarchal history that we
meet first with Bethlehem, under its ancient name
of Ephrath.* ‘When I came from VPadan,’ said
Jacob on his deathbed, recounting to Joseph in
Egypt his chequered history, ‘Rachel died by me
in the land of Canaan in the way, when yet there
was but a little way to come unto Ephrath: and
I buried her there in the way of Ephrath; the
same is Bethlehem’ (Gn 48’, cf. 35°). The sacred
historian records that Jacob set a pillar upon her
grave: ‘that is the pillar of Rachel’s grave unto
this day’ (Gn 35”). MRachel’s grave is marked
now by a Mohammedan wely, or monumental
mosque, at the point where the Bethlehem road
breaks off the road leading from Jerusalem to
Hebron; and though the monument has been
repaired and renewed from generation to genera-
tion, it serves still to recall a real event, and to
distinguish the spot where Rachel’s ‘strength
failed her, and she sank, as did all the ancient
saints, on the way to the birthplace of hope’ (Dr.
John Ker, Sermons, 8th ed. p. 153). Bethlehem
becomes more definitely associated with the Messi-
anic hope when it becomes the home of Ruth the
Moabitess, the ancestress of David and of David’s
greater Son. Trom the heights near Bethlehem a
glimpse is obtained of the Dead Sea—the sea of
Lot—shimmering at the foot of the long blue wall
ot the mountains of Moab; and the land of Moab
seems to have had close relations with Bethlehem
and its people in patriarchal as well as later times.
\\ ith Ruth the Moabitess, through her marriage
With Boaz, the ‘mighty man of wealth’ of Beth-
lehem-judah (Ru 91), there entered a strain of
Gentile blood,—although we remember that Lot,
the ancestor of Moab, was the nephew of the great
ancestor of Israel—into the pedigree of Christ
scecording to the flesh (Mt 15), asif in token that, in
a dity still far off, Jew and Gentile should be one
in Him. With David, the great-orandson of Ruth,
there entered the royal element into the genealogy
of Jesu and Bethlehem has no associations more
sacred and tender than its associations with the
shepherd king of Israel, unless it be those that link
it for ever with God manifest in the flesh. The
str am of Messianic hope, as it flows onwards and
broadens from a to age, is net-unlike that river
3 ἣν ἂς x, τ ( ΤΡ ἀρ a stminster Commentaries’),
BETHLEHEM
of Spain which for a considerable part of its course
flows underground, and only at intervals miles
apart throws up pools to the surface, which the
inhabitants eall ‘the eyes’ of the Guadiana. The
pools trace the onward progress of the river, till
: t length it bursts forth in a broad stream seeking
the distant sea. So the hope of a great Deliverer
from spiritual misery and death flows onward in
the story of God’s ancient people, throwing up
its pools in the days of Abraham, Moses, David,
Isaiah and the prophets ; and Micah indicates the
direction of its flow with more explicitness than
any who went before when he says: ‘But thou,
Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among
the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he
come forth unto me that is to be Ruler in Israel ;
whose goings forth have been from of old, from
everlasting’ (Mie δ᾽). When the fulness of the
time had come, the Messianic hope became the
place of broad rivers and streams which we so
happily know and enjoy, and the glad tidings was
heard on the plains of Bethlehem, addressed to the
watchful shepherds: ‘ Fear not: for, behold, I bring
you glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all
people. For unto you is born this day in the city
of David ἃ Saviour, which is Christ the Lord’ (Lk
910. 11 .
The story of the Nativity is told by St. Matthew
and St. Luke with a simplicity and delicacy and
beauty which are of themselves an evidence of
its historical truth. Both narratives, as has been
indicated, assign to Bethlehem the high honour of
being the place of the Nativity and the scene of
the stupendous fact of the Incarnation. ‘The de-
tails are too familiar to require rehearsal here.
There is one particular handed down by early Christian
tradition which may be regarded not as a variation from, but an
addition to, the Evangelic narrative,—the statement made by
Justin Martyr (A.b. 140-150), and repeated in the Apocryphal
Gospels, that the birth of Jesus took place in acave. Justin
(Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 78) relates that, since Joseph had in
that village no place where to lodge, he lodged in a cave near
by. Justin relates other particulars which may have come to
him—he was a native of Nablds, not 40 miles from Bethlehem
—by oral tradition er from apocryphal narratives : such as that
the Magi came from Arabia, and that Herod slew all the
children of Bethlehem. That the stable where the Infant
Saviour was born may have been a cave is quite in keeping
with the practice of utilizing the limestone caves of the hill
country of Judea as places of shelter for cattle and other
beasts. Those Apocryphal Gospels which deal with the In-
fancy, notably the Protevangelium Jacobi and the pseudo-
Mattheus, make mention of the cave. Pseudo-Mattheus (ch.
13) says, ‘The angelcommanded the beast to stop, for her time
to bear had come; and he directed the Blessed Mary to come
down from the animal and to enter a cave below a cavern in
which there was never anv light, but always darkness, because
it could not receive the light of day. And when the Blessed
Mary had entered it, it began to become light with all lightness,
as if it had been the sixth hour of the day. . . . And then she
brought forth a male child, whom angels instantly surrounded
at His birth, and whom, when born and standing at once upon
His feet, they adored, saying, Glory to God on high, and on earth
peace to men of good will.’ The Protevangelium relates the
story with curious imagery (ch. 18). ‘And he [Joseph] found a
cave there and took her in, and set his sons by her, and he
went out and sought a midwife in the country of Bethlehem.
And I Joseph walked and I walked not; and I looked up into
the skv and saw the sky violently agitated ; and I looked up at
the pole of heaven, and I saw it standing still and the birds of
the air still; and I directed my gaze on the earth, and I saw a
vessel lying and workmen reclining by it and their hands in the
vessel, and those who handled did not handle it, and those who
presented it to the mouth did not present it, but the faces of
all were looking up; and I saw the sheep scattered and the
sheep stood, and the shepherd lifted up his hand to strike them
and his hand remained up; and I looked at the stream of the
river, and I saw that the mouths of the kids were down and
not drinking; and everything which was being impelled for-
ward was intercepted in its course.’
_ The Protevangelium Jacobi is generally recognized as belong-
ing to the 2nd cent., and its testimony is a valuable confir-
mation of the early Christian tradition. Few scholars, if any,
will agree in assigning it the place of importance attributed to
it recently by the fantastic theory of Conrady (Die Quelle der
kanonischen Kindheitsgeschichten Jesu, Gottingen, 1900), who
regards the Protevangelium as the source of the Gospel narra-
tives of the Infancy. The author of it, according to him, is an
| Egyptian, most likely of Alexandria, who introduces Bethlehem
into the narrative not because of its place in Hebrew prophecy,
BETHLEHEM
BETHPHAGE 197
but because it was formerly a seat of the worship of Isis, and
he wishes to incorporate this worship with Christianity. In
concert with the priests of Isis and Serapis, he aided with his
inventive pen the appropriation of this sacred site by the
Church, and it was from the Protevangeliwm that the writers of
the First and Third Gospels drew their separate narratives of
the Infancy. Conrady returns to the subject with an article
full of equally curious and perverted learning in SK, 1904,
Heft 2, ‘ Die Flucht nach 4gypiten.’
It is in the 4th century that Bethlehem begins
to receive that veneration as a Christian Holy
Place in which it is now equalled only by Jeru-
salem and Nazareth. As early as Justin Martyr
attention is specially directed to Bethlehem as the
birthplace of the world’s Redeemer. In addition
to the reference, already mentioned, to the cave,
we find Justin quoting the well-known prophecy
of Isaiah (33'%), ‘He shall dwell in a lofty cave
of a strong rock,’ in the same connexion (Dialogue
with Trypho, ch. 70). Even earlier than Justin’s
day it would appear that this particular cave was
venerated by the followers of Christ ; for, as Jerome
tells in one of his letters to Paulinus, the emperor
Hadrian (A.D. 117-138), in his zeal to extirpate the
very remembrance of Christ, caused a grove sacred
to Adonis to be planted over the grotto of the Nativ-
ity, as hecaused a temple to Venus to be erected
over the site of the sepulchre of our Lord. Origen
(c. Celsum, i. 51) says: “11 any one desires certainty
as to the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem apart from
the Gospels and Micah ’s prophecy, let him know
that in conformity with the narrative in the Gos-
pel regarding His birth there is shown at Lethle-
hem the cave where He was born and the manger
in the cave where He was wrapped in swaddling
clothes. And this sign is greatly talked of in
surrounding places, even among the enemies of
the faith, it being said that in this cave was born
that Jesus who is worshipped and reverenced by
the Christians.” The site is now marked by the
oldest church in Christendom, the Church of St.
Mary of the Nativity, built by order of the
Emperor Constantine. It is a massive pile of
buildings extending along the ridge from west to
east, and comprising the chureh proper with
the three convents, Latin, Greek, and Armenian,
abutting respectively upon its north - eastern,
south-eastern, and south-western extremities.
The proportions of the church and its related
structures are more commanding from its eleva-
tion and from the shabbiness of the town in
comparison. The nave of the church is common
to all the sects, and is shared by them together—
Latins, Greeks, Armenians. [rom the double
line of Corinthian pillars sustaining the basilica
sixteen centuries look down upon the visitor, and
the footsteps of nearly fifty generations of Chris-
tians have trodden the ground upon which he
treads. Says Dean Stanley: ‘The long double
lines of Corinthian pillars, the faded mosaics, the
rough ceiling of beams of cedar from Lebanon still
preserve the outlines of the church, once blazing
with gold and marble, in which Baldwin was
crowned, and which received its Jatest repairs from
our own English Edward Iv.’ (Sinai and Palestine,
p. 433). It is the subterranean vault that con-
tinues to be of perennial interest. Descending
the steps from the raised floor of the eastern end
of the nave, and turning sharply to the left, the
visitor finds a half-sunk arched doorway which
leads down by thirteen steps to the Chapel of
the Nativity—the rude cave now paved and walled
with marble and lighted up by numerous lamps.
This chamber is about 40 feet from east to west,
16 feet wide, and 10 feet high. The roof is covered
with what had once been striped cloth of gold.
At the east end there is a shrine where fifteen
silver lamps burn night and day, and in the
floor, let into the pavement, a silver star of Greek
pattern marks the very spot of the Nativity
with the inscription: ‘Hic de Virgine Maria
Jesus Christus natus est.’ To the Christian the
associations of the place make it full of impres-
siveness, and the visitor has no more sacred or
tender recollections of holy ground than those
which cluster round the Church and the Grotto of
the Nativity. Not far offis a cave, cut out of the
same limestone ridge, which was the abode of St.
Jerome for over thirty years. Here, with the
noble ladies whom he had won to the religious life,
Paula and her daughter Eustochium, he laboured
totus in lectione, totus in libris, preparing the Vul-
gate translation of the Holy Scriptures, which for
more than a thousand years was the Bible of
Western Christendom, and is a powerful tribute to
his piety and learning. ‘It is the touch of Christ
that has made Bethlehem’ (Kelman and Fulleylove,
The Holy Land, p. 234). And the touch of Christ
is making itself felt still in the works of Christian
philanthropy and missionary zeal that are being
performed there. There are schools and other
missionary agencies maintained by Protestants
and Roman Catheclies to instruct in His truth and
to enrich with His grace the community who
occupy the place cf His birth. Bethlehem appears
among the stations of the Church Missionary
Society, and the work done there among women
and gitls has borne good fruit. The Germans
have built an Evangelical Church, which was
dedicated in 1893. There is much superstition
and error among the nominally Christian inhabi-
tants of the place, but the eflorts of the Protestant
and Roman Catholic missionaries have stirred up
the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Christians to
activity for the moral and spiritual welfare of
their people.
LitERATURRF.—Andrews, Life of our Lord?, p. 82; Cunning-
ham Geikie, The Holy Land and the Bible; Stanley, Sinai and
Palestine; Kelman, The Holy Land; Sanday, Sacred Sites of
the Gospels; G. A. Smith, Histor. Geog. of Holy Land; The
Survey of Western Palestine, vol. iii.; Ramsay, Wes Christ born
at Bethlehem ?; Palmer, ‘ Das jetzige Bethlehem’ in ZDPV xvii.;
articles in Kitto’s Cyclop., PRE 3, Vigouroux’s Dictionnaire dela
Bible, Smith’s DB, Hastings’ DB, and Encyclopedia Biblica.
T. NICOL.
BETHPHAGE (B7@¢ay7).—A place unknown to
the OT, the Apocrypha, or Josephus, and men-
tioned in the NT only once—on the occasion of
our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem five
days before His death. It was certainly situated
upon the slope of the Mt. of Olives, on or near the
road from Jericho to Jerusalem (Mk 10 111, Lk
191- 39), and in the immediate neighbourhood of
Bethany. The site of the latter being accurately
determined as the modern οἰ“ Azariyeh (see art.
BETHANY, 1), it might be expected that there
would be little difficulty in locating Bethphage.
Unfortunately, however, the texts of the three
Synoptists [St. John does not mention Bethphage]
are a sake on two points—
(1) As to the relation between Bethphage and
Bethany, St. Luke (1959) alone mentions both places
(‘as he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany’).
His language seems to imply that a traveller com-
ing from Jericho would come first to Bethphage,
then to Bethany, and finally to Jerusalem. St.
Matthew (21!) mentions only Bethphage. As for
St. Mark, his original text (11!) probably contained
no reference to Bethphage, but this name has been
inserted, and in the majority of MSS stands be-
tween Jerusalem and Bethany in such a way that,
if this reading were accepted as the original one,
we should have to place Bethphage in a different
position in relation to Bethany from what is im-
plied in the text of St. Luke.
To reconcile these divergent statements, a hypothesis has
been started to the effect that Bethany may have lain a little
off the direct route from Jericho to Jerusalem, upon a side
198 BETHSAIDA
BETHSAIDA
road, and Bethphage at the point where this joined the main
road, It would thus have been necessary to pass Bethphage
both in going to Bethany and in returning from it. Support
for this conjecture has been sought in the use of the word
ἀμζφοδον in Mk 114.
(2) In all three Synoptics, Jesus sends two of
His disciples to a village (κώμη) to bring the ass
on which He was to ride. Is this village, which
is ‘over against’ (κατέναντι), to be identified with
Bethphage, or with Bethany, or with some third
locality? Each of these views is capable of defence ;
the traditional identification of the village of the
ass’s colt with Bethphage is at least questionable,
especially in view of Mt 21} ‘When they had
reached Bethphage ... then Jesus sent two dis-
ciples to the village over against.’ <A site for the
village of the colt might be suggested at Siloé, or
rather at Aefr et-Tur, on the top of the Mt. of Olives.
[It is known that in the time of Jesus Christ there
were houses on its summit]. In the circumstances
of the case it would be hazardous to offer any
opinion as to the probable situation of Bethphage.
Etymologically the name Bethphage appears to
mean ‘house (or place) of unripe fruits,’ more
especially ‘of unripe figs’ (cf. Ca 2, and see Dal-
man, Grammatik des gid. pal.-Aramédisch, 1894, p.
152, and Arnold Meyer, Jesu Muttersprache, 1896,
P. 166). Recently a connexion has been suggested
ry Nestle (‘Etymologische Legenden ?’ in ZWTh
x}. [1897], p. 148) between this etymology of the
name Bethphage and the story of the barren fig-
tree. But it may be noted that the latter is associ-
ated in the Gospels (Mt 217-22) Mk 1111-.4. 20-26) with
Bethany, not Bethphage. Formerly Nestle (SK,
1896, p. 3231f., and in his Philologica Sacra, 1896,
p. 101.) had pointed to the possibility of con-
necting, from the point of view of popular ety-
mology, Bethphage (=xy17 ma ‘place of meeting’)
and the dudodov of Mk 114, Finally, another ex-
planation of Bethphage, viewed as a dwelline-
place of priests (?), is furnished by Origen, and
rests upon a curious combination of the Aramaic
word 35 ‘jaw,’ with Dt 18%, which assigns to the
priests the jaws of sacrificial victims as part of
their portion.
In the Middle Ages, Bethphage was shown to the
north of Bethany, higher up the slope of the Mt.
of Olives. The site of this medieval Bethphage
(which proves nothing for the Bethphage of Serip-
ture) was recovered nearly thirty years ago, thanks
to the discovery made by the Franciscan Fathers,
controlled and described by Guillemot and Clermont-
Ganneau, of a stone (the fragment of an altar Ὁ)
bearing inscriptions and pictures relating to Christ’s
entry into Jerusalem.
LUCIEN GAUTIER.
hing ’).—The supposi-
places on the shore of the
BETHSAIDA (‘house of fis
tion that there were two
ἊΣ Ἄς Galilee to which this name appropriately
ac. vared 3 pas disputed or rejected by many
uhl, ἃ, A. Smith, Sanday, et al.) ; but the
evidence in its favour, direct and indirect, has the
upport ol n lone list of authorities on Palestinian
vosraphy trom the days of Reland to the present
tin here are differences of opinion with respect
to the precise lox ition of beth places, but there is
τῇ eneral apreement that one Wits on the east and
the other on the west side of the Jordan or its
expanse into the Galilean Lake. Prominent on
the list of those who advocate two Bethsaidas are
ἘΝ name . of Kitter, Robin on, Caspari, Stanley,
} de Pa —- Wie eler, Weiss, ‘Tristram, Thomson,
an de elds _Po ter, Merrill, Maceresor and
Ewing. The facts and Suggestions ‘which bear |
upon the supposition itself may be summed up as
follows :—
1. Bethsaida of Gaulanitis.—The historic evi-
dence for the existence and general location of
this city is not disputed. Josephus describes it as
a village ‘situate at the Lake of Gennesaret
which Philip the tetrarch advanced unto the
dignity of a city, both by the number of inhabi-
tants it contained, and its other grandeur, and
called it by the name ‘‘Julias,” the same name
with Ceesar’s daughter’ (Ané. XVIIL. ii. 1). In other
passages he indicates its position as in ‘ Lower
Gaulanitis’ (Jaulan), ‘in Persea,’ and as near the
Jordan, which ‘first passes by the city and then
passes through the middle of the Lake’ (BJ τι.
1X.) lexi. ΟΣ 8150 Be Ute πΞ 7. ΠῚ 7. Τὴ ἴῃ
every instance, except the one above quoted, which
gives a reason for the change of designation,
Josephus drops the old name and calls it ‘ Julias.’
Pliny and Jerome give it the same appellation,
and locate it on the eastern side of the Jordan
(Plin. HN v. 16; Jer. Com. on Mt 16%). The
modern designation, ‘ Bethsaida-Julias,’ is not to
be found in ancient history, sacred or secular.
The site of the city which thus became the 5πὸ-
cessor, under another name, of Bethsaida of
Gaulanitis, has not been identified with certainty.
After careful research, Dr. Robinson came to the
conclusion that a mound of ruins, known as e¢-Te//,
was the most probable location of the long-lost city.
‘The tel/ extends from the foot of the northern mountains
southwards, near the point where the Jordan issues from them.
The ruins cover a large portion of it, and are quite extensive ;
but so far as could be observed, consist entirely of unhewn
stones, without any distinct trace of ancient architecture’
(BRP 2 ii. p. 418). 3
The site is over against one of the fording-places
of the Jordan, and about 2 miles above its mouth.
This tentative identification has been accepted by
many recent explorers, but mainly for the reason
that the location seems to be the most favour-
able, because of its commanding position, for such
a city as Josephus describes. The objections to it
are its distance from the Lake, and the absence of
anything which would suggest its original name—
‘the house (or place) of fishing.’
Another site, to which these objections do not
apply, has been suggested by Dr. Thomson at
el- Mas'adiych, not far from the eastern bank of the
river, and near the Lake, ‘distinguished by a few
palm trees, foundations of old walls, and fragments
of basaltic columns’ (Land and Book, ii. 422).
This writer advocates the existence of a double
city, lying on both sides of the Jordan, as the true
solution of the Bethsaida problem, and indicates a
site over against ed-Masadiych, where a few ruins
have been found, as the probable location of the
Galilean portion of the city. The apparent objec-
tions to this site are the bogey and treacherous
ground in the vicinity, and the absence of anything
that would suggest the existence in former times
of a fording-place or, a connexion by means of
bridges. Wilson accepts Thomson’s views; and
Schumacher, the noted explorer of the Jaulan
region, agrees with him in locating the eastern
city at el-Masadiyeh. He suggests also that the
royal residence of Philip may have been on the
hill at e¢-Ted/, and the fishing village at el-Araj,
near the mouth of the Jordan, where are ruins,
and that both were connected by a good road still
visible (see Jaulan Quarterly Statement, April
1888). Conder, who favours e¢-Tell, makes the
plea on its behalf that local changes in the river
delta may have increased the distance materially
between this site and the head of the Lake.
Assuming this as a possibility, the place must
always have been a considerable distance from the
mouth of the Jordan, It is not unlikely, how-
BETHSAIDA
BETHSAIDA 199
ever, as Merrill suggests, that the landing-place
of Julias was the original site of the town, and
that among the local fishermen it retained the old
name for some time after the building of the city
of Philip, which would naturally be laid out on
higher ground. In the only NT references which
can with certainty be attributed to this place, the
Evangelists make use of the older name (Lk 9",
Mk 833. In the first, the scene of the miracle of
the five loaves, it is described as ‘a desert,’ or
vacant place, ‘belonging to the city called Beth-
saida.’ All the Evangelists concur in the state-
ment that it was a place apart from the town,
but evidently near it, where the native grass
thickly covered the fallow ground and made a
comfortable resting place for the weary multitude.
The loeation which fulfils all the conditions of the
narrative is on the eastern ridge of the Batiha
plain, in the immediate vicinity of the Lake.
In the seeond reference it BP ESaTS that Jesus,
after crossing to the other side from Dalmanutha
on the west coast, came to Bethsaida en route
to the towns of Ceesarea Philippi. While in the
city a blind man was brought to Him. It 15 ἃ
significant fact, in keeping with His uniform atti-
tude towards the Gentile cities of this region, that
He took the blind man by the hand and led him
out of the town, before He restored his sight.
In this, says Farrar, ‘all that we can dimly see is
Christ’s dislike and avoidance of these heathenish
Herodian towns, with their borrowed Hellenic
architecture, their careless customs, and even their
very names commemorating, as was the case with
Bethsaida-Julias, some of the most contemptible
of the human race’ (Life of Christ, ch. xxxv_).
2. Bethsaida of Galilee.—It has been alleged
by some writers that the existence of a western
Bethsaida was invented to meet a supposed diffi-
culty in the narrative of the Evangelists. This
is not a fair statement of the case. A Bethsaida
belonging to the province of Galilee is designated
by name as well as implied by incidental reference.
Its claims are advocated mainly, if not solely, on
the ground that it 15 in the Gospel record. The
objection sometimes urged, that the existence of
two towns of the same name in such close proximity
is improbable, has little weight in view of the fact
that these towns were in different provinces, under
different rulers, and in many respects had little
in common. The name itself suggests a place
favourably situated for fishermen, and might be
appropriately applied to more places than one by
the Lake side. But see art. CAPERNAUM.
The main points of the argument in favour of a western
Bethsaida are as follows :—
(1) The direct testimony given in John’s Gospel. —In one
passage it is affirmed that Philip, one of the Apostolic band,
was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter (144); in
another (1221), that Philip was of Bethsaida of Galilee. This is
the testimony of one who is noted for his accuracy in geo-
graphical details, who knew every foot of this lake-side region,
and who, in common with the other Evangelists, speaks of this
trio of disciples as partners.in a common industry, and as ‘men
of Galilee.’ ‘Cana of Galilee’ is a similar expression in the
same Gospel, and the fact that the writer mentions the province
at all, in this connexion, is a strong presumptive proof that he
wished to distinguish it from the other Bethsaida on the eastern
side. The mention of Galilee in John’s Gospel determines this
place on the west of the Jordan as decidedly as that of Gaulanitis
does the other Bethsaida on the east. The assertion of G. A.
Smith, that the province of Galilee included most of the level
coastland east of the Lake,—if it applies to Galilee in the time
of Christ, -is apparently in conflict with all the evidence which
the history of that time has given us. It conflicts also with the
positive testimony of Josephus, who places Julias—the city
which Dr. Smith associates with Bethsaida—in Gaulanitis, and
under the jurisdiction of Herod Philip.
(2) The well-attested fact that al/ of the Apostles, except Judas
Iscariot, were men of Galilee (Ac 1!1), furnishes another corrobo-
rative proof that the place of residence of the three above
mentioned could not have been in the city of Philip (see also
Mk 1470), They were typical Jews, and their place of employ-
ment and all their associations were with their brethren of the
same faith on or near the plain of Gennesaret.
(3)In the narrative of the return journey from the place of
the feeding of the multitude, it is distinctly mentioned that the
disciples embarked in a ship to go before to the ‘other side’ unto
Bethsaida (Mk 64). If the word ‘unto’ stood alone, there
might be some ground for the supposition that the disciples
aimed at sailing along the shore towards Julias, but in the de-
scription which follows, the Evangelist makes it plain that the
‘other side,’ as he uses the expression, meant the west shore of
the Lake. ‘And when they had passed over, they came into the
land of Gennesaret.’ The parallel accounts convey the same
impression and are equally decisive on this point (Mt 1422. 34,
Jn 616), It is true that John adds that ‘they went over the
sea towards Capernaum,’ but there is no discrepancy between
the several statements if Robinson is right in identifying Beth-
saida with ‘Ain: et-Tdbigha. The general direction would be
the same, and the distance between the two points does not
exceed three-quarters of a mile. In keeping with these state-
ments is the mention of the fact that the multitude on the east
side, noting the direction taken by the vessel in which the
disciples sailed, took shipping the next day and came to
Capernaum, seeking for Jesus (Jn 622-24). These passages, in-
terpreted in their natural and ordinary sense, show that the
disciples aimed at going to the western side of the Lake in obedi-
ence to the command of Jesus. The contrary wind retarded
their progress, but it did not take them far out of their course.
The mention of Bethsaida, in this connexion, with Capernaum
makes it highly probable also that its site was somewhere in
the same neighbourhood.
(4) There is a manifest verification and corroboration of this
testimony in the close association of Bethsaida with Capernawmn
and Chorazin in the judgment pronounced upon them by our
Lord because of their peculiar privileges (Mt 1171-23). There is
no uncertainty with respect to the import of this denunciation.
It could not apply to a Gentile city like Julias, for it is here con-
trasted with the Gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon. It is evident,
also, that its significance inheres in the peculiar privileges of
Bethsaida through oft-repeated manifestations of supernatural
power in connexion with the ministry of Jesus. In other words,
it was in the very centre of that field of wonders in Galilee,
honoured above all other places in the land as the residence of
Jesus, to which multitudes flocked from every quarter. We
have the record of three brief visits of Jesus to the semi-heathen
population on the eastern side of the Lake, mainly for rest and
retirement, but there is no record of ‘many mighty works’ in
any of the towns or cities of this region. This of itself seems to
be an unanswerable argument against the proposed identifica-
tion of the city to which Jesus refers in this connexion with the
Herodian city of Julias in the province of Gaulanitis.
The generally accepted site of Bethsaida of
Galilee is ‘Ain et-Tdbigha. It is situated at the
head of a charming little bay on the northern
side of the spur which runs out into the Lake at
κᾶν, Minyeh. Here, by the ruins of some old
mills, is a copious stream of warm, brackish water,
fed by several fountains, one of which is the
largest spring-head in Galilee. Its course, which
now winds and descends amid a tangled mass of
rank vegetation to the Lake, was formerly diverted
to the plain of Gennesaret by a strongly built
reservoir, still standing, which raised the water to
an elevation of twenty feet or more. Thence it
was carried by an aqueduct. and a rock-hewn trench
to the northern end of the plain. There is little
to indicate the site of the city, except an occasional
pier of the aqueduct and the substructures of a
few ancient buildings long since overthrown and
forgotten.
The nataral features of ‘Ain et-Tabigha are a
safe harbour, a good anchorage, a lovely outlook
over the entire lake, a shelving, shelly beach, ad-
mirably adapted to the landing of fishing boats,
a coast free from débris and driftwood ; and a warm
bath of water, where shoals of fish ofttimes crowd
together by myriads, ‘their backs gleaming above
the surface as they bask and tumble in the water’
(Macgregor, Rob Roy on the Jordan, p. 837). Al-
though surrounded by desolate wastes, this is still
the chief ‘Fishertown’ on the Lake, where nets
are dried and mended, and where fish are taken
and sorted for the market, as in the days of
Andrew, Simon, and Philip.
Literature.—Andrews, Life of our Lord2, pp. 230-236 ; Robin-
son, BRP 2 ii. 413, and iii. 358, 359; Tristram, Land of Israel,
p- 418, also Topog. of the Holy Land, pp. 259-261; G. A. Smith,
ἬΘΗ], 457f.; Thomson, Land and Book, ii. 423; Stewart,
Mem. Places among the Holy Hills, pp. 128-138 ; Reland, p. 653 ;
Macgregor, op. cit. pp. 334-343 and 360-372 ; Merrill, Pict. Pal.
i. 322; Ewing in Hastings’ DB i. p. 282; Baedeker-Socin, Pad.
255f.; Buhl, GAP 241ff.; Sanday, Sacred Sites of the Gospels,
41 f., 45, 48, 91, 95. R. L. StTEwART.
a Tn ne ev OO ee υ. a 2
200 BETRAYAL
BETRAYAL.—
The Gr. verb for ‘betray’ is rapadidcves. παράδοσις never
occurs in the sense of ‘ betrayal’ in the NT; in the Gospels it is
used of ‘ the tradition of the elders’ (Mt 152: 3. 6= Mk 78. 5. 8. 9. 13),
by St. Paul also of the Christian tradition (1 Οο 112, 2 Th 216
80), προδότης, ‘traitor,’ occurs in Lk 616; cf. Ac 752, 2 ΤΊ 84,
Had Jesus not been betrayed into the hands of
His enemies, His death would hardly have been
averted, but it would have been delayed. They
would fain have seized Him and made short work
of Him, but they dared not. He was the popular
hero, and they perceived that His arrest would
excite a dangerous tumult. The goodwill of the
multitude was as a bulwark about Him and kept
His enemies at bay, malignant but impotent. The
crisis came on 13th Nisan, two days before the
Passover (Mt 26'5=Mk 14!?=Lk 22!-?), He had
met the rulers in a succession of dialectical en-
counters in the court of the Temple, and had
completed their discomfiture by hurling at them
in presence of the multitude a crushing indictment.
Enraged beyond endurance, they met and debated
what they should do. They were resolved upon
His death, and they would fain have seized Him
and slain Him ont of hand; but they dared not,
and they agreed to wait until the Feast was over
and the throng of worshippers had quitted Jeru-
salem. ‘They took counsel together to arrest
Jesus by stealth and kill him; but they said:
Not during the Feast, lest there arise a tumult
among the people.’
Such was the situation when, all unexpectedly,
an opportunity for immediate action presented
itself. Judas, ‘the man of Kerioth,’ one of the
‘Twelve, waited on the high priests, probably while
Jesus was engaged with the Greeks (Jn 1220-59),
and offered, for sufficient remuneration, to betray
Him into their hands. Judas was a disappointed
man. He had attached himself to Jesus, believing
Him to be the Messiah, and expecting, in accord-
ance with the current conception of the Messianic
Kingdom, a rich recompense when the Master
should ascend the throne of His father David, and
confer offices and honours upon His faithful fol-
lowers. The period of his discipleship had been a
process of disillusionment, and latterly, when he
perceived the inevitable issue, he had determined
to abandon what he deemed a sinking cause, and
save what he might from the wreck. It may be
also that he desired to be avenged on the Master
who, as he deemed, had fooled him with a false
hope.* He therefore went to the high priests and
asked what they would give him to betray Jesus
‘nto their hands. They leaped at the proposal, and
offered him thirty shekels. It was the price of
a slave,t and they named it in contempt not of
Jesus but of Judas. Even while they trafticked
with him, they despised the wretch. Impervious
'o contempt, he accepted their offer; and, as
though in haste to be rid of him, they paid him
the money on the spot.
ἐν east, 15 St. Matthew's report. St. Mark and St. Luke
resent them as merely promising money, the amount un-
eht be supposed that St. Matthew’s account is
y to refer to the theory popularized
211f.), which has since his time
This ingenious theory seeks to
Judas by ittributing the betrayal not
but to an honest, if mistaken, deter-
} 1’ of Je ind compel Him to assert
hasten the establishment of His
that this explanation,
support in the Gospel
te irreconcilable with the stern
: L Bp ker our [4 rd with reference to
ΠΝ. " a ( é tC 20" “Woe unto that man
i \ trayed! good were it for
Foro full discussion of
ea rt. Jupag Iscarior,
lls a slave, good or
sus
»>remarh
t
BETROTHAL
assimilated to Zec 1112.13 (cf. Mt 279-10); but (1) Mt 273-5 proves
that the money had been paid, at all events before the trial of
Jesus by the Sanhedrin. (2) ἔστησαν, even if it be taken in its
literal sense, ‘weighed,’.need not be an unhistorical embellish-
ment borrowed from the prophecy. Cf. ῬΕΙ͂ δέ, Apr. 1896,
Ρ. 152: ‘To this day it is usual in Jerusalem to examine and
test carefully all coins received. Thus a Medjidie (silver) is ex-
amined not only by the eye, but also by noticing its ring on the
stone pavement, and Engtish sterling gold is carefully weighed,
and returned when defaced.’
It remained that Judas should perform his part
of the bargain, but he encountered a difficulty
which he had hardly anticipated. Jesus was aware
of his design, and, anxious to eat the Passover with
His disciples ere He sutfered (Lk 22"), He took
pains to checkmate it. The next day. was the
Preparation, and, when His disciples asked where
He would eat the Supper, He gave them a
mysterious direction. ‘Away into the city,’ He
said to Peter and John, ‘and there shall meet you
a man carrying a pitcher of water: follow him.’
Some friend in Jerusalem had engaged to provide
a room in his house, and Jesus had arranged this
stratagem with him, in order that Judas might
not know the place and bring in the rulers in the
course of the Supper* (Mt 2611-9-- Μ|ς 1412-16-- 1ς
297-13),
That evening, as they reclined at table, Jesus,
desirous of being alone with His faithful followers,
made the startling announcement: ‘One of you
shall betray me,’ and, amid the consternation which
ensued, secretly gave Judas his dismissal. The
traitor left the room, and, hastening to the high
priests, summoned them to action. See ARREST.
LITERATURE.—Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Judas Iscariot’ ; Fairbairn,
Studies in the Life of Christ, p. 258 ff.; Stalker, Trialand Death
of Jesus Christ, p. 110 ff.; Hanna, Our Lord’s Life on Earth (ed.
1882], pp. 458-467; Bruce, Training of the Twelve, p. 362 ff.;
Expositor, 3rd ser. [1889], p. 166ff.; Ὁ. Smith, The Days of His
Flesh, p. 436 fi. DAVID SMITH.
BETROTHAL. — Betrothal among the Jews in
the time of Jesus, like so many other social in-
stitutions, was in process of transition. Jewish
marriage customs were in origin the same as those
of other Semitie peoples, but Jewish civilization
was far removed from its primitive stages. Un-
fortunately there is little positive information con-
cerning the ceremony of betrothal in NT times
proper. The Talmudic seder on marriage includes
two tractates, Acthuboth and Kiddushin, dealing
largely with the preliminaries of marriage, the
latter especially with betrothal, but it is con-
siderably later than the NT period. Accordingly,
one cannot be sure that the elaborate laws therein
set forth obtained in the time of Jesus. Yet
it is possible by the study of betrothal customs in
Hebrew and in Talmudic times to form a highly
probable hypothesis as to such customs in the time
of Jesus.
1. The OT betrothal ceremony perpetuated in a
conventional fashion the recollection of the time
when a woman was purchased from her family.
This appears in the Heb. word δὴν (Dt 207, Hos
19”). Yet it would be a mistake to regard the use
of this word as anything more than a conventional
survival. In the days of the codes and the pro-
phets the time was long past whena man’s wife was
strictly his property. At the same time it is clear
that when a woman was designated (πὸ Ex 21® 9)
by the head of her family as the future wife of
another man, there was paid over by the prospec-
tive bridegroom a certain sum of money (or service,
as In the case of Jacob), and a contract which
was inviolable was then entered into (Gn 34:3, Ex
22"). Until the time of the marriage proper the
bride-to-be remained in her own family. It was
*Euth. Zig. on Mt 2618:
; ‘
ἐκδράμη πρὸς τοὺς ἐπι
᾿ ‘ ;
t orws μὴ μαθὼν tiv οἰκίαν ᾿Ιούδα:
ΜΠ ΑΕ ἐλ λον , , ~ Η͂ ~
7 : Ῥουλου: παὶ ἐπαγάγῃ τούτους αὐτῷ πρὸ τοῦ
παραδοῦναι τὸ μυστικὸν δεῖπνον τοῖς μαθηταῖς.
Ν
;
BETROTHAL
not permissible to betroth her to any other man
except by action amounting to divorce, and an
violation of the rights established by the betrothal
Was as serious as if the two persons had been
actually married (Dt 22°%74). In the OT period
it is not possible to say with precision just how
soon the betrothal was followed by the wedding.
In later times, in the case of a virgin it was after
the lapse of a year, and at least thirty days in the
case of a widow ; but it is impossible to establish
more than a possibility of these periods in OT
times. So, too, it is impossible to describe with
any great precision the betrothal ceremony, but
it certainly included the payment of some sum
(mohar; in addition to above references, see 1S
18:5), and the making of a betrothal contract
(either viva voce, Ezk 16%, or in writing) by the
prospective bridegroom. We know nothing of any
formal ceremony or of the use of a ring (unless
[unlikely] it may be in Gn 245). The money pay-
ment belonged originally to the family of the
woman, but gradually came to belong in part or
wholly to the wo. an herself. The woman might
bring wealth to her husband, as in the case of
Rachel and Leah, but this was not obligatory in
the Hebrew period, and cannot be said to belong
to betrothal as such. The first advances might
come from the family of either party. There is no
clear evidence that the young woman had any
right of appeal from the choice of her family. The
bridegroom himself very probably did not conduct
the negotiations, but the matter was in the hands
of a third party, as his parents, or some trusted
servant or friend.
After the Exile the custom of the earlier period
seems to have continued, although with certain
modifications. The payment to the bride’s father
on the part of the prospective groom had been
increasingly regarded as the property, at least
in part, of the bride. Such a payment during
this period was often supplemented by a dowry in
the true sense (To 8:51, Sir 252"), No consent of the
girl was demanded, nor do we know of the recog-
nition of any legal age of consent, unless, as in
somewhat later times, it was not expected that
boys would marry before the age of eighteen or
girls before twelve (Aboth vy. 21). Although
families undoubtedly reached some sort of early
arrangement, there is no clear reference to the
betrothal of children. 5
2. In Talmudic times proper there was a distinct
tendency to combine betrothal with the wedding.
At present the wedding ceremony among orthodox
Jews combines the two elements of the two older
ceremonies. Possibly because of Western in-
fluences the Rabbis became more insistent upon
the right of the girl (at least if she had reached
her majority, whenever that may have been,
Kiddushin, 41a) to give consent, Rab especially
urging it. As the two ceremonies were united,
in addition to the former betrothal there grew
up a much less permanent form of engagement
similar to that which obtains among Western
peoples to-day. In Jerusalem, at least, there seem
to have been certain opportunities (15 of Ab and
Kippurim) for young people to become acquainted
before the union was determined upon. ΑἸ] men
were supposed to marry before the age of 20, and
the age of women was a few years less. Other
tendencies in Talmudie times were the fixing of
the amount of the dowry at not less than 50 zuz,
that of the mdhar at 200 zuz, and the use of a
peculiarly shaped ring. It is interesting to note
that the conventionalizing of the modhar is evi-
denced in the words which are now used for the
ceremony of betrothal: pep ‘consecration,’ pws
‘ betrothal,’ parw “ compact,’ ΟΠ ‘ conditions.’
8. Thus the ceremony of betrothal in NT times
BILL
201
probably involved the following acts: (1) A con-
tract drawn up by the parents or by the ‘friend
of the bridegroom.’ (2) The meeting of the two
families concerned, with other witnesses, at which
time the groom gave the bride a ring and declared
his intention to observe the terms of the contract
already arranged. (3) The payment of the mdhar.
The act of betrothal gained in importance, and the
two parties seem to have been seated under a
canopy during the procedure, and the company to
have joined in an increasingly jovial celebration.
Strictly speaking, there was no religious ceremony
connected with the act, but if a priest were present
he doubtless pronounced some benediction which
was subsequently elaborated into that used by
later orthodox Judaism. The status of the man
and woman was now, as in Hebrew times, prac-
tically the same as that of married persons, al-
though it was now generally customary for the
wedding ceremony proper to be celebrated at the
expiration of a year in the case of a virgin, and in
thirty days in the case of a widow. As in the
older times, separation of betrothed persons de-
manded a divorce, and there seems to have been no
reason why they should not live together as man
and wife without a subsequent wedding ceremony.
The children of such a union would be regarded as
legitimate.
So far as the relations of Mary and Joseph are
concerned, it would appear from the narrative in
both Matthew and Luke that in their case the
custom of the Jews was followed. The description
of the betrothal in the Gospel of Mary is clearly
unhistorical and born of pious imagination; but
we are justified in believing that Joseph drew up
the customary contract, paid a médhar of approxi-
mately 200 zwz, and gave Mary a ring. After the
formal betrothal (μνηστεύειν, Mt 118, Lk 157 2°) they
are reported to have lived together without a
second, or wedding, ceremony. As has already
appeared, there would be no question as to the
legitimacy of children born of such a union.
LITERATURE.—Complete details as to the Talmudic require-
ments regarding betrothal are given in Kiddushin ; see also the
article ‘ Betrothal’ in the Jewish Encyclopedia, and Mielziner,
Jewish Law of Marriage and Divorce. For the ancient Hebrew
betrothal, see Benzinger, Heb. A7vch. p. 133 ff. ; and Nowack,
Heb. Arch, i. 155ff. Brief accounts are also to be found in
Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life, and good articles in
Hamburger, Herzog, Hastings’ DB, and in the Eneye. Biblica.
SHAILER MATHEWS.
BIER.—The Gr. word copés (Heb. πϑῷ, 2 S 3°),
‘bier,’ more strictly means ‘a coffin.’ Lk 713 is
the only place where the word appears in the NT.
The bier was an open coffin, or simply a flat wooden
frame on which the body of the dead was carried
to the grave. Closed coffins were not used in the
time of our Lord. According to the Levitical Law,
contact with a dead body was forbidden as a source
of defilement (Nu 19-4). In raising to life the
widow’s son at Nain, Jesus, by touching the bier
only, avoided any infringement of the letter of the
Law. But the miracle, prompted by that same in-
tense sympathy with human sorrow which He so
strikingly manifested on another oceasion (Jn 11°),
pointed to a higher and more authoritative law
—that Divine eternal law of compassion which
received its freest and fullest expression for the
first time in His own life, and which forms one of
the most distinctive features of His Gospel.
DUGALD CLARK.
BILL.—41. Bill of divorceement: Mk 104, Mt 197
(RV): Gr. βιβλίον (a seroll or letter) ἀποστασίου ;
shorter equivalent, ἀποστάσιον Mt 5*'. In all three
assages the expression is used of the no73 159
ΕΒ ἢ in Dt 24'4 of the husband who divorces
his wife. In contrast with the older usage —still
prevalent in the East—of divorce by a merely
verbal process, the need of preparing a written
202
BIRTH OF CHRIST
BINDING AND LOOSING
document was calculated to be a bar against hasty
or frivolous action, while the bill itself served the
divorced wife as a certificate of her right to marry
again. The Rabbis, who dwelt with special gusto
(‘non sine complacentia quadam’—Lightfoot) on
the subject of divorce, had drawn up regulations
as to the proper wording of the bill of divorcement,
its sealing and witnessing, and the number of lines
—neither less nor more than twelve—the writing
must oceupy. In the eyes of Jesus, no document,
however formal, could prevent divorce from being
a violation of God’s purpose in instituting marriage.
See Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. in Mt 5°),
2. A bond (so RV) or written acknowledement
of debt, Lk 16%7: Gr. (Ti., Tr.. WH) τὰ γράμματα,
(TR) τὸ γράμμα. The word itself is indefinite
(literally = ‘the letters’), and throws no light upon
a question much diseussed by commentators on the
parable of the Unjust Steward, viz. Was the bond
merely an acknowledgment of a debt, or was it an
undertaking to pay a fixed annual rental from the
produce of a farm? Edersheim decides, though
without giving his reasons, for the former alter-
native; Lightfoot inclines to the latter. Against
the theory of a simple debt is the fact that the
amount of the obligation is stated in kind—wheat
and oil—and not in money; and ‘the pfobability
of the story is heightened if we are to understand
that the remissions authorized by the steward—
amounting in money value, according to Edersheim,
to the not very considerable sums of £5 and £25
respectively—atfected not a single but an annual
payment. But, on the other hand, as van Koets-
feld, who argues strongly for the view that the
document was of the nature of a lease, admits,
there is no precedent for the word (χρεοφιλέ-
rac) rendered ‘debtors’ being used for tenants.
Jiilicher dismisses the whole controversy as ir-
relevant. Another point in dispute is whether
the old bond was altered, or a new one substituted
for it. Lightfoot and Edersheim again take dif-
ferent sides. The alteration of the old bond is
suggested, though not absolutely demanded, by
the language of the passage, and would be, accord-
ing to Edersheim, in accordance with the probabil-
ities of the case. Acknowledgments of debt were
usually written on wax-covered tablets, and could
easily be altered, the stylus in use being provided,
not only with a sharp-pointed kothébh or writer,
but with a flat thick méhék or eraser. In any case
it is clear that the ‘bill’ was written by the person
undertaking the obligation ; that it was the only
formal evidence of the obligation; and that its
supervision belonged to the functions of the
steward. Hence, should the steward conspire with
the debtors against his master’s interests, the
latter had no check upon the fraud.
LITERATURE.—Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah,
: Lightfoot, Hor. Heb., in loc.; see also the various
mentators on the Parables.
NORMAN FRASER.
BINDING AND LOOSING.—See CSAREA PHI-
LIPPI, KEYS,
BIRD.—See ANIMALS, p. 65%,
BIRTH OF CHRIST.—
L St. Li Ἢ account,
1 ir 1 element and colouring,
O ectior Ὁ taken to the contenta of Uk 1. 2.
3. Pre sources of St, Luke's information.
i. Bethle) our Lord's birthplace.
Of Quirinius,
is ' . ‘
Ι {OT proy
I to Je Ὁ legal requirements,
. i dehen Of the narrative
Mens 0 taken to the contents of Mt 1. 2.
i \ poet
; cs rad ! ind the main facts,
Literature.
i. St. LUKE’S ACCOUNT.—1. Jewish element and
colouring.—The two accounts of our Lord’s birth
in the Gospels carry us at once into the very heart
of Jewish home life. In the fuller account of the
two, that of St. Luke, the evidence of this Jewish
element has been materially strengthened by recent
literature and discussion. No one, e.g., can read
the early Canticles in St. Luke’s Gospel without
noticing their intensely Jewish character. This
was amply shown by Ryle and James in their
edition of the Psalms of Solomon (see esp. pp. xci,
xcii), a work which may fairly be placed some
half century or so before our Lord’s Advent. In
the same manner Chase has illustrated many points
of contact between these Canticles and the Jan-
guage of the Eighteen Prayers of the synagogue.*
More recently Sanday has emphasized the same
argument, more especially in relation to the Bene-
dictus, in which he finds quite a piling up of ex-
pressions characteristic of the old popular Messianic
expectation ; the first five or six verses are quite
sufficient to mark this essentially pre-Christian
character (Critical Questions, p. 133; see also
Nebe, Die Kindheitsgeschichte uwnseres Herrn Jesu
Christi nach Matthaus und Lukas ausgelegt, 1893,
p. 166 ff; and even Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschicht-
lichen Verstandniss des NT, 1903, p. 67).+
This question of the composition of the Canticles in St. Luke
is a very important one, because it is constantly assumed that
they were the invention of the author of the Third Gospel.
But in this case we have to assume that the Greek Luke, or
some unknown writer, was able to transfer himself in thought
to a time when Jewish national hopes, which were shattered by
the fate of the capital, were still vividly cherished in Jewish
circles, and that he was able to express those hopes in the
popular language current at the date of our Lord’s birth with
a marked absence of any later Christian conceptions. ᾧ
And yet with all this Jewish colouring there is
in these Canticles a depth and a charm which have
appealed to men everywhere throughout the Chris-
tian centuries. No one recognized the Jewish ele-
ment in these early chapters of St. Luke more
frankly than M. Renan; but he could also write of
the Magnificat, Gloria in Excelsis, Benedictus,
Nune Dinittis: ‘Never were sweeter songs in-
vented to put to sleep the sorrows of poor humanity ”
(Les Evangiles, p. 278).
2. Objections taken to the contents of Lk 1. 2.—
The extravagant assertion must, of course, not be
forgotten, that we owe these opening chapters of
St. Luke, or at least some of their details, to the
influence of other great Eastern religions. A dis-
cussion of this assertion may more properly be
referred to the art. VIRGIN Birru.§ But a word
* ‘The Lord’s Prayer in the Early Church’ (TS i. 8, p.'147 ff.).
+ Harnack, in his Reden und Au/fsdtze, i. p. 307 ff. (1904),
maintains that while St. Luke has undoubtedly used a Jewish-
Christian document in chs. 1 and 2, he has also introduced
touches acceptable to a Greek, and that one word, in common
use to-day, was wanting in the original Christian phraseology,
the word ‘Saviour.’ According to Harnack, we owe this word
to St. Luke, a word so often used by the Greeks to designate
their gods, and thus it found its way into Lk 9511, St. Paul
scarcely knew it; but shortly after his time, when we come
to St. Luke, it is otherwise. It is further argued that we look
for the word in vain in St. Mark or St. Matthew. But, to
say nothing of its use by St. John, cf. Jn 442 and 1 Jn 44, St.
Matthew (121) emphasizes the meaning of the word Jesus,
“for it is he that shall save (σώσει!) his people from their sins’ ;
and St. Paul in his first recorded missionary address speaks
of ‘a Saviour Jesus’ (σωτὴρ ‘Inccts), and connects His coming
with the remission of sins (Ac 1324-38), Cf. Ph 320 and Ac 541,
an admittedly early source); also Ps-Sol 109 165,
{ Zahn well remarks: ‘ Passages like Lk 1-2, which in their
narrative portions and the psalms mtroduced can be compared
for poetical grace and genuinely Israelitish spirit only with the
most beautiful portions of the Books of Samuel, could not have
been composed by a Greek like St. Luke’ (Etnleitung, ii. p.
404). The whole passage should be consulted. On the minute
account of the ritual in the Temple (Lk 222mF), and its signifi-
cance as pointing to an early date for the narrative, see Sanday
(Z.c. p. 135), and the Church Quarterly Review, Oct. 1904, p. 194,
The whole point of St. Luke’s full acquaintance with the legal
ritual is well brought out by B. Weiss (Leben Jesu, i. p. 237).
δ See, however, amongst the-most recent writers, A. Jeremias,
Babylonisches im NT, pp. 48, 49, and his able criticism.
BIRTH OF CHRIST
BIRTH OF CIIRIST
203
may here be said upon the most recent attempt to
trace this alleged influence, in Indische Einfliisse
auf evangelische Erzahlungen, by ἃ. A. van den
Burgh van Eysinga, 1904. On p. 22 ff. a whole
series of alleged parallels is quoted between the
coming of the aged Simeon into the Temple and
the coming of the sage Asita into the Palace to
do homage to the infant Buddha. While the
writer is constrained (p. 23) to admit that the
whole of the story of Simeon is told in a strongly
Hebraistic style, he maintains that it is not said
that the original motive of the incident is also of
Hebrew origin. But in this connexion it is very
significant that, while asupposed parallel is alleged
between every verse which tells of Simeon (Lk
2-82) and the story of Asita, there is one verse
(v.2*) for which no parallel is adduced ; and it is
diticult to see that any other than a motive of
Hebrew origin could inspire such words as these:
‘and it had been revealed unto him by the Holy
Spirit that he should not see death before he had
seen the Lord's Christ.’ The contrast is rightly
marked between the pious resignation of Simeon
and the wail of Asita over his departure amid the
ruins of old age and death. But what could be
more absurd than to find a parallel (p. 22) between
Asita taking his path across tlhe sky by the way
of the wind, and the statement of St. Luke that
Simeon came ἐν τῷ πνεύματι into the Temple ?
From a somewhat different point of view these
Jewish conceptions are noteworthy. In Lk 1°? we
read: ‘He shall be great, and shall be called the
Son of the Most High: and the Lord God shall
give unto him the throne of his father David: and
he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever ;
and of his kingdom there shall be no end.’ Here
again we have language closely resembling that
of the Psalms of Solomon, e.g. 17** "8, full of
Jewish thought and expectation, expressing the
hopes of the times at which it purports to be
written, but scarcely such as would have been in-
vented by a Christian composer.* But we are
asked to believe that into the midst of this Jewish
language some Christian writer wished to intro-
duce a statement of our Lord’s virgin birth, and
that he did so by the interpolation of the next two
verses, Lk 1%. Asa matter of fact, there is no
valid ground for regarding these two verses as
interpolated. They are retained by the most dis-
tinguished editors of the NT both in England and
Germany, ¢.g. WH, Blass, Nestle; even Gunkel
can see no reason for their excision (Zw religions-
geschichtlichen Verstiindniss des NT, 1908, Ρ. 66).
There are one or two points connected with this
alleged interpolation which we may notice with-
out encroaching upon the art. VIRGIN BIRTH.
(a) We are struck with the ex traordinary reserve
and brevity of the statement, a reserve which
characterizes the whole story in Lk 1. 2. These
two verses (1**) contain, we are told, the only
reference to the virgin birth. Let us suppose for a
moment that this is so; and if so we cannot but
contrast the language with that of the Protevan-
glium Jacobi, with its fantastie and prurient
details, or even with that portion of the Ascension
of Isaiah, viz. the Vision of Isaiah, which carries
us back, according to Charles, within the lines of
the first Christian century (Ascen. Is. p. xxiiff.).
(6) Let us suppose that these two verses are no
longer to find a place in the story, what then? It
has been urged with truth that the whole of St.
Luke's narrative is impregnated with the under-
lying idea that when Christ was born His mother
was ἃ virgin, and that it is impossible to omit
this element without destroying the whole (Church
Quarterly Review, July 1904, p. 383).
* «The phraseology of the suspected vy.%4: 95 15. unmistakably
Hebraistic’(G. ΗΠ. Box in ZN7'W, 1905, eft 1, p. 02).
‘The Christian belief,’ writes Professor V. Rose of Fribourg,
‘is manifest from the whole trend of the Gospel of the Infancy.
Mary it is who, contrary to all Hebrew use, appears alone upon
the scene. While Zacharias receives the celestial promise of
the birth of a son, while he himself hymns the opening of the
Messianic era and the destiny of John, Joseph plays not the
smallest part in the mystery of Jesus. Mary is entirely in the
foreground : to her the angel addresses himself ; the prophecy
of Zechariah has to do with her; she speaks to the child found
in the Temple; Joseph says nothing; he keeps in the back-
ground. His position in the family is that of guardian, the
supporter of Mary, the protector of Jesus’ (Studies in the
Gospels, 1903, p. 72).
(c) If the interpolator of these two verses in
question had done his work so ‘clearly and eflec-
tively’ as Schmiedel maintains, it is surely sur-
prising that he should have allowed any of those
passages in the original document to stand which
could refer in any way to Joseph’s parentage.
These references, ¢.g. 27'-%- 41-43-38, would have
seriously impaired both the clearness and eftective-
ness of his work. But suppose, on the other hand,
that the whole story comes to us from one who was
well acquainted with all the facts of the case,
we can then understand why he could allow the
passages about Joseph to stand ; in common esti-
mation our Lord passed for the son of Joseph ;
probably in the register of births He was thus de-
scribed ; and from a social point of view it was
necessary, as we shall see, that this should be so.
3. Probable sources of St. Luke's information.—
St. Luke’s account gives us not only a picture of
Jewish home life, but it also reveals the workings
of a Jewish mother’s heart; it gives us with un-
mistakable clearness, and yet with the utmost
delicacy and reserve, information which could
scarcely have come from any one in the first in-
stance but a woman (this is admirably shown by
Ramsay in the second chapter of Was Christ born
at Bethichem 3). Whether this information reached
St. Luke through a written document or whether
it came to him orally, we cannot say, and from
the present point of view it does not matter. For
the impression which is derived from his account is
twofold,—not only that it is of Palestinian origin,
but also that it is derived from Mary the mother
of the Lord, or from those who were closely ac-
quainted with her.*
It has been lately suggested, with much force and learning,
that the information derived in the first place from the Virgin
herself may have reached St. Luke through Joanna (Sanday,
Critical Questions, p. 157). Evidently St. Luke had some special
source of information connected with the court of the Herods,
and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, appears no
fewer than four times upon the stage of the Gospel history.
She accompanies our Lord amongst the other women in Galilee ;
she was one of the group of women who had witnessed the
Crucifixion, and who afterwards went to the grave on the
morning of the first Easter Day ; and it may be safely inferred
that she was one of the women in the upper room after the
Ascension. We can scarcely doubt that she and the Virgin
Mother were often in each other’s company. It may, of course,
be alleged that St. Luke’s news about the Herods may have
reached him through other channels, and that there is no proof
that he was personally acquainted with Joanna.
If credit be allowed to the Acts of the Apostles,
it would seem that St. Luke himself, as also St.
* See the remarks of Wright, Synopsis of the Gospels in
Greek2, p. 292; Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, i. 31. Recent attempts
have been made to ascribe the Magnificat to Elisabeth, and
the arguments for and against this view will be found in PRE%
vol. xii. (1903), p. 72f. But in spite of all that has been urged by
Harnack (Sitzungsb. d. Kénig. Preuss. Akad. der Wissensch. zu
Berlin, xxvii. 1900), it is ditficult to believe that the words ‘the
lowliness of his handmaiden,’ are not most naturally connected
with the words of Mary to the angel, ‘ Behold, the handimaid of
the Lord’ (Lk 148), and that the words ‘shall call me blessed’
are not_best referred to the words spoken by Elisabeth to Mary
(vy.4% 4°), On the proposal to find in the words of Mary, ‘all
generations shall call me blessed,’ an imitation of the words of
Leah in Gn_ 3018, see Nebe, Die Kindheitsgeschichte, p. 136,
Plummer, St. Luke, ad loc., also Jacquier, Histoire de NT,
ii. 504(1905). The contrast far exceeds any comparison, as these
writers show. The combination in Mary of the deepest humility
with a firm consciousness of her own high calling and future
renown is very striking. See, further, Burn, Niceta of Remesi-
and, 1205, p. cliii ff.
[ae
204 BIRTH OF CHRIST
Paul, may well have come into personal contact
with one or more members of the Holy Family.
We read, for instance, in Ac 9118, in one of the
‘We’ sections of that book: ‘And the day follow-
ing Paul went in with us unto James; and all the
elders were present.’ How much St. Luke may
have learnt from St. James the Lord’s brother, it is,
of course, presumptuous to say; but he may at
least have learnt something during his stay in
Jerusalem as to the place and the circumstances
connected with our Lord’s birth. We cannot for-
get the Evangelist’s claim to have traced the
course of all things accurately from the first (Lk
13), and he would scarcely have neglected the
opportunities of information which were open to
him in Jerusalem and afterwards in Cyesarea.
4, Bethlehem as our Lord’s birthplace.—The in-
tercourse just referred to would at least have saved
St. Luke from the gross geographical blunder
which he has been accused of making at the outset
of his history, the blunder of confusing Bethlehem-
Judah with another Bethlehem in Galilee (see, in
relation to this alleged blunder, Knowling, Our
Lord's Virgin Birth and the Criticism of To-day,
pp. 6-13). But the recently published remarks of
Sanday may well be remembered in this connexion
(Sacred Sites of the Gospels, p. 25) :—
‘There are two Bethlehems, the second in Galilee, about
seven miles west of Nazareth, and it has recently been sug-
vested in the Hneye. Biblica that the Galilean Bethlehem was
the true scene of the Nativity. There would be real advan-
tayves if Bethlehem could be thought of as near to Nazareth.
But to obtain this result we have to go entirely behind our
Gospels. Both St. Matthew and St. Luke are express in plac-
ing the birth of Christ at Bethlehem of Judcea. And as their
narratives are wholly independent of each other, and differ in
most other respects, it is clear that we have on this point a
convergence of two distinct traditions.’
Professor Usener, indeed, fastens upon the pas-
sage Jn 7", and sees in it the hidden path by
which Bethlehem found its way into the Gospel
tradition (πόνο. Bibl. iii. 3347). But there is no
reason for supposing that the writer of the Fourth
Gospel was himself unaware of our Lord’s birth at
Bethlehem, because he expresses the popular ex-
pectation of the ignorant multitude. τί the Gospel
was written at the late date demanded by advanced
critics, his ignorance of such a Weliee would be
altogether unaccountable. Quite apart from our
Gospels, Charles would refer the remarkable pas-
sage in the Ascension of Isaiah 112 to a very
early date, deriving it from the archetype which
he carries back to the close of the 158 cent. (Introd.
pp. Xxi-xlv) ; and from a comparison of v.2. and ν. 13
it can searcely be doubted that Bethlehem-Judah
was meant throughout the narrative as the scene
of our Lord’s birth. But if the writer of the
Fourth Gospel was St. John, it is a most arbitrary
procedure to see in this passage (742) any proof
that the place of the Nativity was unknown to
him. Are we to suppose that St. Jolin was also
ignorant of our Lord’s descent from David ?* an
interence which might equally seem to follow from
the passage before us, unless we remember that
the Evangelist is presupposing that his readers
would be well aware of the true descent of Jesus
and the actual place of His birth (see this point
admirably put by Ramsay, Was Christ born at
Bethi mm? γ». 96),
Nor does the faet
that our Lord was popularly
cnown as Ji us of Nazareth in any way interfere
with the truth that He was born at Bethlehem
It | . indeed, not untrequently happened that a
man has been asso
lated with, or even named after,
n tow yl a hi ‘ ΩἹ arl
| nh where his youth and early manhood have
wen ΝΟ Ἢ I her thay after ii
» Tather than after the actual place of
On the descent of J from Davi ;
Dike ree ἄϑεδει om I d see especially Dalman,
~ fred εν Ie irles, A ) ΟΥ̓ Isaiah, p. 95.
meaning Ἷ ee, f er, Sabnon, Introduction
to the NTS, »
BIRTH OF CHRIST
his birth, in which his parents may have sojourned
for a while (B. Weiss, Leben Jesu, i. 227). It
will, of course, be said that prophesy, pointed to
our Lord’s birth at Bethlehem, and that St.
Matthew (2°) distinctly quotes Micah’s words in
this connexion. But was the prophecy fulfilled ?
On the one hand, we are asked to believe that St.
Luke starts his narrative not only with a geographi-
eal, but also with a grave historical blunder, and
that he confuses an enrolment of Herod with the
subsequent enrolment, some ten years later, of Ae
5°7, On the other hand, it is urged that St. Luke’s
accuracy, so well attested in other respects, would
have saved him from making an initial and need-
less error, and that the least consideration would
have prevented him from connecting such an event
as an enrolment of the people with the birth of
the Messiah at Bethlehem, unless it was true.
Undoubtedly both OT prediction and Rabbinic
teaching pointed to Bethlehem, yet the prophecy
was fulfilled according to the Gospel story by the
introduction of a set of circumstances which were
strangely alien to Jewish national thought and
prestige: ‘a counting of the people, or census,
and that census taken at the bidding of a heathen
emperor, and executed by one so universally hated
as Herod, would represent the ne plus ultra of
all that was most repugnant to Jewish feeling’
(Edersheim, Jesus the Messiah, i. 181). At any
rate, we know quite enough of Jewish suscepti-
bilities and of Jewish fanaticism in the Ist cent.
of our era to be sure that a ruler like Herod,
and in his position, would naturally guard against
any undue exasperation of Jewish national and
religious feeling. If it is urged that the story
of the Nativity was bound in any ease to bring
Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, the city of David,
it would have been easier and more significant to
have adopted the theory of Strauss, to the effect
that the parents were Jed to go to Bethlehem by
the appearance of an angel, especially when we
remember that the frequent introduction of an-
gelic visitors is described as one of the special
characteristics of the writings of St. Luke.
5. The census of Quirinius.—It is one of the
great merits of Professor Ramsay’s theory, that it
not only claims credibility for the enrolment of
Lk 2° as an historical event, but that it also com-
bines with that claim a due recognition of Jewish
national prejudices. The word for ‘enrolment’
(ἀπογραφή), or its plural, was the word for the
periodic enrolments which beyond all doubt were
made in Eeypt, probably initiated by Augustus.
These enrolments were numberings of the people
according to households, and had nothing to do
with the valuation for purposes of taxation. But
H. Holtzmann urges in objection that Egypt is not
Syria (Hand-Commentar zum NT, 190], p. 316).
On the other hand, however, it does not seem
unreasonable to suppose that such enrolments
would take place in other parts of the empire, *
especially under a ruler so systematic as Augustus ;
and this probability Ramsay has not forgotten to
illustrate. Moreover, as the same writer urges,
we have to take into account the delicate and
difficult position of Herod, who was obliged, on the
one hand, to carry out the Imperial policy, whilst,
on the other hand, he was ealled upon to rule over
a fanatical people full of stubborn pride and
inherent suspicions. What under such circum-
stances would be more likely than that Herod
would endeavour to give a tribal and family
character to the enrolment, in fact, to conduct it
*Percy Gardner (art. ‘Quirinius’ in Encyc. Bibl. iv. 3 ff.)
admits that ‘one or two definite, though not conclusive pieces
of evidence seem to indicate that this periodical census was not
confined to Egypt, but was, in some cases at all events, €X-
tended to Syria.’
BIRTH OF CHRIST
BIRTH OF CHRIST 205
on national lines which would harmonize as far as
was possible with Jewish sentiment.* Here prob-
ably lies the true distinction between the first
enrolment, which was ene of a series, and the en-
rolment (Ac 5°”) which was conducted after the
Roman fashion, and became the cause not only of
indignation, but of rebellion. Here, too, we have
the probable explanation as to why Joseph and
the Virgin Mother left their home at Nazareth for
Bethlehem. If the enrolment had been taken on
Roman lines, there would have been no motive for
the journey, since in that case only a recognition
of existing political and social facts would have
been involved ; but in the present instance the
Roman method was judiciously modified by the
introduction of a numbering not only by house-
holds, but by tribes. There is, then, no confusion
between this enrolment of Herod’s and the subse-
quent enrolment of 6-7 A.D.,—a confusion that
would involve a blunder of some ten years,—as
Schmiedel and Pflciderer maintain; but, on the
contrary, a careful distinction is drawn between
them.
Moreover, since the publication of his first book
on the subject, Ramsay has collected fresh details
to support his thesis.t The year, for instance,
which he claims for the first periodic census seems
to demand an interval of some two years between
it and the earliest date for the Birth of our Lord.
This somewhat lengthy interval, which has been
urged against the theory, may perhaps be ac-
counted for by the situation of atfairs in Palestine,
which presented at the time considerable difficulty
and anxiety. But a fair and contemporary ana-
logy, so far as length of time is concerned, may be
found in another part of the Roman Empire, and
in a much simpler operation than that of a census,
The kingdom of Paphlagonia was incorporated in
the Roman province Galatia ; but although the
taking of the oath of allegiance was, as compared
with a census, a matter which required little pre-
paration and instruction of officials, yet nearly, or
perhaps more than, two years elapsed before the
oath was actually administered (xpositor, Nov.
1901, p. 321 ff.).
One of tbe most acute and prominent opponents of St. Luke’s
accuracy in regard to the question before us is Professor Schurer,
who in GJ V3 (vol. i. [1901] pp. 508-543) deals seriatim with the
difficulties which, in his opinion, St. Luke’s statement involves.
(1) Schirer, first of all, points out that history knows nothing
of a general census of the empire in the time of Augustus.
But, as Ramsay rightly says, the contrary assertion stands on
a very different level of probability from that which it occupied
before the Egyptian discovery. And if there is evidence that
the periods of the Egyptian enrolments were frequently co-
incident with the holding of a census in other parts of the
empire, we come very near to St. Luke’s statement, that
Augustus laid down a general principle of taking a census of
the whole Roman world.
(2) It is maintained by Schiirer that if St. Luke describes
Joseph as travelling to Bethlehem because he was of the house
and lineage of David, this presupposes that the lists for the
census were prepared according to descent and families, which
was by no ineans the Roman method. But Ramsay’s whole
contention is that the ‘enrolment’ in question was conducted
not according to Roman, but according to Jewish, methods.
‘It is urged,’ says Schurer, ‘that in this census an accommo-
dation was made to Jewish customs and prejudice.’ But he
argues that although this was often the case under the Em-
* On this practical method of thus avoiding any outrage upon
Jewish national feeling, see, further, B. Weiss, Leben Jesw4, 1.
231. Turner (art. ‘Chronology’ in Hastings’ DB i. 404) also
points out that Herod may well have been mindful of the
susceptibilities of the Jews, and so, in avoiding the scandal
ud by the later census (Ac 5%7), avoided also the notice of
istory.
t Zockler (art. ‘Jesus Christus’ iz PRE) speaks of Ramsay’s
theory in terms of approval; Chase speaks of the same theory
as having advanced many stages the probability that St. Luke’s
reference to the enrolment under Quirinius is historical (Super-
natural Klement in our Lord’s earthly Life, p. 21); while
Kenyon (art. ‘ Papyri’ in Hastings’ DB, Ext. Vol. 356) speaks
of the light which the discovery of the census-records in Egypt
has thrown upon the chronology of the NT, although, as he
adds, Professor Ramsay’s is the only attempt to work out the
problem in detail.
pire, yet in this instance such a method would have been too
burdensome and inconvenient; and, further, that it is very
questionable whether such an ‘enrolment’ according to tribes
and families was practicable, since in many cases it was no
longer possible to trace the link of connexion with some par-
ticular tribe or family. But with regard to the former of these
points, it is quite consistent with Ramsay’s theory that the
‘enrolment’ should have taken a considerable time, and with
regard to the second point we are fortunately able to quote
Dalman as to the accuracy with which family registers were kept
among the Jews. He points out that the title ‘Son of David’
would not have been ascribed to Jesus if it had been believed
that He did not satisfy the genealogical conditions implied by
the name. The Book of Chronicles, which gives (1 Ch 17) the
promise of 2S 7, revived afresh the idea of the royal destiny
of the family of David, and thereby contributed to the preser-
vation of the household traditions of descendants of David.
Dalman adds, ‘ Where, in addition to proud recollections, national
hopes of the greatest moment were bound up with a particular
lineage, those belonging to it would be as unlikely to forget
their origin as, in our own day, for instance, the numerous
descendants of Muhammad, or the peasant families of Norway
who are descended from ancient kings.’ And he adds, ‘ Hence
it results that no serious doubts need be offered to the idea of
a trustworthy tradition of Davidic descent in the family of
Joseph’ (Die Worte Jesu, i. p. 266).
(3) But Schurer has by no means come to the end of his
arguments. The decisive proof against a census in the time of
Herod is this, that Josephus characterizes the census of Ac 537
as something entirely new and unheard of, and that it became
on that account the cause of indignation and rebellion.* But
admitting these statements of Josephus, what then? Simply
this, that his language is amply justified with reference to the
passage mentioned, viz. Ac 537, The year a.p. 7, as Josephus
has it, did mark a new departure ; the taxing then made was
made after the Roman fashion; it was wholly removed in its
method and in its consequences from the earlier enrolhnent
under Herod. It is therefore evident that whilst Josephus
might well refer to the revolt under Judas of Galilee as the
result of this taxation, there was no reason why he should refer
to the enrolment of some ten to fourteen years earlier with
whicn no rebellious excitement was connected.
(4) In his latest edition Schtrer is very severe with regard to
Ramsay’s theory that Quirinius was associated with Quintilius
Varus, the latter being the regular governor of Syria for its
internal administration, while the former administered the
military resources of the province. This, according to Ramsay,
would bring Quirinius to Syria B.c. 7-6, and the ‘enrolment’ of
Palestine took place at the same time. St. Luke does not say
that Quirinius was governor ; he uses a vague word with regard
to him, a word which might mean that the ‘enrolment’ was
made while Quirinius was acting as leader (ἡγεμών) in Syria;
and it seems quite possible that St. Luke should speak of
Quirinius in this way, since he was holding the delegated
ἡγεμονία of the Emperor in his command of the armies of Syria.
But Schiirer presses his point, and makes much of the unlikeli-
hood that St. Luke would date his census not from the ordinary
governor, but from one who had nothing to do with the taking
of the census. Yet it must be remembered that there are un-
doubtedly examples of frequent temporary associations of
duties in Roman administration, and it is quite possible that
Quirinius may have been concerned in the census, as Plummer
suggests (art. ‘ Quirinius’ in Hastings’ DB iv. 183).t Moreover,
it may be fairly urged, as it is in fact by Ramsay, that Quirinius
ruled for a shorter time than Varus,-and that as he controlled
the foreign relations of the province he furnished the best
means of dating (Was Christ born at Bethlehem? p. 246; see
also p. 105). But if we once admit that St. Luke’s words do
not involve the belief that Quirinius was the actual governor of
Syria, the view that Quirinius may have been sent as an extra-
ordinary legate to Syria, and as such had undertaken the ad-
ministration of the census, is well worthy of consideration.
This view is mentioned by ΒΟ σου (/.c. p. 540), although only to
be rejected. But Ramsay (p. 248) points out that if this sup-
position is accepted, it may be observed that Quirinius as the
commissioner for Syria and Palestine would be a delegate ex-
ercising the emperor’s authority, and might rightly be said
ἡγεμονεύειν τῆς Sugies. At all events this view offends against no
method of Roman procedure (as Schurer apparently allows), and
it may fairly be said to be quite compatible with the language
which St. Luke employs.
When we consider the many difficulties which surround this
vexata queestio, it is somewhat surprising that Professor Schtrer
should affirm that all possible means of escape from the con-
* BJ τ. viii. 1, Vu. viii. 1.
tIn this connexion Plummer points out that Justin Martyr
refers to Quirinius at the time of the Nativity by a word equiva-
lent to one holding the office of procwrator, and not by a word
signifying deqatus, as Quirinius afterwards became in A.D. 6.
The only other place in which St. Luke uses the word employed
in the phrase ‘ when Quirinius was governor of Syria’ refers to a
procurator (Lk 31), and this fact adds weight to the supposition
that, while at the time of the enrolment Varus was actually
legatus, Quirinius may have held some such command as that
indicated above. H. Holtzmann (//dcom., 1901, i. p. 317) dis-
misses Ramsay’s proposed explanation somewhat contemptu-
ously ; but he has nothing to say with regard to the analogous
cases of a temporary division of duties in Roman administra-
tion, or to those quoted by R. 8. Bour, who is essentially in
agreement With Rainsay in the proposed solution.
206 BIRTH OF CHRIST
clusion are closed, the conclusion being that St. Luke’s state-
ment conflicts with the facts of history (/.c. p. 542). Having
arrived at this very dogmatic result, he points out that anyone
who cannot attribute such an error to Luke should bear in mind
that the Evangelist is not free from the perpetration of other
blunders. He confuses, 6.6.» the Theudas in Ac 5%, the Theudas
who rises up before Judas of Galilee, with the Theudas who
lived some forty years later. But Schtrer must be well aware
that many able critics do not accept this further summary
| assertion on his part of St. Luke’s ignorance, and that his own
learned countryman Dr. F. Blass passes the sensible judgment
in his Commentary on Ac 5°7, that St. Luke’s accuracy in other
respects should prevent us from attributing to him here such a
grave error as is sometimes alleged. Moreover, it should be
remembered that it is precisely in points connected with the
administration of the Roman provinces that St. Luke’s accuracy
has been so repeatedly proved. Consider as a single instance
the manner in which in the Acts he is able not merely to dis-
tinguish between Imperial and Senatorial provinces, but also to
note accurately the particular period during which a certain
province was under one or the other kind of rule. Or if we
turn to the Gospel, we recall how a keen controversy has raged
around the statement in Lk 3! with regard to Lysanias the
tetrarch of Abilene. Here, too, St. Luke has been accused of
manifest inaccuracy. But, to say nothing of the recent dis-
covery of two inscriptions which have been fairly cited in
support of St. Luke’s correctness, it may be observed that
Schmiedel reluctantly allows (art. ‘Lysanias’ in Hneye. Bibl.
iii. 2842) that it cannot possibly be shown, or even assumed,
that St. Luke is here mistaken, while Schiirer entertains no
such hesitation, and frankly states that ‘the Evangelist Luke
is thoroughly correct when he assumes that in the fifteenth
year of Tiberius there was a Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene’ (/.c.
p. 719). And yet within a few lines of this evidence of correct-
ness we are asked to believe that the same Evangelist was guilty
of a gratuitous and stupid blunder in relation to the enrolment
under Quirinius.
ii. St. MATTHEW’s ACcoUNT.—1. Use of OT
prophecy.—While St. Luke narrates the events
which lead to the Birth at Bethlehem without
making any definite reference to OT propheey, it
is noticeable that St. Matthew (2°) quotes delinitely
the prophecy of Micah (5?) with reference to the
home of David: ‘And thou Bethlehem, land of
Judah, art in nowise least among the princes of
Judah : for out of thee shall come forth a governor,
which shall be shepherd of my people Israel.’ The
prophecy was undoubtedly regarded as Messianic
(Zahn, Das Bvangeliim des Matthius, 1903, p. 94;
Schiirer, Z.c. 11. 527-530).
The difference in the wording of Mt 26 and Mic 52 is easily
accounted for, if we bear in mind that the Evangelist repro-
duces the prophecy in the manner popular at the time, 7.e. he
quotes some Targum on the passage, or, as Edersheim puts it,
Mic 52 is rendered targumically, and this would fairly cover
the variations in the two renderings (Jesus the Messiah, i. p.
206 ; cf. also Delitasch, Messiunische Weissagungen?, p. 129).
Bat if Schurer is correct in seeing in the prophecy of Micah
words which might easily be understood to mean that the
Messiah's goings forth had been from of old, froin everlasting,
i.¢. to signify the Messiah's pre-existence, yet it cannot be said
that Jewish theology pointed to a birth such as that recorded
by St. Matthew.
‘It ig no wonder that Zahn (1.6. p. 83) should characterize
| as altogether fantastic the attempt to derive the stories of
St. Matthew and St. Luke from the Rabbinic exegesis of Is 714,
When there is no reason to assume that the prophet’s words
were taken at the time of our Lord’s birth to refer to the
Messiah at all (see also Weber, Jiidische Theologie 2, pp. 354, 357 ;
and von Orelli, art. ‘Messias’in PRE3, 1902, and esp. Dalman,
Die Worte Jesu, i. 226). But this is a subject for which refer-
ence may be made to art. Virgin Birtu.
2. Lelation to Jewish legal requirements. —St.
Matthew's account, which with every due con-
cession may fairly be regarded as dating in its
| pre ent lorm within the limits of the Ist cent.,
cemands our attention for further reasons. It is
» ‘remarkable, for example, how strictly it adheres
to Jewish legality, and yet at the same time how
delicately the feelings and thoughts of Joseph are
porti vyed (ef. G H. Box, lc. Pp 82).
Wit! e inst i j
Ἄν 1 regard to the first point, it may be noted
nat ‘atter the betrothal the } ride was under the
naires ὩΣ ΟΝ pe ; Rise ὑ " . . ἡ
— ΠΕ Is as Na wife. If unfaithful, she
ΕΝ ΟῚ mnie W 4 MLNS : | { i
Στ πο π ΨΟΑ, uni ue d as an aduiteress (Dt
: 2 fn Ἷ Θ other hand, the bride eroom, if
ut Ἢ ied to break the contract, had the same
privi 5, ana had also to observe the same for-
malities, as in the case of divorce
The situation
ities, as re Ca Che situation
is Ulustrated in the history of Joseph and Mary,
BIRTH OF CHRIST
who were on the footing of betrothal’ (art. ‘Mar-
riace’ in Hastings’ DB iii. ; ef. also Nebe, Kind-
heitsgeschichte, pp. 199, 200, and Zahn, J.c. p. 71).
In this connexion one may also refer to another
passage in Dalman with reference to the descent
of Jesus: ‘A case such as that of Jesus,’ he writes,
‘was, of course, not anticipated by the Law ; but if
no other human fatherhood was alleged, then the
child must have been regarded as bestowed by
God upon the house of Joseph; for a betrothed
woman, according to Jewish law, already oceupied
the same status as a wite’ (Die Worte Jesu, 1.
p- 263). See BETROTHAL.
If we bear this in mind, we ean see how casy it is to interpret
the reading of the Sinaitic-Syriac palimpsest, of which so much
has been made, in Lk 2° ‘he and Mary his wife, that they
might be enrolled.’ All that the words show, if we allow that
they are the correct reading, is that Mary was under the full
legal protection of Joseph: ‘unless, indeed, our Lord had passed
in common estimation as the son of Joseph,’ it has been well
pointed out that it is difficult to see how Joseph, according to Mt
119, could have gratified his wish ‘not to expose’ Mary. And so
again ‘Joseph was without doubt the foster-father of our Lord ;
and if any register of births was kept in the Temple or elsewhere,
he would probably be there described as the actual father. Such
he was from a social point of view, and it was therefore no wilful
suppression of the truth when the most blessed amongst women
said to her Son, “ΤῊΝ father and I have sought thee sorrow-
ing”’ (Mrs. Lewis in the Hapos. Times, 1900, 1901, where illus-
trations from Eastern social customs may be also found). Cf.
W. C. Allen, Interpreter, Feb. 1905, p. 110.
3. Sobriety and delicacy of the narrative.—If we
turn again to what we may call the inwardness
of St. Matthew’s story, we can scarcely fail to be
struck with its singular sobriety and reserve. We
hear nothing of any anger or reproach on the part
of Joseph against his betrothed, although as ‘a
righteous man’ he feels that only one course is
open to him. But with this decision other con-
siderations were evidently still contending,—con-
siderations the very existence of which bore testi-
mony to the purity and fidelity of Mary. The
words of the angel (Mt 1:9) say nothing of the
appeasement of indignation, they speak rather of
the befitting conquest of hesitation and doubt:
‘fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife,’ ὁ.6. to
take unto thee one who had and still has a claim
to that honoured and cherished name. No wonder
that Dean Plumptre could write that the glimpse
given us into the character of Joseph is one of
singular tenderness and beauty (see Ellicott’s Com-
mentary, in loco). Τῇ any one will read this delicate
and beantiful description and place it side by side
with that given us in the Protevangelium Jacoht,
where, ¢.g., both Joseph and the priest bitterly
reproach Mary, and a whole series of prurient
details is given, he will again become painfully
aware of the gulf which separates the Canonical
from the Apocryphal Gospels.
4, Objections taken to the contents of Mt 1. 2.—
St. Matthew’s record, no less than that of St.
Luke, has been the object of vehement and re-
lentless attack. It is asserted, for instance, by
Usener that in the whole Birth and Childhood
story of St. Matthew a pagan substratum can be
traced (art. ‘Nativity’ in Lncyc. Bibl. ili. 3352,
and also to the same effect ZNT'W, 1903, p. 21).
Thus we are asked to find the origin of the story
of the Magi worshipping at the cradle of the
infant Jesus in the visit paid by the Parthian
king Tiridates with magi in his train to do hom:
age in Rome to the emperor Nero. But the magi
of the Parthian king were evidently, like many
other magi of the East, claimants to the possession
of secret and magical arts, and there is nothing
strange in the fact that they are found among the
retinue of a Parthian king. But what actual
pens of resemblance exist between this visit to
Nero and the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem it is
difficult to see. One crucial contrast, at any rate,
Tiridates came to
has been rightly emphasized.
BIRTH OF CHRIST
Nero, not of his own accord, but because his only
choice was to do homage to Nero or to lose his
crown. Here there is no comparison with, but
rather an obvious and essential contrast to, the
Wise Men of St. Matthew, who came with joy and
gladness to worship the Babe of Bethlehem.
Soltau, who also supports the same origin for
St. Matthew’s story, adduces the parallels which
in his opinion may be fitly drawn between the
visit of the Parthian king to Rome and the visit
of the Magi to Bethlehem (Die Geburtsgeschichte
Jesu Christi, 1902, p. 37). As might be expected,
he makes much of the fact that 'Tiridates is said
to have knelt and worshipped Nero just as the
Wise Men fell down to worship Jesus. But the
only other verbal parallel which he is able to
adduce is this: Tiridates, according to Dio Cassius
(Ixili. 2 ff), did not return by the way which he
came; beneath the quotation of this statement
Soltau writes as a parallel the words of St.
Matthew: ‘and they departed into their own
country another way’ (Mt 2”). <A strong case
scarcely stands in need ef such parallels as these. *
But an attempt is often made to trace St.
Matthew’s story to Jewish sources, and reference
is made to the words and expectations of the pro-
phets. And no doubt it is easy to affirm that such
a passage as Is 61'% might have contributed to the
formation of the legend of the adoration of the
Magi. But the Evangelist, who loves to quote
prophecies apposite in any degree to the events
connected with our Lerd’s birth, makes no refer-
ence to this passage of Isaiah which Christian
thought has so often associated with the Epiphany.
As a matter of fact, it would seem that the pro-
phecy referred primarily, not to the Messiah, but
to the city of Jerusalem and to the day of its latter
glory.
No doubt the Evangelist does definitely connect
at least two Old Testament prophecies with. the
visit of the Magi and the events immediately sub-
sequent to it. But the question may be fairly
asked, Which is more probable, that the flight into
Egypt actually took place, or that the Jewish
Evangelist, or some later hand, introduced the
incident as the fulfilment of an OT prophecy
which had primarily no definite or obvious con-
nexion, to say the least of it, with the Messiah ? +
Or, again, 1f some such event as the Massacre of
the Innocents at Bethlehem actually occurred, we
can understand that a Jewish Evangelist could
find in that event, and in the mourning of the
mothers of Israel, a further fulfilment of Jere-
miah’s words (311), sut there is no obvious
reason why he should have hit upon and _ intro-
duced such words unless some event had hap-
pened at Bethlehem which recalled to his mind
the picture which the prophet had drawn, and the
scene once enacted within a few miles of the city
of David.
Other explanations are, of course, forthcoming. ‘ Why,’ asks
Usener, ‘is Egypt selected as the place of refuge?’ and one
answer is that mythological ideas may have had their uncon-
scious influence; it is to Egypt that the Olympian gods take
their flight when attacked by the giant Typhon! (art ‘ Nativity’
in Ency. Bibl. iii. 3351 ; and ZNTW p. 217).¢ In any considera-
tidn of such statements it is well to remember first of all that,
whatever date we assign to St. Matthew,§ we are dealing with
* See also the recent criticisms of A. Jeremias, Babylonisches
im NT, 1905, p. 55.
t On the exact words of Hos 111, quoted by St. Matthew from
the Hebrew, see Zahn, Evangelium des Matthdus, p. 103; and
also Delitzsch, Messianische Weissagungen2, 1899, p. 105.
1 Indications are not wanting that this constant and some-
what reckless appeal to supposed pagan analogies is being over-
done ; see, e.g., Farnell’s remarks in the Hibbert Journal, July
1904, p. 827.
§ In art. ‘Gospels’ in Encyc. Bibl. ii. 1893, mention is made
of the Syriac writing attributed to Eusebius, and it is main-
tained that, according to this document, the story of the Magi,
committed to writing in the interior of Persia, was, in A.p. 119,
in the episcopate of Xystus of Rome, made search for, dis-
BIRTH OF CHRIST 207
an historic period of the world’s history, and that the writer at
least claims to place his events in relation to historical data.
Nothing was more natural than that Egypt should be chosen
as the place of refuge ; it was nigh at hand, the communication
by caravan was very frequent ; in earlier days Jeroboam had
fled thither from Solomon (1 Καὶ 114°), and it was to Tahpanhes
that Johanan, the son of Kareah, and his companions had gone
to save themselves out of the hands of the Chaldeans (Jer 437).
Nothing was more in accordance with the char-
acter of Herod than the deed of bloodshed ascribed
to him, and modern days supply many proofs of
the unscrupulous manner in which a jealous and
suspicious potentate has not hesitated to rid him-
self of anyone likely to render his tenure of sove-
reignty insecure (see, ¢.g., amongst recent writers
Kreyher, Die gungfrauliche Geburt des Herrn, 1904,
Ρ. 83).* On the other hand, it is very improb-
able that the Evangelist would have invented a
story in which the birth of the Messiah was made
to bring bitter sorrow into so many Jewish homes.+
Nothing, again, was more likely than that Joseph
should withdraw into Galilee after the return from
Egypt, since we have evidence that Archelaus very
soon after his accession gave proof of the same
cruel and crafty behaviour as had characterized
his father (Jos. BJ I. vi. 2).
In the next place, it is well to remember that
there is at all events one instance of a prophecy
cited in this part of the Gospel of St. Matthew
the fulfilment of which is beyond doubt, if we can
be said to know anything at all of the histori-
cal Jesus (2%). And yet no one with any discern-
ment could possibly maintain that our Lord’s
residence and bringing up in Nazareth were intro-
duced for the sake of finding a fulfilment for a
prophecy which it is so ditticult to trace to any one
source in OT literature. But if in this case it is
certain that the prophecy could not have created
the fact, why in the case of the other prophecies
cited should their alleged fulfilment be credited to
the extravagant imagination of the Evangelist,
and to that alone?§
il. APOCRYPHAL ACCOUNTS. —It is of the greatest
significance that just in that portion of our Lord’s
life concerning which the Gospels of St. Matthew
and St. Luke are most sileut, the Apocryphal
covered, and written in Greek. But Zahn (Einleitwng, ii. p.
266) points out that this statement at least shows that by the
date named the year of the coming of the Magi was discussed
not only in Rome, but in various places. He further argues,
with good reason, from the same statement of the pseudo-
Eusebius, that the narrative of Mt 2 had already been incorpor-
ated in the Gospel before A.p. 119. See, further, Ch. Quart.
Rev. July 1904, p. 389. In this connexion it may be noted that
it is difficult to see why the statement of St. Ignatius, exagger-
ated as it is, should not be taken to refer to the star of the Magi
(Ephes. xix. 2, 3). On the significance of this early reference to
the Gospel narrative in St. Ignatius, see Headlam, Criticism of
the NT, p. 166 (St. Margaret's Lectures). In his recent Com-
mentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel, Wellhausen begins with 31,
which is certainly a short and easy method of dealing with the
two earlier chapters.
* See, further, art. Maer. It may, however, be here noted
that Ramsay remarks on Macrobius, Sat. ii. 4, that it is not
probable that Macrobius (a pagan, about A.D. 400) was indebted
to a Christian writer for his information, and that therefore
the story of the Massacre of the Infants was recorded in some
pagan source (Was Christ born at Bethlehem? pp. 219, 220).
Zockler also refers to Macrobius as affording a testimony from
a non-biblical source to the truth of the Massacre at Bethlehem
(art. ‘Jesus Christus’ in PR#%), On the silence of Josephus
see, further, Zahn, Evangelium des Matthdus, p. 109; and
Edersheim, The Temple at the Time of Jesus Christ, p. 35 f.
t Zahn, Evangelium des Matthdus, p. 109. See, too, the
same reference for the improbability of supposing that the
story in St. Matthew was derived from the rescue of Moses (Ex
115 210; Jos. Agit. τι. ix. 2); and cf. art. Magi.
1 ‘There is a noticeable difference between St. Matthew’s
references to the political situation in Palestine and St. Luke’s.
St. Luke speaks with the air of painstaking investigation ; St.
Matthew, with that of easy familiarity, all the more noteworthy
that the frequent and somewhat complicated succession of
rulers would have made error easy.’ This important point is
noted by Burton in his Jntroduction to the Gospels (Chicago),
1904, p. 4.
δ See some excellent remarks of Bruce in the Eapositor’s
Greck Testament, i. p. 78.
208 BIRTH OF CHRIST
Gospels are most effusive.* Here was an oppor-
tunity for them to occupy a vacant space, and
they lost no endeavour in trying to fill it. Both in
the details of the Nativity and in the events just
referred to as subsequent to it, we find ample proofs
of this. Thus Elisabeth is fearful that in accord-
ance with the commands of Herod her son John
may be slain. And when she can find no place
of concealment, she begs a mountain to receive
mother and child, and instantly the mountain is
cleft to receive her; and a light shines round
about, for an angel of the Lord is watching for her
preservation, And upon this there follows a tragic
scene of the murder of Zacharias, who is slain for
his refusal to betray his son. As the Holy Family
pass through Egypt, the marvellous accompanies
them at every step. In these apocryphal stories,
lions, dragons, and panthers adore the infant
Jesus; a palm tree bends at His word that His
Mother may eat the fruit; in one day the
travellers accomplish a journey of thirty days;
the idols prostrate themselves in the temples
before the Mother and her Child. And we know
how the long silence of our Lord’s life in our
Gospels, which is broken only by one incident in
St. Luke, and by the brief summary of St. Matthew,
‘He shall be called a Nazarene,’ affords further
opportunity for the introduction of the same in-
sipid and fantastic tales.t Even in modern days
there have not been wanting writers who have
boldly essayed to oceupy the same ground with an
equal lack of historical data.t In all this and
much else we mark again and again the reserve
so characteristic of St. Matthew and St. Luke
alike, a reserve and restraint often emphasized by
earlier commentators, and again recently referred
to by German v-riters so far apart in point of view
as Gunkel and Hermann Cremer.§
iv. CONVERGENT TRADITIONS AND THE MAIN
FACTS.—It is often said that the narratives in
our two canonical Gospels contradict one another.
But although, no doubt, it is difficult to harmonize
them in their particulars and sequences, their in-
dependence is evident proof that there was no
attempt on the pate of one Evangelist to make his
work the complement or corrector of the other.|
Antecedently we might have expected that St.
Luke, the Gentile Evangelist, would have told us
of the adoration of the Magi, and that the Hebrew
Evangelist would have given us the picture of
obedience on the part of Mother and°Child to the
details of the Law and the worship of the Temple.
And it is justly urged as no small proof of the
truch of the narratives that each Evangelist could
* For a useful classification of the most important of the
Apocryphal Gospels, and a list of those which claim to fill up
the gaps in our knowledge of the Infancy and Childhood of
von See art. “apocryphal Gospels in Hastings’ DB, Ext.
In the same volume (art. ‘ Papyri,’ Ῥ. 352) it is of interest to
note that Kenyon in commenting upon the later Egyptian
p ri remarks that one document written about the end of
the Ist cent. has been held to show certain resemblances to
wrative of the Nativity of our Lord, but that the resem-
is, 10. truth, very slight and unessential.
ἡ It cannot be said that
1 accounts of the N
Conrady’s attempt to derive our
‘tivity from the Apocryphal Gospels,
ν fr the Protevangelium Jacobi, is likely to gain
acceptar D hu der kanonischen Kindh« itsgeschichte
is article in SK, 1904, Heft 2). Such a
called a literary miracle. For a criti-
mpt, see Z'heol, Literaturblatt, 1901,
ζ 5 , C A. Witz, Keine Liicke im Leben Jesu, 1895,
— - orutvon Nikolaus Notowitsch,
Γι Ϊ 'r ἢ Ϊ
ao. 1 H. Cremer, Reply to Harnack,
tig ἵν οἱ ‘a { tles’ Or ,
mL al 7 : Hes Creed, p. 50, for the
egg two. most entirely differ- |
ee ΝῊ wort pI ble order of-the events see
a ἢ Ι 8, Life ef our Lord upon the |
δον , F Ge O417., also
BLASPHEMY
thus transcend his own special standpoint and
purpose (Iairbairn, Stud. in Life of Christ, p. 36).*
It is indeed urged that this same contradiction may be found
in those parts of the canonical narratives which relate most
closely to our Lord’s birth (Lobstein, The Virgin Birth of Christ,
p. 42, Eng. tr.). But the details vouchsafed to us, it may be
fairly said, present no essential incompatibility, and two con-
vergent traditions coming from distinct sources may be rightly
affirmed to corroborate and sustain each other as to the main
facts which they describe (Church Quarterly Review, Oct. 1904,
pp. 200, 201; W. C. Allen, ἐ.ὁ. p. 115).
The belief that St. Matthew gives us an account
which comes primarily from Joseph, while St.
Luke gives us an account that comes primarily
from Mary, has iong been maintained by many
able eritics, and it is a belief which still commends
itself as the most satisfactory explanation of the
two stories. It is the simplest thing to see how
in the one case the frequent repetition of the
name ‘Joseph’ points to him as the primary source
of information, and how in the other case the
twice repeated reference to Mary points to her as
occupying the same position: ‘Mary kept all
these sayings, pondering them in her heart’ (Lk
21%); ‘and his mother kept all these sayings in her
heart’ (v.71), One thing may be safely asserted,
that if these two accounts had come to us agreeing
in every particular, we should have been asked to
discredit them on account of this very agreement.
LITERATURE.—A considerable amount of the literature has
been indicated above, and for further information art. ViRGIN
Birtu should be consulted. The following works may be added
here: W. H. Mill, Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels,
1861; C. F. Schmid, Biblical Theology of the NT, 1870 (Eng.
tr. p. 25 ff.]; F. L. Steinmeyer,’ Die Gesch. der Geburt des
Herrn, 1873; Wace, The Gospel and its Witnesses, 1883; F.
Godet, Commentaire sur Vévangile de Luc, 1888; Nésgen, Ges-
chichte Jesu, 1891, p. 113 ff. ; Geboren von der Jungfrau, Anon-
ymous, Leipzig, 1896; Bishop Gore, Dissertations on Subjects
connected with the Incarnation?; Grenfell and Hunt, Oxy-
rhynchus Papyri, i. 1899; AJTh, July 1902; J. Grill, Unter-
suchungen tuber die Entstehung des vierten Evangeliwm, 1992,
p. 380ff.; Briggs, New Light on the Life of Jesus, 1903;
Dean of Westminster, Some Thoughts on the Incarnation, 1903 ;
Randolph, The Virgin Birth of our Lord, 1903; J. E. Carpenter,
Bible in the Nineteenth Century, 1903, p. 491 ff. ; Bishop Words-
worth, The Baptismal Confession and the Creed, 1904 ; Th. H.
Wandel, Die Wunderbare Zeugung, 1903; E. Burton, Intro-
duction to the Gospels (Chicago): Appended notes on ‘ Quirinius,’
and ‘The Old Testament Law in Luke ii. 22-24,’ 1904; Lepin,
Jésus Messie et Fils de Diew, 1904, pp. 55-75; P. W. Schmidt,
Geschichte Jesu, 1904, ii. 13, 14; Cheyne, Bible Probleins, 1905 ;
W. C. Allen, Znterpreter, Feb. and Oct. 1905; G. H. Box,
ZNTW, 1905, Heft 1. R. J. KNOWLING.
BIRTHDAY.—In Mt 146 and Mk 6% this word
represents the Gr. τὰ γενέσια in the account of the
king’s (Herod Antipas) feast to his nobles, at
which John the Baptist was condemned to death.
It has been suggested, however, though without
much acceptance, that the anniversary referred to
was that of Herod’s accession, not strictly that of
his birth. Τενέσια, which in Attie Greek means
‘the commemoration of the dead,’ is in the later
language interchangeable with γενέθλια (birthday
celebrations), and there seems no reason why the
translation of RV and AV should not be right (see
Swete on Mk 6, and Hastings’ DB, s.v.). The
custom of observing the birthday of a king was
widely spread in ancient times (cf. Gn 40, 2 Mac
67; Herod. ix. 110).
For the question of the date of our Lord's birth,
and the authority for the traditional 25th December,
see art. CALENDAR, C. L. FELTOE.
BLASPHEMY (βλασφημία ; for derivation of word
see Hastings’ DB, vol. i. p. 305*).—This word is
used in the Gospels, as in other parts of the NT,
_for abusive speech generally, as well as for lan-
guage that is insulting to God. Thus we read of
* A careful study of Resch’s attempt (1897) to reconstruct a
| Kindheitsevangelium from the first two chapters of St. Luke
and St. Matthew with the help of some extra-canonical parallels,
and to restore the Hebrew orizinal of the narrative, can scarcely
' be said to carry conviction with it.
BLASPHEMY
BLASPHEMY 209
as Beelzebub.
Jesus did not expressly say that
‘an evil eye, blasphemy (RV railing), pride,’ ete.
(Mk 72), where the position of the word indicates
human relations. The evil eye is followed by the
evil tongue, the one by look and the other by
speech expressing malignity towards a fellow-man.
Two questions concerning blasphemy come up in
the Gospels, viz. the teaching of Jesus Christ on
the subject, and the charge of blasphemy brought
against our Lord.
1. The teaching of Jesus Christ concerning
blasphemy.— Using the term in the general sense,
our Lord does not always formally distinguish be-
tween insulting speech with regard to God and
abusive language towards men. βλασφημία in any
application of it is sin, As railing against our
fellow-men, it comes in a catalogue of sins together
with the most heinous—‘ murders, adulteries,’ ete.
(Mk 72). In this connexion it is treated as one of
the ‘evil things’ that ‘proceed from within, and
defile the man.’ Thus it is taken to be the expres-
sion of a corrupt heart, and as such a defilement
of the person who gives vent to it. Nevertheless
it is not beyond the reach of pardon. With one
exception all revilings may be forgiven (Mk 3%: *,
Mt 125, The comprehensive sentence must in-
clude blasphemy against God, although that is not
expressly mentioned. In Mt 1255 there is a refer-
ence to blasphemy against the Son of Man, and
in both eases the unpardonable sin of blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost is mentioned; but in
neither case is there any reference to blasphemy
against the Father. Perhaps the safest thing is
to say that this was not in mind at the time, so
that no direct pronouncement-was made concern-
ing it; and, further, it is to be observed that Trini-
tarian distinctions do not appear in these teach-
ings of Jesus. Jesus is here the ‘Son of Man,’ not
‘the Son,’ 1.6. of God, and the Holy Spirit is God
in His manifested activity. Still, it must be im-
plicitly contained in St. Mark’s emphatic sentence,
‘All their sins . . . and their blasphemies where-
with soever they shall blaspheme (ica ἂν βλασφημή-
σωσιν).᾽
To ‘speak a word against the Son of Man’ is
taken as one form of the blasphemy or reviling.
Here, therefore, the word is not used in its rela-
tion to God. It does not stand for what we now
understand by ‘blasphemy’ in our narrower sense
of the word. Jesus is not here standing on the
ground of His divinity, to insult which would be
Llasphemy in this modern sense. He is speaking
of Himself as seen among men, and referring to
personal insults. But, since the term ‘the Son
of Man’ appears to be a veiled reference to His
Messiahship, for Himself and for the enlightened
among His followers He must have meant that
those who insulted Him, even though He was the
Christ, were not beyond pardon ; ef. ‘ Father, for-
give them,’ etc. (Lk 23%, om. BD*, etc.). Some
doubt, however, is thrown on this reference to ‘ the
Son of Man’ because (1) it does not occur in the
Mk. parallel passage; (2) in Mk. but not in Mt.
the phrase ‘the sons of men’ occurs in an earlier
part of the saying (3%).
The nature of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost
(Mt 1222*2, Mk 32, Lk 1910) must be learnt from
the context. This excludes such notions as rejec-
tion of the gospel (Iren.), denial of the divinity of
Christ (Athan.), mertal sin after baptism (Origen),
persistence in sin till death (August.). The form
of the blasphemy is given in the words ‘ because
they said, He hath an unclean spirit,’ and the occa-
sion of it was Jesus’ casting out of demons. Jesus
declares that this is done ‘by the Spirit of God’
(Mt 1278), or ‘by the finger of God’ (Lk 11*°). To
ascribe this action to Beelzebub is to be guilty of,
or to approach the guilt of, blasphemy against the
Holy Spirit, because it is treating the Holy Spirit
VOL. I.—I4
the scribes who put forward this Beelzebub theory
of His work had actually committed this sin. He
judged by thought and intention, not by outward
utterance. A prejudiced, ignorant, hasty, super-
ficial utterance of the calumny would not contain
the essence of the sin. This must be a conscious,
intentional insult. If one mistakes a saint for a
knave, and addresses him accordingly, he is not
really guilty of insulting him, for it is not actually
the saint but the knave whom he hasin mind. If
the presence of the Holy Spirit was not recognized,
there could be no blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit. But when it was perceived and yet deliber-
ately treated as evil, the action would indicate a
wilful reversal of the dictates of conscience. Our
Lord warns His hearers that such a sin cannot
be forgiven either in the present age—the pre-
Messianic, or in the age to come—the Messianic,
that is, as we should say, the Christian age. The
condition of such a person will be that he is guilty
(ἔνοχος) of an eternal (αἰωνίου) sin (so RV of Mk 3°,
following NBL, ete., ἁμαρτήματος ; not ‘damnation,’
as in AV, after the Syrian reading κρίσεως, A, ete.).
This cannot well mean ‘a sin that persists, a fixed
disposition,’ as Dr. Salmond understands it, be-
cause (1) the Greek word ἁμάρτημα stands for an
act, not a state; (2) there is nothing in the con-
text to indicate persistency in the blasphemy ;
(8) the Jewish current conception was that a sin
once committed remained on the sinner till it was
atoned for or forgiven. He had to bear his sin.
Therefore one who was never forgiven would have
to bear his sin eternally, and so would be said to
have an eternal sin. Wellhausen understands it to
be equivalent to eternal punishment (‘schuldig
ewiger Siinde, d. i. ewiger Strafe,’ Evang. Marci, 28).
At the same time, while this must be understood
as the correct exegesis of the words, the saying
should be interpreted in harmony with the spirit
of Christ. Nowit is characteristic of legalism and
the letter to make a solitary exception, depending
on one external act. The Spirit of Christ is con-
cerned with character rather than with specific
deeds, and it is contrary to His spirit that one
specific deed should be singled out for exclusion
from merey. Then, elsewhere, the breadth of His
gospel indicates that no genuine seeker would be
rejected. Therefore we must understand Him to
mean either (1) that to be guilty of such a sina
man must be so hardened that he never would re-
pent, or (2) that such a sin cannot be overlooked,
forgotten, and swallowed up in the general flood of
merey. It must come up for judgment. Against
(1) and for (2) is the fact that our Lord says nothing
of the offender’s disposition, but only refers to the
sin, its heinous character, and consequent never-
to-be-denied or forgotten ill-desert. See, further,
art. UNPARDONABLE SIN.
2. The charge of blasphemy brought against
Jesus Christ.— This charge was brought against
our Lord on three occasions—two recorded in the
Synoptics and one in the Fourth Gospel. In all of
these cases the alleged blasphemy is against God,
actual blasphemy in our sense of the word. The
first instance is at the cure of the paralytic who
had been let down through the roof (Mt 9’, Mk 2’,
Lk 5%). Jesus had just said to the sufferer, ‘Thy
sins are forgiven thee.’ Upon this the scribes and
Pharisees who were present complained that He
was speaking blasphemies because only God could
forgive sins, that is to say, that He was arrogating
to Himself a Divine prerogative. In His answer
He distinetly claimed this right on the ground of
His enigmatic title of ‘the Son of Man,’ and held
it to be confirmed by His cure of the paralytic.
The second occasion is that recorded by St. John,
where the Jews declare that their attempt to stone
BLESSEDNESS
210
Jesus was ‘for blasphemy,’ adding ‘because that
thou, being a man, makest thyself God’ (Jn 10*).
This was just after He had said, ‘I and the Father
are one (ἐν). The third occasion is at the trial of
Jesus. According to Mt 26 and Mk 14° when
Jesus, after being adjured by the high priest to
declare if He were the Christ, declared that they
would ‘see the Son of Man sitting at the right
hand of power and coming with the clouds of
heaven,’ the high priest treated this as blasphemy,
rending his garments as a token of horror at the
words. Yet the claim was not for more than the
Book of Enoch assigned to the Messiah. But
the Messiah in that Apocalyptic book is a heavenly
being. Such a being Caiaphas would understand
Jesus to claim to be, and he reckoned the pro-
fession of such a claim blasphemous. ‘This was the
formal ground of the condemnation of Jesus to
death by the Sanhedrin. The first charge, that of
threatening to destroy the Temple and rebuild it
in three days, had broken down because of the
inconsistency of the witnesses. The second charge
is suddenly sprung upon Jesus by the high priest
on the ground of His words at the council ; and, on
this account, as guilty of blasphemy, He was con-
demned to death, although it was useless to cite
the words before Pilate, who would have dismissed
the case as Gallio at Corinth dismissed what he
regarded as ‘a question about words and names’
(Ac 18). Therefore a third charge, never men-
tioned in the Jewish trial,—/a@se majestatis, treason
against Ceesar,—was concocted for use at the
Roman trial.
It is to be observed that there is one common
character in all these accusations of blasphemy
brought against Jesus. He is never accused of
direct blasphemy, speaking insulting words about
God. The alleged blasphemy is indirect, in each
ease claiming more or less Divine rights and powers
for Himself.
Lastly, it may be noted that Lk 22° AV has the
word ‘blasphemously’ for the way in which the
mockers spoke of Jesus; but RV has ‘reviling,’
which is the evident meaning. There is no refer-
ence to our narrower sense of blasphemy as insult-
ing the Divine; the word (βλασφημοῦντες) is used
in the common wider sense.
LITERATURE. —S. J. Andrews, Life of Our Lord, 505-514;
Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Blasphemy’; Cremer, Bibl.-Theol. Lex.
8.00. βλασφημία, βλασφημέω; and in particular on blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost, Martensen, Christian Ethics, ii. p.
123 ff.; Gloag, Exegetical Studies, p. 1ff.; Expositor, 2nd ser.
ill, [1882] p. 321ff.; A. Maclaren, Christ’s Musts, 44-54.
W. F. ADENEY.
BLESSEDNESS. — Though the word ‘blessed-
ness’ itself is never found in the recorded utter-
ances of our Lord nor in the pages of the Gospels,
the idea conveyed by it is very frequent. The
adjective ‘blessed’ occurs in many contexts, and
neh indeed, be termed a characteristic epithet on
irist’s lips. Che thought expressed by it was
inherited, like so many others, from the Old Testa-
ment. It is one of the dominant notes of the
mt. Psalter (Heb. 12x Ὁ the happiness of ἢ, and consti-
tutes one of the clearest and most common terms
whereby to denote the ideal of Israel’s highest hopes.
I was natural, therefore, that Jesus should take
the word forth the great spiritual realities
of His kingdom. It is in this sense that it meets
us on the earliest pages of St. Matthew’s Gospel.
Phe form of the sayings there collected
(see BEATITUDES) is one of the best-known
mabe ἄρδω So throughout the pages
he Gospx in the NT we find
mould. All of them are
graces to be looked for
bo set
famous
art.
section narrative
and elsewhere
Sayings cast in the same
expressive of the spiritual
in disciples of the kinedo ; ἣ j ὡς
gdom (e.g. Mt 116. Lk 723
Mt 24", Ac 20%) οἱ Bes
leces open to believe)
. "| A - . .
are indicative of high privi-
BLESSING
Lk 11%, Jn 2039). Spiritual gladness is not only a
note of service in the kingdom, but is to accom-
pany all its true and inalienable rewards.
When we set ourselves to discover the signifi-
‘cance of these sayings we are struck (1) by their
spiritual character. Twice (Lk 1157 and 14?) beati-
tudes of a material character are uttered by our
Lord’s hearers, and He at once rebukes them, and
shows the necessity of fixing the desires of the heart
on the inward and unseen. The main qualities
designated and praised are meekness, purity, ten-
derness of heart, peaceableness, faith, patience, con-
trition, qualities which have no sooner been named
than we are reminded of such lists of the fruits of
the Spirit as we find in Gal 5”: or Eph 4%-*,
Blessedness, as Christ presented it, was therefore
a condition of the mind and heart that expressed
an attitude of faith and love towards God and men,
and obtained the reward with-certainty even if the
sowing were ‘in tears’ and the ‘interest far off.’
(2) Several of these sayings are marked by the
sense of the futurity of their fulfilment. It is note-
worthy that in the list of Beatitudes in Mt 5,
while the majority speak of futurity, ‘shall be
comforted,’ ‘shall inherit,’ ete., one or two are
written in the present tense, e.g. ‘theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.’ In v.!® we have the unique
form of expression, ‘have been persecuted . .
theirs is.’ In St. Luke also we find the same com-
mingling of present and future. This reflects a
state of opinion that prevails throughout the
Gospels, and gives rise to some of the greatest
problems of interpretation, viz. in what sense the
kingdom of God is to be understood—as a present
or as a future condition. The Beatitudes are not
only closely related to this question—they consti-
tute a special aspect of it. As Titius puts it, ‘Over
every saying of Jesus may be written the inscrip-
tion, ‘‘Concerning the kingdom of God.”’ These
sayings, then, reveal the nature of the kingdom in
its twofold aspect as an inward, spiritual, present
reality which exists, progresses, suffers, is in per-
petual conflict ; and, as a great future fulfilment,
when conflict shall turn to peace, failure to victory,
suffering to reward, and the inward desire and the
outward attainment be one in the presence of per-
fected power.
Blessedness may therefore be regarded as one
of the forms under which our Lord presented the
character of His kingdom, and so it becomes an
illuminative idea whereby to read the whole
Gospel narratives. They all illustrate it. They
all serve to make up its content. The word and
thought derived from the Old Testament receive
richer significance, and may be taken as equi-
valent to those other great terms, such as ‘ eternal
life’ and ‘the kingdom of heaven,’ under which,
in the pages of St. John and St. Matthew, the
great purposes of God in Christ are set forth.
LITERATURE.—The articles ‘Blessedness’ and, in particular,
‘Sermon on the Mount’ in Hastings’ DB; the articles in this
Dictionary on ΒΕΑΤΙΤΌΡΕΒ, KINGDOM OF Gop, ETERNAL LIFE,
PARABLES, etc. ; the Commentaries on Mt 5 and Lk 6, and on
the other verses quoted, especially, for practical purposes,
Morison, Bruce [in Hapos. Gr. Test.]; Trench, The Sermon on
the Mount. The most recent full commentary on Matthew is
that of Zahn (in German). Books on the Kingdom of God
should also be consulted, and, in particular, A. Titius, Die NT
Lehre von der Seligkeit, etc., erster Teil, 1895; and Lousset,
Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judentum. See also N.
Smyth, Christian Ethics, 118 ff.; J. B. Lightfoot, Sermons in St.
Paul's, 178; T. G. Selby, U'he Imperfect Angel, 25.
G. CURRIE MARTIN.
BLESSING.—
Introductory.
Terms.
Jewish usage.
. Usage in the Gospels.
Literature.
1. Introductory.—The main underlying idea of
poo BO pt
min its message (e.g. Mt 131% 1 the characteristic New Testament word for “ bless-
BLESSING
BLESSING 211
ing’ (εὐλογεῖν) seems to be that of goodwill, which,
on the part of man towards God, has its appro-
priate expression in praise and thanksgiving. ‘The
close connexion of these two last ideas is clearly
seen in the New Testament in the interchange of
the expressions for ‘ to bless’ (εὐλογεῖν) and ‘ to give
thanks,’ namely to God (εὐχαριστεῖν, ef. e.g. Mk 6%
and || with Jn 6!!; and see, further, below, § 4),
and is explained by the Jewish development of the
term for ‘blessing’ (bérakhah; οἴ. further, § 4 4).
In Jewish religious terminology, under the influ-
ence of the high ethical views of God’s character
and uniqueness, and His relation to Israel and
mankind, that had been developed, ‘blessing’
acquires a lofty spiritual connotation. God
‘blesses’ man and his world by His ever active,
beneficent Providence; man ‘blesses’ God by
thankful recognition of this, and by pure acts of
praise ; man ‘ blesses’ man by invoking the Divine
favour for his fellows’ benefit (cf. e.g. Ps 1298);
and even when material things are the objects of
blessing, this finds its proper expression in an act
of thanksgiving to the Divine Giver.
The original sense of the Heb. verb bérakh (Piel, denomina-
tive from berekh, ‘ knee’) is more probably ‘to cause to make
progress’ (so Cheyne) than any notion of adoration (‘to bend
the knee’). The primitive conception of blessing and cursing,
according to which they were regarded as possessing an ob-
jective existence, more or less independent of the speaker after
utterance (cf. Gn 2795), naturally became moralized with the
progress of monotheistic religion (cf. Pr 26? for a denunciation
of ‘the causeless curse’).
2. Terms.—The terms for ‘blessing’ used in the
Gospels are
(a) εὐλογεῖν, ‘ to bless,’ and εὐλογητός, εὐλογημένος,
‘blessed.’ All these forms are common in the
LXX, where, in the vast majority of instances,
they correspond to some form of the Heb. word
7712 or its derivatives.
εὐλογεῖν is used—
(A) of men: (1) as in Greek writings, in the sense of ‘to
praise,’ ‘celebrate with praises,’ viz. God. So several times
in the Gospels: e.g. Lk 164 223 2453 (syn. αἰνεῖν, ‘ to praise,’ and
δοξάζειν, ‘to elorify’; see under, αἰνεῖν, below]. (2) ‘To invoke
blessings upon’ (a sense peculiar to Biblical Greek): e.g. Lk 628.
(3) ‘To bless’ material objects (i.e. to bless God for their be-
stowal): e.g. Lk 916,
(B) of God: (4) ‘To bestow blessings, favour, upon men’:
e.g. LK 142 (εὐλογημένο). [The compound χατευλόγειν, ‘to call
down blessings upon’ occurs, according to the best attested
reading, in Mk 1010].
(ὁ) εὐχαριστεῖν, ‘to give thanks,’ viz. to God,
esp. for food: ὁ... Mt 15% 05", With this compare
also—
(c) ἐξομολογεῖν, ‘to celebrate,’ ‘give praise or
thanks to’ (τινί) : Mt 1135 and ||, and—
(¢) αἰνεῖν, ‘to praise, extol’ God: Lk 2!% °° 1057
9455 (reading doubtful). (Cf. the use of the syn-
onymous expression δοξάζειν, Lk 1715, and διδόναι
δύξαν τῷ θεᾷ, ‘to give glory to God, Lk 178—
both of thanksgiving].
(6) μακαρίζειν, ‘to pronounce blessed’: once only
in Gospels, Lk 148; and μακάριος, ‘ blessed,’ ‘ happy’
(esp. in a congratulatory sense): ¢.g. in the Beati-
tudes (Mt 55:11, Lk 629-22. ef. Jn 20%). Both words
are common in the LXX.
It is remarkable that the term εὐχαριστεῖν occurs very rarely
(and only in the Apocryphal books) in the LXX. The common
LXX equivalent for ‘to give thanks’ (Heb. hdddh) is ἐξοιμολογ είν.
αἰνεῖν is also of frequent occurrence there. The Bishop of
Salisbury (The Holy Communion2, p. 135 n. 34) suggests that
εὐλογεῖν in the NT was ‘often purposely exchanged . . . for the
more Classical and intelligible ey«porey.’
3. Jewish usage.—The elements that entered
into the Hebrew idea of ‘blessing’ ¢ sketched
* The derivatives εὐχαριστία (‘giving of thanks’) and εὐχάρισ-
τὸς (‘thankful’) do not occur in the Gospels.
ΠῚ See, further, on this expression Grimm-Thayer, Lex. 8.0.
oso, il. %
t The wide variety of meaning attached to 773 in the OT
(cf. Oaford Hebrew Lexicon, s.v.) well illustrates this.
above (§ 1) were elaborately developed in later
Jewish usage. Here the most important points
for the illustration of the Gospels may be briefly
summarized.
(A) Blessing of persons.—According to Jewish
ideas, God is the sole source of all blessing, both
material and spiritual; and to Him alone, there-
fore, praise and thanksgiving are due (cf. Eph 1*
for a beautiful Christian application of the idea).
Thus, even in the great Priestly Blessing (Nu 0553),
which filled so large a place in Jewish liturgical
worship both in the temple and (in a less degree)
in the synagogue, it was not the priest per se who
blessed, but God (Sifre, ad loc.).* The blessing of
man by man finds one of its most prominent ex-
pressions in greeting and farewell, a custom of
great antiquity, and not, of course, in itself
specifically Jewish.t But the formulas connected
with it naturally reflect Jewish religious senti-
ment ina marked degree. The fundamental idea
of goodwill is worked out into an invocation of
the Divine favour and providence, and consequent
prosperity, on the recipient. These ideas find
beautiful expression in the Priestly Blessing, and
in the poetical amplification of it embodied in Ps.
67.t The characteristic word employed in greeting
and farewell is ‘ peace’ (Heb. sha@lém, Greek εἰρήνη),
which has a wide connotation, embracing the
notions of security, safety, prosperity, and feli-
city.§ ‘Thus the regular formula of greeting is
‘Peace be to thee’ ( 6°, Dn 101%), and, for fare-
well, ‘Go in peace’ (cf. 1S 117 ete.). ‘To greet’
is expressed in Hebrew by the phrase ‘to ask
of a person concerning peace (welfare)’ (cf. Gn
4327, Ex 187 ete.), and similar formulas.|| The use
of the word ‘blessed’ (Heb. barv%kh), both in
solemn greeting (1S 1518 ‘Blessed be thou of J’,’
ef. Ps 118*6 ‘Blessed is he that cometh’) and
parting (1 K 109), should also be noted in this
connexion.
The custom of imparting a solemn blessing at
final departure (from life‘) is attested in the
Talmud (e.g. Ber. 28b—death of Johanan ben
Zakkai, c. 75-80 A.D.).
Besides the salutation, other forms of blessing
prevailed, notably the blessing of children by
parents (and sometimes by others). This custom
is well attested in the OT (cf. ¢.g. Gn 97° 277% 489).
Jacob’s blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh is esp.
notable, because it fixed the formula which has
been used among the Jews in later times.** The
earliest literary evidence for the existence of this
particular custom is quite late (17th cent.) ; but
that some form of parental blessing was well
known by the NT period may be inferred from
Sir 39 (οἵ. Mk 1015:16 and ||).
According to the minor Talmudical tractate Sopherim
(xviii. 5), which contains valuable old traditional material: ‘In
Jerusalem there was the godly custom to initiate the children
at the beginning of the thirteenth year by fasting the whole
Day of Atonement. During this year they took the boy to the
* The special sanctity with which the Aaronic blessing was
invested in the later period lay in the pronunciation of ‘the
ineffable name,’ which was permitted to the priests only.
Originally, however, this restriction was not in force. Thus
the Mishna (Ber. x. 4) cites Ru 24 as proving that ‘the name’
was used in ordinary greetings ; cf. also Ps 1298,
+ See the articie ‘Salutation’ (with reff.) in Kitto’s Biblicai
Cyclopedia, iii. p. 739.
4 The whole Psalni gives a fine analysis of the contents of the
Hebrew idea of blessing. Other echoes of the Priestly Blessing —
occur in the Psalter (Ps 46 3116 805. 7. 19),
§ Note that this word forms the climax of the Priestly Bless-
ing (Nu 676).
|| For further details see the Hebrew Lexicons, s.v. iby.
4 Cf. 2 K 29.
** For boys the formula runs: ‘May God make thee like
Ephraim and Manasseh’ ; for girls: ‘May God make thee like
Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah’ (cf. Ru 411). Any other
blessing suggested by the occasion or special circumstances
might be added. See, further, Jewish Encyc. (as cited below,
§ 4, end).
BLESSING
212
priests and learned men that they might bless him, and pray
for him that God might think him worthy of a life devoted to
the study of the Torah and pious works.’ *
(B) Blessing of things.—The feeling of praise
and thanksgiving, which is so striking and promi-
nent a feature of Jewish devotional life and worship,
has erystallized itself into a regular form of bene-
diction known as Bérakhah (lit. ‘ Blessing’). In its
technical sense the term denotes a set form of
wrayer, which opens with the words, ‘Blessed art
hou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe,
who,’ ete., and, in its fully developed form, closes
with a repetition of the same words. This class t
plays an important part in the Jewish Liturgy. _
In its simplest and shortest form the Bérakhah
opens as described, but has no closing refrain.
It contains a brief expression of thanks to God
for some benefit conferred or privilege enjoyed.
Undoubtedly the most ancient kind ot benedic-
tion is that recited at the meal. The Book of
Samuel attests the antiquity of the custom, for in
one passage (1S 913) we are told that the people
refused to eat the sacrificial meal until it had been
blessed.
The Biblical command on which the obligation
of grace at meals (Heb. birkath ha-mazén)—i.e.
according to the Rabbis (Ber. 2la, 486; Tos. Ber.
vii. 1), grace both before and after eating—is
founded, occurs in Dt 8!" (‘When thou hast eaten
and art full, thou shalt bless the Lord thy God
for the good land which he hath given thee’).
The Benediction over bread, which is recited
before the meal begins, and which may have been
known to our Lord, runs: ‘Blessed art Thou, O
Lord our God, King of the Universe, who bringeth
forth bread from the earth.’ The corresponding
one said before drinking wine is: ‘Blessed art
Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe,
who createst the fruit of the vine’ (cf. Lk 2918),
Note.—The Benediction (thanksgiving) over wine was especi-
ally associated with the hallowing of the Sabbath and festival
days embodied in the ceremonies of Kiddish (‘Sanctification’)
and Habdalah (‘Separation’ or ‘ Distinction’). For a full de-
scription of these observances see the Jewish Encyc. s8.vv.
*“Kiddush’ and ‘Habdalah’; and for a possible connexion with
the Gospels reference may be made to an article by the present
writer in the Journ. of Theol. Studies (iii. [1903] p. 357 ff.) on
‘The Jewish Antecedents of the Eucharist.’ Though thanks-
fiving is an essential, and indeed the most prominent, element
in consecrat ion or sanctification, the ideas must be kept distinct.
Cf. Bp. of Salisbury, op. cit. p. 135f.
The more important Benedictions in this cen-
nexion are reserved for the recitation that follows
the meal. Of these there are now four (see
Singer’s Prayer-Book, p. 286). The first (< Blessed
art Thou, O Lord . . . who givest food unto all’)
is ascribed by the Talmud (Ber. 484) to Moses ;
the second (‘for the land and for the food’) te
Joshua, who led Israel into the land; the third
(‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who in Thy compas-
sion rebuildest Jerusalem’) to king Solomon: the
fourth (‘Blessed art Thou, O Lerd our God τ :
who art kind and
Rabbi
nd dealest kindly with all’) to the
ὁ of Jamnia in the 2nd cent. A.D.§
wt of thanksgiving after the meal is not explicitly
© Gospels. That the custom is an ancient one,
5 from the fact that, by the time of the com.
t (cf. ΠΣ ΩΝ rules as to its ordering had been fully
ed ( ser. vii.). j
a It constitutes a sort of service, with
lich va cording to the number, etc., of those
a : 1} ne hter, Stud i 3 in Judaism, p. 380.
Belting nea ᾧ ex eaple is th well-known group of the
ths, ᾿ wy od ond * Bsr ), the nucleus of which is |
ce omer pre-Christian: At is notable that here the element
οἵ petition | mpeanes that of praise and thanksgiving (for
τὸν 1 See Singer's Heb.-Ene Prayer-Book,
PF, e short Benedictions, expressive
: ( rd 8 {00 Ines and providence as
; n : ope d, For a full enumera-
τὴς 6 ictions, or the Prayer- |
§ Cf. Jewish E il. 9 |
BLESSING
present). Details and text of prayers can be read in Singer,
pp. 278-285.
Another ancient form of Benediction (with responses), which,
however, is not alluded to in the Gospels, is that offered before
and after the reading of Scripture (for the modern forms cf.
Singer, p. 147 ff.). This has a Biblical basis in the practice of
Ezra mentioned in Neh 89, and was doubtless well known in the
time of Jesus.
Enough has been said above to make it clear
that the set form of Benediction, based as it is
upon Biblical precedents, had been developed by
the NT period. ‘The first tractate of the Mishna
(compiled in its present form, probably from earlier
collections, at end of 2nd cent. A.D.) deals with the
various forms of the Bérdlhah (hence its name
Bérakhith =‘ Blessings’), and embodies the earliest
Rabbinical tradition on the subject. According
to the Talmud (Ber. 33a), the recognized Benedic-
tions were formulated by the ‘men of the Great
Synagogue.’ Later the rule was deduced that a
Benediction, to be regular, must contain the name
of God and the attribute of God’s kingship (Ber.
406).
ἃ, Usage in the Gospels.—The Jewish concep-
tion of ‘ blessing’ (ef. §§ 1 and 8) is reflected in the
Gospel narratives in its purest and most elevated
form. The central thought of God as the sole
object of praise, of God’s favour as the highest
form of felicity (cf. Lk 1°), the duty of rendering
thanks to Him as the Great Giver and Father, are
strikingly enforced, especially in some of the say-
ings of Jesus. The Gospel usage may best be
illustrated by an analysis of the passages in which
the terms enumerated above (§ 2) respectively
occur. These may be grouped as follows :—
(a) Passages involving the use of εὐλογεῖν, ‘to
bless,’ and its derivatives :
(1) With a personal object expressed, viz. :—
(A) God: Lk 1% 278 24°,
With this division should be considered the use of εὐλογητές,
‘Blessed,’ which is always explicitly applied to God in the NT.
The term occurs twice in the Gospels, once as a periphrasis for
God, Mk 1461 (cf. the regular Jewish periphrasis, ‘The Holy
One,’ ‘Blessed be He’), and once in a liturgical ascription of
praise, Lk 163 (opening line of the Benedictus).
(B) Wan: in the sense of ‘to invoke blessings
on,’ Lk 6°; esp. at solemn parting er farewell,
Lk 234 245% (ef. the Rabbinical parallel quoted
above); of solemn blessing of children, Mk 1016
(better reading κατευλύγει), ef. Mt 19%, and the
Jewish illustration already cited.
Note.—Here it may be remarked that the blessing was im-
parted either by the imposition of hands, in the case of one or
a small number (cf. Gn 4817-19, Mt 1915, Mk 1016); or, in other
cases, With uplifted hands (Ly 922, Lk 2459; ef. Sir 502).
Here naturally comes to be considered the use
of εὐλογημένος -- “ blessed’ (viz. by God): it oceurs
six times in the acclamation, borrowed from Ps
118 [117]°8, of ‘him that cometh’; Mt 219 9339 and
the || passages, Mk 119, Lk 1335 19°8, Jn 128 (where
D reads εὐλογητός) ; once of the mother of the
Lord and her Son, Lk 1” (εὐλογημένη, «.7.d., in 138 is
not well attested); also of ‘the nations on the
King’s right hand’ (Mt 2533), and of ‘the kingdom
of David’ (Mk 1119).
(2) With a material object : Mk 87, Lk 916 (both
of food). ‘In these cases blessing the bread must
be understood as “blessing God the giver of the
bread”? (Westcott), in accordance with the Jewish
usage illustrated above (§ 8).
(3) Absolutely, without any object expressed
(always of food and sustenance): Mk 6" || Mt 1419
(feeding of the five thousand), Mk 1422 || Mt 2676
(in ref. to bread at Last Supper), and Lk 24°".
In close connexion with the above we have to
consider here—
(6) The use of εὐχαριστεῖν, ‘to give thanks,’ in the
Gospels. :
_(1) Of food and wine. The word occurs eleven
times, and in eight of these has reference either to
BLINDNESS
food or wine, viz.: Mk 8° || Mt 1585 (of the feeding
of the four thousand), Lk 9919 (in ref. to the bread
at the Last Supper), Jn 611-38. (of feeding of the
five thousand), of thanksgiving over the cup at
the Last Supper, Mk 14”? || Mt 2677 and Lk 227,
It is clear from a comparison of the parallel
passages noted above that εὐλογεῖν and εὐχαριστεῖν
are freely interchanged (cf. Cremer, Bib.-Thcol.
Lex. s.vv.; Swete, J7hASt iii. [1902] 163). It thus
appears that the predominant idea in the Gospel
usage of such expressions as ‘ blessing the bread’
is not so much that of sanctification or consecra-
tion as of thanksgiving to God for the gift.*
(2) Of thanksgiving to God in other connexions :
ΠῚ - 15 Jn 1141.
(3) Of thanksgiving to Christ : Lk 1715,
(Note here that the act of thanksgiving was accompanied
by ‘glorifying God’ (v.15), and that it is on this feature that
Jesus lays stress (v.18), ‘Were there none found that returned
to give glory [here = ‘to render thanks’] to God save this
stranger? ’)
(c) and (ὦ) The use of the terms ἐξομολογεῖν,
‘thank,’ and αἰνεῖν, ‘ praise’ (cf. δοξάζειν, “ glorify’),
in a more or less synonymous sense (the sense of
thanksgiving), has been sufliciently explained
above (ὃ 2), and does not call for further remark
here.
Note, however, that αἰνεῖν is never used of or by Jesus.
(6) The use of μακάριος, ‘blessed,’ is frequent in
the sayings of Jesus (its employment in the
‘Beatitudes’ has already been noted above). It
is used especially in a congratulatory sense, corre-
sponding in the LXX to the Hebrew term ‘ashré=
‘happy’ (lit. “Ὁ the happiness of’). In this way
it is employed, especially in personal address (a
ood instance oceurs in Mt 16!” ‘ Blessed art theu,
simon Bar-jona,’ ete.). Especially notable are
such sayings as that recorded in Lk 11°: *8 (« Blessed
is the womb that bare thee’... ‘Yea, rather,
blessed are they that hear the word of God and
keep it’), in which Jesus pointedly insists on the
idea that true blessing and true blessedness are to
be found in thought and action that are imme-
diately related and directed to God and the Divine
requirements. The Jewish conception of blessing
and blessedness is thus set forth in its purest and
most elevated phase.
LITERATURE.—The most important original authorities for the
Jewish data are the recensions of the tractate Bérakhéth
extant in the Mishna (various ed. of Heb. text; Eng. tr. in
Barelay’s Talmud, 1877, and De Sola and Raphall’s Mishnah,
1845), and the Tosephta (Heb. text, ed. Zuckermandel). Fora
full account of these see Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. * Berakot.’
For an account of the various Jewish forms of blessing see the
articles ‘ Benedictions,’ ‘Blessing of Children,’ and ‘Blessing
(Priestly),’ with the literature cited, in the same work. Cf. also
the art. ‘ Abschied’ in Hamburger’s RE fiir Bibel und Talmud,
vol. ii. Some relevant data are also to be found in the article
‘Benedictions’ (by R. Sinker) in Smith’s Dictionary of Chris-
tian Antiquities. There is a valuable ‘Additional Note’ in
Westcott’s Hebrews on ‘The Biblical Idea of Blessing’ (p.
209 ff.); and a careful synopsis of references in Harper (W. R.),
Priestly Element in ΟἽ", (1905) 136ff. Reference may also be
made to the works of Edersheim (esp. The Temple: its Ministry,
etc., where the Jewish material is set forth fully) and those of
the elder Lightfoot. Other references have been given in the
body of the article. ἘΠ Box.
BLINDNESS.—Blindness is a very common dis-
easc in the East. It is mainly due to ophthalmia
caused partly by the sun-glare and nach. by lack
of leauiinee, The word ‘ blindness’ or ‘ blind’ is
used in the Bible, however, very frequently of a
spiritual condition; and the references in the
Gospels are specially interesting as the physical
and the spiritual states are sometimes intertwined,
the former being used as emblematic of the latter.
* Cf. the valuable remarks of the Bp. of Salisbury on this
point (op. cit. p. 135 f.). He notes the occurrence of the expres-
SIONS εὐχαριστηθεῖσα τροφή, εὐχαριστηθεὶ: ἄρτος, etc., ‘thanksgiven
food,’ ‘thanksgiven bread,’ where we should say ‘consecrated
food or bread’ (ib.). Cf. also Didache x. and xy.
BLINDNESS 213
In Mt 115 the first evidence of His Messiahship,
adduced by Jesus to the disciples of John the
Baptist, is that the blind receive their sight. The
first miracle of this nature in the life of Jesus is
recorded by St. Matthew (9°) as occurring at
Capernaum.
Two blind men followed Him, crying, ‘Thou Son of David,
have mercy on us.’ Jesus seems unwilling at first to grant their
request, as we are told that it was not till they had entered
the house with Him that He turned a favourable ear to their
entreaty. Satisfied of their faith, and of the spirit in which
they approached Him, He pronounced the word of healing.
In St. Mark (8) another miracle of restoring
sight to the blind is recorded which has features of
its own.
Jesus leads the blind man out of the village (Bethsaida), and,
having spit upon his eyes, touches them. Sight is only gradually
restored, as at first he sees men like trees walking. This is one
of the many instances of the realism of St. Mark. Probably
it is a reminiscence of the well-known difficulty experienced
by the blind-born, to whom sight has been given through a
surgical operation, of adjusting the knowledge acquired by the
new faculty with that derived through the other avenues of
sense-perception.
The story of the blind man or men at Jericho is
recorded in all three Synoptics (Mt 20°", Mk 1058...
Lk 18), It has also features in common with
the incident narrated in Mt 9°".
St. Mark and St. Luke speak of only one blind man, St.
Matthew has two. All three give the words of healing differ-
ently. There have been many attempts made to harmonize
the various accounts,* but the necessity for making such
attempts arises out of a mechanical theory of inspiration which
is difficult to maintain. Is it not enough for all practical pur-
poses to hold the substantial accuracy of the Evangelic narrative
without troubling ourselves about those minute divergences
which occur in different versions of the same event narrated by
the most trustworthy witnesses?
The miracles recorded in Mt 12” and Jn 9 stand
by themselves as having a very close relation to
the teaching of Jesus which follows. St. Matthew
tells us that there was brought to Jesus one pos-
sessed with a devil, blind and dumb; and He healed
him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both saw
and spake. This gave rise to the charge of the
Pharisees, that the miraculous power of Jesus was
not a God-given, but a devil-given power. ‘This
fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the
prince of the devils.’ To the clear moral vision of
Jesus the attitude implied in this objection showed
a radical depravity of nature, an inability to dis-
criminate between fundamental ethical distinctions.
‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ If
Satan inspires to deeds of beneficence, then he
ceases to be Satan. He who does good is inspired
of God, and the measure of the good he does is the
measure of his conquest over Satan. It is in this
connexion that Jesus utters the remarkable refer-
ence to blasphemy against the Holy Ghost as the
unforgivable sin. See art. BLASPHEMY.
The other instance where the miraculous cure of
blindness is made a text for the most characteristic
teaching of Jesus is that recorded in Jn 9. Here
it is a man blind from his birth that Jesus cures.
And when the Pharisees seek to persuade him of
their peculiar theological tenet that the power of
Jesus 1s derived from Satan, the man has strength
of mind enough to fall back on that primary moral
instinct to which Jesus always appeals. ‘ Whereas
I was blind, now I see. This man has done good
to me, and for me, therefore, he is good. It is not
the function of the prince of darkness to give sight
to the blind.” He cannot, therefore, accept their
theory of the source whence Jesus derives His
power.
This leads us to a predominant feature of the
teaching of Jesus—His presentation of the gospel
as vision. Jesus claims to be the Light of the world.
Light to those who see is its own evidence, and
* For a summary of these see Plummer, Internat. Crit. Com.,
‘St. Luke,’ in loco.
214 BLOOD
BLOOD
Jesus, therefore, in making this claim can desire no
recognition other than that spontaneously made by
the soul when purged from the sinful passions that
obscure or ἀϑήδος its vision. ‘To secure effective
vision there must be not only light, but also a
healthy visual organ. Blindness may arise from
the absence of light, from mere functional derange-
ment of the organ of vision, or from some fatal
organic defect in the organ. It is to those whose
blindness comes from either of the first two causes
that Jesus appeals. He comes as Light, strength-
ening the visual faculty, dispelling the darkness
that envelops the soul, and revealing to it the
spiritual realm. ‘I am come into this world that
they which see not might see’ (Jn 93. This pre-
sentation of Jesus as Light appealing to the organ
of spiritual vision and vindicating empirically His
unique Divinity dominates the whole of the Fourth
Gospel. But the principle is as clearly enunciated
in the Synoptics. It is the pure in heart who see
God (Mt δὴ), because the pure heart is the organ
of the God-consciousness. In the great confession
of St. Peter the real point of our Lord’s com-
mendation lies not in the clear enunciation of the
Messiahship and the Divine Sonship of Jesus, but
in the manner in which the profoundest of all
spiritual truths has been reached. ‘Blessed art
thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
heaven’ (Mt 1017).
Jesus, the Light of the world, can appeal only
to those who have the faculty of sight. Where
the faculty of sight is impaired or destroyed, how-
ever clearly the light may shine, there is no vision.
This obscuration of the spiritual orb is what is
ealled ‘judicial blindness.’ ‘The phrase implies that
there never can be such radical defect of vision
without personal guilt in the person so affected.
It is a penalty of sin, the judgment that comes
through neglecting the light (ef. Jn 9"). Inasmuch
as Jesus is the true Light that lighteth every man
that cometh into the world, there is in human
nature, as such, the capacity of spiritual vision ;
but this capacity, either by disuse or perversity,
nay be so radically corrupted as to be impervious
to the light. And when this is so, the sinner
rushes to his doom heedless of the plainest warn-
ings. This is a truth always recognized in the
Gospels, St. John in his Prologue says that the
Light shineth in darkness, but the darkness com-
prehended it not (cf. Mt 6). Tt is the meaning
f the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, a sin
unforgivable, inasmuch as it does not recognize
itself as sin, and thus renders impossible that
repentance which is the condition of forgiveness
(but see art. BLASPHEMY). A. MILLER.
_ BLOOD (07, Aram, xp3, Gr. alua).—Underlying
the use of the term ‘blood’ in the Gospels is its
root conception, as contained in the OT. This
root conception is clearly seen, e.g., in Ly 171-4
The life (' oul? 012) of the flesh is in the blood
. it is th blo d that maketh atonement by
n of the life.... Foras to the life of all
the blood thereof
tereof is all one with the life
OY. +. for the life of all flesh is the blood
ie » connexion between ‘life? and
even to identification — was
doubtless realized by man from very early times ;
el ‘pee 4 ' ι ὟΝ ( tansht him that loss of
Ἢ ἱν », While great loss resulted
ath, 3 the ceparture of life. This would
been noticed ; n and again in everyday
tether in hun or In slanchtering (both
ty un Lerif or in battle. This belief
no me confined to the .Hebrevw s, but
H. L. Str Der Blutaberala
2 in der Menschheit4,
was universal in ancient times, just as it is now
among primitive races.* The reiterated prohibi-
tion with regard to the eating of blood contained
in the Hebrew Code was due, firstly, to the fact
that God had made use of it as a means of atone-
ment, and that therefore it ought not to be used
for any other purpose ; and, secondly, because it
was believed to contain the soul or life. In the
one case, the prohibition is due to the holy char-
acter of blood;+ in the other, to its essential
nature,t it being the centre from which animal
life in all its various forms emanated. Blood was
therefore holy from the Divine point of view, be-
cause God had sanctified it to holy uses; and it
was holy from man’s point of view, both because
it had been ordained as a means of atonement in
the sight of God, and because human life, of
which blood was the essence, was sacred to Him.
In the Gospels one or other of these conceptions
underlies the use of the word ‘blood.’ Its use
may be briefly summarized thus :
1. Blood in its material sense, e.g., the woman
with the issue of blood (Mk 5”, Lk 8%). The
power which went out from Christ stayed the flow
of the woman’s blood ; it is implied (Mk 5” ἀλλὰ
μᾶλλον εἰς τὸ χεῖρον ἐλθοῦσα) that this outflow was
the ebbing-out of her life. The ancient concep-
tion is, therefore, plainly present here.
2. Blood used in the sense of life (i.e. poured out
in death). [Ὁ is interesting to observe that in all
the Gospel passages in which blood is used as
synonymous with life, the reference is either to
an OT occurrence, or else to Christ as fulfilling OT
types. The passages are the following: Mt 23%
‘We should not have been partakers with them
in the blood of the prophets’; 23% ‘That upon
you may come all the righteous blood shed on the
earth, from the blood of Abel the righteous unto
the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom ye
slew between the sanctuary and the altar,’ ef. Lk
1151, Mt 274 ‘I have betrayed innocent blood’ ;
27° ‘the price of blood’; 978 ‘the field of blood’ ;
274 “1 am innocent of the blood of this righteous
man’; 27° ‘His blood be upon us.’ In each of
these passages the meaning of blood as implying
life is sufficiently clear.
3. In Lk 13! occurs a reference to ‘the Galilzeans
whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices.’
There is no reference to this event either in Josephus
(although there is mention of a similar occurrence
in Ant. XVII. ix. 3) or elsewhere ; but the meaning
appears to be that they were offering up their
usual sacrifice in the ordinary course, when they
were fallen upon and butchered by the Roman
soldiery, probably as a punishment for some act
of revolt [the restlessness of the Galileans was
notorious, ef. Ac 5%").
4. A further use of the word is seen in Mt 162”,
where the expression ‘flesh and blood’ occurs.§
In this passage the use of ‘blood’ is somewhat
modified from what has been found hitherto; the
phrase σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα denotes what is human, ab-
stractly considered; ‘the antithesis is between
knowledge resulting from natural human develop-
*Rob. Smith, Rel. of the Semites2, p. 337ff. ; Wellhausen,
Reste arabischen Heid.2 p. 226ff.; Strack, Op. ‘cits ps) Offs
J. G. Frazer, Golden Bough2, i. 353, where other authorities
are cited ; Bahr, Symbolik des Mosaischen Cultus 2, i. 44 f£. ;
Trumbull, Studies in Oriental Social Life, p. 157 ff.
t See, further, with regard to this point, the many interesting
details in Trumbull’s The Threshold Covenant, and Doughty’s
Arabia Deserta (2 vols.) ; the references are too numerous to
quote, but both works will well repay careful study.
1 Cf. Strack, op. cit. p. 75ff.; Franz Delitzsch, System der
biblischen Psychologie, pp. 196, 202.
§The expression σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα (also in the order αἷμα καὶ
σάρξ) is frequent in Rabbinical writings (O7) wa); ‘the Jewish
writers use this form of speech infinite times, and by it oppose
men to God’ (Lightfoot, Hore Heb. et Talm. [Gandell’s ed.] ii.
234); see also Sir 1418, where ‘flesh and blood’ are compared to
the leaves on a tree.
BLOOD
BLOOD 215
ment, or on the basis of natural birth, and know-
ledge proceeding from the revelation of the Father
in heaven, or on the basis of regeneration’
(Lange).* The expression therefore emphasizes
the contrast between human and Divine know-
ledge (cf. Gal 115 ‘immediately I conferred not with
flesh and blood’; cf. also He 24, 1 Co 15°°, Eph
6”). The special meaning attaching to ‘blood’
here is that it belongs to human nature; and
significant in this connexion is the passage Lk 24°"
a ‘spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye behold me
having,’ where ‘flesh’ is clearly intended to include
blood ; + the primary difference in bodily structure
between a natural and a spiritual body being the
absence of blood in the latter. If in the ordinary
human body blood is conceived of as being the
source of life, the body without blood receives its
life in a manner utterly different,—it is the life
which comes from Christ: ‘I am come that they
might have life, and that they might have it more
abundantly’ (Jn 10'°). Closely connected with this
are the words in Jn 1%‘... which were born, not
of bloodt... but of God’; here, too, the contrast
is between that which is born ‘of blood,’ z.e. accord-
ing to anatural birth, and that which is born ‘of
God,’ ὁ.6. according to a spiritual birth.
5. A very mysterious use of ‘ blood’ is that con-
tained in the words ‘ bloody sweat’ (Lk 22#).§ ‘It
is probable that this strange disorder arises from
a violent commotion of the nervous system, and
forcing of the red particles into the cutaneous ex-
cretories.’ || ‘The intensity of the struggle,’ says
Godet, ‘becomes so great, that it issues in a sort
of beginning of pliysical dissolution. The words,
as it were drops, express more than a simple com-
parison between the density of the sweat and that
of blood. The words denote that the sweat itself
resembled blood. Phenomena of frequent occur-
rence demonstrate how immediately the blood, the
seat of life, is under the empire of moral impres-
sions. Does not a feeling of shame cause the
blood to rise to the face? Cases are known in
which the blood, violently agitated by grief, ends
by penetrating through the vessels which enclose
it, and, driven outwards, escapes with the sweat
through the transpiratory glands (see Langen, pp.
212. 9]4). 1 See SWEAT.
6. One other passage must be referred to before
coming to the spiritual use of ‘ blood,’ namely, Jn
19 ‘and straightway there came out blood and
water.’ On the phenomenon of the effusion of
water together with the blood, see Godet’s Gospel
of St. John, iii. 274f. With regard to the flowing
of the blood, there seems to be a striking signifi-
cance in the fact; it was a visible instance of the
fulfilment of Christ’s own words: ‘Think not that
I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I came
not to destroy, but to fulfil . . .’** (Mt 517-38); for
* Commentary on Matt. in loc. Cf. the words of Tholuck : ‘It
designates humanity with reference to its character as endowed
with the senses and passions’ (Com. on Matt.); see also Ols-
hausen, Com. on the Gospels, vol. ii. (fT. & T. Clark).
+ See, further, art. Bopy.
The use of the plur. here ἐξ αἱμάτων (Vulg. ex sanguinibus)
appears, according to Westcott, ‘to emphasize the idea of the
elements out of which in various measures the body is framed’
(Com. on St. John, in loc. ; cf. also Godet’s Com. on St. John,
vol. i. p. 357 ff. (T. & T. Clark).
: Vyoriine the text here, see Westcott-Hort, and Godet,
in loc.
|| Stroud, Physical Cause of the Death of Christ, pp. 74, 380,
quoted in Trumbull’s The Blood Covenant, p. 279 note ; cf. also
the letters of Dr. Begbie and Sir James Y. Simpson, given in
App. i. of Hanna’s Last Day of Our Lovd’s Passion.
Com. on Luke, ii. 306 (T. & T. Clark). There is certainly one
other instance on record of a like mysterious flow of blood, that,
namely, of Charles 1x. of France. It is said of him that on his
deathbed his bitterness of sorrow and qualms of conscience,
on account of the massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Eve, were
14 intense that in the anguish of his soul he literally sweated
ood.
** Cf. the frequent occurrence of such phrases as ‘that the
Scripture might be fulfilled.’
it was of the essence of sacrifice under the Old
Dispensation that blood should flow,* and that it
should flow from a vital part, usually from the
throat, though the spirit of the Law would obvi-
ously be fulfilled when the blood flowed from such
a vital part as the region of the heart, the central
part of man; + the sacrifice was consummated
when the life, 1.6. the blood, had flowed out.t
Kalisch points out that, guided by similar views,
the Teutons pierced the heart ot the sacrificial
victims, whether animals or men, because the
heart is the fountain of the blood, and the blood
of the heart was pre-eminently regarded as the
blood of sacrifice.§ See also the following article.
7. The passages which speak of the blood of Christ
(Mt 2678, Mk 145, Lk 22”), Jn 6-56) 2,6. of blood in
its spiritual meaning, can be here only briefly re-
ferred to [see ATONEMENT, LAST SUPPER]. ‘They
must be taken in conjunction with such expressions
elsewhere as ‘the blood of Christ’ (1 Co 1016, Eph
218), ‘the blood of the Lord’ (1 Co 11:2), ‘the blood
of his cross’ (Col 139), ‘the blood of Jesus’ (He 10",
1 Jn 1"), ‘the blood of Jesus Christ’ (1 P 1°), ‘the
blood of the Lamb’ (Rev 191},
From the earliest times ambng the ‘ancient
Hebrews the various rites and ceremonies, indeed
the whole sacrificial system, showed the yearning
desire for a closer union with God; this union was
to be effected only through life-containing and life-
giving blood. The very existence of these sacri-
fices proved (and the ofiering up of their firstborn
sons only emphasized the fact) that men deemed
the relationship between God and themselves to
be unsatisfactory. Useless as these sacrifices were
in themselves, they were at any rate (when not
unauthorized) shadows of good things to come (He
10'4) ; and they served their purpose of witnessing
to profound truths which God intended to reveal
more fully as soon as man’s capacity for appre-
hension should have become sufticiently developed.
The shedding of Christ’s blood effected a new rela-
tionship between God and man; it sealed a New
Covenant,|| and became the means of the salvation
of many (Mt 26:8, Mk 14%, ef. Lk 29:9, But the
ancient conception, the God-revealed truth only
dimly apprehended, was right: the life was in the
blood, inasmuch as the shedding of blood brought
life—‘I lay down my life, that I may take it again’
(Jn 10!7)—only it was a life which it was impossible
to conceive of before the Author of it brought it to
man. ‘ Having in His own blood the life of God
and the life of man, Jesus Christ could make men
sharers of the Divine by making them sharers of
His own nature; and this was the truth of truths
which He declared to those whom He instructed.’ {
LITERATURE.—There are many books which give information
on this subject, but as regards the special relationship between
‘blood’ and Christ it is ditficult to point to any particular work ;
many details are to be had, but they must be gathered from
numerous sources ; some of the more important of these are:
Franz Delitzsch, System der biblischen Psychologie, Leipzig,
1855; P. Cassel, Die Symbolik des Blutes, Berlin, 1882; C. Bahr,
Symbolik des Mosaischen Cultus, 1874; F. Godet, Biblical
* This was originally based on the conception of blood being
the drink of gods (cf. Ps 5018); see Rob. Smith, op. cit. p. 233 ff.;
Curtiss, Primitive Sem. Rel. To-day, p. 223: ‘The consumma-
tion of the sacrifice is in the outflow of blood.’
t Cf. the words of Philo, de Conewpise. x.: ‘Some men pre-
pare sacrifices which ought never to be offered, strangling the
victim and stifling the essence of life, which they ought to let
depart free and unrestrained’ (quoted by Kalisch, Leviticus,
i. 184).
t ‘Under the symbolic sacrifices of the Old Covenant it was
the blood which made atonement for the soul. It was not the
death of the victim, nor yet its broken body; but it was the
blood, the life, the soul, that was made the means of a soul’s
ransom, of its rescue, of its redemption’ (Trumbull, U'he Bivod
Covenant, p. 286). ‘Blood atones by virtue of the life that is in
it’ (Bahr, op. cit. ii. 207).
§ Kalisch, op. cit. i. 189.
|| A covenant was always ratified by the shedding of blood,
“1 Trumbull, op. cit. p. 274.
|
216 BLOOD AND WATER
BOAT
a β΄’! ---“-------- -
Studies in the OT and NT (Eng. tr. by Lyttelton), London,
1876; L. J. Rickert, Das Abendmahl . . ., Leipzig, 1856; H. L.
Strack, Der Blutaberglaube in der Menschheits, Munchen,
1892 (a work of extreme interest). A great fund of information
is to be found scattered in the three books of H. C. Trumbull,
The Blood. Covenant, London, 1887, 116 Threshold Covenant,
Philadelphia, 1896, Studies in Oriental Social Life, London,
1895; and in GC. M. Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta,
2 vols., Cambridge, 1888. Other works that should be consulted
are: J. Lightfoot, Hore Heb. et Talm., 4 vols. (ed. Gandell),
Oxford, 1859; Rob. Smith, Mel. of the Semites?, London, 1394,
Kinship and Marriage (ed. 8. A. Cook), Jondon, 1903; 8. I.
Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day, London, 1909.
Various notices will also be found in the Commentaries of
Lange, Tholuck, Olshausen, Godet, and Westcott. See also
the art. on ‘Blood’ and kindred subjects in the Bible Diction-
aries, such as Hamburger, Riehm, Hastings, Cheyne, and the
Jewish Encyclopedia. V. Ὁ. E. OESTERLEY.
BLOOD AND WATER (Jn 19°-*7).—When the
soldier, whom tradition names Longinus,* to make
sure that He was really dead, drove his spear into
the side of Jesus on the cross (see CRUCIFIXION), a
strange thing happened. On being withdrawn the
spear was followed by a gush of blood and water.
It was a singular phenomenon. The Fathers re-
garded it as a miracle,t but St. John does not
venture on an opinion. He neither attempts to
account for it nor pronounces it a miracle, but
contents himself with solemnly asseverating that
he had witnessed it, and could vouch for its actual
occurrence. He felt the wonder of it to the last
(cf. 1 Jn 558).
Medical science has confirmed his testimony,
and furnished an explanation which at once de-
fines the phenomenon as a perfectly natural oceur-
rence, and reveals somewhat of the awfulness of our
Lord’s Passion. During His dread and mysterious
dereliction on the cross (see DERELICTION) His heart
swelled until it burst, and the blood was ‘ effused
into the distended sac of the pericardium, and
afterwards separated, as is usual with extravasated
blood, into these two parts, viz. (1) crassamentum
or red clot, and (2) watery serum.’ When the
distended sac was pierced from beneath, it dis-
charged ‘its sanguineous contents in the form of
red clots of blood and a stream of watery serum,
exactly corresponding to the description given by
the sacred narrative, ‘‘and forthwith came there
out blood and water.”’+ Jesus died literally of a
broken heart—of ‘agony of mind, producing rup-
ture of the heart.’
[Ὁ was a favourite idea with the Fathers that the
Water and the Blood were symbolic of the Sacra-
ments. St. Augustine, following the v./. ἤνοιξε for
évute in v.*4, comments (in Joan Ev. Tract. exx.
§ 2): * Vigilanti verbo Evangelista usus est, ut non
diceret, Latus ejus pereussit, aut vulneravit, aut
quid alind ; sed, aperuit: ut illis quodammodo
vile ostium panderetur, unde Sacramenta Ecclesize
Manaverunt, sine quibus ad vitam que vera vita
est, non intratur.’ Cf. Chrysost. in Joan. Ἰχχχὶν :
οὐχ ἁπλῶς οὐδὲ ὡς ἔτυχεν αὗται ἐξῆλθον αἱ πηγαὶ, ἀλλ᾽
ἐπειδὴ ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων ἡ ἐκκλησία συνέστηκε. καὶ ἴσασιν
οἱ μυσταγωγούμενοι, δι’ ὕδατος μὲν ἀναγεννώμενοι δι᾽
αἵματος δὲ καὶ σαρκὸς τρεφόμενοι. ἀρχὴν λαμβάνει τὰ
μυστήρια, ἵν ὅταν προσίῃς τῷ φρικτῷ ποτηρίῳ, ὡς am’
αὐτῆς πίνων τῆς πλευρᾶς οὕτω προσίῃς.
LITERATURE. —Residk s the Comm. consult S. J. Andrews, Life
of Vur Lord upon the Earth, 566-569. DAVID SMITH
BOANERGES.—In Mk 317 we read that Christ
gave to James and John name(s) Boanerges, that
is, Sons of thunder’ (καὶ ἐπέθηκεν αὐτοῖς ὄνομα [v.0.
a I ὃ, Nicod. x (Lat ) (xvi (Gr )). Cf. Aug.’ Manual. xxiii :
a 4 aper mint latus Christi lancea, et ero intravi et ibi
julesco iru The name is probably derived from Aoyxn,
tor ty ‘ ‘Rl
: ᾽γ a s ‘> Blood does not flow from dead bodies,
= oe γέχρου συματος τὸ παράδοξον." Cf. Euth.
; A dae — ΤῚ δ 86 ΟἹ “ e Physical Cause of the Death of
ἐγ, Simpson in pen οἱ f 4 Β ᾿
Same βόλος, τ δῷ API nd. to Hanna's Last Day of Our
ὀνόματα] Boaynpyés, 6 ἐστιν viol βροντῆς). ἡ The equa-
tion Boanerges=‘sons of thunder’ presents two
ditticulties : (a) the Hebrew 32 does not naturally
rive rise to the two vowels oa; (6) no known
ebrew or Aram. root rgs or rgsh has the mean-
ing ‘thunder.’ <A third difficulty might be added,
that the title Boanerges, whatever its meaning, does
not accurately correspond to ὀνομα(τα), ‘name(s).’ +
If the Evangelist be right in saying that the
original title meant ‘sons of thunder,’ we must
suppose that Βοανὴ or Boave is due to inaccurate
transliteration of 33, or to a conflation of two read-
ings with a single vowel (see Dalm. Gram.* p. 144).
But the difficulty as to ργεςΞε βροντή remains.
Jerome (on Dn 17) thought that Boanerges should
be emended into Benereem=oyr 32. In that case
the s is a mistake on the part of the Evangelist or
his copyistsfor m. Others prefer to think that the
original title was 19 "32=‘sons of wrath,’ or v3 "33
=‘sons of tumult,’ and that viol βροντῆς is an in-
accurate translation on the part of the Evangelist.
The Syriac Version (Sinaiticus) unfortunately gives
us no assistance. It transliterates Bénai Kagsh
or Ragshi, and omits the explanation 6 ἐστιν υἱοὲ
βροντῆς (see Burkitt, Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe,
i. 181, ii. 280). It is possible, however, that the
corruption lies deeper than this. Just as Dal-
manutha (Mk 8) 1s probably a corruption of an
Aramaic proper name (see Burkitt, 1i. 249), so
Boanerges may be a fusion of two names answering
to the ὀνόματα. In that case the Evangelist, mis-
reading or mishearing his Aramaic original, has
fused two names into one, and has tried to give a
rough translation of the word thus formed. The
first name might be 33 (Bann), 132 (Bannaz), or 53
(Bunnai). Curiously enough, the Babylonian Tal-
mud vives Bani as the name of one of the disciples
of Jesus (Bab. Sanh. 43a). For the second name
we offer no conjecture. See, further, JOHN, JAMES.
LITERATURE.—Encyc. Bibl. art. ‘Boanerges’; Expositor, τι.
x. [1889] 332 ff. W. C. ALLEN.
BOAT.—
πλοῖον : AV ‘ship,’ RV ‘boat.’ πλοιάριον : Mk 39AV ‘a small
ship,’ RV ‘a little boat’ ; Jn 622 AV and RV ‘boat,’ RVm ‘ little
boat’ 5 v.24 ἐνέβησαν εἰς τὰ πλοιάριω AV ‘took shipping,’ RV ‘ got
into the boats,’ marg. ‘little boats’; 218 τω σπλοιαρίῳ AV ‘in a
little ship,’ RV ‘in the little boat,’ [Lk 52 Tisch., WH marg.
thocpoe: WH,TR πλοία. Jn 623 Tisch., TR,RV σλοιάριω : WH
Toi).
The word ‘ship’ is rightly expelled from the
Gospels by the Revisers. It corresponds to vais,
which occurs nowhere in the Gospels, and in the
NT only in Ac 27, Being a small lake, the Sea
of Galilee had no ‘ships’; but it had numerous
‘boats’ mostly employed in fishing (termed πλοῖα
in the Gospels, also [τὰ] σκάφη in Josephus). Some
of these were biggish craft, and usually swung at
anchor on the Lake (cf. Jos. Vit. 33), being at-
tended by πλοιάρια, ‘punts’ (cf. Jn 918: 8). In Ae
271°: 80. 32 the small-boat of St. Paul’s ship is called
ἡ σκάφη). To quell the revolt in Tiberias, Josephus
mustered all the boats on the Lake, and they num-
bered as many as 230 (Jos. BJ τι. xxi. 8). A boat
which could accommodate Jesus and the Twelve
must have been of considerable dimensions; and
in the battle on the Lake, under Vespasian, the
Romans fought on rafts and the pirates on boats.
Though small and weak in comparison with the
rafts, the boats must have been of considerable
size (Jos. BJ II. x. 9).
Jesus had much to do with boats during His
Galilean ministry, and one use that He made of
them is peculiarly noteworthy. In two recorded
instances He ie a a boat as His pulpit (Lk
δ, Mt 13'*=Mk 4!). Getting into it to escape
*The MSS give: βοανηργες NAB, etc., βοωνεργης 1), Bouvepyes
EF, etc.
t ὀνόματα is read by NAC, etc., ὄνομεα is the reading of BD,
rm:
eee (Εὃ0ὲ0ὕ.0.0.0.0.0ῳ0(ὅὕὕ0ὕ0ὲ0ὕ....0..........ὕ... 0 ΧΚ([κ[Ἃ(ὝΕὖἍἝ δ... Χ(Χ0Χ0δΧΚΚ.κΚ (Χ ΧΚ(
BOAZ
the pressure of the multitude, He pushed out a
little way from the land and addressed the people
ranged along the sloping beach, as St. Chrysostom
puts it, ‘fishing and netting those on the land
(ἁλιεύων καὶ σαγηνεύων τοὺς ἐν TH yy). Only two
instances of His resorting to this device are re-
corded, but it seems to have been His practice.
Early in His ministry, St. Mark says (3°), ‘He
spake to his disciples that a little boat should
wait on him because of the crowd, lest they
should throng him’; and it is interesting to ob-
serve how the Evangelist subsequently alludes to
‘the boat’ (Mk 4° 6%. Cf. Mt 8% τὸ πλοῖον. TR,
Tisch. ; πλοῖον WH), meaning the boat which had
been put at His disposal. DAVID SMITH.
BOAZ.— The husband of Ruth, named in the
genealogies of our Lord (Mt 1°, Lk 352).
BODY.—i. THE HUMAN Boby GENERALLY.—
‘Body’ in the Gospels invariably represents σῶμα
in the original. Always in Homer and frequently
in Attic Greek σῶμα τα dead body; and in this
sense the word 1s occasionally used in the Gospels
(Mt 275" 58. 59, Li 1757). The usual meaning, how-
ever, here as in the rest of the NT and in ordinary
Greek usage, is the living body, and in particular
the body of a living man (Mt 6” 26, Mk 559). In
the records of our Lord’s life, teaching, and whole
revelation, we find the dignity and claims of the
body as an integral part of human nattre con-
stantly recognized. This meets us in the very fact
of the Incarnation (Jn 14), in the most solemn
utterances of Jesus (Mt 25%: 42), in His tender re-
gard for the bodily needs and pains of those around
Him—His feeding of the hungry and healing of
the sick; but above all in the narratives of His
Resurrection and Ascension, which show that the
Incarnation was not a temporary expedient of His
earthly mission, but a permanent enfolding of our
human nature, body as well as soul, within the
essential life of the Godhead.
The Gospels give no support to the philosophic
tendency, so often reflected in certain types of
religious teaching, to treat the body with dis-
paragement. Jesus accords full rights to the cor-
poreal side of our being. He was neither an ascetic
nor a preacher of asceticism—‘the Son of Man
came eating and drinking’ (Mt 11)*!%). At the
same time, we find in His teaching a clear recog-
nition of a duality in human nature—a distinction
drawn between body and soul, flesh and spirit (Mt
6° 26"). Moreover, He lays strong emphasis on
the antithesis between the body as the lower part
of a man, and the soul as the higher. Though the
body is a true part of our humanity, its value is
not to be compared for a moment with that of the
spiritual part (Mt 1058). Those who follow Jesus
must be prepared, if need be, to surrender their
bodies to the sword and the cross (Mt 23%) ; but
‘What shall a man give in exchange for his soul ?’
(Mt 1676).
In the teaching of Jesus the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body, which had gradually
taken root in the Jewish mind, is everywhere pre-
supposed (as in His references to the Future Judg-
ment), and at times is expressly proclaimed (Lk
1414 20%, Jn 5*°-*8), And by the grave of His friend
Lazarus our Lord gave utterance to that profound
saying, ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ (Jn
1155), which reveals the ultimate ground of Chris-
tian faith in the resurrection of the body, and at
the same time invites us to find in the nature of
the risen Christ Himself the type, as well as the
pledge, of that new and higher corporeal life to
which He is able to raise His people.
ii. THE Bopy or Curisr.—(1) Christ’s natural
body.—As ‘the man Christ Jesus,’ our Lord was
BODY 217
possessed of “ἃ true body’ as well as of ‘a reason-
able soul.’ When the time was come in the coun-
sels of God for the redemption of mankind, the
Second Person of the Holy Trinity took upon Him
human flesh by the operation of the Holy Spirit in
the womb of the Virgin Mary (Mt 138, cf. Gal 44).
In due time, according to the laws of human life,
He was born at Bethlehem (Lk 2*-7). The child
thus born was seen in His infancy by the shepherds
and the wise men, and, when He was eight days
old, by Simeon and Anna (255: %6). From His con-
ception and birth His body developed in the man-
ner usual to human beings. ‘The child grew,’ we
are told (Lk 2%"); arrived at ‘twelve years old’;
and still ‘increased in stature’ (vv.4* 53).
After He had arrived at’ man’s estate, we find
Him living under the conditions to which the
bodies of men in ordinary life are subject. We
learn that He suffered hunger (Mt 45); that He
was wearied with journeying (Jn 4°); that He ex-
perienced pain (Mt 27*°); and that He underwent
death (v.*"). In healing sickness He frequently
used common bodily action, and His power of
motion, with one miraculous exception (Mt 14% |j),
was limited to that which men in general possess.
After death, His body, nowise different from that
of an ordinary man, was delivered by Pilate to
Joseph of Arimathiea, who wrapped it in a clean
linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb (Mt
Ὁ 81), where it rested till the moment of the
Resurrection. Down to that moment, then, the
Lord’s body had been a human body with the
powers, qualities, and capacities of the body of an
ordinary man.
(2) Christ's body after the Resurrection. —It was
the same body as before His death. The grave
was left empty, because the very body which
Joseph of Arimathea laid there had risen and
departed. Moreover, it had in most respects
the same appearance. His disciples might doubt
and hesitate at first (Lk 94:6. °7, Jn 204), but they
did not fail to recognize Him (Lk 24%! 5, Jn
DOS 20528 Dela Ae 12 922) Wier finds Him! eatine:
and drinking as a man (Lk 24), making use of the
natural process of breathing (Jn 9055), declaring to
His disciples that He had flesh and bones (Lk
24°), showing them His hands and His feet (v.*),
and giving them the assurance that His body was
the identical body which they had seen stretched
upon the*ecross, by inviting the disciple who
doubted, to put his finger into the print of the
nails and thrust his hand into the wound in His
side (Jn 9051).
On the other hand, our Lord’s resurrection body
was freed from previous material conditions and
possessed of altogether new capacities. It seems
to be implied that it could pass at will through
material objects (Jn 9055) ; and it does not appear
to have been subject as before to the laws of
movement (Lk 24°), or visibility (v.*1), or gravita-
tion (Mk 101", Lk 24°!). These new powers consti-
tuted the difference between His pre-resurrection
and His glorified body. It was in His glorified
body, thus ditferentiated, that He ascended into
heaven ; and in that same glorified body He is to
be expected at-His final coming (Ac 19: 1).
There is little ground for the idea of Olshausen
(Gospels and Acts, iv. 259-260) and others, revived
by Dr. Newman Smyth (Old Faiths in New Light,
ch. viii.), that the transformation of Christ’s body
from the natural to the glorified condition was a
process which went on gradually during the Forty
Days, and was not completed till the Ascension.
Rather, it must be said that on the very day of
His Resurrection the spirituality of His risen body
was as clearly shown as in the case of that much
later manifestation by the Sea of Tiberias (cf. Lk
2451. 86. Jn 2147), Weare not to think of the body
}
ἢ unity and
BODY
218
of Jesus during this period as in a tiansition state
with regard to its substance—partly of earth and
partly of heaven. It was with a spiritual body
that He rose, that glorified body of which His
Transfiguration had been both a prophecy and a
foretaste; and if we see Him moving for a time
along the borders of two worlds, that was because,
for the sake of His disciples and the future Church,
He made use of the natural in order to the revela-
tion of the spiritual. It is in this way that we
must explain His asking and receiving food (Lk
24%, Ac 10%). He cannot have depended upon
this food for His bodily support. His purpose in
taking it was to convince His disciples that He
was still a living man, in body as well as in spirit,
—that same Jesus who had so often in past days
partaken with them of their simple meals.
In respect of His body the risen Jesus now be-
longed to the mysterious regions of the invisible
world, and it was only when He chose to reveal
Himself that His disciples were aware of His pres-
ence. It is to be noticed that St. John describes
His appearances as ‘manifestations’: He ‘ mani-
fested Himself,’ ‘was manifested,’ to the disciples
(Jn 911... His resurrection body was a spiritual
body, but it had the power of materializing itself
to the natural senses, and Jesus made use of this
power from time to time in order to convince His
disciples, by the actual evidence of sight and
sound and touch, that the victory of His whole
liuman personality over death and the grave was
real and complete. And when this work was
accomplished, He parted from them for the last
time, and went up to the right hand of the Father
in a kind of royal state which not only proclaimed
His own lordship over both worlds, but became a
prophecy of the truth regarding the divinely ap-
pointed destiny of those whom He is not ashamed
to call His brethren. In the body of Christ’s glory
both St. Paul and St. John find the type after
which the believer’s body of humiliation is to be
fashioned at last (Ph 324, 1Jn 32). We are to be
like our Lord in the possession of a human nature
in which the corporeal has been so fully inter-
venetrated by the spiritual that the natural body
spr been transformed into a spiritual body (1 Co
ΡΤ):
There is no ground to suppose that our Lord’s
entrance upon the state of exaltation implies any
further change in His bodily nature. Certainly
no new quality could be developed which would be
inconsistent with the essential characteristics of
a body. One of these characteristics is the im-
possibility of being in two places at the same
moment, As long as He was on earth His body
could not be in heaven, thongh He was there by
His Spirit; and as long as He is in heaven His
body cannot be on earth, although He is present
by His Spirit, according to His promise to be with
His followers where they are gathered together in
His name (Mt 18”, ef. 28°), “St. Peter preached
that the heavens must receive Him until the times
of restoration of all things (Ac 9... and Christ
Himself taught the Apostles that it was expedient
for them that in bodily form He should leave them,
so that the Comforter might take His place in the
nudst of the Church (Jn 167),
3) Christ's mystical body.—In 1 Co 12" (ef. Ro
125) St Paul uses the figure of a body and its mem-
bers to describe the relations of Christian people
to ( hrist and to one another, and then in v.*7 he
delinitely applies the expression ‘a body of Christ’
1 Χρισ to the Corinthian Church. With
relerence to thy body politic the ficure was a
familias one in both Greek and Latin literature
and the Apostle transfers it to the Church for the
purpose of emphasizing his exhortations to @Ghurch
A sence ‘ ]
& sense of mutual dependence among the
Se
BOOK
people of Christ. As yet, however, the figure is
quite plastic, while the anarthrous σῶμα suggests
that it is the local Church which is immediately in
view. Here, accordingly, we have in their first
draft the Apostle’s grand conceptions on the sub-
ject of the Lord’s mystical body. When we come
to Ephesians (1°: * 413) and Colossians (1}8: 24) we
find that his ideas have been elaborated, and that
‘the body of Christ’ (τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ) has
become a fixed title of the Church not as local
merely, but as universal, nor simply as empiric,
but as an ideal magnitude. We notice this further
distinction, that in the earlier Epistles Christ is
conceived of as the whole body, of which indi-
vidual Christians are the particular members;
while in Ephesians and Colossians He becomes the
head of the Church which is His body (Eph 5*- 4,
Col 2!’)—the vital and organic centre of the whole.
The idea of this striking figure is similar to that
presented by our Lord Himself in the allegory of
the Vine and the Branches (Jn 151-83), The lesson
of the figure, as of the allegory, is not only that in
Christ all believers are bound together into the
unity of the Chureh, but that the spiritual vitality,
indeed the very existence, of individual Christians
and Christian communities depends upon the close-
ness of their relations with Jesus Christ who is
their head.
(4) Christ’s symbolic body.—On the night in
which He was betrayed, Jesus, in instituting the
sacrament of the Supper, said of the bread which
He took and broke and gave to His disciples, ‘This
is my body’ (τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ σῶμά μου: Mt 2675, Mk
1455 Lk 2919.1 Co 1133). Similarly St. Paul, writing
to the Corinthians, says of the bread which is
broken at the Supper, ‘Is it not the communion
of the body of Christ?’ (1 Co 1018); while in the
same Epistle he describes the person who eats the
sacrainental bread unworthily as ‘guilty of the
body of the Lord’ (1137, and says that a man eats
and drinks judgment unto himself ‘if he discern
not the body’ (11**). Opinions have differed greatly
in the Chureh as to the full significance of this
language, whether on the lips of Jesus or of St.
Paul. But whatever its further meanings may
be, there can be little doubt that primarily the
broken bread of the Supper is a symbol of the
crucified body of Christ. With this symbolic use
of the word ‘body’ many have sought to identify
the words of the Lord in the Fourth Gospel about
‘eating the flesh’ of the Son of Man (Jn 6%),
But as the word σῶμα denotes the body as an
organism, while ‘flesh’ (σάρξ) applies only to the
substance of the body, and as σάρξ is never em-
ployed elsewhere in the NT to describe the sacra-
mental bread, it is unlikely either that Jesus would
use σάρξ with this intention, or that the author of
the Gospel would have failed to use σῶμα, the
ordinary sacramental term, if it had been his
intention to represent our Lord as furnishing in
the Capernaum discourse a prophetic announce-
ment of the institution of the Supper. See art.
Lonrp’s SUPPER.
LITERATURE.—Grimm-Thayer, Lezicon, 5.0. ; Cremer, Biblico-
Theological Lexicon, s.v.; Laidlaw, Bible Doctrine of Man, s.v.;
Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality, s.v. ‘Resurrection’;
Lange, Life of Christ, vol. v. p. 126 ff. ; Forrest, Christ of His-
tory, pp. 150 ff., 411 ff.; Eapositor’s Greek Testament, passim ;
arts. ‘ Resurrection ’ and ‘Ascension’ in Hastings’ DB.
Ε΄ MEYRICK AND J. C. LAMBERT.
BOOK. — The word ‘book,’ representing two
Greek words, βίβλος and βιβλίον (with dim. βιβλαρί-
διον, Rev 103: 96), is of fairly frequent occurrence
in the NT, although it is found only nine times
in the Gospels. Very probably a book in the form
familiar to us did not exist in NT times. The
book of Scripture was a roll. as we may gather
from such a text as Rev 5!, ‘A book written
within and on the back, sealed with seven seals.’
BORDER BOSOM
SS ee ὍὃὉὦ5. ΄.... ὅ“΄. ὅ 5... . ζΚ0ὖὺὔ00΄ὌὍ0.0.0.Χ.Κ5΄Κ΄.΄. ΠπἔοΠὦἔὦΨἕἔΨἔ«οΣἔΕοΘυἘὁὁ ΄΄... ᾳὥ«ᾳὕὖΦΦ΄ῸΞβ00ΦΦὯπὰ΄΄ ςᾳ0ᾧᾳππὐὉ.. «ᾳ{βᾶΦῷπ|ᾳΨ«ἙΣὅὐ σ΄. ἀὐὐὐ΄ὐ ἀπὰ΄ὐτιῷὐ΄΄΄΄ὰὐὐὰ΄΄ὰ΄ὰ΄΄΄ὐὐ΄΄΄ςᾳ00]ὸῷὦ΄Θὥὦ0΄00}ὦ0ἅαὕ.ὕϑΨβόυὕϑῳῳϑσυσασισνσαν
The Scriptures used in the synagogues up to the
fall of Jerusalem were probably leather rolls, or at
least rolls of skins tanned in some way; but
papyrus rolls were in very general use. Parch-
ment was in use also, as we see from 2 Ti 41", but
probably also in the roll and not the codex form.
The distinction between the books (τὰ βιβλία) and
the parchments (τὰς μεμβράνας) in the passage just
referred to was, in all probability, simply one
relating to the material used and not to the form
of the manuscript, although it is not absolutely
certain at what date parchments began to be
folded instead of rolled.
The word ‘ book’ is not always used in a strictly
technical sense. In Mt 1! ‘The book of the genera-
tion of Jesus Christ’ means simply the record of, or
writing about, the genealogy of Jesus. There is
no reason to think that St. Matthew meant it to
be understood that the genealogy formed a little
roll by itself. Again in such expressions as ‘the
book of life’ (although that expression does not
occur in the Gospels), it is evident that the writer
is speaking figuratively. Our Lord said to His
Apostles (Lk 10°), ‘Rejoice because your names
are written in heaven’; and in the OT (Ex 32°)
there is express mention of a book which God had
written : ‘If not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy
book which thou hast written.’ The connexion of
the expression ‘book of life’ with the words of
our Lord to His Apostles, and with the daring yet
splendid utterance of Moses, is obvious enough.
To say that names are in ‘the book of life’ and
‘the Lamb’s book of life,’ is to say that those bear-
ing these names are accepted and accounted as
members of the heavenly kingdom here and here-
after.
The word ‘ book’ is used in its technical sense of
an actual roll or volume in Mk 19:0, Lk 8: 4!7 30
20, and Jn 9030, It is noteworthy that in Mk 12°6
the writings of Moses are called not ‘the books,’
but simply ‘the book.’
The books mentioned in Ac 19" as having been
brought by their possessors and burned, were
probably, many of them at least, simply amulets,
spells, grammata Ephesia, little strips of parch-
ment with words professedly of magical value
written on them.
LITERATURE.—Comm. on the NT; art. ‘ Writing’ in Hastings’
DB and in the Encye. Biblica; Schiirer, H/JP, Index, s.vv.
‘Books,’ ‘Scriptures’; Sanday, Inspiration, 157, 297; Kenyon,
Handbook to Textual Criticism of NT, ch. ii.
Gro. C. WATT.
BORDER (Gr. κράσπεδον for Heb. myy).—This
word plays a significant part in the Gospels (Mt
9” 1436 935, Mk 6%, Lk 8#). When Jesus was on
His way to heal Jairus’ little daughter, a certain
woman who had an issue of blood twelve years
came behind Him and touched the ‘ border’ (* hem’)
of His garment (τοῦ κρασπέδου τοῦ ἱματίου) and was
healed (Mt 970-22, Lk 8*4, Mk 6%). In Mt 14% we
read of many sick ones who sought healing in the
same way. Again, in that remarkable denuncia-
tion of the scribes and Pharisees which constitutes
the climax of one of our Lord’s most striking
discourses, He makes this charge among others:
‘All their works they do to be seen of men: they
make broad their phylacteries, and they enlarge
the borders of their garments’ (Mt 23°).
What is this ‘border of the garment’ that plays
such a réle? Clearly in our Lord’s time the Jews
had come to attach great importance to it. To
them it was the chief of three ‘sensible signs,’
or material reminders, of their obligations under
the Law, the other two being the PHYLACTERIES
(téphillin) and mézizéth, oblong boxes fixed above
the door-posts, on which Dt 6% and 1115} were
written, according to the directions there given.
The Law first required (Dt 22”) that ‘twisted
219
cords’ (Heb. gédhilim, incorrectly rendered ‘fringes’
by AV and RV) be formed upon the four corners
(‘four borders,’ RV) of the mantle or ‘outer gar-
ment.’ This thing termed gédhilim acquired later
the special name zizith,—it is so rendered by the
Targum in Dt 22”. The same law is found in
the Priestly Code in expanded form: ‘And the
Lord spake unto Moses saying, Speak unto the
children of Israel, and bid them that they make
them fringes (zizith, κράσπεδα) in the borders’ (more
correctly ‘tassels in the corners,’ RVm) ‘of
their garments throughout their generations, and
that they put upon the fringe of each border (7.e.
‘the tassel of each corner’) a cord of blue’ (Nu
1587: 88),
The ‘twisted cords’ of Dt 22! were clearly
intended to be fastened to the four corners of
the outer garment (usually called szm/ah). The
Priestly Code, however, further called for a ‘ tassel’
to be attached to each corner by a cord of blue.
Now, it is to these ‘tassels’ that the Gr. trans-
lators give the name kpdoreda—the term exclusively
used in the NT. The stmlah was worn like the
Gr. ἱμάτιον (the NT equivalent), the loose end
being thrown over the left shoulder. The ‘ tassel’
attached to this corner, then, could be reached
with ease from behind, as in the case of the woman
with the issue of blood (Mt 9°).
Some think that behind this law was an ancient
Semitic custom with superstitious and magical
associations, which, however, was impressed with
a new significance by the Hebrew legislation. At
any rate, we see here, as elsewhere, that in NT
times a special virtue was still thought to be
attached to the ‘tassels on the four corners’ (cf,
Mt 14°6, Mk 6° with Lk 47 and 1 Καὶ 1°).
In the Mosaic Law they were evidently intended
to be, as to the more spiritually minded doubtless
they were, simply reminders of the obligations
resting upon Jehovah’s people to walk in this law
and to keep all His commandments (Nu 15%: 10),
The ostentatious Pharisees, however, went beyond
others in their use of these signs, by making them
large and conspicuous.
Jewish hearers and readers would at once under-
stand what Jesus meant by this charge against the
scribes and Pharisees, ‘who sit in Moses’ seat.’
Making their phylacteries unusually broad and
enlarging the borders (‘tassels’) of their garments
would both be understood as their way of calling
every casual observer to witness that they were
remarkably pious. It was this ostentatious display
of an empty, outward piety which Jesus here and
elsewhere denounces, and which has given such ἃ
sinister and forbidding significance to ‘ Pharisaisin’
the world over.
LITeRATURE.—Schiirer, HJP τι. ii. 111ff.; Edersheim, Life
and Times, i. 624 ff.; Hastings’ DB and Kitto’s Biblical Cyclo-
pedia3, art. ‘Fringes.’ GEO. B. EAGER.
BORROWING.—See LOANs.
BOSOM occurs 5 times in EV of the Gospels
(Lk 6 167-2, Jn 138 13%), representing in each
case the Gr. κόλπος, the word which in LXX regu-
larly corresponds to pq of the Heb. text and ‘ bosom’
of the EV. κύλπος is found only once more in
NT, viz., in Ac 27°, where it has the secondary
sense of a bay or bight (a bosom-like hollow) ; ct.
Eng. ‘ gulf,’ which comes from this root.
In classical Greek, in the LXX, and in the NT
κόλπος, like Lat. sinws (which Vulg. gives in all the
above passages), is used in the two principal senses
of (a) the human bosom, the front of the body
between the arms; (ὁ) the bosom of the garment,
i.e. the hollow formed in front when the upper
garment was bound round the waist with the girdle.
In EV of the OT ‘bosom’ is to be understood,
BOSOM
according to the context, in one or other of these
two senses. 7.0. in expressions like ‘the wife of
thy bosom’ (Dt 13°), Naomi took the child and
laid it in her bosom’ (Ru 4:5), the first sense 1s
evidently the proper one. On the other hand,
when we read of putting one’s hand into one's
bosom (Ex 4% 7), taking fire into the bosom (Pr 67"),
receiving a gift in the bosom (2114), 10 is the bosom
of the garment of which we are to think. See art.
DREss. ;
1. In Lk 6*8, where our Lord says to willing givers,
‘Good measure, pressed down, shaken together,
running over... shall they give into your bosom,’
it is clear that the word has the sense of (ὁ). The
overhanging front of the upper garment when con-
fined by the girdle was used as a convenient re-
ceptacle, serving the ἀν αν ἐξ of the modern pocket.
An adequate paraphrase would thus be, ‘ Your
pockets shall be filled to overflowing.’ In the re-
maining passages two distinct questions emerge.
First, the more important one as to the general
meaning in each case of the expression ‘in the
bosom’ or ‘on the bosom.’ Next, in those cases in
which the phrase is taken to refer to the position
at table of one guest in relation to another, as to
whether the ‘bosom’ is the bosom proper or the
bosom of the garment.
2. Το begin with the simplest passage, the general
meaning of Jn 13°, in the light of the table customs
of the period, is perfectly plain. In the time of
Christ it was customary at a set feast to recline on
a divan or couch, with the feet stretched out
behind, the left arm supported on a cushion, and
the right hand free for eating. Moreover, the usual
plan was that the guests reclined not at right
angles to the table, but obliquely, this being mani-
festly much the more convenient way of reaching
the viands (cf. Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. et Talm., ad
loc.). By this arrangement a second guest to the
right hand lay with his head towards the bosom of
the first, and so on. But what precisely is meant
by ‘bosom’ in this connexion? Whether is the
word used in the sense of (a) or of (6) as described
above? Probably in the latter, the meaning being
that the head of the second reached ‘to the sinus
of the girdle’ of the first (see Meyer, Com. in loc.).
{t could not well have reached to the other’s bosom
in the strict sense of the word, for this would have
interfered with his freedom and comfort in eating
and drinking. This view is confirmed by the fact
that when the Evangelist describes St: John as
leaning back (ἀναπεσών) on Jesus’ breast to ask
Him a question, a different word (στῆθος) 15. em-
ployed (v.*1, cf. 2150 and see RV in both cases).
See art. GUEST-CHAMBER.
3. ‘The expression ‘A braham’s bosom’ (Lk 1622 23)
has already been dealt with in its general eschato-
logical signification (see art. ABRAHAM). A ques-
tion remains, however, as to the precise form of
the figure which the words are meant to suggest
(note that the plur. in v.2 has no separate conno-
tation from the sing. in v.2. Cf. Homer, Jl. ix.
ae) ie Aiea as ee
ight of, fatherlike,
as entolding Lazarus in his arms (ef. ‘Father
Abraham,’ vy." 27-3) or rather as receiving him
into the place of the honoured guest, the place
nearest to himself at a heavenly banquet? ‘Into
brah uns bos ym’? (els τὸν κόλπον A., v.72) might
Sugeest the former, but ‘in his bosom?’ (ἐν τοῖς
, as ‘a 7 "ᾧ , may very well be used with
ake © the idea of a feast, after the analogy
f Jn 13 (κόλπο used in the plural form both of
the human besom and of the folds of the upper
garment, See Liddell and Scott and Grimm-Thayer
£0 And this seems to be confirmed by that
other passage (Mts ‘ οὗ, Lk 1338. i 5
““) in which Jesus
says, ‘Many shall come from the east and the
BOTTLE
west, and shall sit down (RVm ‘recline,’ Gr. ἀνα-
κλιθήσονται ; οἵ. ἀνεκλίθη in TR reading of Lk 796,
which AV renders ‘sat down to meat’) with
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of
heaven.’ Alike for the social outcast (Lazarus) and
for the religious outcasts (the Gentiles), Jesus holds
out as a joyful ἔπ υοοι the thought of sitting
down with Abraham at a heavenly banqueting-
table. The conception of Paradise, moreover,
under the figure of a feast, is specially appropriate,
because of the contrast it presents to the earthly
condition of Lazarus as a starving beggar (v.”),
just as it is in keeping with the great reversal in
the positions of the two men that Dives, who on
eh had ‘fared sumptuously every day’ (ν.}5),
should now lack even a drop of water to cool his
burning tongue (v.”4).
4. The only passage that remains is Jn 118, where
Jesus Christ is described as ‘the only-begotten
Son, which is in the bosom of the Father.’ In this
case the image of neighbours at a feast seems quite
inappropriate, though some have suggested it ; and
it 15. in every way more suitable, in view of the
whole purpose of the Prologue no less than the
language of the immediate context, to take ‘in
the bosom of the Father’ in that closer and more
tender meaning in which in the OT the expression
is used to describe, whether literally or figuratively,
the relation of a wife to her husband (Dt 13%), or
of a child to his father (Nu 11}3) or mother (1 Καὶ
17°). This beautiful term of human affection is
employed here to denote the intimate fellowship of
pertect love which exists between God and His Son.
Some difficulty is occasioned by the fact that the
phrase in the original is εἰς τὸν κόλπον, literally,
‘into the bosom.’ Meyer insists on giving to eis
its ordinary meaning of ‘direction towards,’ and so
recognizes as the prominent element in the expres-
sion the idea of having arrived at. He admits that
‘so far as the thing itself is concerned,’ the εἰς τὸν
κόλπον of v.18 does not differ from the πρὸς τὸν
θεόν of v.1, but maintains that in ν. 18, at all events,
the Evangelist desires to express the fullest fellow-
ship with God, not before the Incarnation, but
after the Ascension into glory. In this case, how-
ever, the description of Jesus Christ as eis τὸν
κύλπον of the Father would be inappropriate, for
the Evangelist is in the act of explaining how it
is that the Only-Begotten Son was made to ‘declare’
the Father while on earth (note the aorist ἐξηγήσατο).
It seems proper, therefore, to take ὧν as a timeless
present, and to understand the author to mean
that Jesus had declared God on earth because His
inherent relation to the Father, before the Incar-
nation as after the Exaltation, was one of being
‘in his bosom’ (cf. 16% ‘I came out from the
Father, and am come into the world’; 17° ὁ ‘the
glory which I had with thee before the world
was... I manifested [ἐφανέρωσα, aor.] thy name’).
The εἰς in this case may either simply be used for
ἐν, after the fashion of the constructio pregnans
(cf. Mk 139-16, Ac 74 8%), or, as Godet and Westcott
think (Comm. in loc.), may point to a relationship
not of simple contiguity merely, but of perfect
communion realized through active intercourse.
The Father’s bosom is not a place but a life. ‘The
Son is there, only because He plunges into it by
His unceasing action; it is so with every state
which consists in a moral relation’ (Godet, 7d.).
LITERATURE.—Grimm-Thayer, Lex., 5.0. κόλπος ; the Comm. on
the various passages ; Hastings’ DB, artt. ‘Dress,’ ‘ Abraham’s
Bosom. J. C. LAMBERT.
BOTTLE.—This is the AV rendering (RV ‘ wine-
skin’) of ἀσκός, which denotes the tanned skins of
sheep and goats that are used in the East for hold-
ing water, oil, wine, and cheese (see art. ‘ Bottle’ in
Hastings’ DBi. 311). In the Gospels the allusion
BOY
BOYHOOD 221
to ‘ bottles’ occurs in connexion with a question that
had been addressed to Christ with regard to an ob-
served difference between His disciples and those of
John the Baptist and the Pharisees (Mt 947, Mk
216-2, Lk 5%), A certain outward conformity
was expected in religious teaching and example,
and the absence of fasting among His disciples
seemed to create a perplexing and objectionable
departure. The interview takes place immediately
after the incident of Levi’s feast, when Christ’s
eating with publicans and sinners was objected to
as lowering the standard of the religious life.
The simile reminds us that the life of institutions
as of individuals has a limit. It is sufficient for the
wine-skin to have once held and matured and _ pre-
served its new wine. The attempt to repeat the
act of filling and distension involves the loss of
both the wine and the vessel which holds it. The
most venerated form was once an innovation on
what preceded it, and by the operation of the
same law a fresh expansive force will again alter
external conditions and create new conformities.
Christ claims the entire devotion of His disciples,
and while the fasting that was largely a com-
memoration of the past was suspended during His
presence, it would receive in days to come a fresh
impulse from His absence.
The important truth taught by the simile of the
wine-skin and its contents is emphasized by the
twofold fact that religious forces are the most ex-
pansiye of all, and that their receptive forms often
attain to a degree of rigidity which preserves the
outward shape after the contents have been with-
drawn. With regard to the principle of fasting,
the affinity of mind and body that connects sorrow
with sighing (Is 3510) abundantly authorizes the
observance under naturally suitable circumstances,
but fasting by statute has usually been found to
be linked, both as cause and effect, with ecclesi-
astical segregation and asceticism.
LITERATURE.—Bruce, Parabolic Teaching, p. 295 ff., Galilean
Gospel, p. 180 ff. ; F. W. Robertson, Jhe Human Race, p. 190 ff.
G. M. MACKIE.
BOY (the word).—-In the AV this word does not
occur in the Gospels, nor indeed in NT, and only
three times in OT (Gn 252’, Jl 3°, Zec 85. We
usually have ‘male child’ for a very young boy,
and ‘lad’ for an older. one, where ‘boy’ would be
used in modern English. And RV has retained
the older use in most cases.
But there is in modern English an ambiguous
use of ‘boy.’ It sometimes approximates to the
sense of ‘servant’ (cf. ‘doctor’s boy’), and in some
of our colonies is used of a native male servant
irrespective of age. A ‘boy’ in this sense may be
grey -headed. This force of the word made it
suitable as a rendering of παῖς in certain cases.
In Mt 8°8—Lk 721°, the centurion’s servant is
sometimes described as a δοῦλος (RVm, ‘ bond-
servant’) and sometimes as a παῖς (RVm, ‘ boy’).
RV text keeps the AV ‘servant’ throughout for
both words. A comparison of Mt 8% with Lk 71
shows that the two words apply to the same
person. It is in the centurion’s own speech (Mt
8°5—Lk 77) that he refers to the slave who was
‘precious unto him’ (Lk 7? RVm) by the milder
word. The narrative (except Mt 8!) uses δοῦλος,
as the centurion himself does in Mt 8°, Lk 7%. The
variation is either a natural simple touch, proving
the veracity of the narrative, or it is an instance
of the highest art. See art. SERVANT.
As in the above instance παῖς -- δοῦλος, so in the
narrative of the healing of the epileptic child (Mt
171418) Mk 9-27, Lk 937-43) we find in St. Matthew
and St. Luke (not St. Mark) that παῖς can=vids.
Here Mt 1738, Lk 9% RV have ‘boy’ in the text,
for the AV ‘child.’ Similar is the use in Lk 8°,
Where ἡ παῖς is ‘maiden’ and ‘maid’ in EV.
Except where the context requires a different
rendering, παῖς is usually translated ‘servant’ in
both versions, and RV often points out occurrences
of δοῦλος by putting ‘or bond-servant’ in the margin.
In Jn 4°! both versions have ‘son’ (-- παῖς) where
RV had far better have put ‘boy’ as in the above
instance, keeping ‘son’ strictly for υἱός.
GEORGE FARMER.
BOYHOOD (Jewish).—So little is recorded on
this subject in the Gospels, or in the NT generally,
that we are dependent on other sources for our facts.
These sources are chietly the OT, the OT Apocrypha,
Josephus, the Talmud, and modern Eastern life.
The first of these authorities is too early, and the
last two too late, to justify us in basing on them
any very positive statements as to Jewish boyhood
in the time of Christ. With this caution they are
used in the present article. And it will be remem-
bered (1) that the Jewish life of our period was the
result of the previous life of the nation; (2) that
Tsrael is a nation of great conservatism in matters
of religion and the home, although receptive of new
ideas ; (3) that some of the Apocryphal books were
late enough to be products of an age in which
Pharisaism, Hellenism, and other Jewish views
met each other, much as they did in the early part
of the Ist cent. A.D.
i. THE HoME.—Boys, until their fifth year, were
under the charge of the women, afterwards they
passed under the father’s control. We therefore
treat the period of boyhood as commencing at the
age of five. Although no doubt many mothers
retained their influence after the boy’s childhood,
it is surely a mistake to quote Pr 31 in this con-
nexion, as Phillott does (Smith’s DB? i. 305°).
The special influence implied here is surely that of the queen-
mother over an adult reigning king, which, according to Eastern
custom, exceeds that of a wife. For there may be many wives,
but only one mother of the sovereign. The queen-mother
(gébirah) is mentioned 1 Καὶ 1518, 2 K 1013, Jer 1318, and the name
of the king’s mother is given with emphasis in the account
of his accession (1 K 142! 152 etc.). So, in David’s lifetime,
3athsheba shows him great outward respect (1 K 116), but is
seated at Solomon’s right hand (1 K 219) when the latter is king.
Phillott also refers to Herod. i. 186; Strabo, xv. 733; Niebuhr,
Descript. p. 24.
More to the point is St. Paul’s reference (2 Ti 1
34-15) to the example and teaching of Lois and
Xunice, which no doubt was only one instance out
of many of good maternal influence. And the
Mosaic law placed the mother on an equality with
the father in her claim on the obedience and love
of her son (Ex 9117, Lv 20° ete.).. The house-mother
of such a family as our Lord’s was neither so
ignorant, so secluded, nor so debased as the woman
sometimes described by travellers in the East.
Judaism was not in this respect the same as
Mohammedanism. Even now we are told that the
home of the Syrian Christian is superior to that of
his Mohammedan neighbours. And even among the
latter the seclusion of the harem belongs chiefly to
the life of the rich. In working and middle-class
homes the wife and mother takes her part, as in
the West, in the training of the children, and in
necessary outdoor business. The OT and _ the
Gospels show this. For instance, ‘ women’s apart-
ments’ are never referred to in the latter. And
Christ apparently met the wife of Jairus, the wife
of Chuza, Susanna, Martha and Mary, Peter's
wife’s mother, and others, without the obstructive
conditions of zenana life. We lay stress on this,
because we believe that views of one side of Eastern
life are often applied too widely, and because from
this freer, higher status of woman in Israel there
followed her greater fitness for wifehood and
motherhood. We believe that in Galilee, at least,
an almost Western freedom of intercourse between
the sexes must be considered in estimating the
influences affecting Jewish boyhood.
The period of boyhood, as we understand it for
BOYHOOD
222
ee
the purpose of this article, was from the 5th to the
13th year. The legal ‘coming ot age’ was at 13
for boys, but 12 or even earlier for girls. Bat
Schiirer (JP 1. ii. 51 1.) thinks that the definite
age was fixed in post-Talmudic times, and that
nothing but ‘the signs of approaching puberty
settled in earlier times whether a child was bound
or not bound to the observance of the Law. We
shall consider the ceremonies of this ‘coming of
age’ later on. One thing connected with this date
was the power of giving evidence. Schiirer quotes
the Mishna (Nidda v. 6): ‘When a child is twelve
years and one day old, his oaths are tested ; when
he is thirteen years and a day, they are valid with-
out further ceremony.’ Here, for our period, we
may compare the commentators on Jn 951 ‘He is of
age, ask him; he shall speak for himself.’
ii. PLAY.—-The few allusions in the Bible to
children’s games do not allude specially to those of
boys. Zee 85 ‘The streets of the city shall le full
of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof,’ is
quite general, and is 500 years too early. The use
of yeled (‘boy’) and yaldah (‘girl’) even leaves a
vagueness as to the ages of the children. But the
prophet no doubt based his words on the customs
and sights of his day, and thus a fairly early
period of life is meant. It is πού said that the sexes
were playing together, they might be in different
groups. Nature, even in England, soon leads to
this, and the early ripening of the East must be
remembered. Therefore, soon after tle period of
infantile games, comes that of sports practised by
each sex alone, and in the case of boys ‘manly’
exercises soon follow, if practised at all. In many
parts of the East the climate is often quite un-
suited for the ‘school-boy’ games of Northern
lands. The absence of these is noticed by the
teachers of many Mission schools. But in this
respect there must be great differences. That
lassitude which is true of children in Bombay, for
instance, cannot at all seasons apply to those of
Nazareth, which is about 1500 feet above sea-level.
A caution is necessary when such excellent books
as Lane’s Modern Egyptians, dealing chiefly with
Cairo, or even works on Persia or India, are used
not merely to illustrate the Bible, but to add to the
descriptions in it.
There were, of course, in the Ist cent. A.D. athletic
sports and physical exercises in some of the large
towns of the Holy Land. But these were so con-
nected with Hellenic immorality that they were
offensive to every pious Jew. They were chiefly
confined to the cities which had a large heathen
popriation, and we cannot imagine a gymnasium
at Nazareth or Hebron. At Jerusalem, during the
high priesthood of Jason (B.C. 173), a gymnasium
Was set up, and ‘the very priests forsook their
service at the altar and took part in the games of
the palwstra’ (Schiirer, I. 1. 203; 2 Mac 413-14),
liberias, Jericho, Tarichzea had each a hippodrome
or a stadium (Schiirer, 11. i. 33). Had the exercises
for which these buildings were erected commended
themselves to the Jews, the older boys would soon
have emul ited their adult countrymen as far as
possible, Just as English boys are cricketers and
footballers because Englishmen are so. But
Judaism completely condemned the exercises in
Which Greeks and Romans delighted. By their
history as well as by their surroundings and details
these exercises were connected with heathenism
and apostate Judaism (Jos. Ant. XV. viii. ΝΟ
on οἱ pious Jewish parents could copy even the
eager a : οἱ these exercises (Brough, 76, 77).
An older boy in districts like Upper Galilee or
the hill country of Judea would find much
physical exertion called for by ¢} ontour of the
country, Almost every journey implied hill-
BOYHOOD
climbing. Moreover, there were (and are) in many
parts of Palestine many minor field-sports prac-
tised, such as the snaring of small birds, which
would form a pastime for older lads. Skill in
slinging (Jg 20', 1S 17%, 2 Καὶ 3”, 1 Ch 12?, Job
4122, Pr 268 [AV, RVm], 1 Mac 651) could be ob-
tained only by early training and practice. The
sane remark applies to the archery so often men-
tioned in the Of. That both these accomplish-
ments were maintained in NT times may be
believed from the many references to bowmen and
slingers in Josephus (BJ, passim). But specific
references to these arts as boyish exercises are
apparently wanting.
Young English children play at ‘ horses, ’ ‘school,’
‘work,’ ‘mothers,’ etc., which we may call games of
imitation. The Talmud alludes to these ; and our
Lord noticed the little children playing at mar-
riages and funerals (Mt 11)* Ὁ Lk 7). These
would be played by young children of both sexes.
It is curious that the Apocryphal Gospels have a legend about
our Lord modelling birds out of moist clay (Syr. Boyhood of the
Lord Jesus 1, pseudo-Matthew 27, Thomas 11, Arabic Gospel of
the Infancy 36 etc., in B. H. Cowper’s Apoeryphal Gospels).
Some of these accounts describe our Lord’s playmates as also
modelling objects. While we reject the miraculous statements
that our Lord endued these figures with life, we may accept
the narratives as based on actual childish games. It is indeed
said that Judaism would have shrunk from any representation
of animate beings (Schiirer, 11. i. p. 36), but there is no proof that
all good Jews took a puritanical, Pharisaic view of the prohibi-
tions of the Law; and even if the Judeo-Christian Apocryphal
Gospels are absolutely wrong in describing this modelling as a
specimen of our Lord’s play in childhood, they may be right in
using it as an element in a picture of Palestinian infancy. Are
the children of orthodox Jews now forbidden the use of dolls or
wooden horses ?
In PEFSt, April 1899, p. 99, is an account, with illustrations,
of three soft limestone slabs, resembling draught-boards, found
in the excavations at Tell Zakariya. One is conplete, measur-
ing 23cm. x 20 cm. (about 44 in. Χ 4 in.) and 7 cm. thick. It is
ruled (incised) so as to form 144 squares of irregular size. The
other two are fragments only. They belong to the Greek
period. Such draught-boards have also been found at Gezer
and at Tell-es-Safi. Some have fewer squares, and clearly there
were various arrangements of the squares(PEHF'St, Oct. 1900,
p. 321; Oct. 1903, p. 300). A collection of small waterworn
pebbles, each about the size of an ordinary ivory card counter
and three times as thick, was found in the lower Jewish stratum
at Gezer. These were either draught-men, or counters for cal-
culation (PEF'St, Oct. 1903, p. 300).
Two small draughtsmen of green enamelled paste (possibly
Egyptian), found at Gezer, are described PE FSt, Oct. 1903, p.
213, and pl. ii., figs. 25, 26). Others of pottery of local manu-
facture have also been discovered.
iii. ScHooL.—The majority of Jewish boys were
as unable to study in the béth ha-Midrdash as the
majority of our population are to procure a Unti-
versity training (Ac 4%, Jn 7”, and, on the
other hand, Ac 22% ete.). In any case this higher
education belonged to an age beyond boyhood.
Elementary schools, however, existed at least
wherever there was a synagogue. In them read-
ing was certainly taught; and even if Scripture
was the only text-book, the knowledge thus ac-
quired would avail in other directions. Writing
also was taught, probably as a help to the reading
more than for its own sake (Jn 8° ὃ compared with
7 show that it was an ‘elementary subject’).
Arithmetic, etc., is not mentioned in our authori-
ties, but some acquaintance with it is, of course,
a probable part of the course. It would be of
more interest to know if Greek was ever taught
in the synagogue schools of Palestine. It must
have been so necessary in the many bilingual
districts. It was the means of communication
between the natives and the Roman authorities.
A training in a foreign or in a dead language is
always a mental advantage. Even if Greek were
not taught to most Jewish boys, Hebrew was ; and
the Hebrew of the OT which we know they
studied was not the Hebrew (Aramaic) which
they spoke in their homes (e.g. Mk 5"). If only
the mother-tongue was used, then the Scriptures
were read (or verbally taught) in a Targum.
BOYHOOD
According to the Jewish authorities, the ele-
mentary or synagogue school was called the béth
ha-Sepher, ‘house of the book’ (i.c. the Scriptures),
to distinguish it from the béth ha-Midrash or béth
ha-Talmiud, theological colleges where the Rab-
binical explanations and additions were taught.
The teacher of the school was usually the hazzan
or servant of the congregation (Lk 4°; Shabbath
i. 3).
An elementary native Mohammedan school at the present
day, where the instruction is reading and writing Arabic, and
the study of the Koran, will give us an idea of the probable
methods. The scholars sit cross-legged at their teacher's feet,
he being slightly above them (Lk 246, Ac 299, cf. Mt 51). The
letters are first taught by tracing with a stick in sand. All
reading is aloud, and in a kind of rhythmical chant or drone.
Even in after life the sacred Book is always read aloud, and
so Philip (Ac 890) heard the eunuch reading his roll of Isaiah. |
The discipline is of the sternest kind, corporal punishment
being freely used. Does a foundation of fact, or at least
vraisemblance, lie beneath the legends of our Lord’s treatment
by His schoolmaster? (Gospel of pseudo-Matthew 31; Gospel
of Thomas 14. 15 ; ib. (Latin) 12. 13 etec.). It is noticeable how
the Lord and His Apostles silently ignore all such advice about
the training of children as we find in Pr 1324 1918 2318, Sir 301-13,
We believe that Judaism, like some sections of Christendom,
had read such OT ae too literally, or applied them too
severely, and Eph 64 is much more in the spirit of the Gospel.
How far was elementary education universal
and compulsory? The Jewish tradition asserts that
it was both (cf. Jerus. Kethuboth viii. 11, quoted
in Schiirer, 11. ii. 40). Schiirer concludes that
schools were general in the time of Christ; and
thinks that the tradition is by no means incredible
that Joshua, the son of Gamaliel (Ist cent.),
enacted ‘that teachers of boys should be ap-
pointed in every town, and that children of the
age of six or seven should be brought to them.’
At least it is possible that education was fairly
universal in our Lord’s day, within the limits
indicated above. See, further, art. EDUCATION.
iv. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND PRACTICE.—
Although the school education was on a religious
basis, it does not appear to have clashed with or
superseded the religious teaching of the home.
The responsibility remained with the parents.
This was in accordance with the OT and especially
the Pentateuch, which gives no commands for for-
mal religious instruction (schools, tutors, ete.) as in
later Judaism. But it is clearly laid down in the
Law and OT generally that children are to be
taught (ci. Gn 151 (J), Ps 44! 783°, Dt 49 67 119
324). The Wisdom books imply parental teaching
π|ν {0 ® 28354172 10! 13! 15* 22% 23>-°5 ΟῚ] Sir
3. 1:9 30° ete., also To 4 and 14, passim). We notice
in Ex 12769. 138 the direction that the people were
to join the instruction of the children in the
history and meaning of the Passover with the
feast itself. In Ex 135-16 the presentation of the
firstborn is made another opportunity for such
instruction. It is the fathers who have the re-
ligious instruction of young Israel in their hands,
for other rites, ceremonies, festivals would natur-
ally be explained to the children in like manner.
Not by catechisms, reading lessons, tasks learned,
or dry instruction in a school, but by sharing in
the ritual worship, with interest aroused for the
coming explanations offered, which were based on
the history, were the children taught.
Many occasions presented themselves for such
teaching as arises from the child’s own inquiries
and interest. There were the suggestive little
rolls of parehment hung up in the doorway (the
mézuzoth) and the phylacteries (¢éphillin) worn on
the forehead and wrist (Dt 69 11° and Ex 13% 1%,
Dt 68 118°), See art. PHYLACTERIES. Another
opportunity for religious instruction without set
lessons was given by the wearing of the fringes
(zizith), Nu 15%7-41, See art. BoRDER. The feasts
observed at home and in the synagozue, and the
pilgrimages to Jerusalem also afforded opportuni-
BOYHOOD
223
ties for oral and interesting instruction on the part
of the parents. Though Judaism is a ritualistic
and ceremonial religion, teaching through the eye
in a way well adapted to the capacities of children,
the ritual and ceremonies are largely for the home.
The master of the house, the boy’s father, did and
does much more than ‘conduct family prayer.’
Although the Passover was held at Jerusalem, the
greater part of the service and all the sacred
meal were celebrated in private houses and family
circles. The outward forms of religion at least
met the boy in his home more than they do with
us. There were more opportunities for a pious
parent to do the duty winch we have seen was
cast upon him by the Law and by the customs of
Israel.
Moreover, the Biblical history occupied the
place of national history, of ballad poetry, of
tolk-lore tales, and of all that, in ages before the
invention of printing, took the place of our ‘ chil-
dren’s literature.’
In many cases, no doubt, perhaps in most, Haggadistic em-
bellishments were made to the OT narratives, some of which
have perhaps crept into one or both of our present Biblical re-
censions, that of Palestine and that of the Dispersion. Ruthas
a scarcely altered love-tale ; Judith and Jonah, allegorical fic-
tions ; Esther, especially in its Greek form, a greatly amplified
history, are instances of books which we now have in written
forms, but which were once the ‘fireside stories’ (to use a
Western phrase) of many Jewish homes. Here, rather than in
a purposeful foolishness of the Rabbis, was probably the souree
of much that is strange and bizarre in Jewish literature.
Who would listen so attentively to the father
or old grandfather telling his evening story when
work was done as the young boys and girls in the
outer part of the family circle? The story-telling
taste of the East is a well-known fact (witness the
Arabian Nights); true history and the truth of
God were probably taught orally in a somewhat
analogous manner.
Religious instruction was aided in two other
ways. No one can doubt that the historical
Psalms (78. 81. 105. 106. 114) as well as the alpha-
betical ones (9-10. 25. 34. 37. 111. 112. 119. 145)
were well adapted for use by young people, even
if they were not composed expressly for the pur-
pose of assisting those who were to learn them
by heart. The ‘Hymn of the Fathers’ (Sir 44-50)
has apparently a similar object. It is far too
long for liturgical use, of which besides there is
no record.
And, lastly, the synagogue services, with the
lections from the Law (Ac 15?!) and the Prophets
(Lk 41. Ac 1315), filled their place in the training
of a Jewish boy. It is in the highest degree un-
likely that every household, even every pious
household, possessed rolls of all the OT books.
There was not perhaps a definite ‘Canon’ in our
modern sense. More families would possess the
‘Law,’ but expense would prevent even this being
universal. The oral teaching at home, the reading
in school, and the hearing in the synagogue,—all
had a share in producing that knowledge of the
Jewish Bible which, as we see in the Gospels, was
possessed even by working men like the fishers of
Bethsaida (Lk 953 ete.). But the oral teaching,
however and wherever it had been given, is clearly
referred to in Mt δ5) 37: 33.38 (heard not read) 17
(hearsay of Mal 45:5). Our Lord constantly re-
ferred to OT incidents (Mt 659 8: 12% 41. 42 ete.) as
to facts well known by the multitudes. (Do all
Mohammedan families possess a Koran? Yet they
know their faith). But then He also referred to
haggadéth (Mt 8") and to the OT Apocrypha (Lk
6°, cf. 1 Mac 2°41) in much the same way. The
contrasted phrase, ‘Have ye never read?’ (Mt
2116. #2 22°! ete.), was said to the religious leaders,
who would have more advantages and opportuni-
ties than the bulk of the population, and who were
supposed to study the written Revelation.
BOY HOOD
Up to the age of 12 or 13 a Jewish boy was
called katdn (‘little’) or tindk (cf. both words used
of school children in passages quoted by Schiirer,
II. ii. 49 ff.).
The second word is a form of p3\' yénék, suckling (3) to
suck), which however is used of schoolboys in the Talmud ; and
this meaning has clearly been reached by a language-change
similar to that by which infant has come in English law to
mean, in spite of its etymology, a person who may be twenty
years old.
At the age mentioned above, the Jewish boy
became bound to fulfil the Law. He was therefore
called a ‘son of the Law’ (bar-mizvah), or a ‘son of
the Precept,’ and the ceremony in which he was
recognized as such by the community was natur-
ally regarded as important and interesting. ἢ
Opinions differ as to how much of the Law and
the Precepts a boy was bound to observe before
this ceremony. Probably there was no uniformity.
The practice for sons of Pharisees is naturally the
one recorded fer us, rather than the popular one.
And probably also the exact period when the
fullest obligations fell on the boy was not fixed at
first, but was settled individually (as Schiirer
suggests) by the appearance of signs of approach-
ing manhood. We must remember that Orientals
attain physical maturity at an earlier age than
we do.
Later on, when the age of 13 was fixed, the Rabbis found
support for it, or rather for that of 12. At that age Moses was
said to have left the house of Pharaoh’s daughter (but cf. Ex
211 with Ac 723). They taught that Samuel was 12 when he
began to’ prophesy (18 124 is followed by 219.21, implying an
interval of some years before 34, at which time Samuel was old
enough to open the doors of the house of the Lord, 315. The
age is also stated by Jos. Ant. v. x. 4). Solomon was (absurdly
enough) said to have been 12 years old when he gave his judg-
ment (1 K 316-27), The only instance which was not entirely
founded on conjecture or tradition is that of Josiah’s age when
he carried out his reform, 2Ch 343 (not in 2K 223). These
instances all look like attempts to date the origin of the
Rabbinical rule further back into OT times.
According to modern rule, the boy must be 13 years old and
aday. He is then presented in the synagogue ona Sabbath,
called ‘the Sabbath of Phylacteries’ (téphillin) because the boy
is then invested with them, and wears them in prayer, and is
bound to observe the feasts and fasts. In olden days the
obligation to attend the feasts at Jerusalem perhaps became
binding after this ceremony. Women and children were exempt
by the Law (‘all thy males,’ Dt 1616). But Schiirer (1. ii. 51)
quotes a decision of the school of Shammai as to the meaning
of ‘child’ (katan): ‘Every one who cannot yet ride on his
father's shoulders from Jerusalem to the temple mount’ ; While
the school of Hillel said: ‘Every one who cannot yet go up from
Jerusalem to the temple mounf led by his father’s hand.’ We
think that Lk 242 neither affirms nor denies any previous visits
of Christ to the temple, either annually or three times a year.
The fact that His life had been in danger in Juda (Mt 213.16. 22
might lead Joseph and Mary to observe the rule less strictly
than they otherwise would have done. Perhaps boys who lived
at or near Jerusalem did more than the provincials. If Joseph
went up alone annually he probably did as much as most of his
Galilean neighbours. The Jews of the Dispersion certainly only
went up annually (usually at Pentecost), if they went more than
once or twice in a lifetime. St. Paul had omitted many years
(Ac 2417), although a strict observer himself of the Law. ἢ
_ In modern times the Jewish hoy reads (or rather sings) the
lesson, and gives the blessing for the first time at the bar-
ceremony In the presence of his relatives and the con-
nm. Itis to his parents a time of joy and honour, and
intones the holy words, the prayers of his pious friends
Was this reading by the boy a custom in the 1st
iry’ If the ceremony existed at all, it probably was a part
ar 1 Lk 416.17 implies that the Carpenter had officiated
mie The first occasion may well have been at
rat
ty8 also the presiding Rabbi usually gives an address
vith personal allusions. Presents to the boy from
nd a feast at the parents’ house follow the cere-
n the whole service may well be ancient, and
re the time of Christ; but the absolute silence
. and Jo us on the subject prevents our being
Τ +} Hy
: I bos s who e 1 far from the capital and temple the
period Ἶ been I creat importance, apart from
i ‘if their homes were in quiet villages,
n “ἢ vizviih has }
been found in the Talmud,
ecome Us L ge nerally for an adult
“urer, I, 1:. 51, 2 note 38, and his
aut * Ji, 02 ἢ
BOYHOOD OF JESUS
| the crowds at the feasts would arouse their keenest interest.
They would also see the luxury of the rich, the noisy bargain-
ing of traders, and signs of that imperial power which, however
it was hated, was the great fact of the time.
v. WorK.—Every well brought-up Jewish boy
was taught an occupation. This may have arisen
from the many warnings against idleness in the
Wisdom books of the OT (Pr 6% 1! 10426 194),
‘ Abundance of idleness’ (RV ‘ prosperous ease ’) is
noted in Ezk 16% asa cause and concomitant of
sin, and the Rabbis appear to have realized the
truth about the usefulness of manual labour to
much the same extent as did the founders and
leaders of Western monasticism. Rabban Gam-
aliel 111., son of R. Judah ha-Nasi, said: ‘ For
exertion in both (the study of the Law and labour)
keeps from sin. The study of the Law without
employment in business must at last be interrupted,
and brings transgression after it’ (Aboth ii. 2;
Schiirer, 11. 1. 318, 8 25). Another said: ‘He who
teaches not his son a trade teaches him to be a
thief.’
St. Paul’s father was wealthy enough to give
him a good Greek education at Tarsus (probably)
and a Rabbinical one at Jerusalem. His wealth
is also implied in Ph 37:8, if that passage refers,
as some commentators think, to St. Paul’s being
disinherited for his Christianity. His private
means somehow disappeared, so that he had to
depend either on the contributions of others or on
his labour. But he had a trade to fall back upon
(Ac 185, 1Th 2°, 2Th 3°). And.the warnings
about idleness in the NT were addressed by him
to Gentile Churches, rather than by him or other
Apostles to Jewish converts (Eph 458, 2 Th 31-22),
Our Lord was not only the carpenter’s son, but the
carpenter (Mk 6%); and Justin Martyr speaks of
ploughs and yokes having been made by Him
(Trypho, 88). But His earthly condition was not
wealthy ; and this may have been the case with
Aquila (Ac 18°), as it probably was with the fisher-
Apostles of Galilee. See, further, artt. TRADES,
WORK.
Lireratcre.—J. Brough, The Early Life of Our Lord,
London, Murray, 1897 (a full, well-arranged and useful compila-
tion, but needing careful testing, as authorities divided by
many centuries are used in the same paragraph without a word
of caution); F. Delitzsch, Artizan Life in Nazareth ; Schiirer,
GJV3 [Eng. tr. HJP)] passim; Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. et Tal-
mud.; Schwab, Le Talmud de Jérusalem; Joseph Simon,
L’ Education, etc., chez les anciens Juifs; the ‘Lives of Christ’
by Edersheim, Didon, Farrar, Keim, Geikie, etc. (the remark on
Brough’s work applies to some of these also); the relevant
articles in the Bible Dictionaries and Encyclopedias; Keil,
Biblical Archeology, ii. 175 ff. § 111; the Heb. Archiol. of
Nowack and of Benzinger, s.v. ‘ Familie.’
Much ‘local colour’ is to be gained from the works of travel-
lers in Palestine—Kitto, Tristram, Robinson, etc., and from the
issues of the PEF'St. GEORGE FARMER.
BOYHOOD OF JESUS.—1. The Biblical data.—
The preceding article expresses the present writer’s
ideas as to religious training, education, and
recreation in the time of Christ. The Gospels
tell us nothing except by inference. The complete
absence of haggddéth, i.e. such religious fiction as
we find in the Talmud, from our Lord’s teaching,
implies either want of training in it, or positive
rejection of it. But Christ acquired such a know-
ledge of the Old Testament, and perhaps of some
books outside the Palestinian canon, that the
teachers in the temple ‘were astonished at his
understanding and answers’ (Lk 2%7). We do not
doubt that Seribism and Rabbinism had begun, and
had a considerable following. But we doubt if it
had made such progress that a good Israelite in the
provinces, living in private life, was bound to live
and to order his household according to the rules
laid down and enforced by the leaders of the nation
in the next and following centuries after the great
upheaval of the Jewish war with Rome. Then, by
BOYHOOD OF JESUS
political necessity, the ‘ traditions’ of a sect became
the life of a nation. Perhaps, also, Christianity
took out of Judaism those pious souls who were
‘zealous of the law,’ but not necessarily so of the
‘traditions,’ and there were left only those leaders
and followers whose sayings supply us with the
picture of 2nd century Judaism (cf. Schiirer,
ΠΡ UU. i. 8 25, ‘Scribism’—especially pp. 365-
379). Yet it must be admitted, in favour of a
contrary view, that Peter at least was guided by
some rules which went beyond those of the OT,
and which came froth the scribes, Pharisees, and
Rabbis (Ae 10%; Gal 2!*—eating with non-Jews).
But if any pious persons and households were as
et free from the Rabbinical ‘yoke of bondage’
(Gal 5'), surely that freedom was to be found in the
household of Nazareth. A protest is needed, be-
cause some writers illustrate (?) Christ’s early life
entirely by Rabbinical rules. The many illustra-
tions from Jewish books which are brought forward
to prove that all Jewish boys learnt a trade are
hardly needed to prove that Christ did so. Apart
from Mk 6? (the only peste in which He is called
ὁ τέκτων, and not merely ὁ Tod τέκτονος vids), common
sense would teach us that He who deigned to live
in a carpenter’s household, under real luman con-
ditions, in His youth, would help Joseph, and
learn the art he practised. This is implied in His
subjection to Joseph (Lk 2). Perhaps the parable
of the Mote (chip or splinter) and Beam (Mt 7*°)
derives its outward form from the work of His
youth (cf. Justin Martyr, 6. 7ryphon. 88).
During the stay at Nazareth, where Joseph and
Mary settled after their return from Egypt (Mt 259),
the Babe (τὸ βρέφος, Lk 216) passed into the stage of
young boyhood. He grew in bodily height (ηὔξανε,
Lk 2%) and in bodily strength (ἐκραταιοῦτο, Lk 239),
The omission of πνεύματι in this verse by ΝΡ],
Vulg. and most crit. edd. takes away any ground
for discussing its meaning. The next words πληρού-
μενον σοφίας (or σοφίᾳ) imply a gradual, progressive
filling.* What does ‘wisdom’ mean? Just as
any inanifestation of ‘supernatural’ power was out
of place in this stage of our Lord’s life, so would
have been any such manifestation of knowledge,
of adult acquirements, of power to instruct others,
or of any other form of ‘ wisdom’ which was clearly
unsuitable to His age. He was the perfect child,
with the perfection suited for each successive stage
of childhood. And others recognized and valued
this, no doubt (cf. ‘in favour. . . with men,’ Lk
2°), But nothing occurred in His childhood (or
later, up to the time of His beginning His ministry)
to prevent His neighbours being astonished when
His work began, and wondering at His words and
works, which clearly were new to them and unex-
pected by them (Mk 157 912 67-6 ete.).
Had it been found that He knew all human
knowledge (¢.g. reading, writing, arithmetic) with-
out any instruction, there would have been a
contradiction to the above facts. The σοφία then
was (as we should expect in this Hebraistic pas-
sage) the opposite to ‘folly’ in the OT sense. As
each fresh experience of life, each external diffi-
culty (perhaps temptation) from His environment
came on, part passu, with His growth, there was
heavenly wisdom to meet it. Tact, gentleness,
veracity, the ‘ soft answer,’ were the sort of things
which distinguished Him from other lads, and not
miraculous knowledge, or miraculous power such
as is described in the Apoeryphal Gospels.
‘And the grace of God was upon him. God's
favour was clearly upon Him, as had been foretold
in Is 117-3, Men noticed (Jn 112) that He was full
of grace and truth. But we must remember that
* The reading is doubtful. Treg. and WH prefer σοφίᾳ, and
Lachmann gave it in his margin, supported by XcBL pl; and
this, as the more unusual construction, may be right.
VOL. I.—15
BOYHOOD OF JESUS 225
it was a gift to His human nature, and therefore
words are used which are used of His brethren
(c.g. Ac 68 Στέφανος δὲ πλήρης χάριτος). At the end
of the next section St. Luke (953) tells how He
progressed in favour (χάρις) also with men.
‘And his parents went every year to Jerusalenr
at the feast of the Passover’ (Lk 2%). From our
Lord’s own presence at other feasts, both of Divine
and human appointment, and from the large
crowds at them, we are led to reject the idea that
pious Jews at this time went to Jerusalem only for
the Passover. No doubt the greatest attendance
was at that feast, and those who could attend only
one probably choseit. Jews resident outside the
Holy Land seem, probably on account of the more
favourable season for travelling, to have _pre-
ferred Pentecost (Ac 9111 18?! 2016 21°7 2418 1 Co
16°). We think it probable, therefore, that the
emphatie words of the sentence are οἱ γονεῖς.
Joseph may have gone at other seasons; at this
season Mary usually (ἐπορεύοντο, imperfect of
‘habit’) accompanied him. Women were not
bound to attend any feast (Dt 16° ‘all thy males’).
Jn 7% show that the ‘brethren of the Lord’
attended the feast of Tabernacles, which may be
an indication of what Joseph’s custom was. But
if women went to any one feast, it would be, if
possible, to the Passover, partly because it was the
most esteemed, partly because the Supper (both
sacrificial and social) was an essential element in
it, and partly because of the examples of Peninnah
and Hannah (1 5.15 7 ?!),
In Lk 2” we are told of Christ going with them,
being twelve years old. Does this imply that He
had never been with them before? We doubt it.
The mention of His age may be made only in order
to mark at what period of His life the incident
which follows occurred. The commentators, ete.,
lay great stress on His having become a ‘son of
the Law’ or a ‘son of the Precept,’ and represent
this Passover visit to Jerusalem as a sort ot ‘ First
Communion’ after a sort of ‘Confirmation.’ The
whole of the legislation about the bar-mizvah
dates after the destruction of the Jewish polity
in A.D. 70 (cf. Schiirer, HJP Il. ii. 51f.). ‘There
may have been earlier traces of it in Pharisaic
ΠῚ τὸ circles. Besides, when a definite age for
‘full membership’ of the Jewish community was
fixed, it was at thirteen, and not at twelve years
of age. The current views would never have been
brought forward, but for the assumption by the
elder Lightfoot and others that in this Talmudic
rule we find the explanation of the mention of our
Lord’s age.
Moreover, are there any Biblical grounds fer
supposing that a child of five, or ten, or any other
age, might not be present at the Passover, and eat
of the Paschal lamb? Ex 195: 4 rather implies the
contrary, for if all children under thirteen were
excluded, few households would be large enough
to consume a yearling lamb. If the custom of the
present Samaritans is any guide, it is stated that
even little girls eat of the lamb (cf. J. E. H.
Thomson in PE FS¢#, 1902, p. 91).
But if it was our Lord’s first Passover (which
St. Luke does not say), we can find another reason
than the age He had reached for the previous
omission. erod the Great had tried to kill the
Child, Archelaus was considered by Joseph to be
as dangerous, and therefore Jesus was kept
out of his dominions. Now Archelaus was in
exile; in 759 A.U.c. a Roman governor had been
appointed over Judza, and Roman law and justice,
however defective at times, at least ensured safety
for the Boy who had been sought for ten or eleven
years before as an Infant. Of course, it is possible
that the later Jewish rule prevailed in Christ’s day,
but it does not appear to us to be proved, either
er
226 BOYHOOD OF JESUS
‘vor St. Luke’s ids, or from any contemporary
or earlier source.
do at Jerusalem? The
What did our Lord
Biblical accounts of the Passover ritual are mainly
This
confined to the first or Egyptian. Passover.
differed naturally from later ones in some respects,
and in others a difference had been made by litur-
gical regulations. For instance, the eating of the
lamb in a recumbent instead of a sté anding “posture
Was a change (E x 1911 1S 19 ‘rose up, > Lk 991. 15
ete.). So were the psalms, the pr: ayers, the bless-
ings, the four cups of wine, and other well-known
customs. One of the best popular accounts of the
Jewish ritual is in Bickell’s Messe wad Pascha,
of which an English version by Dr. Skene has
appeared. He rightly states that our oldest source
is as late as the end of the 2nd cent. A.D., with
large additions from the 11th to the 16th centuries
(p. 112 f. Eng. tr.). Bickell also points out that
“the Paschal Lamb was an actual offering. [Ὁ was
slain in the Temple, its blood was sprinkled by the
priest on the altar, its flesh was consumed as a
sacrificial meal. Therefore, after the destruction
of Jerusalem, when the Temple service . . . came
to an end, it could no longer be eaten.
‘The same thing is true 5 of the Chagiga, the meat
of a slain thank-offering, which was “wont to be
previously brought w ith the Passover Supper.’
And we must remember that the ritual was prob-
ably not written down while it was a ‘living rite.’ *
The earliest written sources are based on an oral
tradition of what had been done a century before.
We may reverently Sa aby our Lord’s medi-
tations as He saw the lamb sacrificed, and sat down
to the Feast. The death of the lamb was a figure
of His own death. The feast shadowed forth His
feeding His people. Did He as yet know of His
destiny? Perhaps it was beginning to unfold
itself to His human consciousness (1) by His grow-
ing knowledge of His nation’s religion, history,
and sacred books ; (2) by His mother’s telling Him
some of the incidents of His birth and infancy ;
(8) by the inner unveiling of His Divine nature
to His human nature. We can only conjecture.
But His answer to Joseph and Mary (Lk 2“) implies
some self-knowledge, and perhaps a step in the
acquirement of that self - know ledge and con-
sc iousness.
On another point we are on surer ground. At
the Paschal feast it was customary for the youngest
present to ask, ‘Why is this night different from
all other nights ?? adding a mention of some of the
ritual acts. rene hat mean ye by this service?’
(Ex 12% 137-8, Dt 6%). And the head of the house-
hold or company replied by a recapitulation of the
history of the Exodus, which in later times was
called the Eastern Haggada. No doubt our Lord
followed this custom, and no doubt also Joseph
gave pe explanation, either in the traditional
s handed down to the modern Jews, or in
a freer, perth aps a fuller manner (cf. Ex 1927 155:
Dt 62> 9659, ef. Bickell, Eng. tr. pp. 118-120).
Other details of the Passover ritual in the time
such as the sop, the cups of wine, and
thr eg οἱ, i Great (or third or final) Hallel,
aire vouched for by the accounts of the ee Supper
i he th Ἢ igelists and by St. Paul.t “See
il ‘ ( kil
. 1 rs W ¢ f the earliest liturgies. We will
vish accounts of the ecclesiastical
. tural order, and stili less on modern
. pr S \ritan customs (mode of
cross,
er 1 obably Oke ag
r ion of the Temp! Ofed: Ὁ
PI 2, and Ex, bumes, xi, [1900] 375
othe Dean Stanley, Mills,
and Siuria, ete.
ignore the
composed it; cf.
the mode of
Jewish rites
. Thomson in
fallel
BOYHOOD OF JESUS
‘When they had fulfilled the days’ (τελειωσάντων
ras ἡμέρα5). Our first impression is undoubtedly
that the whole seven days of the Feast (Ex 23" ete.)
are meant. We should expect pious Jews, like
Joseph and Mary, to remain the whole time, not
because it was a precept, but out of devotion.
‘It was more laudable to remain the whole seven
days, especially on account of the last day, which
was a Feast Day’ (Lightfoot ; ef. Ex 12"). Eders-
heim (Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, i. 247)
argues that Joseph and Mary set out for home
before the close of the Feast, because the Talmud
says that ‘during Feasts’ (not after them) ‘the
members of the Temple Sanhedrin came out on
to the terrace and taught the people, contrary to
the usual custom of sitting as a court of appeal,’
and he thinks that Christ was there. In dealing
with this suggestion we have to notice the expres-
sion τελειωσάντων τὰς ἡμέρας instead οἱ the ὡς (ὅτε
ἐπλήσθησαν αἱ ἡμέραι of Lk 133 26 251. 95 and ἐπλήσθη
ὁ χρόνος of Lk 15, The two words are sometimes
synonymous in effect, but the distinction between
them ‘has been defined as follows: “τελειοῦν is to
complete so that nothing remains to be done, but
the thing or work is ΤΣ ; it implies an end or
object (réXos) to be looked forward to and fully
attained. πληροῦν looks at the quantity to be
done, not at the end to be reached, and so is to
fill a thing full, so that it lacks nothing.’ St.
Luke's words are therefore perhaps compatible with
Joseph and Mary having left on the third day, the
so-called half-holiday, when it was lawful to return
home, but we prefer (in spite of Edersheim’s Tal-
mudical argument) to think that they ‘stayed to
the end’ of the Feast. It might be said, however,
by those who believe in the earlier return, that
our Lord’s stayi ing behind was a tacit rebuke,
especially if ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός pov (Lk 2”) be taken
in a local sense. St. Luke’s use of the simple μένειν
in the Gospel and Acts should be noted: the com-
pound occurs only here and in Ac 17" in his writ-
ings: and in the Jatter case it is also used in
contrast to Paul’s departure. St. Luke, however,
does not say that Jesus remained for any such
reason, nor that Joseph and Mary lost sight of
Him through any failure of duty. Popular “books
add much to the narrative.
All the pilgrims used 2 go to the Temple on the
day of their departure, Ly a rule possibly based
on 18 1% There would be a great crowd, and the
temporary separation of a family i in the colonnades
and on the steps would be (as in great public
gatherings now) a natural occurrence, causing
little alarm. Possibly Joseph and Mary joine
their fellow-travellers from Galilee, in the belief
that the Child, who would know the time and
point of departure, was among the younger pil-
vgrims. The little fear they felt on the first day
ip k 25) rather supports the view mentioned above,
that it was not Jesus’ first Passover.
Our Lord’s ‘ parents’ (γονεῖς, Lk 2%—
his mother’ is a
orthodox dogma),
‘Joseph and
correction in the interests of
being ignorant of His having
stayed behind, went therefore a day’s journey
towards home. As we do not know the route
they travelled by, it is impossible to say that
they went as far as Beeroth (Farrar, Life of
Christ, and others). Jericho is quite as probable
a resting-place.
The search among the kinsfolk and acquaint-
ances being in vain, they returned to Jerusalem,
and found Him ‘after three days’ (probably from
Bickell, pp. 126, 127. They are not justified in saying which
Psalm or Psalms our Lord used. Ps. 136 has the general sup-
port. The Babylonian Gemara mentions Ps 23. The 114th
Psalm, which Christian tradition (cf. the name of its tune,
4 Peregrinus’ ) connects with the Passover, cannot have been
the one mentioned (Mt 26%), as its use occurred before the actual
See art. HALLEL.
supper (Bickell, p. 120).
|
BOYHOOD OF JESUS
the time of separation). We need not inquire
whether this expression means ‘on the third day’
(μετὰ ἡμέρας τρεῖς, cf. Mk 851 μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας). ἢ The
search on the road back to and in Jerusalem was a
thorough one (ἀναζητοῦντες). ‘Vhere must have been
many persons who could be inquired of with safety,
persons in sympathy with the pious hopes of Simeon
and Anna (Lk 2-5), though these had probably
passed away. It is St. Luke who tells us (238) that
there was a group of pious persons, who looked for
the redemption of Jerusalem.t As this refers to
a period only twelve years previous, Joseph and
Maury could easily find some of these residents of
Jerusalem, even if the connexion had not been
kept up in the yearly Passover visits (Lk 25, We
think that the reason for Joseph and Mary spend-
ing at least a day in Jerusalem before going up to
the Temple, was that they and our Lord were well
known to this group of persons, and that they
thought of Him as possibly among friends at Jeru-
salem, just as they had thought it possible on the
fist day of the separation that He was among
the pilgrims.
Christ in the Temple.—‘ And it came to pass,
after three days they found him in the temple,
sitting in the midst of the doctors (Vm ‘ or
teachers’), both hearing them, and asking them
questions’ (Lk 2%). By being present at the
meeting of the Rabbis, Christ was obeying the
counsel of Ben Sira (Sir 6*4-**), which was possibly
a commonplace piece of instruction in pious Israelite
families.
‘Stand thou in the multitude of the elders ;
And whoso is wise, cleave thou unto him,
Be willing to listen to every godly discourse ;
And let not the proverbs of understanding escape thee.
lf oe seest a man of understanding, get thee betimes unto
im,
And let thy foot wear out the steps of his doors.’
A discussion has been raised as to the meaning
of ‘in the midst’ (ἐν μέσῳ). It is usually thought
that Christ sat, as scholars did, on the floor, with
the Rabbis on a raised bench or divan, arranged
perhaps in a semicircle. ἐν τῷ μέσῳ occurs in Ac
41, where it cannot mean more than ‘present in a
central position where others could see and hear,’
yet apart from the members of the court. Kuinoel
watered down the expression here to ‘in the same
room with the teachers.’ It has, however, been
suggested that the Rabbis, being struck by the
searching power of the questions put by Christ,
and the depth of knowledge of the Law which they
displayed, invited Him to take a seat among them-
selves, as a mark of admiration, as well as for
more convenience in the conversation. If this
was so, their action would be somewhat similar
to that in a British court of justice where a dis-
tinguished visitor, or even witness, is sometimes
complimented by an invitation to ‘take a seat on
the Bench.’ It is said that members of the Sanhe-
drin did sometimes, on extraordinary occasions,
admit an inquirer to the same seat as themselves.
It would be a probable thing to do, where the
youth of the person made him, as in this case,
liable to partial concealment among older and
taller bystanders.
There is no ground for supposing that Christ
disputed with the Rabbis. It is clear that He in
nowise offended their prejudices on this occasion.
All that He said, although remarkable for His age,
* The mystical school of interpreters have pointed out several
parallels to this period : (a) Bengel says: ‘ For the same number
of days, when He lay in the graye, He was considered as dost by
His disciples (Lk 2421),’
(Ὁ) Another writer says beautifully: ‘Seeing Mary sigh for
three days for her Divine Son, I see again humanity during the
3000 years of paganism, wandering in search of God.’
t So RV with ΝΒ, ete., but cf. AVand.AVm. The Vulgate has
the more easy redemptionem Israel; Amiatinus: Jlierusalem,
and so Peshitta.
BOYHOOD OF JESUS 227
was suitable to it. The mode of higher religious
teaching among the Jews seems to have been
neither didactic nor catechetical, but by mutual
interrogation between the teacher and the scholar.
Hence the freedom used by the disciples and others
in questioning their Teacher. Christ answered
some questions and put others, no doubt with all
marks of respeet to these who ‘sat in Moses’ seat’
(Mt 23°).
What led to Christ’s desire to interview the
Rabbis at all, and what was the subject of His
questions? We can understand His intense in-
terest in the recently celebrated Feast, its: history
and its meaning. Or, building on His previous
knowledge of the Law and the Prophets, and on
the current Messianie hopes, He might desire to
learn from the Rabbis about the Messiah and the
Messianic kingdom. Questions such as those dis-
cussed in Mt 2+ 6 Mk 94, Jn 7 would be raised
and would interest Him. Lk 20-3 78-83) Mk 10?
give us other authentic instances of the points dis-
cussed by the Jewish teachers of that age. It has,
moreover, been suggested that on the journey up
to Jerusalem, Mary for the first time told Him the
story of His birth, of the messages of the angels,
of the Magi, of Simeon, of Anna, of the flight into
Egypt, and of the dreams of Joseph. It would be
an overpowering revelation, for which, however,
as an exceptional, though true child, He would be
ready.
We are in the realm of pure conjecture, but
certainly it might be-God’s way of revealing. to
the Divine Child a part of the truth about that
Child’s nature and mission. That to Him, as to
the Church, to the world, and to each of us, the
truth should come ‘by divers portions and in
divers manners’ (He 1!) is a conceivable, and
perhaps the most probable theory. And such a
revelation, falling on an unusually gifted soul
(Lk 2°), on a soul infinitely more receptive,
because of its sinlessness (Wis 75: 35 ete.), than any
other soul could be, would quicken into energy
His whole life. If this were so, we have an ade-
quate exposition of our Lord’s desires, an adequate
explanation of His action.
©All that heard him were amazed (AV astonished)
at his understanding and his answers’? (Lk 2%),
As, later on, ‘never man so spake’ (Jn 74%), so now,
never child so spake. Yet as in the later case
there was nothing contrary to trne manhood, so
now we ought not to think of anything contrary
to true boyhood. It is worth noting that while
AV has ‘astonished’ for the feeling of the by-
standers (2% ἐξίσταντο) and ‘amazed’ for that of
Joseph and Mary (2% ἐξεπλάγησαν), RV simply
reverses the terms. The former word is often
rendered ‘ beside himself,’ ‘beside themselves,’ but
it is difficult to express in English the difference
between the two verbs.* See artt. AMAZEMENT,
ASTONISHMENT.
In spite of the assembly of ‘grave and reverend
signiors,’ Mary's feelings were at once vented in
audible address (εἶπε) to her Son: ‘Child! why
hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father
and I have sought thee sorrowing!’ Her trouble
overpowered her amazement. No doubt they were
proud of Him in their hearts, but Mary thought it
necessary mildly to chide Him for having caused
them so much anxiety. We say ‘chide’ as the
nearest expression of our thought, but few parents
in the East or anywhere else would speak of what
* For ἐξιστάναι, cf. Mt 1223, Mk 212 321 542 651, Lk 856 2422) Ac
97.12 99.11.13 921 1045 1216, 2 Co 513; and for ἐκσλήσσειν, Mt 728
1354 1925 2223) Mk 122 62 737 1026 1118, Lk 482943, Ac 1312. The
context sometimes offers no reason for the choice of one word
rather than the other. The latter one may be the weaker of
the two; in Mt 19%, Mk 1026 737 it needs an adverb to strengthen
it. Etymological arguments cannot be pressed with regard to
the popular Greek of the 1st century.
228 BOYHOOD OF JESUS
they deemed to be a child’s error so courteously
and with such an absence of ‘temper.’ We notice
that it was Mary who spoke, and this may possibly
be urged as a point in favour of the orthodox view
of the ‘Virgin Birth.’ If Joseph had been the
natural father of Christ, he would have spoken to
a son of that age, at least in addition to the
mother, His silence seems to us to balance such
expressions as ‘thy father and I,’ or ‘his parents. ’*
Mary joined Joseph with herself not only in her
account of the continuous careful seeking (ἐζη-
τοῦμεν), but also in her sorrow.t
We now come to our Lord’s reply, which is a
veritable crux interpretum. There is no variant in
the Greek (Τὶ ὅτι ἐξητεῖτέ με; οὐκ ἤδειτε ὅτι ἐν τοῖς τοῦ
πατρός μου δεῖ εἶναί με ;). Nor is there any doubt
that the words were a reminder (witha slight touch
of rebuke) that Joseph was not His father (cf. ὁ πατήρ
cov κἀγώ, 28), and that in any case the claims of His
Divine Father were paramount. The principal in-
terpretations of ἐν rots τοῦ πατρός μου are: (a) ‘in my
Father's house’; (0) ‘about my Father’s business’ ;
(ὦ ‘among my Father’s servants and friends’ ; (d)
combinations of (@) or (6) implying an intended
vagueness. The Vulg. is in his que patris met sunt ;
the Pesh. supports (@) ‘in my Father's house,’ having
«οἱ Δ...) [But does not beth support (c) as
n
much?; ef. 18 2” ete., ὁ.6. by Semitie idiom
‘house’ (as in English) may mean family, con-
nexions].
In favour of (a) is the circumstance that τά τινος,
which strictly means ‘that which is a person’s
property,’ came to be used specially of his house,
the word ‘house’ being omitted. Field and Hum-
phrey compare the colloquialism ‘I am going to
my father’s.’ In profane Greek ef. Herod. i. 111, ἐν
Aprayouv: Philostratus, Vita Apollon. ii. 28, ἐν τοῦ
βασιλέως : Lucian, Philop. ἐν Ἰλαυκίου : and many
other cases where οἶκος or rather οἰκήματα is to be
understood. L. Bos, who collected many of these
instances in his work on Greek Ellipses, held
strongly that πράγμασιν (‘business’) was not the
word to be supplied here. He gave (p. 193) the
same explanation of Jn 111 (16%? 1927) and Αο 218,
but in these we find τὰ ἴδια. In the LXX, ef. Est 79
kal ὥρθϑωται ἐν τοῖς ᾿Αμὰν ξύλον, κιτ.λ. : Gn 415! where
πάντων τῶν τοῦ πατρός μου represents the MT ‘all
my father’s house,’ and Job 1813, On the other
hand, the supporters of (a) say that no example
has been produced in Biblical or profane Greek
for ‘to be about a person’s business’ as a render-
ing of εἶναι ἐν rots τινος, though it is admitted that
ἐν τούτοις ἴσθι (1 Ti 4%) approaches it closely.
Origen, Epiphanius, Theodoret, Theophylact, and
Euthymius show a chain of commentators, ex-
plaining a passage in their own language, who take
10 in the sense of ‘house.’ Sir 42! ἐν Tots πατρικοῖς
αὐτῆς (Vulg. in paternis suis) also seems to support
it.
Against this, and in favour of (5), it has been
said that Christ did not mean to say ‘I could not
aetide I was in the Temple of God,’ but “My
ALE
Me.’ It is also said that ‘the necessity of our
* Where did \lford find ground for saying, ‘Up to this time
ἱ » | igre ope Ll ulled (‘father’) by the holy Child Himself,
attr ἢ me er It may be so, but it is not recorded.
ha, ate dag sae fc ay bina S in iuke (here, 1624. 25, Ac 2038)
pot ane Mion tig vT. ‘Sorrowing’ (AV and RV) does not
meaning . Farrar (St ut none, SEE Olah” “a rather ube
: L uggests ‘with aching hearts.’
tormented,’ but RV ‘to be in anguish,’
man in Hades. Th Ac 2038 it ex-
Ephesian elders at parting with St.
e Peshitta here, is used for στενοχωρία
is Trequent in Galen, Aretwus, and
ike’s medical words. We
hant sorrow, commemo-
already the ‘sharp and
ee
ὁ business is the most important thine for |
BOYHOOD OF JESUS
Lord’s being in His Father’s house could hardly be
intended by Him as absolutely regulating all His
movements, and determining where He should be
found, seeing that He had scarcely uttered the
words in question before He withdrew with Joseph
and Mary from that house, and spent the next
eighteen years substantially away from it. On
the other hand, the claim to be engaged in His
Father's concerns had doubtless both frequently
been alleged explicitly in respect of the occupation
of His previous home life, and continued to be so
during the subsequent periods of His eighteen
years subjection to the parental rule; His acknow-
ledgment of that claim being in nowise intermitted
by His withdrawal with His parents from His
Father’s house. Intimations of a more general
kind seem ‘easily capable of being read between
the lines of the inspired narrative, which increase
the probability that the AV, rather than the RV,
expresses the meaning of the Evangelist’ (Dr. Rt.
E. Wallis). It should also be noted that the ex-
pression ‘my Father’s house’ occurs in Jn 215 in
plain terms.
In favour of (6) we may quote the words of Jul.
Déderlein (Newes Jahrbuch fiir deutsche Theologie,
1892, i. 204): ‘**In My Father’s house” is not
correct: Christ soon leaves the Temple. ‘‘ Busi-
ness” is little better. . . . Joseph and Mary could
hardly have been expected to understand that
their child had special work to do for God’s king-
dom’ (ze. at that age)... . ‘Had they sought
Him among the good, they would not have needed
to seek long. Instead of this, they sought Him ἐν
τοῖς συγγενέσιν Kal τοῖς γνωστοῖς, who afterwards
tried to east Him down from the hill (4538: 39), and
therefore even then would converse little about
God’s word: on the other hand, He was to be
found ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός μου, who held the oflice of
the Word (Mt 237), and as such gladly listened to
His eager questions . . . the masculine, so to
speak, has the first claim on the τοῖς, which is
formed from οἱ, not from τά. There is no mention
of things in the context. . . . In Ro 1216 Luther,
AV and RVm give the masculine, ‘‘ them of low
estate.” 1Co 12% 15%, Col 3" πάτα ἐν racw=
‘all things in all men,” not ‘‘all things in all
things.” In Lk 2 no one would render ἐν τοῖς
γνωστοῖς, ‘in the known places.” Again the pe
at the end of the phrase seems to be antithetical
and emphatic. ‘‘ Among those of My Father must
Inot be?” ... Not in what place, but in what
company He must be, the anxious ones are able
to learn once for all... ‘‘where men speak of
God, I shall surely be found”’ (cf. a review in
The Thinker, 1893, iii. 171 ff.). We think this
explanation deserves more consideration than it
has received.
The syneretic combination of (a) and (4), as, e.g.,
by Alford and others, does net commend itself to
the present writer. Finally, we should not forget
that this conversation is one of the most likely
ones in the Gospels to have been held in Aramaic
and not in Greek. It will therefore be wise not
to lay too much stress on the analogies quoted
above on various sides of the question. Even the
Greek of these two chapters, as we have it, is noted
as Semitic in style, not in St. Luke’s classical
manner (except, of course, 11-8). The Pesh., as we
noticed above, supports (a). The Sinaitic palim-
psest has ‘Wist ye not that I must be with my
Father?’ (Expos. Times, xii. [1901] p. 206).*
yore and Mary ‘understood not the saying
which he spake unto them’ (Lk 2”). Therefore He
ἢ Besides the works quoted above, the reader should consult
Field's Otium Norvicense, Pars Tertia ; Expository Times, x. 4843
Farrar, St. Luke in Cambridge Bible for Schools, 368, 369 (in
which he abandons the view taken in Life of Christ, i. 78); and
most reviews and criticisms on the Revised NT generally.
amd
ae
BOYHOOD OF JESUS
BOYHOOD OF JESUS 229
had not learned this from them, nor from other
teachers, nor had He previously spoken. much, if
at all, of the Father. Their difficulty, of course,
was not the literal question of grammar which
troubles us. It was that they did not so realize
the spiritual force of His saying (οὐ συνῆκαν τὸ
ῥῆμα).
Although Joseph and Mary understood neither
His words, nor His actions, nor Himself, and
although His words and actions show that He now
knew more than He had done of His Father, of
Himself and of His mission, yet ‘He went down
with them, and came to Nazareth and was subject
unto them.’ As W. KR. Nicoll says: ‘He went
their messages, did their work, humbled Himself,
as if this episode at Jerusalem had never been’
(The Incarnate Saviour, p. 41). The twelve years
of hidden life were followed by another eighteen
years of retirement. Even Nathanael, living at
Cana, a few miles off, had not heard of Him (Jn
146-47), We may be sure that He who would ‘ fulfil
all righteousness’ (Mt 3'°) did not omit the yearly
attendance at the Passover, and other feasts. He
had at least to lead the life of example to His
family and to His fellow-townsmen. Although
we do not think that He or His were bound by all
the rules of Pharisaic or of later Rabbinic Judaism,
we may be sure that He did what was usual among
pious Jews, partly because He would obey those
who sat ‘in Moses’ seat’ (Mt 23-%), and partly
because, like His future Apostle (Ro 141%, 1 Co
8 ete.), He would put no stumbling-block in
anyone's way (Mt 175).
We know that after Christ’s ministry began, He
spent much time in prayer, usually secret and for
secrecy’s sake, on the mountain (Mt 14°, Mk 1°
678, Lk 327! 516 918: 28.29 1]1)) We cannot believe
that this communion with His Father began with
His ministry. Yet it seems unlikely that Christ
in His early childhood would have followed this
custom. May we date it from His return to
Nazareth in His twelfth year? Then, His claim
for liberty to be ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρὸς (ἀυτοῦ) would not
seem to be a claim which either lay dormant for
eighteen years (‘my Father’s business’) or which
was at once relinquished (by His return) and only
taken up at intervals (‘my Father’s house’), in
which case no claim for liberty was needed. More-
over, ‘ His Father’s business’ for the next eighteen
years was, as the event proved, prepuraticn. And
this is just what Christ did, and the secret prayer
and meditation were part of it. If this custom
began, or at least took a larger part in His life
then, we can reconcile His words in the Temple
with His life in the following years. And if
‘house’ instead of ‘business’ be the word to be
supplied, we can also believe that He knew that
the whole Universe is the Father’s house (Jn 14°),
and not only the Temple ‘made with hands.’
It must also be noted that His growth ‘in
wisdom’ implies not only learning by prayer and
meditation, and learning from the written word,
but also learning from observation of human life.
We learn by these three sources, and He was made
like unto His brethren. But for this last source of
learning, time and the attainment of greater age
are required. Did He know when His active work
was to begin? Moses sinned by beginning too
soon, but ignorance, and the thought that the
right time might be sooner than it was, would be
no sin. Yet He who ‘was in all points tempted
like as we are, yet without sin’ (He 41°), might con-
ceivably be tempted as Moses was. We tread here
on difficult ground, and our ignorance, our desire
not to err from the Faith, and our reverence for our
Lord, bid us say no more. Meanwhile He did His
duty in retirement, passing from boyhood into
manhood, and waiting for the call which came
later. Was the non-appearance of the forerunner
(Mal 31) the sign that the time had not come, and
his appearance the sign that the time was fulfilled
(Mk 1°)?
‘And hismother kept all these sayings in her heart’
(διετήρει occurs in NT only here and Ac 15”; ef. Gn
97:11 of Jacob concerning Joseph. ὁ δὲ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ
διετήρησεν τὸ ῥῆμα, Where E has the same tense as
here διετήρει, perhaps by assimilation). But Jacob
lost hope (Gn 37"), while Mary kept these sayings
in her heart. It was a close, persistent, faithful
keeping, but a keeping in silence, even when it
might have changed the attitude of His kinsmen
towards Him, or indeed have saved His life. She
spoke, no doubt, when the right time came. Stress
is laid on her faithfulness and meditation also in
Lk 2% We may ask whether τὰ ῥήματα included
other sayings than the ῥῆμα of Lk 2°. The πάντα
of some MSS in the place of the ταῦτα of others
leads us to think either of other sayings of Christ,
or of the remarks of the Rabbis and others about
Him (as in Lk 919). And though He ‘was subject
unto them,’ the goodness of Joseph and Mary, His
own wisdom and advancing years, and now the
deepened thoughts Mary had about Him, would
surely prevent their making His subjection an
obstacle or a hindrance to His development.
Again we read of His progress (Lk 2%), though
this refers to a time beyond the Boyhood. The
statement about wisdom is a continuation of that
in 2 The next word ἡλικίᾳ is ambiguous. If we
take the meaning ‘stature’ (AV and RV text), it
applies only to a part of the time between twelve
years of age and thirty. But the margin of AV
and RV ‘age’ would seem to be preferable.
Though increase in age is as inevitable as increase
in stature, yet St. Luke, having spoken of Christ’s
twelfth year, goes on to speak of His thirtieth,
and characterizes by his transitional passage the
whole of those eighteen years as a period of de-
velopment. He cannot mean our thoughts to stop
at the period when adult height was reached. The
advance in ἡλικία must grammatically have the
same duration as the advance in wisdom, and in
favour with God and man.*
2. Dogmatic conclusions.—The doctrines of the
Incarnation, of the Union of the two Natures in
one Person, and of the Kenosis are beyond the
limits of this article, though it is impossible to
avoid bearing them in mind in dealing with our
subject. But an exegetical study of Lk 2%-5
shows a genuine human development of Christ in
His boyhood. Body, soul and spicit made regular
progress, With other children it is often the
irregularity which troubles their older friends.
Childishness (in the bad sense), where we expect
some measure of intelligence; stupidity, which is
sometimes the result of imperfect mental growth,
and sometimes the result of the childish sins of
laziness and self-will, are the common faults of
children. Later on, the desire not to be subject to
parental, or other restraint, and the premature
longing for freedom (not necessarily for evil) are
marks of sinful imperfection which we all recog-
nize. Christ was free from them. When He was
a child He dived, spake, and no doubt thought as a
child, but as a sinless one. The awakening of the
human consciousness was gradual. As Oosterzee
(on Lk 2) says: ‘ His recognition of Himself (we
add ‘and of His mission’) formed part of His
filling with wisdom. His public ministry did not
begin with a sudden impulse, but was prepared for
* Mere comparisons with other passages, even in this Gospel,
cannot outweigh the above considerations. In 193 no doubt
the stature of Zaccheus is referred to; 1229 and Mt 627 are
doubtful. In Eph 418 ‘stature’ is probably right. Jn 921.23
and certainly He 1111 mean ‘age.’
41), Job 2918 seem to bear the same meaning.
in Ca 77 must have meant ‘stature.’
In the LXX, Ezk 1318, 2 Mac
But Symmachus
230 BRASS
BREAD
by His whole life. It was the forgetting or over-
looking this which led some early heretics to date
the Incarnation from the Baptism. But we see
that at the age when childhood passes into youth,
Christ was already aware (in part perhaps) of His
mission.’ ‘lhe consciousness of His Divine Nature
and power grew, and ripened, and strengthened,
until the time of His showing unto Israel.’
Those who in times of controversy have most
firmly held the Divinity of Christ have sometimes
found a difficulty in admitting the ideas of growth
and development in our Lord. This was specially
so in the time before the careful statements of the
Great Councils and the Fathers of that period. So
Epiphanius (//e@r. li. 20) states that ‘some Catho-
lies were inclined to admit the miracles of the
Infancy (as in the Apoer. Gospels) as affording an
argument against the Cerinthians, and a proof
that it was not at His Baptism that Christ was
first united to the man Jesus.’ Jeremy Taylor
(Life of Christ, pt. i. § 7) has a passage which is
worth quoting: ‘They that love to serve God in
hard questions use to dispute whether Christ did
truly, or in appearance only, increase in wisdom.
Vor, being personally united to the Word, and
being the Eternal Wisdom of the Father, it seemed
to them that a plenitude of Wisdom was as natural
to the whole Person as to the Divine Nature. But
others, fixing their belief upon the words of the
story, which equally affirm Christ as properly to
have ‘ increased in favour with God as with man,
in favour as in stature,” they apprehend no incon-
venience in affirming it to belong to the verity of
human nature, to have degrees of understanding
as well as of other perfections ; and although the
humanity of Christ made up the same Person with
the Divinity, yet they think the Divinity still to
be free, even in those communications which were
imparted to the inferior Nature, and the Godhead
might as well suspend the emanation of all the
treasures of wisdom upon the humanity for a term,
as He did the beatifical vision, which certainly
was not imparted in the interval of His sad and
dolorous passion.’ * See art. CHILDHOOD.
LITERATURE —The works named in the preceding article and
those quoted above. On the dogmatic problem see Hooker,
Eccles, Polity, Vv. Wi. 10, liv. 6; Thomas Aquinas, Summa, Pars
Tertia, Questiones 7-12; Dorner, History of the Development
af the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, on the true growth of
the Humanity, Division 11. vol. i. 45, 343; vol. ii. 89, 125, 139,
204, 213, 214, 281, 285, 287, 365, 368, 432 ; vol. iii. 18, 20, 30, 127,
'40, 147, 256. On the Apocryphal stories of the Boyhood see
french, Miracles, Introd. iv. 2; Nicolas, Etude sur les Evan-
jiles Apoeryphes, Paris, 1865; also the ‘ Lives of Christ’ and the
Commentaries on St. Luke.
_ The fact that the passage Lk 241ff. is the liturgical Gospel for
the first Sunday after the Epiphany in the Anglican and Roman
liturgies, has produced a mass of homiletical and devotional
literature, which naturally deals more with the spiritual lessons
of the Boyhood of Christ, but which often has other useful
matter, Wecan name only a small portion of this literature :
Goulburn, Gospel of the Childhood, Thoughts upon the Liturgi-
eal Gospels, i, 132, ch. viii. ; Bourdaloue, Sermon for 1st Sunday
Epiphany ; Duquespe, L’évangile médité, i., Médita-
, 19, 20; Bossuet, Elévations sur les Mysteres, 20th
t : Rothe, δὲ rinons for the Christian Year, p. 100;
irop, In @uiver, Dec. 1889 (on Lk 249); Vallings,
ὁ Divine Man, ch. vi. ; Sannzel Cox, Bird’s Nest,
Nicoll, The Incarnate Saviour, chs. ii. and
e of Jesus prior to His Public Ministry’ in
1; Il. W. Robertson, Sermons, 2nd ser. p.
tor, 2 er. vill. [1884] Ὁ. 17 ff., 4th ser. iv. [1891]
1 ser. 11, (1895) p. 69fF.; Liddon, Bainpton Lect.8 p-
rrar, Christ in Art, pp. 271-291.
GEORGE FARMER.
BRASS.—W herever we find the word ‘brass’ in
i \ wen onably certain that copper
is Intended, Copper was universally
on account of its extreme
lands it w mined in the
» in Edom, in the Sinaiti
M1, In the Sinaitie pen-
ptium mines were
Y ve Treas
nsec y the ancients
80, to Mt 2746,
located, and in the isle of Cyprus. Brass is a
fictitious metal, an alloy of copper and zine;
bronze is a mixture of copper and tin. But while
in ancient vessels a combination of tin with copper
is frequently found, analysis hardly ever reveals
the presence of zine.
1. The word χαλκία in Mk 74 (found here only in
the NT), AV and RV ‘brasen vessels,’ may be tr.
‘copper vessels,’ and is actually so rendered in the
German and Dutch versions.
2. The noun χαλκός, tr. ‘brass,’ is used by Christ
in Mt 109 ‘Get you no gold nor silver nor brass
in your purses,’ by metonymy for copper coin.
χαλκός" occurs also in Mk 6° 12#!, where it is tr.
‘money, marg. ‘ brass.’ ;
3. The word χαλκολίβανον, white copper, tr. ‘fine
brass’ (RV ‘burnished brass’) in Rev 1! 218 (ef.
Dn 10°), is descriptively applied to the feet of
Christ as He appeared in the vision of St. John
in Patmos. There is quite a diversity of opinion
as to its correct meaning. Some have supposed it
to be that rare metal, more precious than gold,
Orichalcum, whilst others have thought of frank-
incense and even of amber. In this connexion it
evidently refers to the strength and stable majesty
of the glorified Christ, in the same way as the
Heb. néhdsheth is used in the OT (Ps 107!, Mic 4:",
Zec 6).
LITeRATURE.—Hastings’ DB, art. ‘ Brass’; Smith, Dict. of
Antiq. s.v. ‘Aes’; Grimm-Thayer, Lex. s.v. χαλκολιβανον.
HENRY E. DOSKER.
BREAD.—In Syria and Palestine there are cer-
tain shrines and groves that have been preserved
undisturbed through times of political change, and
are to-day venerated by all the religions of the
country. Suclralso has been the unchanged history
of bread in Biblelands. Τύ 15 to-day practically what
it has always been with regard to (1) the materials
of which it is made, (2) the way in which it is pre-
pared, (3) its importance and use as an article of
food, and (4) the symbolism and sanctity suggested
by its value.
1. Materials.—Bread is usually made of wheat
flour, the wheat of the Syrian plains being remark-
able for its nutritious quality. An inferior and
cheaper kind of bread is also made from barley
flour, and less frequently the meal of Indian corn
is used.
2. Modes of preparation.—The most primitive
way is that of making a hollow in the ground,
burning twigs, thorn-bushes, thistles and dry grass
upon it, and then laying the flat cakes of dough
upon the hot ashes. These loaves are about seven
inches in diameter and from half an inch to‘ an
inch in thickness. The upper surface is frequently
studded with seeds of Indian corn, and they are
generally turned in the process of baking (Hos 7°).
They are ‘cakes upon the hearth’ (Gn 18°), ‘ baken
upon the coals’ (1 K 17-38). Such probably were
the barley loaves brought to Christ at the feeding
of the five thousand (Jn 09: 19). Out of this custom,
prevailing among the pastoral tribes and the poorest
of the peasantry, were developed several improved
methods made possible by more civilized conditions
of life. (a) Large smooth pebbles were laid over
the hollow in the ground, and when the fire had
been kept up for a sufficient time, the ashes were
removed and the loaves were Jaid upon the hot
stones.—() Thinner cakes of both leavened and un-
leavened bread were made upon a flat pan or convex
griddle. These are now made especially at times
of religious festival, and are coated on the upper
surface with olive oil and sprinkled with aromatic
seeds. They recall the ‘ oiled bread’ of Lv 8”, and
the ‘wafers anointed with oil’ of Ex 29? and Lv
24.—(c) The cavity for the fire is deepened, and a
cylindrical hole about the size of half a flour barrel
is made of stone and lime with a facing of plaster.
The pebbles are still left at the bottom for the
better preservation of the heat, and the same fuel
is applied till the oven has been sufficiently heated.
The dough is then rolled out into broad thin cakes,
and each disc, after being still further distended by
being passed with a quick rotatory motion between
the hands of the female baker, is laid on a convex
cushion or pad, and is thus transferred evenly to
the hot wall of the cavity. In a moment it is
fired, and as it begins to peel off it is lifted and
laid above the others at her side.—(d) The most
developed form is that of the public oven in the
village or town. Here features of the more primi-
tive types still survive, but the cavity now becomes
a low vaulted recess about twelve feet in length,
and the pebbles are changed into a pavement of
smoothed and squared stones. On it wood and
lighter fuel of thorns are burnt, and the glowing
ashes are finally brushed to each side of the vault.
When the oven has been thus prepared the dises
of dough are laid in rows upon long thin boards
like canoe paddles, and are inserted by these into
the oven, and by a quick jerk of the arm slipped
otf and placed upon the hot pavement to be fired.
These loaves, when fired, are about an inch in
thickness and about eight inches in diameter, and
when newly baked are soft and flexible.
8. Use and importance of bread.—In the West
bread is eaten more or less along with the other
articles of food that chiefly constitute the meal ;
but in the East those other articles are rather
eaten along with bread, and are regarded as merely
accessory to it. When the farmer, carpenter,
blacksmith or mason leaves the house for the day’s
labour, or the messenger or muleteer sets out
on his journey, he wraps his other articles of
food in the thin loaves of home-made bread. In
the case of loaves fired in the public oven, these,
owing to the glutinous adhesiveness and elasticity
of the dough, and the sudden formation within
them of vapour on the hot pavement, puff out into
air-tight balls. They can then be opened a little
at one side, and the loaf thus forms a natural pouch
enclosing the meat, cheese, raisins or olives to
be eaten with it by the labourer. As the loaf
thus literally includes everything, so bread repre-
sents generally the food of man. A great exclu-
sion was expressed in ‘ Man shall not live by bread
alone’ (Lk 4). In the miraculous feeding of the
multitude (Mt 1458. ||) if was enough to provide
them with bread. It was three loaves of bread
that the man asked from his neighbour to put
before his guest (Lk 115). Two would have been
sufficient for his actual needs ; but even in such an
emergency a third loaf was required to represent
that superabundant something which as a touch of
grace, often passing into tyrannical imposition, so
deeply affects Oriental social life.
In the act of eating, Oriental bread is broken or
torn apart by the hand. This is easily done with
the bread of the public oven, as it can be separated
into two thin layers. The thin home-made bread
is named both in Hebrew and Arabic from its thin-
ness, and is translated ‘wafer’ in Ex 29-°, Lv 8:5,
Nu 6, 1 Ch 2339 (RV). Such bread is called
PP? (rakil:; Arab. markik, from warak, ‘foliage,’
‘paper’). At a meal a small piece of such bread
is torn off, and with the ease and skill of long
habit is folded over at the end held in the hand.
It thus makes a spoon, which is eaten along with
whatever is lifted by it out of the common dish.
This is the dipping in the dish (Mt 26%), and is
accomplished without allowing the contents of the
dish to be touched by the fingers or by anything
that has previously been in contact with the lips
of those who sit at meat.
4. Symbolism and sanctity of bread.—In a land
where communication with other sources of supply
was difficult, everything depended upon the local
wheat and barley harvest. As this in turn de-
pended upon the rain in its season, which was
beyond the control of the sower, a special sanctity
attached itself to what was peculiarly a gift of
God, and a reminder of His continual and often
undeserved care (Mt 5*). ‘To the disciples of
Jesus, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ would
seem a very natural petition. An Oriental seeing
a scrap of bread on the road will usually lift it up
and throw it to a street dog, or place it in a crevice
of the wall or on a tree branch where the birds
may find it. It should not be trodden under foot
in the common dust. Thus the most familiar
article of food, so constantly in the hands of all,
both rich and poor, and used alike by the evil and
the good, had in it an element of mystery and
nobility as having been touched by the unseen
Giver of all good. How deeply this feeling of
reverence possessed the mind of the Lord Jesus is
evidenced by the fact that He was recognized in
the breaking of bread (Lk 24*).
In the social customs of the East, the giving and
receiving of bread has always been the principal
factor in establishing a bond of peace between the
host and the guest at his table. [Ὁ was a gravely
unnatural offence to violate that law of hospitality.
Of this offence Judas Iscariot was guilty at the
Last Supper.
In travelling through Palestine and partaking of
the hospitality of the peasantry, one may notice in
the bread the indentations of the pebbles, and small
patches of grey ash, with here and there an inlaid
attachment of singed grass-or charred thorn, the
result of the simple baking process. It is bread,
however, the best that the poor can give, and it is
given with gladness and the dignity of a high
duty towards the guest. When Christ sent forth
His disciples to tell of His approach, He charged
them to take no bread with them (Mk 68). It wonld
have been a serious discourtesy to have set aside as
unfit for their use that which was offered to them
willingly by their own people, and would have
hindered the reception of the good tidings of the
Kingdom.
To the crowd that selfishly followed Christ the
giving of bread as by Moses was the sordid sum-
mary of Messianic hope (Jn 6). God’s gift of
natural food to His people enters into the praises of
the Magnitieat (Lk 1). When Christ called Him-
self ‘the bread of life’ (Jn 6), He could confidently
appeal to all the endeared and sacred associations
connected in the East with the meaning and use of
bread. In the initiation of the Passover, and inits
commemoration afterwards, bread was regarded by
the Israelites as the most general and effective
symbol of their life in Egypt. In the initiation of
the new covenant also the same humble article of
food was adopted at the Lord’s Supper, to be, with
wine, the token of fellowship between Himself and
His Church, and the symbol among His disciples οἵ
the Communion of Saints. The use of a symbol
so familiar and accessible to all, and so representa-
tive of common life, seems to suggest that to the
mind of Christ some realized and visible com-
munion among the members of His Church was
possible and to be expected.
G
BREAKFAST.—Lk 11° (RVm).
and MEALS,
. M. MACKIE.
See DINNER
BREAST.—See Bosom.
BREATHING.—On the evening of the Resurrec-
tion, the Lord appeared to the disciples, gave them
the commission ‘As my Father, ete.,’ ‘and when
he had said this, he breathed on them (ἐνεφύσησε),
and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost
BREAD BREATHING 231 |
BRETHREN OF THE LORD
232
(Λάβετε Πνεῦμα “Αγιον). Whose soever sins... re-
tained,’ Jn 207%, The word ἐμφυσάω is that em-
ployed by LXX to translate n>} in Gn 2’, Ezk 37°.
As Westcott observes, ‘the same image which was
used to describe the communication of the natural
life [at the Creation] is here used to express the
communication of the new, spiritual life of re-
created humanity.’ The figure of human life de-
vending on the breath of God is frequent in tlie
sible ; besides above passages, see Job 12 334, Ps
33°, Is 425, Dn 5%, Ac 17%. In the following the
breath of God is synonymous with the manitesta-
tion of His power: 28 2216, Job 37)” 411, Is 11%.
Both ideas seem to underlie our Lord’s action.
The Church was now receiving its commission, and
the eflicacy and reality of the commission must
depend upon the indwelling in the Church of the
same Spirit as was in Christ Himself. ‘ Alike the
mission of the Church and its authority to forgive
or retain sins are connected with a personal quali-
fication, ‘‘'Take ye the Holy Ghost ”’ (Edersheim,
ii. 644). The work was not new, but was that
already received from the Father by the Son and
now handed on to that Church which was to be
Christ's body on earth. He had compared the
action of the Spirit to breath (Jn 35). ‘ By breath-
ing on them He signified that the Holy Ghost was
the Spirit not of the Father alone but likewise His
own’ (Aug. δέ. JoAn, tr. 121).
Considerable difference of opinion exists as to
whether the act of breathing, with the authority
to retain or forgive sin, was bestowed upon the
Apostles only or on others besides. Those who
limit it to the Apostles urge that ‘disciples’ is
always in the later chapters of St. John used to
signity Apostles; and that, even if others were
present, the analogy of Mt 2816 απ Mk 164-38 im-
pie that the breathing and commission were
imited to the Apostles. They would then see in
the act a formal ministerial ordination.* On the
other hand, Westcott and many others, comparing
Lik 24", see no reason whatever for limiting the
act and commission to Apostles. Even of the
Eleven we know that Thomas at least was absent
(Jn 20%). The commission was one given to the
Christian society as a body: in it in its corporate
capacity would dwell the Holy Ghost, and the
authority of retaining or forgiving sins.
LITERATURE. —The Commentaries on St. John; Westcott
Revelation of Risen Lord, p. 81; Edersheim, Life and Times
of Jesus the Messiah, ii. 644 ; Gore, Christian Ministry p. 229 ;
Stanley, Christian Institutions, p. 192. ; :
J. B. Bristow.
BRETHREN OF THE LORD.—The only three
theories about ‘the brethren of the Lord? which
are worthy of serious consideration are those which
are called by Lightfoot (1) the Hieronymian (from
its advocacy by Jerome [Hieronymus)), (2) the
Epiphanian (from its advocacy by Epiphanius),
and (3) the Helvidian (from’ its advocacy by
Jerome’s opponent, Helvidius),
\ccording to the Hieronymian view, the ‘ breth-
ren’ of Jesus were His first cousins, being sons of
the Virgin’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas. Ac-
cording
to the Epiphanian view,
of Joseph by a former wife.
Helvidian view,
Mary born ;
they were sons
According to the
they were sons of Joseph and
fter Jesus. All these views oe to
be Seriptural, and the Epiphanian claims in addi-
tion fo be in accordance with the most ancient
rmcdition.
i, POIN ΓΒ THAT ARE CERTAIN.—In discussing a
a ΑΗ hood: reo he. the present, it is well
stan OY distingn shing what is reasonably
at is u ain, <A careful com-
Ω lew (CC) t. Inat. p. 192) states that ‘i ha Ahvacin: |
Mexandrian Chur dnd still is, by Beenie
~ ; » by breath-
BRETHREN OF THE LORD
parison of the relevant Scripture passages renders
it certain— Ξ
(1) That the brethren of the Lord, whatever their
true relationship to Him was, lived under the same
roof with Jesus and His mother, and were regarded
as members of the Virgin’s family. The common
household is implied in Jn 7%, and more distinctly
still in 913, where we read that ‘he went down to
Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren,
and his disciples: and there they abode not many
days.’ That the brethren were members of the
same family as Jesus, and stood in some definite
filial relation to Joseph and Mary, is distinctly
stated in Mt 13°°||, ‘Is not this the carpenter’s son?
is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren,
James, and Joseph,* and Simon, and Judas?. And
his sisters, are they not all} with us?’ (ef. also
Mt 12” ‘Behold thy mother and thy brethren
stand without, seeking to speak to thee’). In
harmony with this the Gospels represent the
brethren of Jesus as habitually going about in
company with the Virgin (Mt 12%|)).
(2) That the brethren of Jesus were jealous of
Him, and up to the time of the Resurrection dis-
believed His claims. Thus the Gospels represent
Jesus as lamenting the unbelief and want of sym-
pathy of His near relatives: ‘A prophet is not
without honour, save in his own country, and
anong his own kin, and in his own house’ (Mk 6+) ;
and again, ‘My time is not yet come, but your
time is alway ready. The world cannot hate you,
but me it hateth’ (Jn 7%). There are, moreover,
the still more definite statements, ‘ For even his
brethren did not believe on him’ (Jn 7°); and,
‘his friends (οἱ rap’ αὐτοῦ) went out to lay hold on
hin, for they said, He is beside himself’ (Mk 3”).
Some attempts have been made to attenuate the force of these
passages. Cornelius a Lapide, for instance, commenting on
Jn 7°, says: ‘Licet enim viderent eum tot signa et miracula
facere, illaque vera esse non dubitarent, tamen dubitabant an
ipse esset Messias et Dei Filius: dicet enim hoe verwi esse
optarent, et ex parte ob tot ejus miracula erederent—tamen alia
ex parte videntes ejus paupertatem et neglectum, dubitabant.
Ut ergo certi hac de re fiant, hortantur Christum ire secum in
Jerusalem, etc.’ But St. John asserts disbelief (οὐδὲ ἐτίστενον),
not doubt, and implies jealousy and hostility. Other critics
have maintained that some only of the brethren disbelieved.
But St. John’s language at the very least asserts that the
majority (that is, three out of the four brethren) disbelieved,
and almost certainly implies the disbelief of all.
From this there follows the necessary inference—
(3) That none of the brethren were numbered
among the Twelve Apostles. This conclusion is
confirmed by the manner in which they are dis-
tinguished from the Twelve in Ac 14, ‘[The
eleven) all with one accord continued steadfastly
in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother
of Jesus, and with his brethren.’ With this may
be compared 1 Co 9° (‘ Have we no right to lead
about a wife that is a believer, even as the rest of
the apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and
Cephas?’), which, though less decisive than Ac 113,
because Cephas is first classed among the Twelve
and then separately, points in the same direction.
It is no sufficient Tea to this to say that in Gal
1° James is called an Apostle (‘But other of the
apostles saw I none, save [εἰ μή] James the Lord’s
brother’). Granting that this is the case, though
it has been denied (e.g. by Grotius, Winer, Bleek ;
ef. RVm), it may be fairly maintained that St.
James is called an Apostle in that wider sense in
which the term is applied to St. Paul himself, to
St. Barnabas (Ac 14*, 1 Co 9), to Andronicus
and Junias (Ro 167), and perhaps also to Silvanus
* In Mt. the correct reading seems to be ᾿Ιωσήφ (so WH and
Ea BC, etc.). In Mk 63 Ιωσῆτος (BDL, etc.) is certainly
right. ;
Τ Epiphanius says that there were only two sisters, Mary and
Salome, but the σῷὥσα, shows that there were three at least.
The present passage seems to indicate that they were married,
and resided at Nazareth.
BRETHREN OF THE LORD
(1 Th 25, ef. 1). That James the Lord’s brother
was one of the Twelve is implied already in the
Gospel according to the Hebrews (6. A.D. 100),* but
the evidence of this dubious source cannot outweigh
the strong negative presumption afforded by the
canonical writings. +
ii. THE HIERONYMIAN VIEW.—With these three
points established, we proceed to consider the
Hieronymian view that the brethren of Jesus
were really His first cousins. Jerome’s theory,
as stated by himself in his acrimonious but able
treatise adversus Helvidium, involves the following
positions :—
(a) That James the Lord’s brother was an
Apostle, being identical with James the Less, the
son of Alphzeus.
(Ὁ) That the mother of James and of the other
‘brethren’ was ‘ Mary of Clopas’ (Jn 1955).
(c) That this Mary was the Virgin’s sister.
As developed by subsequent writers, the Hier-
onymian theory atiirms in addition—
(ὦ) That Simon the Zealot and Judas ‘not
Iscariot’ were also brethren of the Lord.
(9) That Clopas is identical with Alpheus, and
that consequently ‘ Mary of Clopas’ is not to be
regarded as the daughter of Clopas, but as his wife.t
As these two additional points are maintained
by all modern followers of Jerome, we shall regard
them as integral parts of the Hieronymian theory.
Jerome’s theory has already been virtually dis-
proved by the proof (i. 2, 3) that the Lord’s
brethren were not Apostles, but its great ingenuity
and wide acceptance § render full discussion of it
necessary.
A. Arguments for the Hieronymian view. —
(1) James the Lord’s brother must have been of
the Twelve, because he is called an Apostle, Gal
1%, (For a reply to this see i. 2, 3).
(2) James the Lord’s brother must have been of
the Twelve, because he exercised great authority
among, and even over Apostles. Thus at the
Council of Jerusalem he presided and pronounced
the decision, although St. Peter himself was
present (Ac 15). St. Paul names him before St.
Peter as one of the chief pillars of the Church
(Gal 2°). The Galatian heretics appealed to his
authority as superior to that of St. Paul (Gal
2!*), and his importance is further shewn by such
passages as Ac 1917 2118,
Reply. —St. James’ prominent position is ad-
mitted, but it can be accounted for without sup-
posing him to have been of the Twelve. For—
(a) His close relationship to Jesus (whatever the
relationship was) would have sufficed of itself to
gain him great consideration among the _ first
Christians. He probably owed in part at least
to this his election to the see of Jerusalem.
Relationship to Jesus was clearly the main motive
in the appointment of his successor, Symeon the
son of Clopas,|| who was a cousin of Jesus (Eusebius,
* This Gospel represents him as present at the Last Supper,
and therefore clearly as one of the Twelve.
t It is perhaps worth adding that St. James in his Epistle does
not claim to be of the Twelve, and that his brother St. Jude
seems even to exclude himself from the number of the Apostles
- (Jude 17).
t Jerome himself says : ‘Mariam Cleophe Joannes Evangelista
cognominat, sive a patre, sive a gentilitate familie, aut qua-
quumque alia caussa ei nomen imponens’ (xiii.).
§ Jerome’s treatise converted Augustine, who originally held
the Epiphanian view, and the united influence of these two
great doctors caused the Hieronymian view to prevail ex-
clusively in the West. It is this view which is implied in the
Liturgy, which, both in its Roman and in its Anglican form,
regards James the Less, Simon Zelotes, and Judas not Iscariot
as brethren of Jesus. :
|| This Clopas was Joseph’s brother, and is perhaps identical
with the Clopas of Jn 1925, If so, and if (as is supposed by
many) ‘ Mary of Clopas’ was the wife of Clopas, and the sister
of the Virgin, two brothers (Joseph and Clopas) must have
married two sisters (the Virgin Mary and Mary of Clopas). For
reasons to be presently given, we regard this combination as
improbable.
BRETHREN OF THE LORD 2988
HE iii. 11). Hegesippus speaks of the relations of
Jesus as ‘ruling the churches’ as such. Even as
late as the reign of Domitian they were sufliciently
important to incur the jealousy of the tyrant (d.c.
ili. 20).
(4) James the Lord’s brother possessed personal
qualities which fully account for his elevation.
Even the Jews, according to Hegesippus, rever-
enced him for his piety, his unceasing prayers,
his life-long Nazirite vow, and above all for his
Justice (/.c. ii, 23). Josephus mentions the indig-
nation which his execution excited among the
Jews (Ant. XX. ix. 1), and in a passage not now
extant ascribes the sufferings endured by the Jews
during the siege of Jerusalem to Divine vengeance
for his murder (Origen, 6. Celswi, i. 47).
(3) James the Lord’s brother must have been of
the Twelve, because there were only two promi-
nent Jameses in the Church, as the expression
‘James the Less’ (Mk 15#°) indicates. He was
therefore either James the Great, son of Zebedee,
or James the Less, son of Alpheus. But he was
not the former, who was martyred as early as
A.D. 44 (Ac 1239). Therefore he was the latter, the
son of Alphzeus.
Reply.—Jerome and his followers have been mis-
led by the Latin translation Jacobus minor, ‘ James
the Less.” The Greek is IdkwBos ὁ μικρός, “ James
the Little,’ the allusion being to his short stature.
(4) The names of James, Simon, and Jude occur
together, and in the same division, in all the
Apostolic lists. This suggests—(a#) that they were
brothers, and (4) that they are identical with our
Lord’s brethren of the same name (see Mt 102,
ΜῈ 5168. bie. Ac: 125):
Reply.—\t has already been conclusively proved
that our Lord’s brethren were not Apostles (see
i. 2,3); but, waiving this point, we answer: (1) The
occurrence of the three names together in the list
of Apostles is no proof of fraternal relationship.
(2) There is definite proof that the three were not
brothers. For had they been so, it would natur-
ally have been mentioned in some at least of the
Gospels, as it is in the cases of the brothers Peter
and Andrew, James and John. Moreover, the
father of James is Alphwus, but the father of Jude
is a certain James, of whom nothing definite is
known. It is true that some propose to translate
᾿Ιούδας ᾿Ιακώβου (Lk 6'°, Ac 119) ‘Jude the brother of
James,’ but so unusual, and probably unexampled,
a meaning would require at least to be indicated
by the context. We conclude, therefore, that
James was certainly not the brother of Jude, and
there is no evidence that he was the brother of
Simon. If he was the brother of any Apostle, it
was of Matthew (Levi), whose father was also
ealled Alpheus (Mk 24). But even this, in the
absence of any evidence of the identity of the two
Alphzeuses, must be pronounced doubtful.
Equally evident is it that these three Apostles
were not brethren of Jesus. The coincidence of
three such common names as James, Simon, and
Jude in the list of brethren and in the list of
Apostles proves nothing. So common are the
names that they are duplicated in the Apostolic
list itself. If it could be shown that James, Simon,
and Jude, Apostles, were also brothers, the coinci-
dence would be worth considering ; but since they
were not, the coincidence is without significance.
The very way in which these three Apostles are
designated shows that they were not brethren of
Jesus. It was necessary to distinguish them from
three other Apostles of the same name, and yet
they are not once called, for distinction, ‘the
Lord’s brethren.’ James is called ‘of Alpheus,’
perhaps also ‘the Little’; Simon is called ‘the
Cananean, and ‘the Zealot’; Jude receives no
less than four distinguishing titles, ‘not Iscariot,’
BRETHREN OF THE LORD
234
‘of James,’ ‘Thaddieus,’ and ‘Lebbzeus’ (Mt 10°,
Western Text). How strange, if he really was
the Lord’s brother, that he is not once so de-
seribed ! bt
(5) The last argument consists of three distinct
steps. (a) James, the son of Alphieus, the Apostle,
is identical with ‘James the Little’ of Mk 15”=
Mt 27%, But this James the Little had a brother
Joses, clearly a well-known character, and _there-
jore (since no other Joses is mentioned in_ the
Gospels) the same as Joses the brother of Jesus
(Mk 6°; and Mt 13°, where the authorities are
divided between the forms Joses and Joseph).
(6) The mother of this James is called by the
Synoptists Mary, and she is further deseribed in
Jn 19” as ‘Mary of Clopas’ (Mapia ἡ τοῦ Κλωπᾶ).
This might mean ‘ Mary daughter of Clopas,’ but
since Clopas and Alpheus are the same word, both
being transliterations of the Aramaic ‘bn (pon),
the correct translation is ‘ Mary the wife of Clopas.’
(c) This Mary, wife of Clopas, is said by St. John
to have been the Virgin’s sister. Accordingly
James and Joses (and consequently also Simon
and Jude), the Lord’s ‘brethren,’ were really His
first cousins on His mother’s side.
* Reply.—This argument is ingenious rather than
strong. For (a) the identification of James the
Little (Mk 1559) with the son of Alphzeus, though
generally accepted and not improbable, is only a
guess. Indeed it may be argued that since St.
Mark in his Gospel gives no hint that the son of
Alphzeus was called ‘the Little,’ he must mean
by ‘James the Little’ another person. But con-
ceding the identity (which, however, whetlier true
or not, is too precarious to bear the weight of an
important argument), we still cannot concede the
identity of Joses, the brother of this James, with
Joses the brother of Jesus. The identity of James
of Alpheus with James the Little may be con-
ceded, because, though it is weakly attested,
nothing of weight can be urged against it. But
if this Joses, the brother of James, was also the
brother of Jesus, then three of our Lord’s brethren
were Apostles, a conclusion which is negatived by
an overwhelming weight of evidence (see i. 2, 3).
In such a case the mere coincidence of a name
(and Joses or Joseph is, as Lightfoot shews, a
particularly common name) is of no weight at all.
(4) Jerome's assumption that ‘Mary the mother
of James and Joses’ (Mt., Mk.) is identical with
‘Mary of Clopas’ is probably, though not cer-
tainly, correct. But there is no ground for sup-
posing, as Jerome’s supporters do, that this Mary
was the wife of Clopas. There being no indication
in the context to the contrary, the natural trans-
lation of Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Ἱλωπᾶ is ‘Mary the daughter
of Clopas.’* It is maintained, indeed, that since
she was the mother of James the Little (who
was an Avostle), her husband must have been
A\lpluens, i.e. Clopas. But itis doubtful if James
the Little really was an Apostle, and it is still
more doubtful if Alpheus is the same corer as
(lopas. ;
}
Κλωπᾶς
πᾶς, Or, as it should probably be ac-
Κλώπας, 15. a purely Greek name, being
“l from K λεόπατρος (cf. ᾿Αντίπας from ᾽Αντί-
Tar : \Aqg Ss | A\daios, WH), on the other
Hand, 18 the Aramaic ‘on (Halpai), the initial
iral bein 5.15. frequently the case, omitted.
he names are therefore linguistically distinct.
It is true that 1f there
tor identifying
istic i,t} ] ᾿
were
strong independent
Alpheus and Clopas, the
ὁ might possibly be surmounted,
it here re no such 1
reasons, or at least none
t+ lent tion of } ] ;
ΓΚ id Alpheus it may be
Vi most invariably
γὰρ, Maria Cleophee |
BRETHREN OF THE LORD
represented by a full vowel in Greek (msby --ξαλομών; ninds=
σαβαώθ; etc.), there is a presumption against a word like
Clopas, which begins with two consonants, representing a
Semitic name. (2) Although Π is occasionally transliterated z in
the middle or at the end of a word, this never, or hardly ever,
happens at the beginning. (3) ‘Bon (bn) is transliterated quite
regularly Χαλφί in 1Mac 117, (4) The w of Kadzes cannot be
derived from °5)n. The nearest Semitic equivalent of Kadres
would be some such form as xsidp. (5) The Semitic versions
uniformly regard ’AAdaios as a Semitic word, but λώτας as
Greek, transliterating the x by p.
(c) There is more plausibility about Jerome’s
contention that Mary of Clopas is described in
Jn 19% as the Virgin’s sister. The words are
ἱστήκειδαν δὲ παρὰ τῷ σταυρῷ τοῦ Inood ἡ μητὴρ αὐτοῦ
καὶ 7 ἀδελφὴ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ, Μαρία 7 τοῦ Κλωπᾶ, καὶ
Μαρία 7 Μαγδαληνή. It must be candidly admitted
that the pruna facie impression which this passage
makes upon the mind is that only three women are
mentioned, and that the Virgin’s sister is Mary
of Clopas. There are, however, important con-
siderations on the other side. (1) When persons
or things are enumerated in pairs (cf. the list of
Apostles, Mt 1074), the copula is not inserted be-
tween the pairs. If, therefore, St. John in this
passage designs to speak of two pairs of women,
καὶ 1s correctly omitted before Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Ἰζλωπᾶ.
(2) The Synoptic parallels show that Salome, the
mother of James and John, was present at the
Crucifixion, and since it is unlikely that St. John
would omit to mention the presence of his own
mother, ἡ ἀδελφὴ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ is probably not
Mary of Clopas, but Salome. The suppression of
her name is quite in the style of the Evangelist,
who is very reticent in personal matters, and never
even names himself. (3) If Mary of Clopas was
sister to the Virgin, then two sisters had the same
name, a circumstance most improbable, unless they
were only step-sisters. The point is undoubtedly
a difficult one, and different opinions will continue
to be held about it, but fortunately its decision
does not affect the main point of our inquiry,
because, whether Mary of Clopas was the Virgin’s
sister or not, there is no reason for supposing that
she was the mother of the brethren of Jesus.
B. Objections to the Hierunymian view.—
The Hieronymian view is to be rejected, partly
because the arguments in its favour, though in-
genious, are inconclusive and often far-fetched ;
partly because no trace of it is to be found befcre
the time of Jerome, who apparently invented it ;*
partly because it is obviously an attempt of an
ardent champion of celibacy to maintain the per-
petual virginity not only of Mary but of Joseph ; +
partly because it involves an unnatural use of the
term ‘brethren’; + but chiefly because it is incon-
_* Papias of Hierapolis (A.D. 120) used to be quoted on Jerome’s
side, but Lightfoot has shown that the Papias in question lived
in the 11th century. Hegesippus (A.p. 160) and Clement. of
Alexandria (A.D. 200) have been wrongly claimed on the same
side. In reality they support the Epiphanian view.
_t Jerome indeed admits this : ‘Tu dicis (he is addressing Hel-
vidius) Mariam virginem non permansisse: ego mihi plus
vendico, etiam ipsum Joseph virginem fuisse per Mariam, ut
ex virginali conjugio virgo filius nasceretur’ (adv. Helv. xix.).
t It is true, as Jerome warmly urges (adv. Helvidium, xiv.,
xv.), that the OT usage of ‘ brother’ is somewhat wide. In
1Ch 2921. 22 first cousins are called brethren (ADEN Ξε ἀδελφοὶ
αὐτῶν, LXX): in Ly 104, first cousins once removed (Σ᾽ πὲ:
Ξε τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ὑμῶν, LXX). So also in Gn 1414-16 Abraham’s
nephew is called his brother ΟΝ); and in Gn 2915 Jacob is
called Laban’s brother. It cannot therefore be pronounced
unpossible that our Lord’s cousins might oécasionally be alluded
to as His brethren, especially if it be true, as is generally alleged,
that there is no word in Aramaic for cousin. At the same time
| it should be remembered that all Jerome's examples of an ex-
tended use of ‘ brother’ are taken from the OT; that the usage
of ἀδελφός is much less elastic than that of ΠΝ ; that no instances
of ἀδελφός τεἀνεψ ός are cited from profane writers; and that
even the OT does not sanction the habitual use of ΠΝ to
describe any other relationship than that of brother. The term
ἀνεψιός is not avoided in the NT (see Col 410), and Hegesippus
BRETHREN OF THE LORD
BRETHREN OF THE LORD 235
sistent with the three certainties, which, as we
have shown, a true theory must necessarily pre-
suppose, namely, the common household, the un-
belief of the brethren, and theirnon-inclusion among
the Twelve. Jerome’s theory is inconsistent not
only with the last two of these certainties, but
even with the first, for though his supporters allege
that the two sisters were both widows and kept
house together, this does not explain the fact that
the brethren of Jesus are regarded in Scripture as
belonging to the Virgin's family, and are con-
tinually represented as being in her company, and
never in the company of their alleged mother,
Mary of Clopas.*
iii.. THE HELVIDIAN AND EPIPHANIAN VIEWS.—
The rejection of the Hieronymian view leaves the
choice open between the Helvidian and the Epi-
phanian views, both of which have the immense
advantage over the Hieronymian of not being
inconsistent with the three certainties laid down
mnt 1. 9.9.
A. Arguments for the Helvidian view.+—
(1) The Helvidian view, which maintains that
the brethren of Jesus were sons of Joseph and
Mary, gives a fuller and more natural meaning to
the term dée\¢oi than the Epiphanian, which denies
that they were blood-relations of Jesus at all.
Reply.—The advantage of the Helvidian view in
this respect is but slight. Joseph was not a blood-
relation of Jesus, and yet he is called, not only
by friends and acquaintances (Mt 13°= Mk 6%, cf.
also Jn 14 012), but also: by the Virgin herself (Lk
2), and by an Evangelist who lays.great stress
upon the supernatural birth (Lk 251), the father of
Jesus. Since, therefore, even in the Holy Family
Joseph was called the father of Jesus, it is certain
that if he had had sons, they would have been
called the brethren of Jesus.
(2) In Lk 27 Jesus is called Mary’s first-born son
(πρωτότοκον). This implies that she had other
children.
Reply.—mpwréroxos among the Jews was a tech-
nical term, meaning ‘that which openeth the
womb’ (Ex 34!-), and does not imply the birth
of other offspring. Indeed, the redemption-price
of a first-born son, required by the Mosaic law,
was due at the end of a month (Nu 8), before it
could be known whether there was any likelihood
of further offspring. Dr. Mayor objects that in a
purely historical passage, like Lk 2’, this technical
meaning is not to be thought of; but the subse-
quent statement ‘they brought him up to Jeru-
salem to present him to the Lord, as it is written
in the law of the Lord, Every male that opencth
the womb shall be called holy to the Lord’ (Lk
2°-- 23), renders it certain that it was poy this
which was in the Evangelist’s mind when he called
Jesus πρωτότοκον (so already Jerome, /.c. X.).
(3) Mt 18, ‘before they came together’ (πρὶν
ἢ συνελθεῖν), implies that the connubial relations of
Joseph and Mary were of the ordinary kind. —
Reply.—ovvedbeiv need not mean more than living
together in the same house.
(4) Mt 135, ‘and knew her not till she had brought
forth a son’ (καὶ οὐκ ἐγίνωσκεν αὐτὴν ἕως οὗ ἔτεκεν
υἱόν), Ὁ implies that he knew her afterwards, especi-
ally as the Evangelist mentions brothers and sisters
(A.D. 160), in discussing the subject of our Lord’s human relation-
ships, keeps the two terms distinct, calling Symeon, the second
bishop of Jerusalem, and our Lord’s cousin, ἀνεψιός 5 but James,
the first-bishop of Jerusalem, always ἀδελφός. Clearly,. there-
fore, Hegesippus did not regard ἀδελφίς τοῦ Κυρίου as equivalent
to ἀνεψιός, and he is our oldest and best authority.
* In every passage of Scripture where the brethren are men-
tioned, except Jn 73, it is expressly said that they were in the
Virgin’s company.
t The whole of these arguments were advanced by Helvidius
himself, and the substance of most of the replies is to be found
in Jerome.
t The πρωτότοκον of the TR here is certainly an interpolation
from Lk 27,
of Jesus, without any warning that they were not
Mary’s children.
veply.—This is an argument of real weight, and
is not adequately answered by Jerome, Cornelius a
Lapide, Pearson, etc., who allege such passages as
Mt 28:0, ‘Lo, [ain with you alway, even unto the
end of the world,’ and 28 6%, ‘ Michal the daughter
of Saul had no child until the day of her death,’ as
a proof that ‘until’ does not fix a limit or suggest
a subsequent change. It is quite true that in such
passages as those quoted, where the circumstances
of the case preclude the idea of change, ‘ until’ does
not imply change. But ‘until’ does imply change
when it introduces a state of things in which
change is naturally to be expected. Thus, as Dr.
Mayor justly remarks, if 2S 6% be made to read
‘Michal the daughter of Saul had no child, until
she left David and became the wife of Phalticl,’ then
‘until’ dves imply that she had a child afterwards,
because child-bearing is a natural and usual sequel
of marriage. So in the present case it may be
fairly argued that inasmuch as connubial inter-
course is the natural accompaniment of marriage,
the Evangelist in asserting that it did not take
place until a certain date, affirms that it took place
afterwards. Still the argument, as applied to this
particular case, is not convincing. The Evangelist
is not (even by implication) comparing together
the connubial relations of Joseph and Mary before
and after the birth of Jesus (as, in the case supposed
by Dr. Mayor, Michal’s connubial relations with
David and Phaltiel are compared), but simpl
affirming in the strongest possible way that J an
had no share in the procreation of Jesus. Bengel’s
laconic comment is therefore, upon the whole,
justitied—‘ donec] Non sequitur, ergo post.’ The
subsequent mention of the brethren of Jesus (Mt
13°°) does not affect the question, because it was
well known, when the Evangelist wrote, who the
brethren were, and there was no need to guard
against misconception.
(5) The fact that the brethren not only lived in
the same house with the Virgin, but continually
accompanied her wherever she went, is an indi-
cation that they were her children as well as
Joseph’s.
Reply.—The tie which unites a step-mother and
her step-sons is often extremely close, and con-
sidering that Joseph was almost certainly dead
before, our Lord’s ministry began, and that Jesus
was fully occupied with public affairs, it cannot be
regarded as surprising that her elie ces (if such
they were) constituted themselves her guardians
and protectors. :
B. Arguments for the Epiphanian view.—
We shall now state the arguments for the theory
of Epiphanius, and subject them to criticism from
the Helvidian point of view.
(1) The Perpetual Virginity of Mary is implied
in the narrative of the Annunciation (Lk 17%),
The angel Gabricl appeared to Mary, and after
saluting her as ‘ highly-favoured’ announced the
manner of Christ’s birth as follows: ‘ Behold, thou
shalt conceive in the womb, and shalt bring forth
a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.’ The reply
of Mary was, ‘ How shall this be, seeing that I
know not a man?’ (Πῶς ἔσται τοῦτο, ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα ov
γινώσκω ;). It is plain from this reply (1) that she
understood the angel to mean that the child would
be born in the natural way ; and (2) that there was
some obstacle which prevented her from having a
child in the natural way (‘I know not a man,’
‘dvépa οὐ γινώσκω). These words cannot mean, ‘I
do not yet know a man.’ That would have been
no obstacle to the fulfilment of the promise. The
angel’s words related to the future (v.*1), and
inasmuch as Mary was already betrothed (v.~‘),
and might shortly expect to be taken into her
236 BRETHREN OF THE LORD
BRETHREN OF THE LORD
husband’s house, there was every prospect, so far
as Mary’s status went, that the angel's words
would shortly be fulfilled. The only meaning,
therefore, which in such a context Mary’s words
can bear, is that she had devoted herself (with her
betrothed’s consent) to a life of virginity, and that
she expected to preserve, even in marriage, her
virginal integrity (so nearly all the older ex-
positors, including Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory |
of Nyssa, Theophylact, Bernard, Bede, Anselm,
Aquinas, Cornelius a Lapide, Maldonatus, Grotius ;
and in more recent times Bisping, Schegg, Schanz).*
Reply.—Such a vow or resolution is improbable
in Mary’s case, because the Jews regarded virginity
as less honourable than marriage, and childless-
ness as a calamity. Moreover, it is improbable
that, if she had formed such a resolution, Joseph
would have consented to be betrothed to her.
These objections are undeniably weighty, but
they do not fully meet the strong exegetical argu-
ment for the traditional view. Moreover, it must
be remembered (1) that the case in question is a
unique and peculiar one, and that it is doubtful
how far the canons of ordinary probability ought
to be applied to it; (2) that esteem for virginity
among contemporary Jews is vouched for (though
only to a limited extent) by the writings of Philo,
and the existence of the sect of the Essenes; (3)
that a high esteem for virginity characterized the
Christian movement from the first (Ac 21°, 1 Co 7),
and formed part of the teaching of Christ (Mt
19°); and consequently it is not incredible that
Joseph and Mary, by whom Jesus was brought
up, shared the sentiment, and communicated it
to Him.
(2) Virginity is regarded, not only by Christians,
but by nearly all men, as, ideally at any rate,
superior to marriage. It is therefore probable that
the most privileged and holiest of women remained
ever ἃ virgin, as has been believed by most Chris-
tians from the first.+
Keply.—This argument has weight, but is not
conclusive. For (1) though ideally virginity is
superior to marriage, being the condition of the
holy angels and of the saints in heaven (Mt Doe
yet practically marriage is in most cases to be pre-
ferred to celibacy, as a more useful means of
serving God. And since the estate of marriage
is altogether holy, and is a religious mystery or
sacrament, symbolizing the union between Christ
and His Church (Eph 533), it is consistent with the
highest reverence towards our Lord’s mother to
rgintng arian Damage it not alluded to by Mayor ang
g , ὦ f yi juately dealt with by most recent
commentators, - B. Weiss (Com.-in Joc.) says that it is ‘a be-
¥ peered duns ion how she, the unstained maiden, can possibly
c Ὁ 5. position.” Considering that she was already
betrothed, no such bewilderment was possible. If the angel had
said that she would have a son before marriage, such bewilder-
ment would have been natural enough, for the concubitus of
betrothed persons, though not exactly forbidden, was not ap-
proved. But the angel had not hinted at this. Dr. Plummer
repr duce 8 Weiss. Godet simply says: ‘Her question is the
<a. Xpression of the astonishment of a pure conscience.’
edel (ἢ neyc. Bibl. iii. 2956) regards the words as an inter-
polation. Only Schanz (Com. in loc.) gives anything like an
ad qua ΕΙ, ussion of the passage. Of the older expositors
- eye and Maldonatus are full, but uncritical.
om Sa y Y : ep howe ver, while believing the Perpetual
hd “isl my Οἱ on regard It as an article of faith. As
uray .. Basil c 14 write : ‘ he words, He knew
siete heute ght forth he r Jirst-born son, do indeed afford
a certa " or “hinking that Mary, after acting in all |
aa ὶ a Sisk of the Lord's birth, which was
wt i rT te. " Ghost, did not refuse to her hus-
= “aston sa Rs | ef es marriage. But as for our-
rs I €w does no violence to rational piety
res Aoyw), for her vir-
d her function in con-
S what I
connected with the mystery,
bear to hear that the Mother
n, we recar:
ve have proc
luced as suflicient’
lappened afterwards |
« the testimonies (to |
believe that after the birth of Jesus she bore
children to her husband.*
(9) Reverence for Mary as ‘Mother of God’
would have prevented Joseph from cohabiting with
her as her husband.
Reply.—lf we could be sure that Joseph and
Mary regarded the infant Jesus as God, this argu-
ment would have great weight ; but it is just this
point which is doubtful. The angel described the
infant as the Messiah, and the Son of God, but
neither of these terms involved necessarily to
Jewish ears the idea of Divinity. The term Son
of God is used in the OT even of the Davidie king.
(4) The brethren of Jesus behave to Him as if
they were elder brothers. Thus they are jealous
of His popularity (Mk 65), criticize and advise Him
in no triendly spirit (Jn 7!*-), attempt to control
His actions, and even to place Him under restraint
(Mk 3°, cf. Mk 851}). Butif they were older than
Jesus, they were not Mary’s children.
Reply.—It cannot be denied that their actions
seem like those of elder brethren, but it is possible
that they were only slightly younger than Jesus,
and if so their conduct is perhaps intelligible.
(5) Jesus upon the Cross commended His mother
not to His ‘ brethren,’ but to St. John (Jn 196 27),
He would have been very unlikely to do this, if
His ‘ brethren’ had really been the Virgin’s sons.
Leply.—(a) The cause of this arrangement may
have been the great poverty of the brethren of
Jesus, and the comparative affluence of St. John,
who, after all, was a near relation of Jesus (a first
cousin). This is, of course, possible; but there is
nothing to indicate that the brethren of Jesus were
specially poor. They were living with St. Mary,
and their united earnings would, under ordinary
circumstances, have sutticed to maintain a single
household in comfort. (ὦ) Some allege as a cause
the unbelief of the brethren. But this is unlikely,
because Jesus must have known that within a few
days their unbelief would pass into faith.
(6) The most ancient ecclesiastical tradition,
especially that of Palestine, favours the Epi-
phanian view. The testimony of Hegesippus, a
native of Palestine, and a man of learning, who
wrote about A.D. 160, is definitely against the
Hieronymian, and (as is almost certain) in favour
of the Epiphanian view. His works are lost, but
in the fragments which remain, he consistently
speaks of the first Bishop of Jerusalem (James) as
the Lord’s brother ; but of the second (Symeon) as
His cousin (ἀνεψιός, which he more exactly detines
as ὁ ἐκ θείου τοῦ Kuplov, the θεῖος being Κλώπας, the
brother of Joseph).+ Clearly, therefore, Hege-
sippus did not regard the brethren of Jesus as His
cousins. That he did not regard them as sons of
Mary, is shown by his description of Jude, the
Lord’s brother, as τοῦ κατὰ σάρκα λεγομένου αὐτοῦ
ἀδελφοῦ, and by the fact that Eusebius and Epi-
phanius, who draw their information mainly from
him, regard the brethren as children of Joseph by
a former wife.t This view is taken by Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose,
Ambrosiaster, Gregory of Nyssa ; in fact, so far as
we know, by all the Fathers before Jerome, with
the exception of Tertullian, who probably, though
his statements are not explicit, held the view of
* Quite unjust, therefore, is the customary Hieronymian
abuse of Helvidius as ‘ spurcus heresiarcha,’ and the char-
acterization of his theory as ‘ blasphemia.’ Those who use such
language virtually deny the sanctity of marriage. Helvidius’
theory is perfectly reverent. Whether it is true or not is
another question.
t It is possible, but not capable of proof, that this Clopas, the
brother of Joseph, and the father of Symeon (not Symeon the
Lord’s brother), is identical with the Kiara: of Jn 1925, or the
Κλεότας of Lk 2418. Κλωτᾶς (Kaazres) and Κλεόπτας are etymo-
logically the same word, both being contractions of Κλεόπατρος.
1 The statements of Hegesippus about our Lord’s brethren
oe
23,
are noted by Eusebius, HE ii. lil. 20, iii. 32, iv. 22.
BRIDE, ETC.
Helvidius. Since Jerome the Western Church has
adopted the Hieronymian theory, but the Eastern
Church still maintains that of Epiphanius. The
traditional evidence, therefore, is almost entirely
on the side of the Epiphanian view.
Reply. —I1t is possible that the Apocryphal
Gospels, especially the Gospel of Peter and the
Protevangelium of James, and not any authentic
tradition, are the source of the Epiphanian theory.
This is Jerome’s view, who taunts Epiphanians with
following ‘deliramenta apoeryphorum.’ This, how-
ever, is not likely. The statements of the best
informed Fathers seem based on Hegesippus, who
made an independent investigation, under specially
favourable conditions. The Apocryphal Gospels
probably adopted, rather than originated, the cur-
rent view.
C. The main objection to the Epiphanian view.
—There is one objection to the Epiphanian view
so important that it deserves special notice. It is
well known that a high—an even extravagant—
estiinate of virginity prevailed extensively in the
early Church; and therefore there is some reason
to suspect that, just as, at the close of the 4th
cent., zeal for the virginity of Joseph produced
the Hieronymian theory, so, three centuries earlier,
zeal for the virginity of Mary produced the Epi-
phanian. That this may have been so, no cautious
critic will deny; but it does not, upon the evi-
dence, appear to be probable. For (1) if Mary bore
to Joseph, as the Helvidian theory assumes, seven
children, of whom one was Bishop of Jerusalem,
and three others prominent members of the Church,
the non-virginity of Mary after the birth of Jesus
must have been so notorious a fact in the Apostolic
Church, that the (practically) unanimous tradition
of her perpetual virginity could never have arisen.
(2) The tradition of the Perpetual Virginity was
already prevalent early in the 2nd cent., that is,
long before ascetic views were dominant or even
aggressive in the Church. It prevailed, moreover,
in Palestine, where, there is reason to believe,
ascetic views had less influence than elsewhere.
For these reasons we are inclined to think that the
Epiphanian tradition has a real historical basis.
lv. PROBABLE CONCLUSIONS. — The scantiness
and ambiguity of the only really trustworthy
evidence, the Scriptural, obliges us to be content
with merely probable conclusions. The only con-
clusion that seems to be certain is that Jerome’s
theory is false. The claims of the two other
theories are nearly evenly balanced ; nevertheless,
it appears to us, after weighing the opposing argu-
ments to the best of our power, that there is a
slight but perceptible preponderance of Scriptural,
and a much more decided preponderance of his-
torical, evidence in favour of the Epiphanian theory.
LITERATURE, — Jerome, adversus Helvidium; Epiphanius,
adversus Antidicomarianitas (adversus Heereses, iii. 2) (both
important) ; Pearson, On the Creed ; Mill, Accounts of our Lord’s
Brethren vindicated ; Schegg, Jakobus, der Bruder des Herrn ;
Schanz, Comment. viber Mt., Mc., Lc.; Meyrick, art. ‘ James’ in
Smith’s DB: Sieffert, art. ‘Jakobus,’ and Zoéckler, art. ‘ Maria’
inPRE3; Lightfoot, Galatians, pp. 252-291; Mayor, Epistle of
St. James (v. ff.) and art. ‘Brethren of the Lord’ in Hastings’
DB; art. ‘Clopas’ in Encyec, Bibl.; Farrar, Early Days of
Christianity, ch. xix. ; Patrick, James the Lord’s Brother, 1906,
p. 4ff. C. HARRIS.
BRIDE, BRIDE-CHAMBER, BRIDEGROOM,
BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND.—See MARRIAGE.
BRIMSTONE (burning stone or sulphur [θεῖον,
commonly derived from θεῖος, ‘divine,’ either be-
cause sulphur was used for religious purification,
or because lightning—the bolt of the gods—emits
a sulphurous odour: others connect it with θύω,
‘agitate,’ ef. fumus, ‘smoke’]).—Its use in Scrip-
ture in the imagery of Divine judgment is founded
on the story of the destruction of Sodom and the
BROOK 237
cities of the Plain (Gn 19748), a catastrophe to
which the Gospels frequently refer (Lk 1729 10%,
Mk 6", Mt 10 11%*4), The story of this tragedy
of Divine judgment casts its lurid light all down
Scripture history, and has coloured Christian be-
lief in its presentation of the Divine wrath. The
imagery of ‘fire and brimstone’ appears in the
prophets and the Psalms as an impressive metaphor
of heaven’s most pitiless judgment, while the story
itself is often recalled both in the OT and in the
NT. In the Book of Revelation it is a notable
feature in the description of the Apocalyptic riders
(9 18), that their breastplates are of fire and brim-
stone, and from the mouths of their horses proceed
the same dread emblems of wrath; while no more
impressive figure can be found to describe the final
doom of the wicked in the end of the ages than
that they shall be cast into the ‘lake of fire and
brimstone,’ there to be ‘tormented day and night
for ever and ever’ (Rev 1939 20!° 218),
J. Dick FLEMING.
BROOK (Jn 18!; RVm ‘ravine, Gr. winter tor-
rent, χείμαρρος) is the usual LXX equivalent of
593, and seems to correspond in meaning with the
Arab. wady =‘ valley,’ but, more particularly, the
watercourse in the bottom of the valley. The
winter rains, rushing down from the mountain
range, have hollowed out great channels westward,
towards the Mediterranean. Much deeper are the
gullies eastward, where the descent 15. steeper,
towards the Jordan. Most of these are quite dry
during the greater part of the year. Although
some are called ‘rivers,’ e.g. Nahr el-Aweh, in the
Plain of Sharon, and the Kishon, while others,
such as ed- Anvid, which crosses the Plain of Genne-
saret, and el-Yarnuk, which comes down from
the eastern uplands, draw abundant supplies from
perennial springs, yet ‘ brook’ more accurately de-
seribes them.
The Kidron contains water only after heavy
rains. It is the one ‘brook’ mentioned in the
Gospels. Over it Jesus passed from the upper
room to Gethsemane on the night of His betrayal.
The name pp, from 77); is usually referred to the dark
colour of the streain or ravine. The various forms of the name
in Gr. are τοῦ κέδρου, τοῦ κεδρών, and τῶν κεδρων. WH in ‘Notes
on Select Readings,’ after reviewing the evidence, conclude in
favour of τῶν κέδρων. ‘It probably preserves the true etymology
of ΠΥ, which seems to be an archaic (? Canaanite) plural of
Jp “tthe Dark [trees]”; for, though no name from this root
is applied to any tree in Bib. Heb., some tree resembling a
cedar was called by a similar name in at least the later lan-
guage (see exx. in Buxtorf, Lex. Talm. 1976); and the Gr.
z.dp0s is probably of Phoenician origin.’ They suggest that
isolated patches of cedar forests may have survived irom pre-
historic times. Lightfoot quotes (Chorag. Cent. 40) a Talmudic
reference to two gigantic cedars standing on the Mt. of Olives
even in the latest days of the Temple (Jerus. V’aanith, fol. 69. 1),
which may be taken as supporting this view.
The valley begins in the wide hollow between
the city and Mt. Scopus on the north. Turning
southward, and passing under the eastern battle-
ments, by a deep ravine it cuts off Jerusalem from
Olivet. It is joined by the Valley of Hinnom, and
thence, as Wady en-Ndr, ‘ Valley of Tire,’ it winds
down an ever deepening gorge, through the Wilder-
ness of Judzea, to the edge of the Dead Sea. The
name Wady er-Rdhib, ‘Valley of the Monks,’
attaching to part of it, comes from the convent of
Mar Saba, built on the right-hand face of the
gorge, a sort of reformatory for refractory monks,
in the midst of the wilderness.
The modern name of the brook Kidron is Wady
Sitti Maryam, ‘Valley of the Lady Mary.’ As
early as Eusebius and Jerome it was known as the
Valley of Jehoshaphat, J1 3? [Heb. 4°]. According
to a tradition, common to Jews, Moslems, and
Christians, this is to be the scene of the final Judg-
ment. As against the Temple, which overlooked
it, the valley ranked as an unclean district, and it
238 BROTHERHOOD
seems to have afforded burying-ground for people
of the humbler orders (2 K 23°). To this day the
Jews greatly covet a grave in the Kidron valley.
W. EwINa.
BROTHERHOOD.— The word (ἀδελφότης) does not
occur at all in the Gospels, and is found only twice
in the NT (1 P 2” and 5°). The idea, however, 15
common and of very great importance.
1. The natural Peed of man is assumed
rather than asserted. It probably underlies Christ’s
argument about the Sabbath (Mk 257 and parallels),
and also such language as is found in Lk 151° and
162, This is the more likely in view of such OT
passages as Gn 18 9-7, Job 3115, and Mal Oe
(which regard it as a corollary of our creation by
the one God and Father), and Lv 19!8*4 (which
not only commands love of neighbour, but also ex-
plicitly enjoins like love for the stranger). Hillel
and other Rabbis gave this law the broadest in-
terpretation, and Philo declares that man must
love the whole world as well as God (see Kohler,
Jewish Encye. art. ‘Brotherly Love,’ and Monte-
fiore in the /QR, April 1895). This, however, does
not represent the dominant feeling among the
Jews in our Lord’s time. They narrowed the term
‘neighbour, as His language in Mt 5* plainly
implies. It was the scribe’s suggestion of this
narrow view that drew from Jesus the parable of
the Good Samaritan, in which the term ‘neigh-
bour’ is made the equivalent of brother-man (Lk
107"),
Into this brotherhood Christ entered when He
‘became flesh.’ That at least is implied in the
title ‘Son of Man’ which He so frequently applies
to Himself. He was ‘the seed of the woman.’
The Son of Mary, of David, of Abraham, was also
Son of Adam (Li 338) and one of the race.
Yet of natural brotherhood the NT has sur-
prisingly little to say. Very little importance is
attached to it. No hopes are built on it. The
reason, doubtless, is that it had been destroyed by
sin—a melancholy facet visible in the threshold
tragedy of Cain and Abel. Such is St. Paul’s
summary of OT teaching (Ro 39:18). So Jesus
found it when He was in the world. Men were
dead to brotherhood as to all else that was wholly
good (Jn 6%, cf. Eph 21). For thirty years He
moved among men with a true Brother’s heart,
but met no equal response, even among those
peculiarly His own (Jn 1-11), «ΟΥ̓ the peoples
there was no man with him?’ (Is 63%). He was
sorrowfully alone (Is 53%), standing among sinful
men like one unharmed temple amid a city’s ruins.
2. The new brotherhood.—Under these circum-
stances nothing short of a new beginning would
serve. Anything less radical must fail. A new
creation is necessary (Gal 6"). This Jesus states
explicitly. Men must be born again (Jn 3°; ef.
ph 2°), They must be redeemed from sin and
“iven a new life. This was His appointed mission
(Mt 1, Jn 10"). To that work He formally dedi-
ted Himself in His baptism, which also sym-
volized the means by which the redemption should
elected, namely, His own death (with Mt 3%,
οἵ. Mt “0 26% and Ro 3%-°6, 1 Co 153, Eph 1’, 1 P
m9, Rev} lempted to swerve from it, He held
to that stern, slow path. Meantime He begins to
father about Him a band of brothers on the new
basi ey are such as believe or receive Him.
Π Π Bi ᾿
In faith they fo Him and forsake all else (Mk
] 2 i
10) is ho mere external
following is manifest \
st. . vital union is established
between the mand Him, the significance of which
y t iiuwre of the vine and the
: x 15* Ἃ | Ne πε W birth is effected (Jn
1** *), the new life received (Jn 6°? 1057. 38) and
their sins graciously foreiy I a7
cf. Col 14),
His,
Lk 14). That it
\
8 indicated by the
branches (ty
}
hus they become
Se |
> |
BROTHERHOOD
Te
Divine nature (2 P 1%), children or sons of God
τέκνα, viol, 1 Jn 810, Ro 81" 152!) Gal 376 47), endowed
with a deathless life (Gal 3°°, Jn 1078), and Christ
becomes the firstborn among many brethren (Ro
8”). Elsewhere the change is called a new creation
(2 Co 517, Gal 6%, Eph 219), of which Christ is the
beginning (Rev 34, Col 118).
It is this profound experience which underlies
and accounts for the remarkable statements of Jn
15-51, St. Peter’s new name is a sien of it (v.*);
the ‘Israelite indeed in whom is no guile’ is a
condensed description of the new man (v.*7; οἵ. Ps
322, the first half of which is the germ of Ro 37-
521, and the second of No 6!-8*). These men are
nearer to Jesus now than any other persons. Hence
the appropriateness of the strong language of this
early record in the most spiritual of the four
Gospels. St. John had learned meantime the
potency of the faith that began so simply, and in
the light of that recalls those wonderful early
utterances and the steady progress of their faith
from strength to strength.
Equally appropriate is the Cana incident which
immediately follows (Jn 21:1), There Jesus breaks
with the old order in the words, ‘Woman, what
have I to do with thee?’ Addressed as they were
to her who represented it in its fondest tie, they
show the break to be of the most absolute sort.
That is the negative side, the turning from the
old; the positive, the turning to the new, is indi-
cated by the place assigned to the disciples in the
record. They are identified with Him as others
are not, and especially in a growing faith, to which
others—even His mother and His brethren—are
as yet strangers. What was there taught in the
veiled language of siga is taught plainly and ex-
plicitly in Mt 124° and Mk 3°-3, “ How far Mary:
and His brothers were fromm understanding Him,
how wide the gulf was that separated Him from
them, is shown by the fact recorded in Mk 37! that
they regarded Him as out of His mind. The dis-
ciples, on the other hand, are seated about Him
drinking in His sayings. Them He declares to be
His mother and His brethren (Mt 12”). And look-
ing upon the multitude also sitting around and
listening to His words, He generalizes the teaching
and declares that ‘Whosoever shall do the will
of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and
mother’ (Mk 3%), Such constitute the new
brotherhood.
(1) So the first characteristic of the new brethren
is that they do the will of God. They are in right
relation to Him. When men are not so, they can-
not be rightly related to one another. To be bound
together by the tie of brotherhood, they must first
be bound by the filial tie to God, their Heavenly
Father. Loving obedience is the test and evidence
of that (1 Jn 5°, Jn 14-2),
It is worth noting that this is the first great law of the King-
dom of heaven (Mt 6, and summarized in v.33). Really the
brotherhood and the Kingdom (in one sense of the term) are
different aspects of the same thing. As to membership the two
are coextensive. Godisat once Father and King; the brethren
are both subjects and children, ‘fellow-citizens with the saints
and of the household of God’ (Eph 219), Both ideas run through
the Sermon on the Mount, which is Christ’s proclamation of
the nature and principles of the Kingdom.
_ Doubtless the new brotherhood and the Church may be
similarly equated. Their membership too should coincide.
This is indicated not only by Christ's solemn recall of Peter’s
new naine, and His assertion that His church should be built of
such confessors as he (Mt 1618), but also by the uniform practice
in the Acts and Epistles of referring to the members of the
churches as ‘ brethren.’
(2) The second characteristic is that they love
one another, Loving God as their Father they
instinctively love also His other children, their
brothers (1 Th 4°, 1 Jn 42° and δ. This is Christ’s
new commandment and the badge of discipleship
(Jn 134%). Though an old command, it has been
‘ made new in experience by Christ’s death for them.
—e"
BROTHERHOOD
And they in turn make it new afresh when they
lay down their life for one another (1 Jn 315, 27-)),
The love that makes the greatest sacrifice will
make the lesser. In the OTF the law of Israel’s
brotherhood enjoined kindness, and definitely for-
bade such sins as contempt, extortion, oppression,
ete. (Dt 22!-4 237- 196. 247. 14. 258, and elsewhere). So
in the NT special mention is made of charity (1 Jn
317, Ja 2-1); hospitality (He 13!, Ro 12); for-
giveness (Col 313); truthfulness (Eph 4”); mutual
admonition (2 Th 3%); a humility that prefers
others and renders even lowly service (Mt 181-18,
toe Ὁ το 100 ἘΠ θυ P57); practical
sympathy with the persecuted (He 12%), ete.
Brotherly love insists on the essential equality
of those who are of the same family. Natural
affection exists among them (Ro 12! φιλόστοργοι).
There can be no caste among them (Col 3"); all
selfish ambition and striving after pre-eminence
must be eschewed, and the way of service chosen
(Mt 20°°°8). Differences of gitts are recognized.
But those who are one in Christ must regard
them not as signs of inferiority and superiority,
or grounds of pride and servility, but as means of
mutual helpfulness, and as all necessary to the
general well-being. Different gifts are different
functions for the common good. For Christ and
His brethren form a body, and each member is
necessary to the perfect well-being of the rest.
This is developed in Ro 12, 1 Co 12, and Eph 4.
The love the brethren bear each other is special.
t is distinguished from that they feel toward
those that are without (1 P 217 and2P 17. Τύ 15
closer, more affectionate, complacent, satisfying.
But they must love others—even their bitterest
enemies. So do they become like their Father in
heaven (Mt 54-43; ef. St. Paul in Ro 91-ὅ).
Christ calls them His brethren, and is not
ashamed to do so (He 2"). Still His position in the
brotherhood is unique. He is one of them, yet
He transcends them. He is Master and Lord (Jn
1319) as they are not nor should seck to be (Mt
23°"), For He is Son of God in a unique sense
(μονογενής, Jn 816 and 1'8, in which the reading θεός
is probably correct and explains the uniqueness).
That truth He ever guards in the expressions He
employs. Examples are seen in Mt 11 and fre-
quently inthe Fourth Gospel; in Mt 6°, where the
emphatic ‘ye’ and the character of the prayer
exclude Him from the ‘our,’ and in Jn 9017, where
distinction, not identity, of relation is intended.
When the law of brotherhood is lived out in
sincerity and truth, in justice and righteousness,
in courage and faith, in all wisdom and spiritual
understanding, the solution of social problems will
be hastened. These problems are not new. But
they are seen to-day as never before. Conditions
that once were accepted are accepted no longer as
just or right or tolerable. And it is precisely
because Christ’s ideas of brotherhood have grown
clearer to men’s minds that they feel the inequali-
ties and injustices of the present order. That is
the cause of the present discontent. Christ fore-
saw that such conflicts would be occasioned by His
~ gospel (Mt 10%-%%), And nothing but the gospel
that has caused the conflict.can bring the proper
issue. The cause must be the cure. Loyalty to
the way of the Cross is the way of salvation. The
age waits for Christians to embark in the honest,
whole-hearted application of the great principle of
brotherly love. It will not do to say with Wernle
that Christ’s demands are impractical for any
society. They are impractical for any society that
lacks the martyr spirit. They are not impractical
for the society that is charged with it. Christ’s
way was the way of the Cross. That is the only
way that leads to victory. Only in the spirit of
Jesus can the world’s need be met, and its problems
BUILDING 239
finally solved. For that the new brotherhood has
been created. Only the fresh vision of the Father’s
love, the surrender to the Saviour’s Cross, and
the appropriation of the Spirit’s power will in-
spire, fit, and equip it for the holy task to which
God summons.
LITERATURE.—Material will be found in most Commentaries,
Lives of Christ, and books on Biblical Theology and the Teach-
ing of Jesus. But in addition to the references already made,
special attention may be called to Seeley’s Hece Homo; Renan’s
Life of Jesus; Denney’s art. ‘Brotherly Love’ in Hastings’
DB; Westcott’s Sucial Aspects of Christianity ; and especially
Peabody’s Jesus Christ and the Social Question; Mathews’ The
Social Teaching of Jesus; and Tolstoi, passim.
J. H. FARMER.
BROTHERLY LOVE.—See BroTHERHOOD and
LOVE.
BUFFETING.—In Mt 26” and Mk 14 this word
(Gr. κολαφίζω) is used to describe the ill-treatment
received by Christ in the house of the high priest
after His condemnation was pronounced. The
crowd present seems to have participated in inflict-
ing this personal indignity. St. Mark, with his
usual attention to details, notices that the officers
received Him with blows of their hands. κολαφίξζω
carries the significance of a blow with the clenched
fist (κόλαφος, “ἃ fist’). It vividly represents the
brutal manual violence to which our Lord was sub-
jected. The word also came to imply a meaning
of general ill-usage or persecution, and, as such,
occurs in 1 Co 4", 2 Co 127 (‘a thorn in the flesh, a
messenger of Satan to buffet me’), 1 P 2%; ef.—
“Α man that fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hath ta’en with equal thanks.’
—Hamlet, Act ut. Se. ii.
W. 5. KERR.
BUILDING (οἰκοδομή, 3 times ; οἰκοδομεῖν, 23 times
in the Gospels).—1. Literal.—The lifetime of Jesus
nearly coincides with the period which was un-
doubtedly the golden age of building in Palestine.
The Herods, with their ‘Napoleonic passion for
architecture,’ eclipsed in this respect even the fame
of Solomon, and left their mark in all parts of the
country in the shape of palaces, fortresses, theatres,
and a variety of splendid structures, some serving
a useful purpose (as the great harbour at Czesarea),
but many arising merely out of a love of pomp and
display. Herod the Great had begun his extensive
work of rebuilding the Temple at Jerusalem nine-
teen years before the Christian era, and the work
was still in progress at the time of Christ’s final
visit to the city (Mt 24! 2, Mk 13-2, Lk 215. 6).
Herod Antipas began the foundations of his am-
bitious new city ot Tiberias shortly before Jesus
emerged from the obscurity of Nazareth ; and Pilate
was engaged, during the public ministry of Jesus,
in constructing an elaborate aqueduct for Jeru-
salem. It is certain that, wherever Jesus went,
He would hear the sound of hammer and chisel ;
He would observe the frequent construction of a
class of building hitherto little favoured in His
country, such as hippodromes, baths and gymnasia
(Jos. Ant, XV. vill. 1); and would notice the adop-
tion of a style of architecture foreign to Jewish
tradition.
It was not only Herodian princes, Roman mag-
nates, and well to-do proselytes (see Lk 7°) who
lavished large sums on buildings. Wealthy Jews
seem to have spent fortunes in erecting Juxurious.
mansions in the Graeco-Roman style. Jesus men-
tions this eagerness for building as one of the
passions which preoccupied His generation, and
led Him to compare it with the materialist and
pleasure-seeking age in which Lot lived (Lk 17:8).
He gives a vivid description of a prosperous farmer
designing ampler store-houses on his estate (Lk
1218). In another passage He probably alludes to
some actual instance of the building-mania over.
BUILDING
240
reaching itself, when He describes the tower left
half finished for lack of funds (Lk 14%). In His
denunciation of the Pharisees who ‘build the
sepulchres of the prophets, and garnish the tombs
(μνημεῖα) of the righteous’ (Mt 23”), He refers per-
haps to the growing practice, unknown in the pre-
Grecian period, begun, it seems, In Maccabeean
times, and now become a dilettante cult, of erect-
ing monumental tombs ‘reared aloft to the sight
(1 Mae 13”), as distinguished from the simple rock-
hewn tombs of former days.* See TOMB.
O. Holtzmann (Life of Jesus, p. 100f.) suggests a special
reason for the frequent references which Jesus makes to build-
ing operations. He calls attention to the fact that the handi-
craft in which He had been brought up was one of the building
trades. It is usual, indeed, to describe Him as ‘ the carpenter’
(Mk 68), and the passage is often cited in which Justin Martyr
(Trypho, 88) represents Him as ‘making ploughs and yokes.’
But Justin Martyr is quoting nothing more than a popular
tradition, and there is no reason for limiting the term τέκτων to
a worker in wood. There was hardly the division of labour at
Nazareth that exists among our own mechanics. The epithet
τίκτων has probably not less significance than the term ‘car-
penter’ as used in Hamlet, v. i. 46—‘ What is he that builds
stronger than either the mason, theshipwright, or the carpenter? ἐν
where it indicates one who has to do with the construction of
buildings. We may say that there is good reason to conclude
that Jesus was Himself a builder, and that He understood at
least the art of ordinary house-construction, though it can hardly
be admitted that the passages which Holtzmann quotes in sup-
port of this are sufficient to prove his point. By a similar
method it is easy to prove that Shakspeare was a lawyer or a
doctor, a Romanist or a Puritan.
On the other hand, it is not to be inferred, from
the somewhat disparaging terms in which Jesus
appears to have al uded to the building operations
: His time, that He was insensible to the beauties
of architecture, or that there was an iconoclastic
strain in His nature. It would be easy to marshal
yassages from the Gospels with the object of show-
ing that He was indifferent to, and even evinced
contempt for, sacred places and edifices. But such
a conclusion would be contrary to all that we
know of His many-sided sympathy and genial
tolerance. Rather was the case this—that, like
St. Paul amid the temples of Athens, or like St.
Francis of Assisi, careless of cathedrals in an age
of cathedral-builders, He found His contemporaries
so smitten with the love of outward magnificence,
so absorbed in the thought of the material edifice,
that He bent His whole effort to the task of em-
phasizing the inward and spiritual structure. It is
therefore in this direction that all the great say-
ings of Christ about building look. On each
occasion when He is led to speak of a temple,
whether at Jerusalem or in Samaria, He takes
the opportunity of insisting that the only true
Temple is one not made with hands.
[Ὁ may be suggested that some of His sayings of
this kind are lost, but that the reminiscence or
influence of them is to be traced in the remarkably
frequent use by the NT writers of the term ‘ build-
ing’ In a spiritual sense, whether applied to the
individual believer or to the company of the faithful
(see, e.g., Ac 2082, 1 Co 3°, Col 27,1 P 25 ete.). And
just as Jesus said, ‘ Ye are a city set on a hill,’ He
may well have said, ‘ Ye are the temple of God.’
2. Figurative. —The actual passages in which
us spiri ualizes the term ‘building’ may be
grouped under three heads.
1) In two remarkable passages Christ speaks of
Hims lf asa Builder, (a) The first of these (Mt
26", Mk 14°, Jn 2"), while it is certainly a genuine
4 Ν in oe Christ’s, has come down to us ina form
which leaves us doubtful as to the exact e 2x1
dear hag Pi acai : thi exact connexion
vhich Was lirst uttered. The general sense,
1oWever, 15 clear en¢ ich. rhe buildings of the
® Furrer (Wander »» LF Wy
Furrer + wen, p. 77) and Fergusson (The Temples
() t Tomb of Zecharias in the
i little temple, with . » . pillars
) Urst years of the Ist cent. of
BURDEN
Temple might be razed to the ground, but Christ,
by His presence among His people, would per-
yetuate the true sanctuary (cf. Mt 18°, Jn 474).
ad the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews this
saying in his mind when he referred to Christ
(He 35) as the ‘builder of the house’? (ὁ) The
second passage is that in which Christ contem-
plates Himself as the Builder of His Church (Mt
1018). That with which He is concerned is not the
material edifice reared on the rocky summit of
Mount Moriah, but the spiritual building—the
body of believers—founded on a common faith in
Himself.
(2) In one passage, cited from the OT, Jesus varies
the metaphor. In the ‘germ-parable’ of the Re-
jected Stone (Mt 217, Mk 12!°, Lk 2017 He is no
longer the Builder, but the Foundation. In the
original passage (Ps 118%) the Rejected Stone is
Israel, but Christ appropriates the image to Himn-
self, and once more draws attention to the faet
that the work of God proceeds on lines not to be
anticipated by a type of mind which is governed
by worldly considerations.
(3) In two minor parables Jesus uses the art of
building to illustrate the principles which must
animate His followers. (κα) In Mt 7522, Lk 643 He
shows that, as the stability of a house depends on
the nature of its foundation, so stability of char-
acter can be attained only when a man uniformly
makes the word of truth which he has received the
basis of his behaviour. Doing is the condition
of progress. Christian attainment 1s broad-based
upon obedience (οἵ. Jn 71:7. (ὦ) In Lk 14° He
checks a shallow enthusiasm, apt quickly to eva-
porate, by reminding impulsive disciples that for
great works great pains are required. The parable
is the Gospel equivalent of our saying, ‘ Rome was
not built in a day,’ with special reference, however,
to the necessity of the individual giving himself
up, in absolute devotion, to his task (cf. Shak-
speare, 2 Henry IV. 1. iii. 41).
The foregoing passages exhaust the sayings, as
reported in the Evangelie tradition, in which our
Lord employed the image of building. But, we
may ask, whence did St. Paul derive his favourite
expression, applied both to the Church and to the
individual, of edifying? (see Ro 157, 1 Co 14°, Eph
4" etc.). Itdoes not appear that οἰκοδομεῖν was ever
used by classical writers in this sense. Fritzsche
(Ep. ad Rom. iii. p. 205) thinks that St. Paul
derived it from the OT usage, 732 being sometimes
used, with the accusative of the person, in the
signification of blessing (see Ps 28°, Jer 24°). But
is it not at least as likely that St. Paul derived
the metaphorical use from the custom of Christ,
who so often and with such emphasis applied
building terms to the spiritual condition alike of
the individual and of the company of believers? If
Christ did not Himself use the expression ‘ edify,’
all His teaching pointed that way.
LITERATURE. — Hausrath, Hist. of NT Times, §§ 5, 10, 11;
articles ‘ Baukunst’ in PRH® and ‘ Architecture’ in Hastings’
DB; Josephus, Ant. xv. viii. 1, ix. 4-6, x. 3, xvi. v. 2, BJ 1. xiii.
8, xxi. 1-11, vil. vill. 3; Schtrrer, GJV® ii. 176, 430, 446, etc.;
O. Holtzmann, Life of Jesus, p. 100f. ete.
J. Ross MuRRAY.
BURDEN.—Both in Christ’s discourse against
the Pharisees (Mt 23+, Lk 114) and in His saying,
‘Come unto me,’ ete. (Mt 1138: 30) the ‘burden’
(φορτίον) is that of the legal and Pharisaic ordi-
nances of such a minute and exacting kind that
they became intolerable and crushed out real
heart-religion. ‘My burden,’ Christ says, ‘is light’
in comparison with these ; for I put men under the
law of love, which is a law of liberty. With loving,
gracious hearts, My disciples become a law unto
themselves. The new law is written on the fleshy
tables of the heart. St. Peter, in Ac 15”, speaks
i ST SR
a ΄΄Πἷὅ ͵ ’“ἝὯΡ΄“ἽἝἽ΄ἷἵὔἷ΄ ΄΄ -ἘςἘς-.-Ὸ- -----------
BURIAL
of the traditional legal observances as a yoke
which ‘neither ye nor your fathers were able to
bear,’ while faith in Christ can purify the heart
and make strict rules for outward conduct un-
necessary. In Mt 1159 Jesus gives utterance to
the germ at least of the Pauline idea of a new
spirit of life in Christ Jesus, setting free from
condemnation. While, in the first instance, Christ
meant by ‘burden’ the Pharisaic ordinances, the
truth would become ever deeper to His disciples,
till they understood the full contrast between the
fulfilinent of legal precepts through painful effort,
and the joyous service of a living God and Father,
growing into pervading holiness of character.
The ‘burden (βάρος) ἢ of the day and the heat,’
in the parable of the Labourers (Mt 20") is a de-
scription of toil which strains and wearies. In the
interpretation of the parable, if any stress were
laid on this detail, it might be the long and con-
scientious fulfilment of duty in the Christian life,
which, though it must receive recognition in the
end, gives no claim on God as one who rewards of
debt, nor allows the worker to glory over another
who has been less richly furnished with oppor-
tunity.
LITERATURE.—On the ‘ burden’ of Mt 1128-99 ref. may be made
to Expos. Times, iii. [1892] 512 ff. ; Expositor, 1st ser. vii. [1878]
p. 348 ff., xi. [1880] p. 101 fi.
Davip M. W. LAIRD.
BURIAL.—In contrast to the Greek and the
later Roman custom of cremation, the rites of
burial were observed amongst the Jews with great
reverence, and an account of their ordinary prac-
tice will help to illustrate several passages in
the NT. Immediately after death the body was
washed (Ac 957, and wrapped in linen cloths in
the folds of which spices and ointments were laid
(Jn 19%), The face was bound about with a
napkin, and the hands and feet with grave-bands
(Jn 11 207). Meanwhile the house had been
given over to the hired mourners (Mt 9° ||; ef.
2 Ch. 35”, Jer 917), who lamented for the dead in
some such strains as are preserved in Jer 2915, and
skilfully improvised verses in praise of his virtues.
The actual interment took place as quickly as pos-
sible, mainly on sanitary grounds; very frequently,
imdeed, on the same day as the death (Ac
5°. 8%), though it might be delayed tor special
reasons (Ac 951), In its passage to the grave the
body was generally laid on a bier, or open bed of
wicker work (Lk 714; οἵ. 9 5. 3*!, 2 Καὶ 13*1)—hence at
Jesus’ command the widow of Nain’s son was able
to sit up at once (Lk 715). The bier was, as a rule,
borne to the tomb by the immediate friends of the
deceased, though we have also traces of a company
of public ‘buriers’ (Ac 5° τ: ef. Ezk 9015 .-16): In
front of the bier came the women, and in Judea
the hired mourners, and immediately after it the
relatives and friends, and ‘much people of the
city.’ Attendance at funerals was, indeed, re-
garded as a pious act, and was consequently not
always wholly disinterested. Among modern
Orientals it is called ‘attending the merit,’ an act
that will secure a reward from God (G. M. Mackie,
Bible Manners and Customs, p. 127).
The place of burial in NT times was always
outside the city (Lk 7, Jn 11%, Mt 27° 5), and
frequently consisted of a natural cave, or an
opening made in imitation of one. These rock-
sepulchres were often of considerable size, and
sometimes permitted of the interment of as many
as thirteen bodies. Eight, however, was the usual
number, three on each side of the entrance and
two opposite. The doorway to the tomb was an
aperture about 2 ft. broad and 4 ft. high, and was
* In Gal 62.5 Lightfoot contends that βάρος and φορτίον mean,
respectively, a burden that may and ought to be got rid of, and
one that must be borne.
VOL. I.—16
BURIAL 241
closed either by a door, or by a great stone—the
golel—that was rolled against it (Mt 27%, Mk
156, Jn 11°8-%), It is sometimes thought that it
was in some such rock-tomb that the demoniac of
Gadara had taken up his abode; but more prob-
ably it was in one of the tombs ‘built above
ground,’ which were ‘much more common in
Galilee than has been supposed’ (Wilson, Recovery
of Jerusalem, p. 369, ap. Swete, St. Mark, p. 88).
As a rule, sepulchres were whitened once a year,
after the rains and before the Passover, that passers-
by might be warned of their presence, and thus
escape defilement (Mt 2377; cf. Nu 191. And
though it was not customary to erect anything in
the nature of our gravestones, in NT times it was
regarded as a religious duty to restore or rebuild
the tombs of the prophets (Mt 23°). In addition
to family sepulchres of which we hear in the
earliest Hebrew records (Gn 23”, J@ 8, 2 8 2°),
and such private tombs as the tomb of Joseph of
Arimathzea (Mt 27°), special provision was made
for the interment of strangers (Mt 2778; cf. Jer
2673, 2 Mac 9). See art. TOMB.
It will have been observed how many of the
foregoing particulars are illustrated in the Gospel
narrative of the burial of Jesus; but it may be
well to summarize briefly what then took place.
No sooner had it been placed beyond doubt that
Jesus was really dead, than Joseph of Arimathea
obtained permission to take possession of His body
(Mt 27°7*- ; ef. the merciful provision of the Jewish
law, Dt 9133. Haste was required, as the Jews’
Preparation was close at hand, and the body, after
being, perhaps, bathed (so Gospel of Peter, 6), was
at once wrapped ‘in a clean linen cloth’ (Mt 2759),
the ‘roll of myrrh and aloes,’ of which Nicodemus
had brought about a hundred pound weight (Jn
19°), being apparently crumbled between the folds
of the linen (ὀθόνια). It was then borne to the
‘new tomb wherein was never man yet laid,’ and
reverently laid on the rocky ledge prepared for the
purpose, while the whole was secured by a ‘great
stone’ placed across the entrance, which was after-
wards at the desire of the Jews sealed and guarded
(Mt 27°; cf. Gospel of Peter, 8). There the body
remained undisturbed over the Jewish Sabbath ;
but when on the morning of the first day of the
week the women visited the tomb, bringing with
them an additional supply of ‘spices and oint-
ments’ to complete the anointing which want of
time had previously prevented, it was only to find
the tomb empty, and to receive the first assurance
of their Lord’s resurrection (Lk 24!*-). In con-
nexion with this visit, Edersheim has drawn atten-
tion to the interesting fact that the Law expressly
allowed the opening of the grave on the third day
to look after the dead (Bible Educator, iv. p. 332).
In entire harmony, too, with what has already
been said of the general structure of Jewish tombs,
is the account which St. John has preserved for us
of hisown and St. Peter’s visit to the tomb of Jesus
(Jn 20!*-). He himself, when he reached the door-
way, was at first content with stooping down
(παρακύψας) and looking in, and thus got only a
general view (βλέπει) of the linen cloths lying in
their place. But St. Peter on his arrival entered
into the tomb, and beheld—the word used (θεωρεῖ)
points to a careful searching gaze, the eye passing
from point to point—not only the linen cloths,
but the napkin that was about Christ’s head
‘rolled up in a place by itself.’ These particulars
have sometimes been used as evidence of the care
and order with which the Risen Lord folded up
and deposited in two separate places His grave-
clothes before He left the tomb. But it has
recently been shown with great cogency that what
probably is meant is that the grave-clothes were
found undisturbed on the very spot where Jesus
BURNT-OFFERING
had lain, the linen cloths on the lower Jedge
which had upheld the body, the napkin ‘by itself
on the slightly raised part of the ledge which
formed a kind of pillow for the head. The empty
grave-clothes, out of which the Risen Lord had
passed, became thus a sign not only that no
violence had been offered to His body by human
hands, but also a parable of the true meaning of
His Resurrection: ‘all that was of Jesus of Naza-
reth has suffered its change and is gone. We—
grave-clothes, and spices, and napkin—belong to
the earth and remain’ (H. Latham, The fisen
Master, p. 11: see the whole interesting discussion
in chapters i.-iii.). ’ Ἶ ῇ
Apart from these more special considerations, it
is sufficient to notice that the very particularity of
the description of the burial of Jesus is in itself of
importance as emphasizing His true humanity and
the reality of His death. From nothing in our
lot, even the sad accompaniments of the grave,
did He shrink. On the other hand, the empty
grave on the morning of the third day has always
been regarded as one of the most convincing proofs
that ‘the Lord is risen indeed.’ Had it not been
so, then His body must have been stolen either by
friends or by foes. But if by the latter, why in
the days that followed did they not produce it, and
so silence the disciples’ claims? If by the former,
then we have no escape from the conclusion that
the Church of Christ was founded ‘not so much
upon delusion as upon fraud—upon fraud spring-
ing from motives perfectly inexplicable, and leading
to results totally different from any that could
have been either intended or looked for’ (W. Milli-
gan, The Resurrection of our Lord, p. 73).
LITERATURE.—See artt. ‘Burial’ and ‘Tombs’ in Kitto’s Cycl.,
Smith’s DB, Hastings’ DB, Encyc. Bibl.; ‘ Beerdigung’ in
Hamburger's RE; ‘Begribnis bei den Hebraern’ PRE;
Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life, p. 161 ff. ; Thomson,
Land and Book; Bender, ‘ Beliefs, Rites, and Customs of the
Jews connected with Death, Burial, and Mourning,’ in JQR,
1894 and 1895. GEORGE MILLIGAN.
BURNT-OFFERING is a word of rare occurrence
in NT (Mk 12%, He 10° 8). This is probably due to
the fact that the more generic word for sacrifice
(θυσία) is commonly used, since the distinctions of
the Old Covenant, which was vanishing away, did
not require to be perpetuated in the NT Canon. It
is probable, however, from the train of thought,
that in some instances the sacrifice which was prom-
inently before the mind of the writer was the
burnt-offering (Ro 19). And though not named,
it is latent in certain passages (see below). It is
known in the OT as the πὸν ‘ola@h: more rarely
and partly in poetical passages as the bz μα[
in Ps 51" both terms are used. The most common
LXX rendering is ὁλοκαύτωμα, and in this form it
appears in the NT. The ‘dlah is connected with
“ root meaning ‘to ascend,’ the idea being, prob-
ably, that the essence of the sacrifice ascended to
heaven in the smoke; “adil, with a root meaning
‘to be complete,’ an idea reproduced in the LXX
translation. Details of the rite may be found in
Ly 1. 6 ‘8821 Unlike most sacrifices, it was to
be wholly burnt (Lv 1%), the skin only falling to
the priest as his perquisite.
Che burnt-offering was the principal sacrifice of
the Mosaic dispensation, and continued as such till
the destruction of the Temple by Titus. It was
offered, the victim being a malé vearline sheep
every morning and evening (Ex 2938-42) . hence its
Mishinic name vd rid, the perpetual offering. In
addition, on Sabbaths, new moons, the first day of
the seventh month, the three great feasts, and the
Day of Atonement, other victims were offered
(Nu 28 f.). Burnt-offerine νυ ᾿
vas associated with
), coula be offered for
» and even for the Roman
other sacrifiees (Lv 92-4 15'°
individuals, even Gentiles
BUSH
emperor (Jos. Wars, 11. xvii. 2). The altar stood
in the court of the priests in front of (eastward of)
the Temple building. The offering was made
publicly, in the presence not merely of the large
eroup of ministering priests, but also of ‘the men
of station,’ representatives of what may be called
the Jewish laity.
Although the word is nowhere recorded as being
spoken by Christ, and only once as spoken to Him,
it must be remembered that His connexion with
burnt-offering was, of necessity, more intimate
than the mere occurrence of the word suggests.
As a Jew, acquainted with the OT, He could not
have been unacquainted with the Pentateuchal
legislation on this point ; nor is it conceivable that
as a visitor to the Temple He failed to be a wit-
ness of this rite. The altar on which burnt-otler-
ing was offered, from its great size, its frequent
use, and its standing visibly in the court of the
priests, was emphatically ‘the altar,’ and it was
before this that He directed the offending brother
to leave his gift (Mt 5”). At the Presentation in
the Temple (Lk 274, cf. Lv 12%8) the second of the
turtle doves was intended for a burnt-offering (the
other bird forming the usual sin-offering at such
a time); it was the offering of the poor, and the
ritual is described in Ly 115, The Temple tax to
which He contributed was in part used for the
provision of burnt-oflerings (Mt 1774).
The two occasions on which, in NT, the burnt-
offering is referred to, em phasice the imperfect and
transitory character of the OT sacrificial system,
and the spiritual, perfect, and abiding character of
that which superseded it. In Mk 12* the seribe
inferred from our Lord’s teaching as to the first
commandment, that to love God with all the heart
and one’s neighbour as oneself was ‘much more
than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices,’ and
was for this commended as ‘not far from the king-
dom of God.’ In He 105: δ, where only besides the
word occurs, while the writer dwells on many
points of the Temple, its furniture, and its service,
he fails to apply the burnt-otfering very closely to
the redeeming work of Christ. But he quotes
Ps 40° as declaring that the Divine pleasure lies
not in ‘victim and Minhah’ (Delitzsch, ἐγ Joe.), and
infers the superiority of Christ’s obedience to any
expiatory sacrifice (sin-offering) or dedicatory sacri-
fice (burnt-offering) presented by means of an ani-
mal victim. His obedience is the burnt-offering
that has enduring value and needs no repetition.
LITER ATURE.—Articles on ‘ Burnt-offering’ and ‘Sacrifice’ in
Bible Dictionaries of Hastings, Smith, and Encye. Bibl.; Bible
Archeeology of Keil, Nowack ; Kurtz, Sacrificial System of OT ;
OT Theology of Schultz, Oehler ; Cave, Scriptural Doctrine of
Sacrijice ; Edersheim, The Temple: its Ministry, etc. ; Girdle-
stone, Synonyms of OT ; Schirer, HJ P 11. i. 278 ff.
J. T. L. MaAGes.
BUSH (8d7o0s).—Mk 126 |} Lk 20°7* refers to the
‘Burning Bush’ (Ex 3234, Dt 3316 where LXX
uses βάτος to tr. 3p of the original). Before the
[probably medizeval] division into chapters and
verses it was not easy to cite Scripture with pre-
cision. ‘In or at the Bush’ (AV in Mark and
Luke respectively) means not ‘ beside that memor-
able bush,’ but ‘in the passage in Scripture de-
scribing the theophany in the bush’ (RV, ‘in the
place concerning the Bush’).
The derivation of 73D is not known, and all attempts to
identify it have failed. There is no justification for the sug-
gestion of Gesenius (Lexicon, s.v.) that it is connected with the
senna plant, nor for Stanley’s assumption (Hist. of the Jewish
Church [ed. 1883), i. 97) that it was the wild acacia. The fact
that in the LXX it is translated by βάτος shows that it was
believed to be a thorn bush. βάτος is specially used of the
bramble (Rubus), but according to Post (Hastings’ DB, s.v.
“Bush’), ‘Rubus has not been found wild in Sinai, which is
south of its range, and climatically unsuited to it.’
* The parallel passage in Matthew (2231) omits the reference
to ‘ the Bush.’
BUSHEL
BUSINESS 243
AV and RV ‘bramble bush’ (Matthew’s parallel
(7:5) has ‘thorns’]. It was thought necessary to
alter the translation ; the word which in the other
passage had such lofty associations is here used
by Christ almost with contempt. Moreover, a
vine might well, enough be described as a ‘ bush’
in the abstract ; it does not grow high, and has no
strength of wood (Ezk 15). ‘Bramble’ in older
English means ‘ thorn bush,’ not necessarily ‘ black-
berry bush.’ Yet the translation seems apt enough,
even according to modern usage. Liddell and Scott
give βάτος as=‘ blackberry bush’ or ‘wild rasp-
berry,’ but the adjective βατόεις =‘ thorned.’
ROBERT MACKINTOSH.
BUSHEL (ὁ μόδιος, Mt 5%, Mk 4, Lk 118. ἃ
Lat. word with a Gr. form).—The Roman modius,
equal to 16 sextari, or approximately one English
peck, was not a measure in common use in Jewish
households. Although the definite article is prob-
ably generic (‘the bushel,’ so RV), the measure
which would lend itself naturally to our Lord’s
illustration, and that to which He actually re-
ferred, was the Hebrew sevh measure used by the
housewife in preparing the daily bread. While
the seah measure varied in size according to
locality, it is generally regarded as being equal to
one modius and a quarter, though Josephus (Ant.
IX. iv. 5) states: ‘A seah is equal to an Italian
modius and a half.’
To the influence of Roman eustoms was no doubt
due the substitution of modius for seah in the
report of the saying (Mt 5” ete.); and in like
manner, since no importance was attached by our
Lord to exactness of measure, the familiar ‘ bushel ’
of earlier English versions has been retained by
the RV, although ‘peck’ would be a more accurate
rendering.
The saying of our Lord is as picturesque as it is
forcible. It gives us a glimpse into a Galilean
home, where the commonest articles of furniture
would be the lamp, the lampstand, the seah
measure, and the couch. And who could fail to
apprehend the force of the metaphor? ‘When the
word has been proclaimed, its purpose is defeated
if it be concealed by the hearers ; when the Jamp
comes in, who would put it under the modius or
the couch of the ¢ricliniwn ?’? (Swete on Mk 45).
LITERATURE. —Art. ‘Weights amd Measures’ in Hastings’ DB
iv. 9114, 913>, and the Eneye. Bibl. iv. col. 5294 ἢ.
ALEX. A. DUNCAN.
BUSINESS.—1. The first recorded words of
Jesus stand in the AV, ‘ Wist ye not that I must
be about my Father’s business?’ (Lk 2%), This is
the only passage in the Gospels where the word
‘business’ occurs, and it is not without some sort
of regret that we are obliged to acknowledge the
greater accuracy of the RV, ‘ Wist ye not that I
must be in my Father's house?’ The familiar
rendering, however, finds a place in the margin ;
and indeed in this case, as in so many others,
the AV well represents the inner meaning of the
original words. Translated quite literally, the
phrase (ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός mov) means ‘in the things
of my Father’: it denotes a person’s property or
estate, and is equivalent to our colloquialism ‘at
my father’s, —the whole stress falling on the idea of
ownership,—and in this way it is fairly frequently
used in Greek authors. The closest parallel in
Biblical Greek occurs in the Septuagint transla-
tion of Est 79, where ‘in the house of Haman’ of
the RV is represented by the phrase ἐν τοῖς ᾿Αμάν,
and it is clear that the gallows, fifty cubits high,
must have stood in the precincts of the house, or
on the estate, of Haman. (lor other instances, see
Excursus I. in Farrar’s S¢, Luke in the Cambridge
Bible for Schools, where a summary is given of
the essential points from an important monograph
βάτος occurs once again in the Gospels: Lk 6%; |
on the passage by Dr. Field of Norwich: this
monograph has been reprinted in Notes on the
Translation of the NT, by the late Frederick Field,
Cambridge, 1899).
The Latin Versions render the Greek phrase as
literally as the language allows, and throw no
light on the interpretation. The Sinaitie Syriac
has the suggestive paraphrase, ‘ Wist ye not that
I must be with my Father?’ The idea of a sym-
pathetic relation with God is indeed of the essence
of the passage; perhaps we can best render it by
borrowing from the symbolical language of the
parables, ‘Wist ye not that I must work in my
Hather’s vineyard ?’
A passage of Clement of Alexandria (Strom. Iv.
Xxlll. 148) affords an interesting parallel to the
translation of the Sinaitic Syriac just quoted :
‘For the dispensation of creation indeed is good,
and all things are well arranged, nothing happens
without a reason; in the things that are Thine
must I be (ἐν τοῖς σοῖς εἶναί με δεῖ), Ὁ Almighty, and
if lam there lam with Thee.’ In another passage
(Strom. VI. vi. 45) the phrase is used with an even
wider application ; of the souls in Hades, Clement
says that they are in the things (1.6. within the
domain) of God. With this compare the teaching
of the ‘ Elders’ referred to by Irenzeus (V. xxxvi. 1):
‘For this cause they say that the Lord said that
in the things of My Father are many mansions.
For all things are God’s, who gives to all men the
habitation that befits them.’ Thus what in Jn 142
is called ‘the house of my Father,’ is by the sub-
stitution of the phrase τὰ τοῦ πατρός μου extended
to mean the whole Universe, including, as the
context shows, heaven, paradise, and the ‘city’
of the re-created earth. In Protrepticus, ix. 82,
Clement seems to have the incident of Lk 2” in
his mind as implying the complete consecration of
life: ‘But I suppose that when a man is enrolled
and lives as a citizen and receives the Father, then
he will be en the things of the Father.’
Godet (in his Commentary on St. Luke, ad Joc.)
points out that the phrase ‘ ει be’ (δεῖ εἶναί pe)
conveys the idea of an absolute and morally irre-
sistible consecration to the service of God on earth.
To the awakening consciousness of the child Jesus
the Temple at Jerusalem was the symbol of the
Father's dominion over all things; He said in
effect to His parents, ‘Ye ought to have sought
me in the place where men are occupied with the
things of God.’
These first recorded words of Jesus then set a
standard by which must be tested every manner
of life. How far is it possible for a life spent in
business, with which a linguistic accident connects
these words for English readers of the bible, to be
lived in the things of the Father, according to the
teaching of His Son? As an aid towards reaching
an answer to this vital question, let us see what
we can learn, from our Lord’s acts and words, of
the attitude He adopted towards the business life
of the time of His Incarnation.
2. At the next recorded visit of Jesus to the
Temple, we find Him in conflict with men who
conducted business improperly : those who bore
rule there did not understand that they were ἐν τοῖς
τοῦ πατρός. It is well known that St. John (2138:)
narrates a ‘Cleansing of the Temple’ as taking
place quite early in the Lord’s public ministry,
while the Synoptists (Mt 2113. Mk 11, Lk
10151.) describe a similar event as occurring in
Holy Week. It is at least possible that the holy
zeal of Jesus was twice displayed in this manner ;
but if a choice had to be made, there would be
strong reasons for preferring the chronological
arrangement of St. John. Without entering into
this question, however, we can simply study the
attitude of Jesus towards those who conducted
BUSINESS
the Temple market. The traflic was of two sorts,
the sale of sacrificial animals, and the exchange
of money: in both cases it may well have been
legitimate in itself, and even necessary: the sin
was connected with its being carried on within
the sacred precincts. It seems obvious that the
Sadducean rulers of the Temple, whose cupidity
was notorious, must have made money out of the
business carried on there; no doubt the sites for
stalls within the Temple precincts would command
a good rent; and, further, if the animals sold there
were certified officially as being unblemished and
fit for sacrifice, while those bought outside were
liable to a serutiny on being brought into the
Temple, it is easy to see how the privileged trades-
men may have gained an almost complete mono-
poly, for which they would willingly pay a high
price. If the conjecture (see Edersheimn, Life and
Times‘, 1887, p. 367 11.) that this Temple market
was identical with the unpopular ‘ Bazaars of the
Sons of Annas’ is right, then the notorious Annas
and his son-in-law Caiaphas had probably a direct
interest in the trade carried on. It seems prob-
able that the ‘changers of money’ (κερματισταί,
Jn 2%; κολλυβισταί, Jn 2, Mt 2115, Mk 1115) were
the official Shulhanim (Lightfoot, Hore Heb. on
Mt 2i'*; Edersheim, 719 Temple, p. 701f.) who
sat to collect the half-shekel for a fortnight before
the Passover: they were allowed to make a charge
on each half-shekel whether change was given or
not, and Edersheim places their probable annual
gain from this source at £9000. Very likely the
ordinary business of exchange of money was
carried on, as obviously no coins bearing images
or idolatrous symbols could be offered in the
Temple. Moreover, the mention by Josephus
(LJ vi. ν. 2) of treasure-chambers in the Temple
belonging to private individuals suggests that
ordinary banking business, including the receipt
of money on deposit, may have been made a source
of profit, which would be enhanced by the security
afforded by the sanctity of the place. These con-
siderations have been put forward to show that it
is likely that the ruling priestly faction turned to
financial account the consecrated character of the
buildings committed to their charge. Probably it
was this making money out of holy things, rather
than the ceremonial violation of the sanctity of
the Temple, that caused the severity of our Lord’s
condemnation of the whole system which made
His Father’s house into ‘a house of merchandise,’
according to St. John’s account, or in the stronger
words of the Synoptists, into ‘a den of robbers.’
It is clear that Jesus would not sutfer business to
be carried on in a munner that interfered with
the honour due to God: doubtless He would have
applied this principle to the Day, no less than to
the House, of His Father. The same lesson is
taught in the parable of the Royal Marriace
Feast (Mt 22"™ 5 ef, Lk 1416m), Ἢ
᾿ os ae eo κυ πρὶ to whom nothing human
eee ἜΠΗ ἘΝ in no way stood aloof from
ae aia of ee ἃ car nt ἸΕΝ trade (Mk 6%),
oa pe gebtigas sh 4 : ἫΝ fishermen "Apostles
ταν Κι το Hed ahi seu ss_betw een their ΤΟΥΤΑΟΤ
Mica"); ‘the would-be disasle yh tee
wr op i A ἀν νιν, δι pepe who wished first to
nught have lean | τῇ i vd nites uae told What he
concentrating hid whole intothe ee
the task he heulin haba LA Veer and attention on
min (LK 952, Both before and
atter the resurrection (Lk 5, Jn 2118.) Jesus
aren ed pecial γι velations of Himself to the
: arti While engng din their usual occupations.
1 command to render to Cesar i
t WeSAT 5 os
that are Cywsar’s Mt 2221 He pes
and parallels), we are
recognition of actually
Several of the parables
struck by the business-like
existing circumstances,
BUSINESS
prove how fully Jesus understood and entered into
the business spirit, and show that, when conse-
crated by devotion to God, it is necessary to those
who seek the kingdom of heaven. The merchant-
man who sold all that he had in order to buy one
pearl of great price, gave proof of that confidence
in his own judgment, joined with willingness to
stake all upon it, which is indispensable to success
in great mercantile ventures, and is said to be even
now characteristic of the Jewish nation (Mt 13”,
cf. 1344 ‘the hidden treasure’). In the parable of
the Labourers in the Vineyard the fulfilment of
a contract is sharply opposed to the voluntary gift
of money to those who had presumably been will-
ing but unable to earn it (Mt 20!). A proper
return is rightly expected from the ownership of
land (Mk 12", and parallels) and of money (Mt
25°7, Lk 19). It is worthy of notice that the case
just referred to of the ‘unprofitable servant’
follows in St. Matthew’s Gospel directly after that
parable which shows how unbusiness-like neglect
to buy oil on the part of the foolish virgins led to
their exclusion from the marriage-feast. The man
who failed to make correct calculations as to the
cost of building a tower is regarded as a fit object
for mockery (Lk 14%), On the other hand, the
unjust steward, who took advantage of his position
of authority to make friends of his master’s
debtors, showed a business-like shrewdness which
would have been of value if employed honestly in
a good cause (Lk 16°").
4 A terrible warning of the danger of misusing
business capacity is afforded, not in the imaginary
story of a parable, but in the actual life of Judas
Iscariot. St. Matthew (9613) and St. Mark (14!f)
connect the determination of Judas to betray
Christ with the anointing of His feet at the feast
in the house at Bethany. St. John, in narrat-
ing the same incident (12#*-), tells us that it was
Judas who gave expression to the false idea that
the giving of money to the poor was of greater
value than personal devotion: ‘ Now this he said,
not because he cared for the poor; but because he
was a thief, and having the bag used to take away
(ἐβάσταζεν, see Westcott in Speaker's Commentary,
ad loc.) what was put therein.’ Judas, no doubt
on account of natural aptitude, had been made
treasurer to Jesus and His disciples ; he was vexed
that so large a sum of money as three hundred
pence had been wasted in the pouring out of the
ointment instead of passing through his hands for
the supposed benefit of the poor. Comparing
together these different passages, it seems clear
that St. John traced the fall of Judas, culminating
in the betrayal, to the misuse through covetous-
ness of his business faculties.
5. It can be, and often is, argued that the
morality taught by Christ cannot be strictly and
literally applied in the conduct of business.
Probably the impossibility is no greater in the
life of the business man than it is in the life of
any one who tries to live as a consistent Christian.
The main difference seems to be that in business
practical morality is daily, and often many times
a day, put to a test the extent of which can be
estimated in money, and failure to conform to a
high standard is easily detected. The business
man is obliged to have a definite standard of
practical morality, high or low according to his
own character and the exigencies of his trade, and
according to that standard he must act. Self-
deception in his case is practically limited to one
particular form,-—which, however, is extremely
prevalent,—that of attempting to separate personal
from business morality. The ordinary non-busi-
hess man, on the contrary, generally has a
curiously vague and more or less ideal standard,
and it is a very difficult thing even for a man of
BUSINESS
honest thought to settle how nearly he lives up to
it. Business morality in a measure analyses itself,
while the morality of ordinary life almost defies
analysis: a comparison between the two is thus
extremely dangerous, as they are practically in-
commensurable quantities.
Jesus Christ evidently believed that the moral
and religious truths which He taught were capable
of being applied in business. We have seen above
that He severely condemned the Sadducean hier-
archy, who may be taken to represent the capi-
talist class of those days at Jerusalem, because
their business was conducted on wrong principles :
they maintained merely ceremonial purity, and
would not put the ‘ price of blood’ in the treasury
(Mt 27°), but they did not shrink from making
gain of holy things. This shows the uncompyro-
mising attitude of Christ towards what was morally
bad. But there was a great difference. nn His
manner of dealing with another typical class of
business men, the Publicans. He did not follow
popular opinion in regarding their occupation as
absolutely unjustifiable ; He looked on their eall-
ing as a legitimate one, while demanding honesty
in carrying it out. The Baptist had taken the
same line, ‘Exact no more than that which is
appointed you’ (Lk 3"). Zacchzeus, for his charity
and earnest desire to avoid extortion, is declared
to be truly a son of Abraham (Lk 19°).
It is worthy of note that St. Luke places the
CASAR
parable of the Pounds in close connexion with the
Zacchieus incident, as if to teach us that lessons of
eternal value can be learned in business. The
slaves are rewarded with ten or five cities, accord-
ing to the capacity which each had shown in
trading with his pound.
This brings us to the centre of the whole matter :
the life of business is a legitimate one for followers
of Christ so far as it can be lived ‘in the things of
the Father’; then it is a means of imparting
training and of teaching lessons which can be used
now and hereafter in the service of God. ‘God
has set you,’ writes the Rev. Wilfrid Richmond
(Christian Economics, 1888, p. 159), ‘in the world
with other men to learn, by mutual interchange of
the means of life, the laws of love. Your wealth,
whatever it may be, little or great,—the wealth
you make, the wealth you spend,—is treasure,
corruptible or incorruptible, treasure on earth or
treasure in heaven, according as it is or is not, in
the making and in the spending, the instrument
of love.’
LITERATURE. — Besides the works referred to in the art.,
reference may be made to E. 8. Talbot, Some Aspects of
Christian Truth, 208; A. Whyte, Walk, Conversation, and
Character of Jesus Christ our Lord, 59; C. R. D. Biggs, The
Diaconate of Jesus, 19; 5. Gregory, Among the Roses, 1913
H. Bushnell, Sermons on Living Subjects, 243; Hapos. 2nd
Ser. vill. (1884] p. 17. P. M. BARNARD.
BUYING.—See TRADE AND COMMERCE.
C
CASSAR (Kaicap).—In the Gospel record this
name occurs 18 times, in 16 of which it answers to
‘reigning emperor,’ who in each case was Tiberius:
Ceesar ; in the remaining two the more individual
name is found,—in the one case Augustus (Lk 2), |
and in the other Tiberius (3').
The name ‘ Czesar’ was assumed by Augustus in
44 b.C., immediately after the tragic death of his
grand-uncle, Julius Czesar, being considered by
him part of the inheritance left to him. We have
Cicero’s authority (ad Att. xiv. 5,10, 11, 12) for
saying that the friends of Octavius began to
address him as ‘Czesar’ within a week or two of
the Dictators assassination. Augustus himself
soon gave evidence that he meant to gather up and
concentrate on himself all the fame that was
associated with ‘Czesar.’ Not many years passed
till he came to exercise a world-wide sway, such
as the great Julius had never known. He handed
on the title to his successors very much as we find
it used by the writers of the NT’, in the sense of
the great ruler or Kaiser. His own name (Gr.
Σεβαστός, Lat. Augustus) was quite familiar to
them as applied to the reigning emperor (Ac 257!-
τῷ Nero). ‘The fame of the first Caesar had come to
be overshadowed by the remarkable career of the
founder of the Empire. The way was thus pre-
pared for the still later development, when the
title of ‘ Cesar’ was given to the junior partner of
the two joint-emperors, and ‘ Augustus’ remained
the distinguishing name of the supreme ruler. In
the Gospel record there is clear confirmation of the
first part of this historical development, and there
isat the same time no contradiction of the second.
In the majority of the cases of the use of the
title ‘Czesar’ in the Gospel writings, the question
of paying the tribute has come up.
the great change that had taken place from the
This reveals |
| with the death
'to do only with Archelaus.
time of the ‘census’ under Augustus, when ‘every- ἃ deputation of leading men from Judza and
one went to enrol himself in his own city’ (Lk 2°),
to that of the trial before Pilate, when the chief
charge against Jesus was said to be ‘the forbidding
to give tribute to Cesar’ (237). In those thirty-
three years of interval the relation between the
Roman power, as represented by ‘ Ceesar,’ and the
Jewish people, had undergone a radical change.
Judea had become a Roman province, and was
under obligation to ‘ pay tribute’ as well as submit
to an enrolment of its heads of households. In
perfect accord with this historical fact, St. Luke
wrote (3!): ‘Pontius Pilate being governor of
Judea,’ with the tetrarchs for Galilee, Itursea, and
Abilene, desiring to mark the period in the reign
of Tiberius Ciesar when ‘the word of Ged came
to John in the wilderness.’ The change came
of Herod the Great in 4 8.6.
While Varus, the governor of Syria, was engaged
in quelling serious outbreaks of rebellion in Jer-
usalem, the sons of Herod were in Rome waiting
the decision of Augustus as to their conflicting
claims. At length all parties were heard by the
emperor in an assembly that met in the celebrated
temple of Apollo, behind his own house on the
Palatine. The imperial verdict, announced after
a few days, upheld substantially the will of Herod.
To Archelaus were assigned Judea, Samaria, and
Idumzea—not as king, but as ethnarch ; to Antipas,
Galilee and Persea as tetrarch ; Batanzea, Trach-
onitis, Auranitis, Gaulanitis, and Paneas to Philip,
also as tetrarch (Jos. Ant. XVII. viii. 1, xi. 4).
The kingdom of Herod was thus divided into three
separate territories after his death. As it was in
Jerusalem that the question as to the tribute
money.was raised, our subject in this article has
After some nine years
of rule over Judzea, Archelaus was summoned to
tome to answer. charges brought against him by
246 CASAR
Samaria. He was deposed and banished by Aug-
ustus to Vienne in Gaul in A.p. ὁ. His territory
was put under direct Roman rule, becoming a part
of the province of Syria, with a Roman of eques-
trian rank for its governor. An end was thus put
to the uniform consideration for Jewish traditions
and national prejudices shown by Herod and his
sons. ‘The first notable instance of this in history
is met with in the rebellion of A.D. 6, on the
occasion of the great census, while (Juirinius was
governor of Syria, which is referred to in Ac
57, The tumult, with its accompanying bloodshed,
must have been of no slight moment, when a
quarter of a century thereafter Gamaliel could
effectually use it in restraining the Council from
slaying the Apostles. Between A.D. 6 and A.D. 30,
whichever length of cycle for the imperial census
be taken, there must have been at least another
‘enrolment’ for purposes of taxation. We do not
read of a serious revolt having taken place then as
in6 A.D. ‘The Roman authorities, no doubt, were
better prepared for what might happen, and the
Jewish people also had learned the fruitlessness of
rebellion. As the time of Christ’s public ministry
approached, their spirit nevertheless became more
and more embittered. It was inevitable that at
some point or other in that ministry the question
should be pressed upon Him, ‘Is it lawful to give
tribute to Cwsar or not?’ (Mt 22!7\|). It was
one of the burning questions of His time. A dis-
tinction must here be drawn between the ‘customs’
or duties upon goods and the land tax with poll tax.
The latter only passed into the ‘Fiscus’ or im-
perial treasury. With perfect accuracy, therefore,
it could be described as ‘tribute to Ciesar.? This
tax was exacted annually, and as the Jews were
not yet subject to military conscription, it formed
the chief sign of their subjection to the Roman
yoke. Officers of state collected it, the procurator
for the tax in the case of Juda being also the
governor, Pilate. It was different with the ‘cus-
toms,’ which were farmed out to the highest
bidder, thus creating that intense antipathy which
is revealed in the phrase ‘ publicans and sinners.’
The tribute payment after all was based on the
fact of the kingship of Cesar. The combination
of ‘Cresar’ with ‘king’ sounds entirely unhistori-
cal to one familiar with the rise and growth of the
Roman Empire. ‘King’ wasaterm which Augustus
Was most careful to avoid from the time that it
may be said to have cost the first ‘Czesar’ his life.
Among Eastern peoples, however, it was the most
usual title for their ruler. During the long reign
of Herod no name was more familiar to the Jews
than " king.’ It was most natural for them to
transfer 1f to ‘Cresar.” Any one claiming to bea
‘king’ within the wide dominion of Cxesar was
seeking to establish a rival authority. ‘This was
the charge which they found it so easy to frame
against Jesus when He and they were in the
presence of Pilate: ‘forbidding to give tribute
to Cesar, and saying that he himself is Christ. a
king” (Lik 23°). No more powerful appeal could
they have made to Pilate’s fears, as they thought,
th > when they cried out, ‘If thou let this man
ro, t ou art nob Cresar’s friend: whosoever maketh
νος if a king, speaketh against Cresar’ (Jn 1913).
he title
: on the cross, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the
re “οἱ κρόκας 3° (Jn 1915), as Pilate actually wrote
it, served him better ὶ ir odifi
+ ioe i ΕΝ thi n thi i proposed moditica-
a aid, Lam king of the Jews’ (v.*1), Should
Ἢ ever be called in question by Cesar for giving
eane ἢ ] ἱ = =
. a 2: to a ith, that title, writte n out by his
own land, would form an ‘unple justification. “The
gre pe prol ate lies in the supposition that
Have 50 named Him to spite the Jews jn accny
Mr etsh thio nr " : ews, in accord. |
Mh Chose Otner words, ‘Shall } erucify your
+ 9 i a Ι : : ; nate
aAlng 7’ (y, The whole attitude of Jesus towards |
CASAREA PHILIPPI
Czsar, not only in the question of the tribute, but
throughout the trial before Pilate, must have en-
tirely disarmed the Roman governor of any fear
that He was, or ever had been, a rival of Czesar’s.
J. GORDON GRAY.
CASAREA PHILIPPI.—The town called Ceesarea
Philippi in the Synoptie Gospels (Mt 16, Mk 877,
cf. Jos. Ant. XX. 1x. 4, BUI 1x. 7, Vito i 1) bore
at one time, certainly as early as B.c. 198 (Polybius,
Hist. xvi. 18, xxviii. 1), the name Panias (ΠΠανιάς
or, Ilaveds), which is still preserved in the modern
Banias. Situated to the north of the Sea of Gali-
lee on a plateau at the southern foothills of Mount
Hermon, it lay in the territory that Philip re-
ceived from his father, Herod the Great. The
place, as well as the surrounding country, received
its original name from a cave or grotto in a hill
near by, which was called τὸ Ildveov, because
sacred to Pan and the Nymphs. In the face of
the cliff there are still several niches with inscrip-
tions in which Pan is mentioned. From the cave
(Mugharet Ras en-Neba'), now partly tilled with
fallen stone, issues a strong stream of water which
has long been reckoned one of the chief sources of
the Jordan (Jos. Ant. XV. x. 3). On the hill above,
Herod built a white marble temple in honour of
Augustus (Jos. Ant. Xv. x. 3, BJ I. xxi. 3), and
here the Crusaders built a castle, the ruins of
which still stand some fifteen hundred feet above
the town, and about a mile and a quarter to the
east (IKulat Subeibeh). Philip enlarged and beauti-
fied Panias, and ealled it Caesarea (Karodpeca) in
honour of Augustus. The statement of Eusebius
(Chron. ed. Schoene, pp. 146-147) that Philip built
Panias, and called it Caesarea, in the reign of
Tiberius, is rendered improbable by coins which
show that Cresarea had an era dating from B.C.
3 or 2. To distinguish it from Czesarea on the
seacoast (αισάρεια Στράτωνος or Καισάρεια τῆς
Παλαιστίνης), it was commonly called Cwxsarea
Philippi (Καισάρεια ἡ Φιλίππου). Under Agrippa II.
it received and bore for a short time the name
Neronias (Νερωνιάς, Jos. Ant. Xx. ix. 4). The
place has probably no part in OT history, since
its identification with Dan (Smith, HGHL pp. 473,
480) is not certain (Buhl, GAP p. 238).
Into this region Jesus came with His disciples
during one of His tours of retirement from the
common scenes of His Galilean activity ; but He
does not seem to have entered Ceesarea itself. St.
Matthew (16, cf. 15") tells us that Jesus came
into the region (εἰς τὰ μέρη) ; St. Mark (837) mentions
more specifically and vividly the villages of Caesarea
(εἰς Tas κώμας). In the territory of which Cresarea
was the chief city there were smaller towns, and
it was through these that Jesus moved with His
disciples and others who followed Him. St. Luke
alone (9188.) of the Synoptists seems to have lost
the touch of local colour fixed so indelibly upon
the narratives of Mt. and Mk.—an authenticating
element whose force even those who question the
Synoptic tradition at this point find it difficult to
escape (cf. Wrede, Messiasgeheimnis, p. 239). The
narrative in Lk. lends itself, however, to the set-
ting of Mt. and Mk., both by the way in which it
is introduced without definite localization («al
ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ εἶναι αὐτὸν προσευχόμενον), and by the
fact that in Lk.’s order it follows the feeding of
the five thousand in the neighbourhood of Beth-
saida. According to Mk 8-27, it was from Beth-
saida that Jesus went into the villages of Czsarea,
and in Jn 6%" we read of a confession of Peter
immediately after the discourse of Jesus in
Capernaum, occasioned by the feeding of the
five thousand. St. Luke’s material may have
come to him in the form of a group centring
around a saying of Jesus, but without definite
localization. By inserting it after the feeding of
CASSAREA PHILIPPI
the five thousand he has preserved the historical
order without, however, giving us the exact local
setting. For this we must look to St. Matthew
and St. Mark.
By our First and Second Evangelists the same
group of events is not only connected with a place
which lends peculiar significance to them, but set
in a larger context which extends to the feeding of
the five thousand. Mt. and Mk. alike represent
Jesus’ arrival in the region of Caesarea Philippi as
part of a course decided upon shortly after that
event. The decision which led to the retirement
into the region of Tyre and Sidon must have
been confirmed by His experience on returning to
Galilee. For Jesus withdrew again, this time
going north into the region of Czesarea Philippi.
Located at Ceesarea and standing in the period of
retirement, this group of events points back to the
beginning of the period for the explanation of its
characteristic features. The Gospels do not enu-
merate the causes which led to such a change in
the scene of Jesus’ activity, but their narratives do
ea asituation which will in a measure account
or it.
But, besides change of scene, this group of
events reveals, as do the earlier events of the
pes of retirement, a change in the method of
esus’ work. His retirement from Galilee is from
the people and their religious leaders into more
intimate companionship with His disciples, from
His popular instruction of the multitudes and
beneficent activity in their midst to teach His
faithful followers in more secluded intercourse the
significance of His own person for the Kingdom
He had been proclaiming, and to prepare them
for His Passion. The period has fittingly been
called, from its chief characteristic, the Training
of the Twelve, and in no incident does this char-
acteristic more clearly appear than in the events of
Cresarea Philippi.
The immediate occasion of Jesus’ retirement
from Galilee and the change in His method of
work are indicated in Mt. and Mk. by their account
of His attitude towards the braditions of the
elders (Mt 15'°, Mk 7!-%). The fundamental
opposition between Jesus and the legalism of the
Pharisees which had appeared in His attitude to-
wards the Sabbath customs, and in the Sermon on
the Mount, came now to sharp expression in His
attack on the whole system of external formalism
in religion. The people, moreover, had shown
themselves unprepared to receive and unable to
appreciate His teaching, even after the work of
John the Baptist and His own labours in their
behalf. And so the form of His teaching had
changed from the gnomic to the parabolic, causing
a separation between the mass and those who had
ears to hear. How utterly the people had failed
to comprehend Him is revealed by their attempt
after the feeding of the five thousand to take Him
and make Him king (Jn 6!°). After His discourse
in Capernaum (Jn 675"-), St. John tells us that
many of His disciples walked no more with Him
(Jn 6"), Finally, the mission of the Twelve had
widely extended His work, and shortly thereafter
we are told that Herod (Antipas) heard of Jesus
(Mk 64, Mt 141, Lk 97). Bitter hostility from
the religious leaders, failure on the part of the
people to understand the character of His work,
interested attention from the murderer of John
the Baptist,—in the midst of such conditions Jesus
withdrew from Galilee, and from His popular
preaching activity, to devote Himself to His
disciples.
Jesus’ first retirement is into the region of
Tyre and Sidon, part of the Roman province of
Syria. Returning to Galilee, He feeds the four
thousand, refuses the request of the Pharisees and
CAESAREA PHILIPPI 247
Sadducees for a sign from heaven, with its evident
Messianic implication, warns His ‘disciples against
the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees (so Mt
16°; Mk 815 has ‘ Pharisees and Herod’), heals a
blind man near Bethsaida (Mk 8”"-), and retires
from Galilee for the second time, coming with His
disciples into the region of Czesarea Philippi.
The key to the situation at Czesarea, its con-
trolling idea, is to be sought neither in the con-
fession of Peter nor in the promise to Peter, but
in Jesus’ announcement of His approaching Pas-
sion. To this Peter’s confession leads up; around
it Jesus’ instruction of the disciples regarding
Himself and the conditions of discipleship centres.
The theme, moreover, becomes characteristic of
His subsequent teaching (Mk 9155: 10% 127 148
ete. ).
St. Luke tells us that Jesus had been praying
alone (9'°, cf. 331), and that His disciples were with
Him. St. Mark vividly locates the question that
Jesus put to His disciples, as ‘in the way’ (8:2).
St. Mark and St. Luke agree in the form of the
question, ‘Who do men (Mk. οἱ ἄνθρωποι, Lk. οἱ
ὄχλοι) say that I am?’ St. Matthew, however,
gives it in the third person, and introduces the
title ‘Son of Man’—‘ Who do men say that the
Son of man is?’* In either form the question is
a striking one, by reason of the prominence it
gives to Jesus’ person. Emphasis until now had
been placed by Him on His message and on His
works of mercy, though both had stood in intimate
relation to His person. He desires to know now
what men think of the messenger.
The form given to Jesus’ question in Mt. has been regarded
as secondary, on the ground that by calling Himself the Son of
Man, Jesus suggested the answer to His question in asking it.
As a matter of fact, however, the answer is not given in terms
of this title. In the Synoptic Gospels the title ‘Son of Man’ is
always a self-designation of Jesus. Even where it appears in
the Fourth Gospel in the mouth of others, this is in evident
dependence on its use by Jesus (Jn 1234). St. Stephen’s use of
it also looks back to Jesus’ words (Ac 7°6, cf. Lk 2269), and the
usage of the Apocalypse is probably to be explained by the
influence of Dn 718 (cf. Rev 11% 1414). There can, moreover, be
no doubt that Jesus so designated Himself during the conversa-
tion with the disciples at Czesarea Philippi. The phrase occurs
in Mk 851 and Lk 922, but it is neither more adequately motived
than in Mt., nor is it explained. The disciples must have been
familiar with it as a self-designation of Jesus, even if they did
not understand its full significance. The way in which it is
introduced both in Mt. and Mk.-Lk. makes it difficult for us to
think that it was now used for the first time ; and the Synoptic
Gospels do indeed give earlier instances of its use (Mk 210. 28, Mt
820 96 1023 1119 123. 52. 40 1387. 41, Lk 524 69. 22 734), Dalman ques-
tions this order, regarding it as improbable that Jesus called
Himself Son of Man at an earlier time (Worte Jesu, p. 216), and
Holtzmann holds that if Jesus did so it was in a different sense
(NT Theol. i. pp. 257, 263). The Synoptic representation is self-
consistent, however, in presupposing its earlier use, and this
we must accept even while admitting that the meaning of the
term cannot be fully determined apart from its usage here and
subsequently, where it isassociated with Jesus’ suffering, resur-
rection, exaltation, and coming again in judgment. See,
further, art. Son oF MAN.
In answer to Jesus’ question, the aisciples report
the opinions current among the people concerning
Him. The report must have been discouraging.
Not only was there variety of opinion, some think-
ing that He was John the Baptist (cf. Mk 6"),
others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah (Mt 16") or
one of the prophets; but in the midst of this
variety there was general agreement that Jesus,
whoever else He might be, was not the Messiah.
A forerunner of the Messianic Kingdom He might
be, but not the Messianic King. His activity in
proclaiming the Kingdom, whatever Messianic
expectations it may have aroused, had resulted
only in the popular recognition of His prophetic
character, and in His association with the Mes-
sianic Kingdom in some preparatory sense. Mani-
festly Jesus was not the popular Messiah. His
*In Mt 1613 we before λέγουσιν in the TR is to be omitted with
x Be vg cop syrhr (cf. also Mt 1032, Lk 128f, Mk 838, Lk 926, Mt
511, Lk 622, Mt 1621, Mk 831, Lk 922).
CASAREA PHILIPPI
248
work, directed as it was towards spiritual ends, did
not accord with the popular conception of the
Messianic Kingdom. Moreover, Jesus had not
spoken plainly in Galilee of His Messiahship. He
had not assumed a popular Messianic title, and
when individuals had recognized in Him the
Messiah, He had commanded silence. His work,
however, like that of John the Baptist, had ex-
cited interest, and called forth opinions which
associated Him with the coming Messianic King-
dom. ‘The report of the disciples so accurately
describes the situation and so faithfully represents
the tenor of popular opinion, that it cannot be
regarded merely as the background sketched by
the Evangelists for the purpose of bringing into
sharp relief the confession of Peter.
In the Synoptic narratives the question of Jesus
about the opinion of the people leads up to a
similar question addressed to the disciples about
their own, and the answer in the one case stands
in sharp contrast to the report given in the
other,—a contrast which is vivid and real because
true to the historical situation. ‘lo the question
addressed to the disciples, ‘But who say ye that I
am?’ Peter answers, ‘Thou art the Christ’ (so Mk.;
Lk. gives simply ‘the Christ of God,’ and Mt.
‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God’).
Unlike the people, the disciples had recognized in
Jesus the Messiah, and to this conviction Peter
gave brief expression. However inadequate may
have been the content which Peter and his com-
panions gave to this formal statement of their
faith, it was a matter of great importance that
they were able to affirm clearly, and in opposition
to the opinion of the people, their belief that in
Jesus the Messianic King had come. The readi-
ness and decision with which Peter formulated the
faith of the disciples are an indication that their
faith, though now expressed in this form for the
first time, did not originate here (cf. J. Weiss,
Das alteste Evang. p. 51). Their very presence
with Jesus at this time gave evidence of such a
conviction (cf. Jn 6%), In this faith they had
answered His call to discipleship; in it they had
associated with Him, heard His teaching, and
seen His wonderful works; their appointment as
Apostles implied it, as did their subsequent mission
to Israel. They had seen opposition arise and de-
velop into bitter hostility ; but when Jesus with-
drew into the region of Tyre and Sidon, and again
into the region of Caesarea Philippi, they still com-
vanied with Him. They knew the popular opinion,
ut they still adhered to their own conviction.
_ The significance of Peter’s confession, however,
lies not simply in the fact that it gave expression
to a deep and long -cherished conviction, thus
evidencing the permanent, unchanged character of
his faith ; it had reference also to the future. It
Was made in answer to a question of Jesus which
had as its occasion His intention to reveal to the
wy A ene οἱ i bis preeinat The faith
Sa Wee ealicohe : Rod all the tests to which it
n the past. Jesus, however,
clearly foresaw a still greater test in the near
future. In order to prepare them for it, there was
need that definite expression be given to their
faith Che revelation which was to be made to
them would thus se
, rve the purpose of clarifying
the content of their faith. In Mk. and Lk. the
conte Peter is accordingly broueht into
+3 With the announcement of the
Ὁ. alone gives the words of Jesus to
» not only confirming what we may
Us reception of the contession (Mk.=
ential corre pondence with His own
iousness, but further ard giving us
us’ estimate and appre-
ion of
close conn xion
« Lon.
const oing
po itive knowled ce ot (7,
ciation of Peter's faith.
CAESAREA PHILIPPI
Addressing Peter as Simon Bar-Jona,* Jesus
declares him to be blessed in the possession of a
faith which, transcending the human sphere of
flesh and biood, has its origin in the heavenly
sphere and from His Father. In thus describing
the revelation-character of Peter’s faith, Jesus
does not define more nearly the process or time of
origin, the psychological moment, but treats his
faith simply as a detinite fact of the past. Con-
tinuing with the emphatic ‘But I,’ Jesus makes
Peter’s confession the occasion of revealing His plan
for the future, and the part that Peter is to fulfil in
it. With the words ‘Thouart Peter,’ Jesus recalls
the name He had given to His disciple and apostle
(cf. Jn 177, Mk 3}, Mt 10", Lk 6%). The Greek
Πέτρος, like the Aramaic Képhd, means a rock, and
suggests the idea of firmness or strength. In
giving such a name to Simon, Jesus had looked
beneath the surface and read the character of
Peter in terms of motive and underlying disposi-
tion. A man of decision, he was full of energy
and strength, a man of action rather than of con-
templation, a natural leader; and if at times im-
pulsive, rebuking his Master and even denying
Him, he was in the one case loyal to his faith,
however unwisely so, and in the other was follow-
ing Jesus to be near Him when he fell. In main-
taining and confessing his faith in Jesus, Peter
had shown himself true to the character which
Jesus recognized when He named him Peter.
Upon this rock Jesus now affirms His intention of
founding His Church: not upon any rock, and
therefore not simply upon a strong and firm foun-
dation, but upon this rock indicated by the name
Peter. In the Greek the word for Peter (Πέτρος)
and the word for rock (πέτρα) differ in form, but in
Aramaic the same form was probably used. The
Pesh. has kipha in both instances (ef. also Mt 27" ;
in Mt. 74% saa is used). The rock intended by
Jesus to be the future foundation of His Church is
Peter, realizing the character indicated in his
name. The function thus assigned to Peter is
indeed not apart from his confession, nor is the
fact that he evidently spoke in a representative
capacity to be overlooked. The address of Jesus,
however, is distinetly to Peter, and it is his name
that is interpreted. The confession which precedes
is indeed closely related to the words of Jesus, but
it cannot be understood as the rock-foundation
intended by Jesus. In itself it furnishes the occa-
sion rather than the ground of Jesus’ promise. It
cannot therefore be treated abstractedly as some-
thing separate from Peter, but must be regarded
as a manifestation and, in its measure, a realiza-
tion of the character which Jesus saw in Peter
when He gave him his name. The content of
Peter’s faith, moreover, was entirely inadequate
when measured by Jesus’ conception of what His
Messiahship involved. Much had still to be learned
in the school of experience (Mk 831 1466 [Jk 2231,
Jn 21", 1 Co 15°), but the character was fixed in
principle. Jesus saw its strength, and chose the
man for the work He had for him to do. The
opening chapters of the Acts of the Apostles give
some account of the way in which he accomplished
his charge.
The figure of a rock-foundation, used to describe
Peter’s future function in the Church, suggests
naturally a single rock underlying a whole strue-
* Bar-Jona, or ‘son of Jonas,’ probably means ‘son of John’
(cf. Jn 142 2115-17), In Hebrew the words 731° and 7:0) differ,
but the Greek rendering of j:7) is sometimes the same as that
of 721 (cf. 1Ch 263, 1 Es 923, 2 K 2523), Zahn attributes the
difference between Mt. and Jn. to a confusion by the Greek
translator of Mt. of the two Hebrew words(Kommentar, p. 537).
Wellhausen gives his verdict briefly : ‘Jona ist Jona und keine
Abktrzung von Johanan, und Mt wird nicht bloss gegen das
Hebriaerevangelium, ein spiites Machwerk, recht haben, sondern
auch gegen das vierte Evangelium’ (Das Evang. Matt. p. 83 f.).
CAESAREA PHILIPPI
ture, and not one stone among a number built
together into a foundation (cf. Mt 7%). Neither
the figure nor the function thus assigned to Peter
excludes the work of the other Apostles (Eph 2”),
much less the work of Jesus (1 Co 3"), which is
clearly indicated in οἰκοδομήσω. The figure describes
simply what Peter, by reason of his strong, ener-
getic character, and in view of Jesus’ intention, is
to be for the Church which Jesus will build. The
idea of building a community or Church was familiar
from the OT (cf. Ps 28°, Jer 189 314 337), and recurs
june NT (ef, Mt 21%, Ac 41, 1 P 2!) Ro 15%,
Cor"; 271 2 He 915). By the use of the
future tense and the choice of the word meaning
to build rather than to rebuild (ἀνοικοδομέω, ef. Ac
1516), Jesus not only points to the future for the
origin of His Church, but declares that it will be
His own creation. It was expected that the
Messiah would have a people and would rule over
them in an organized community. The idea of
such a community cannot have been strange to
the disciples who had just confessed their faith in
Him. It would have been strange had Jesus made
no reference to His Church. By speaking of it
He made plain to them that the idea was included
in His purpose, and thus formed an element in
His Messianic consciousness. The future founding
of the Church is set by Him in evident contrast
to present conditions, but the fact that this is
included in Jesus’ present purpose and thus made
part of His Messianic work brings it into vital
and organic relation with the present. His work
had, indeed, not yet taken on its Chureh-form,
but this was not due to the fact that the idea of
such a Messianic community was foreign to His
purpose. He thus encourages His disciples in
the midst of popular disaffection and unbelief,
by giving them assurance with regard to His in-
tention.
The disciples had confessed their faith in Him,
and He now tells them that however little promise
present conditions may give of such a future, He
will found His Church. And He will do this in
the face of conditions which may seem to them to
make such a future impossible. Instead of im-
proving, the conditions will become worse. With
His conception of the spiritual nature of His work
and the consequent character of His Church, Jesus
saw the necessity of His completed work and final
exaltation in order to the ful! realization of His
Messianic functions in such a Messianic com-
munity, and hence speaks of its building as a
future event (Ac 2°°, Ro 14). It is not strange,
therefore, that He speaks but seldom of His
Church, and dwells on the ideas of the Kingdom,
faith and discipleship, in which its spiritual char-
acter and principles are set forth.
The word ἐκκλυσία, regularly used in the LXX to translate
Ap (kahal), occurs frequently in the writings of St. Paul, but
only here and in Mt 1818 in the words of Jesus. Its authenticity
has been questioned (cf. Holtzmann, Hdcom.; but, on the
other hand, Késtlin in PRE? x. 318), but its use has an adequate
basis in the teaching of Jesus, and is naturally motived here not
simply by the confession of Peter, but also by Jesus’ thought of
the future, controlled as it is by the revelation of His Passion
which He is about to make to His disciples.
So permanent and strong will be the structure
built by Jesus on Peter, the rock-foundation, that
the gates of Hades—a figurative expression used
to suggest the idea of the very greatest strength,
since they withstand all effort to force them open
(Is 38°, Wis 16%, 3 Mae 5°')—shall not surpass
(κατισχύσουσιν) it in strength.* Changing the figure
* Others understand χκατισχύσουσιν in the sense that the attack
going forth from the gates of Hades shall not overcome the
Church (Zahn), or again that the gates of Hades shall not prove
strong enough to withstand the attack made on them by the
Church, Hades in the former interpretation being conceived as
the kingdom of evil, in the latter as the kingdom of death
(Meyer).
CAHSAREA PHILIPPI 249
and having the superstructure in mind, Jesus
declares that He will give to Peter the keys of the
Kingdom of Heaven. What he binds upon earth
shall be bound in Heaven; what he looses upon
earth shall be loosed in Heaven. The phrase
‘Kingdom of Heaven’ frequently takes the place
in Mt. of the corresponding phrase ‘ Kingdom of
God’ in Mk. and Lk. Here it is to be understood
not of the Kingdom which is in Heaven, but of that
Kingdom which has its origin and centre in the
Heavenly sphere, whence it receives its character
as the rule of God and its determinative principles
as moral and spiritual. This is the Kingdom which
Jesus preached, whose coming He declared to be
at hand, whose character and principles He ex-
pounded, and whose blessings He mediated. But
while having its centre in Heaven, this Kingdom
was to be realized upon earth, and, in its future
manifestation at least, is associated closely with
the Church. The authcrity which Peter is to
exercise has reference to the Church, but the re-
ciprocal relation between the Kingdom and its
Heavenly centre is to continue in its future mani-
festation as Jesus had known it in His own experi-
ence and had declared it in His teaching. What
Peter does as His representative in the Church
which Jesus will build shall be ratified in Heaven.
The keys of the Kingdom of Heaven symbolize
administrative authority (cf. Is 22:2, Rev 315), and
the phrase ‘bind and loose’ is another figurative
expression in which the idea of regulating seems
to be fundamental: in Aramaic the words ’asar
and shéré mean to allow and to disallow (ef. also
Mt 1818, Jn 20°). Both figures seem to have re-
ference to the internal affairs of the Church, and
are therefore not to be understood as descriptive
of Peter’s proclamation of the gospel, as if by
means of it those who accepted the gospel message
were to be received into the Church (keys) and
loosed from their sins, and those who rejected it
were to be excluded and so bound in their sins.
The description of Peter’s work in the proclama-
tion of the gospel is given in the figure which
represents him as the foundation-rock of the
Church. The power of the keys and that of bind-
ing and loosing, however, are not only closely
associated together, but they are separated from
the figure of the rock, and together describe Peter’s
function in the Church and his relation to its
internal management as that of an οἰκονόμος. See
also art. KEYS below, and ‘ Power of the Keys’ in
Hastings’ DB, vol. iv.
In the command of Jesus to His disciples that
they should tell no one that He is the Christ, Mt.
not only joins again the narrative of Mk.-Lk.,
but rightly interprets the briefer form, in which
they gave the command, by the words ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν
ὁ Χριστός. The authenticity of this and similar
commands, especially in the Gospel of Mk., has,
indeed, been called in question (Wrede, Das Mes-
siasgeheimnis) ; but the command is quite natural
here, and cannot be regarded as having its origin
solely in the general apologetic purpose of St. Mark.
It has reference to the form in which Peter’s con-
fession was made, and to deny its authenticity
would necessitate a complete reconstruction of the
account which the Gospels give us of Jesus’ life
and work.
The climax of the scene at Cesarea is reached
in Jesus’ announcement of His Passion. Both Mt.
and Mk. signalize His words as the beginning of
instruction on this subject (Mk. καὶ ἤρξατο, Mt.
more specifically ἀπὸ τότε ἤρξατο, Lk. connecting
the announcement directly with the command to
silence, εἰπὼν ὅτι δεῖ τ. ὑ. τ. ἀ. πολλὰ παθεῖν). When
Jesus became aware of the necessity of which He
here for the first time speaks explicitly to His dis-
ciples does not appear clearly from the Synoptic
250 CAESAREA PHILIPPI
Gospels. The Fourth Gospel indicates that He
was not unaware of it from the beginning of His
public ministry (Jn 2", cf. 271, Mt 26%), The
Synoptic Gospels, however, give evidence that Jesus
looked forward at an early period in the Galilean
ministry to the time when He would be removed
from His disciples (Mk 2”). Jertainly the narra-
tive here does not justify the inference that He
now for the first time became conscious of the
necessity of His suffering, any more than the
question to Peter and Peter's confession justify
the inference that Jesus or His disciples now for
the first time became conscious of His Messiah-
ship. The conditions of His ministry may well
have influenced Jesus to speak of the subject to
His disciples at this particular time. Foreseeing
not sferely the necessity of His suffering, but its
near realization, He spoke to the disciples of it for
the purpose of preparing them for the issue of His
work and of clarifying the content of their faith.
The necessity of which Jesus speaks is to be under-
stood as moral rather than physical, since it sprang
out of the nature of His Messianie work by which
He was brought into conflict with existing con-
ditions. But if faithfulness to His work involved
suffering, the necessity of which He speaks be-
comes voluntarily conditioned by a willingness to
suffer, and this finds its ultimate explanation only
in the Messianic consciousness of Jesus. A neces-
sity springing out of faithfulness to His work, and
thus to Himself, is, however, not only moral, but
falls within the Divine purpose; and Jesus evi-
dently so conceived it, since in rebuking Peter He
speaks of it as τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ. The idea of a suffering
Messiah, if current at all at the time of Jesus, was
certainly not a prominent feature of the popular
Messianic hope. The traces of it which are found,
moreover, do not explain the form in which it
appears in the Synoptic Gospels. For here we
find it closely associated with a resurrection and
a glorious coming of the Son of Man in His king-
dom.
However clearly Jesus may have foreseen His
suffering, and however calmly He may have an-
nounced its necessity, the care with which He
prepared for, as well as the actual result of, His
statement, reveal plainly the fact that the idea
was foreign and repugnant to the thought of the
disciples. A Messiah, though in retirement, op-
posed by the leaders and unrecognized by the
people, they could believe Him; but that He
should suffer, and that in Jerusalem where as
Messiah He should rather establish His kinedom,
seemed to them incredible. Peter’s action in re-
buking Jesus sprang naturally and spontaneously
from the limitation of his outlook into the Mes-
sianic future. The view which would exclude
suffering from His future, Jesus, however, rejects
not only as human in character and origin, but
as opposed to the Divine purpose; so that Peter
in urging it, however conscientiously, became for
Jesus a tempter, a hindrance in His Way.
In the words which follow Peter’s rebuke, Jesus
sets forth the conditions of discipleship, and points
out that the way of the disciple in following Him,
like His way in going to Jerusalem to suffer, in-
volved not only suffering, but willingness to suffer
for His sake—the voluntary taking up of the cross
and following Him in the pathway of self-sacrifice.
En phasis is placed by Jesus on personal relation-
lip to Him, revealing a conseiousness on His part
of His own supreme significance for the world of
piritual realities made
accessible through Him
and His messave (ef. also Mt 1022). The fate of the
soul, with its possibilities of spiritual life, is made
ck pende nt not ona denial of the will to live, but on
a denial of the will to live for self and earthly gain.
He who would be us disciple
seek his
must
CASAREA PHILIPPI
true and highest life-principle in self-sacrifice for
Jesus’ sake (cf. Gal 2”). Self-surrender to Jesus
is made the principle of spiritual life, and as such
it must be absolute, superseding even the desire
for life itself. In stating such conditions of dis-
cipleship, Jesus reveals a consciousness of His own
significance for men which transcends the present
and partakes of the character of the truth which
He proclaimed. Discipleship is thus drawn into
and made part of that future in which He Him-
self was conscious of holding a place of highest
authority. His words set the present in closest
relation with the future, since its true worth will
then be revealed. The relation which men sustain
to Him now will then have its intrinsic value made
manifest by His attitude towards them. “ For the
Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father,
and with his angels; and then shall he render to
every man according to his deeds.’ This prophetie
description of the future closes with these words :
‘Verily I say unto you, There be some here of
them that stand by, which shall in no wise taste
of death, till they see the kingdom of God come
with power’ (so Mk.; Lk. has simply ‘till they
see the kingdem of God’; Mt. more fully, ‘till
they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom’).
The words are prophetic, and describe an experience
in which some of those then in Jesus’ company shall
share. The object of this experience is in Lk.-Mk.
the Kingdom, or the Kingdom (having) come (Mk.
uses the perf. part. ἐληλυθυΐαν) in power. It seems
thus to be conceived as a future but actually ex-
isting state or fact rather than event. In Mt. the
same experience is described, but the fact of the
Kingdom’s presence is associated with or described
in terms of the Son of Man’s coming (ἐρχόμενον) in
His kingdom. In their context the words seem to
refer to the Messianic kingdom, and to describe it
in one of its eschatological aspects. The disciples
had just confessed Jesus, who called Himself the
Son of Man, to be the Messiah, and He had de-
clared that the Son of Man would come in glory.
He now declares that some of those present will
live to witness the coming of the Son of Man, the
Messiah, in His kingdom ; by which we may under-
stand the establishment of His kingdom in power.
This, however, was to be realized in the Church ;
for Jesus, in speaking of His intention with refer-
ence to the future founding of His Church, had not
only indicated the close relation of the Church to
the Kingdom of Heaven, the one being the future
manifestation-form of the other, but also stated
that He Himself would build the Church, thus
directly revealing His power in it. It is therefore
not unnatural to understand the ‘coming of the
Son of Man in his kingdom’ or ‘ the kingdom (hav-
ing) come in power’ as referring to the establish-
ment of His Church, its equipment with power
through the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, and
its activity in realizing the Kingdom under His
direction. Others seek the fulfilment of Jesus’
prophecy in the Transfiguration, His appearances
to the disciples after the resurrection, or speci-
fically in the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, or in
the fall of Jerusalem, or still more generally ‘in
some convincing proof that the Messiah’s kingdom
had been actually set up, as predicted by prophets
and by Christ Himself’ (Alexander, Matthew,
Ρ. 446).
LITERATURE. —Reland, Palestina, ii. 918-922; Guérin, De-
scription de la Palestine, ‘Galilée,’ ii. 308-323; SWP i. 95,
109-113; G. A. Smith, HGHL, 473-480; Buhl, GAP 288 ff.;
Baedeker, Palestine®, 291f.; Schiirer, HJP (Index); artt.
“Cesarea’ (Ewing) and ‘Peter’ (Chase) in Hastings’ DB;
“Cwsarea ’ (G. A. Smith), ‘Ministry,’ ‘Simon Peter’ (Schmiedel)
in Eneye. Bibl.; ‘Gaulanitis’ and ‘ Palastina’ (Guthe), ‘ Kirche’
(Kostlin), ‘Petrus, der Apostel’ (Sieffert) in Herzog’s PRE3;
Holtzmann, Handkommentar, i., Neutest. Theologie, i. p. 211 f. 3
Zahn, Evangelium des Matthius; Dalman, Words of Jesus,
p. 204 ff. ; Vos, The Teaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom
CAIAPHAS
of God and the Church, 140-168; Lowrie, The Church and its
Organization, 102-123; Hort, The Christian Ecclesia; A. B.
Bruce, Whe Training of the Twelve, ch. xi.
WILLIAM P. ARMSTRONG.
CAIAPHAS (Καιάφας; according to Josephus,
‘Joseph Caiaphas’) was appointed high priest of
the Jews in or soon after A.D. 18, and held office
until he was deposed by Vitellius about A.D. 36
(Jos. Ant. XVIII. ii. 2, iv. 3). Heis referred to as
the high priest in Lk 3? (with Annas), Mt 209. 57,
and is mentioned along with Annas, John, and
Alexander among the heads of the Sanhedrin in
Ac 4°. The Jength of his rule, compared with the
short periods allowed to his immediate predeces-
sors, suggests that he proved a satisfactory and
submissive agent of the Roman policy. By two
of the Evangelists, St. Matthew and St. John,
Caiaphas is specially connected by name with
the procedure which led to the condemnation
and death of Jesus. When, after the raising of
Lazarus, the ‘high priests and Pharisees’ held a
meeting of the Sanhedrin (informal, as Caiaphas
does not appear to have presided), it was Caiaphas
who gave the ironically prophetic advice that it
was expedient that one man should die for the
people (Jn 11”). ‘St. John, contemplating that
sentence years after, could not but feel that there
was something in those words deeper than met
the ear, a truth almost inspired, which he did
not hesitate to call prophetic’ (F. W. Robertson,
Sermons, i. 134). In saying that ‘being high
priest that same year he prophesied,’ the Evangelist
does no more than claim for the theocratic head of
the nation the function which might be supposed
to be latent in his office (ef. the remark of Philo
quoted by Westcott: ‘the true priest is a pro-
phet’; see also the remarks of Dale, The Atonement,
. 169 ff.), and had, asa matter of fact, been exercised
y some of his predecessors in the office (Nu 27:1),
The threefold repetition by St. John of the state-
ment that Caiaphas was high priest ‘that same
year’ (AV; RV ‘that year’) has been made the
ground of charging the Fourth Evangelist with
ignorance of the fact that the high priest might
hold oftice for more than one year. But this eriti-
cism rests on a misapprehension of the phrase (τοῦ
ἐνιαυτοῦ ἐκείνου), which emphasizes not the date, but
the character of the year=‘that fateful year’ (ef.
Jn 209 Mk 4°5),
The resolution thus prompted took effect in the
arrest of Jesus; but, as son-in-law to Annas,
Caiaphas permitted the prisoner to be taken first
before him (Jn 1813) for a private examination.
Whether this took place in the ‘palace’ of Caiaphas,
where Annas was living, or elsewhere, is not clear.
It is also uncertain whether the Fourth Gospel
contains any record of an examination of Jesus by
Caiaphas. According to the reading and interpre-
tation of Jn 18% in RV, it does not; but it is held
by some (6.4. Meyer and Edersheim, against West-
cott) that AV may be correct, and that the high
priest referred to in νν. δ: 19 and * was Caiaphas.
According to the narrative of the Synoptists, it
was to Caiaphas the “high priest,’ or the ‘house
of Caiaphas,’ that Jesus was led, and there, at the
(irregular) meeting of the Sanhedrin at daybreak
(Mt 26°, Mk 1455, Lk 2966), Caiaphas presided; and
it was he who brought the trial to a conclusion by
declaring Jesus guilty of blasphemy, and demand-
ing sentence upon Him.
Caiaphas appears again in Ac 4° in company
with Annas and others, as initiating the persecu-
tion of the Apostles, and in the later proceedings
is probably the ‘high priest’ referred to in Ac
ἘΠ. 21627 71 and 9),
LiTeRATURE.—On the name, Nestle in Expos. Times, x. [1899]
p. 185. On the historical circumstances, Schtrer, HJ FP ii. i.
182f., 199; Andrews, Life of owr Lord, 137,505. On the ethical
Significance of Caiaphas’ attitude to Christ, F. W. Robertson,
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN 251
Sermons, i. 132; J. B. Lightfoot, Sermons in St. Paul's, 75;
᾽
A. Maclaren, Christ in the Heart, 255; E. H. Gifford, Voices of
the Prophets, 73; W. H. Simcox, Cessation of Prophecy, 278;
H. H. Henson, Value of the Bible, 294; Expos. Times, iv.
[1892] p. 49.
C. A. Scorr.
CAINAN.—The name occurs twice in St. Luke’s
genealogy of our Lord: (1) of the son of Arphaxad
(Lk 3°) ; (2) of the son of Enos (ν. 38).
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN.—
I. The Christian Week.
1. The Lord’s Day.
2. Wednesday and Friday.
3. Saturday.
II. The Christian Year.
1. Easter.
(a) The name.
(ὁ) Early observance of Easter.
(c) The Quartodeciman Controversy.
(4) Determination of Easter, Paschal cycles,
(e) The fast before Easter.
(7) Palm Sunday.
(g) Maundy Thursday.
(A) Easter Week.
2. Pentecost and Ascension.
(a) The name ‘ Pentecost.’
(b) Connexion of Pentecost and Ascension.
3. Christmas and Epiphany.
(a) Their origin.
()) Advent.
4. Presentation of Christ in the Temple.
5. Commemoration of Saints, etc.
Recapitulation of festal cycles.
Literature.
The Christian Calendar in its origin appears to
have been based mainly on the desire to com-
memorate, by festival or by fast, the events of our
Lord’s life upon earth. These commemorations
were either weekly or annual. But while the
weekly observances were developed early —almost,
or in part quite, from Apostolic times—the annual
celebrations were of very slow growth, and for
some three hundred years were contined to the
two seasons when the Jews and Christians in
common observed a commemoration, Easter and
Pentecost. It is noteworthy, as showing that the
main desire was to commemorate the events in the
life of Jesus, that one of the very earliest books
which exhibit any considerable development of the
festal cycle is the so-called Pilgrimage of Silvia,
otherwise of Htheria (about A.D. 385), im which the
customs at Jerusalem are described. It was natural
that those who lived in the land where the events
narrated by the sacred history took place, should
wish to commemorate them on the spot by annual
observances. But this development took” place
only in the 4th century.
I. THE CHRISTIAN WEEK.—41. The Lord’s Day.-
It is significant that the first meeting of the dis-
ciples after the evening when they saw their newly-
risen Master was, as far as the Gospel tells us, on
the immediately succeeding ‘first day of the week’
(Jn 20° μεθ᾽ ἡμέρας ὀκτώ : note how emphatically the
Evangelist says of the preceding week, τῇ μιᾷ τῶν
σαββάτων, 20', and τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ TH μιᾷ σαββάτων,
2015). It was more than an accidental coincidence
if, as is very generally assumed, the birthday of
the Church (Ac 21) was also on the first day of the
week. At Troas the Christians met together, or
held a synawxis (συνηγμένων ἡμῶν), on the first day
of the week for worship and the Eucharist (Ac 20%,
where ἐν τῇ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων appears to be more
than a mere chronological reference, and to indi-
cate a custom), and also probably for the Agape
(cf. 207 with 20"). In this and other passages it is
necessary to remember that the ‘first day of the
week’ began, from the point of view of a Jew,
with what we should call Saturday night; and
this consideration is against Prof. Ramsay’s view
that the service at Troas began on what we should
call Sunday night (St. Paul the Traveller, ch.
xiii. § 3). That it was the custom for Christians to
meet together for worship on the first day of the
week appears also from 1 Co 16? (κατὰ μίαν σαβ-
252 CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
βάτου), where the Corinthians are bidden each to
‘lay by him in store,’ that there might be no col-
lection when the Apostle came. This would point
probably to a weekly assembly at which alms were
collected. Otherwise there is no reason why any
one day of the week should be specially mentioned.
The first mention of the ‘Lord’s Day’ by name
is Rev 1°, if indeed this is the right interpretation
(ἐγενύμην ἐν πνεύματι ἐν TH κυριακῇ ἡμέρᾳ). This
phrase has been variously interpreted of the first
day of the week, or of the Day of Judgment, or of
the Sabbath, or of Easter Day. The last two
interpretations may be dismissed as having no
support from the earliest ecclesiastical writings.
The identification of ἡ κυριακὴ ἡμέρα with the Last
Day has more probability; it would then be
equivalent to ἡ ἡμέρα τοῦ Κυρίου (2 Th 2? ; ὉΠ ΠῚ
δ᾽ ἡμέρα Κυρίου, Ac 230 from J] 251, 2 P 3, 1 Co 18
ἐν TH ἡμέρα τοῦ Kuplov ἡμῶν Inood Χριστοῦ, and 1 Co
5°, 2 Co 14, Ph 1°), and would mean that the Apo-
calyptist is carried forward in vision to the day of
the end of the world. It is a valid objection to
this view that it would practically make the
Apocalypse deal only with the future, and that
almost the earliest ecclesiastical authors after the
canonical writers use κυριακή in the sense of the
first day of the week (see below). The more
probable interpretation of the phrase in question
is therefore the first mentioned above.
The NT evidence does not compel the belief that
the Lord’s Day was of universal observance in the
earliest ages of the Church, but it at least makes
it probable (especially when we find it so generally
established in the next age) that it was of Apos-
tolic precept. And there is nothing to forbid the
supposition that it was a following of the spirit of
the teaching of the great Forty Days (Ac 15). But
we may gather, with the historian Socrates (HE
y. 22), that the ‘Saviour and His Apostles’ did
not make fixed rules as to the observance of days,
and ‘enjoined us by no law to keep this feast [he
is speaking of Easter, but his argument applies
equally to Sunday], nor do the Gospels and Apostles
threaten us with any penalty, punishment, or
curse for the neglect of it, as the Mosaic Law does
the Jews. . . . The aim of the Apostles was not to
appoint festival days, but to teach a righteous life
and piety.’
To pass to the post-Apostolic age, Barnabas
(xv. 9) says: ‘We keep the eighth day for rejoic-
ing, in the which also Jesus rose from the dead,
and, having been manifested, ascended into the
heavens,’ a passage which throws some light on
the occasional observance in later times of Ascen-
sion Day and Pentecost together. Barnabas pur-
posely names the ‘eighth day’ rather than the
lirst, as he has just spoken of it as following the
Jewish Sabbath, the seventh day. ‘I will make
the beginning of the eighth day, which is the be-
ginning of another world.’ The Didache speaks of
the synaxis on the Lord’s Day, and uses the pleon-
astic phrase κατὰ κυριακὴν Κυρίου συναχθέντες ; the
purpose of the synaxis was that the Christians
might break bread and celebrate the Jucharist,
having confessed their sins that their sacrifice
might be pure (§ 14).—Ienatius (Magn. § 9) speaks
of Christians no longer observing Sabbaths, but
fashioning their lives after the Lord’s Day (μηκέτι
Ταμματίζοντες, ἀλλὰ; κυριακὴν ζῶντες), which at
“ ᾿ invols ; af ea ul obse rvance of the first day
ee iny (4p. 96) says only that the
(‘hr ; that ‘ .
hristian ἐνὶ on ἃ fixed day, and does not say
Which (‘ soliti st '
LTA
menque Christo qua i deo dicere secum invicem
5 hs He apparently, Lightfoot observes
[qnatius*, i. p. 52), confuses Baptism and the
l uchari ἶ MAY }
account that the Chri ial
Misvlans
of Lithynia met before
to die ante lucem convenire ecar- |
probably gather from his |
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
dawn on a fixed day to celebrate the Eucharist,
and later in the day met for the Agape. This
inference is disputed by some.—Justin Martyr
describes the assembling ‘on the day called Sun-
day’ (τῇ τοῦ ἡλίου λεγομένῃ ἡμέρᾳ) for the Eucharist
by ‘all who live in cities or in the country’ (4ροί.
i. § 67). He also explicitly mentions the Sunday
collection of alms, as in 1 Co 16%. In the Dialogue
also Justin extols the ‘eighth day’ (cf. Barnabas,
/.c.) aS possessing a ‘mysterious import,’ which the
seventh day had not; he is referring to the Jewish
circumcision as a type of ‘the true circumcision
by which we are circumcised from deceit and ini-
quity, through Him who rose from the dead on the
first day after the Sabbath’ (Dial. 24, 41).
That κυριακή became a common name in the
2nd cent. for the first day of the week is further
clear from the fact, which Eusebius tells us (4H
iv. 26), that Melito, bishop of Sardis about A.D.
170, wrote a book περὶ κυριακῆς (ὁ π. κ. λύγος).
Dionysius of Corinth (A.D. 171) in his Epistle to
Soter calls Sunday ‘the Lord’s Day’ (Eusebius,
HE iv. 23: τὴν σήμερον κυριακὴν ἁγίαν ἡμέραν διηγά-
γομεν). After this the name becomes very com-
mon, and we find it both in Greek (e.g. Clement of
Alexandria, Strom. vii. 12) and in Latin, dies do-
minica (e.g. Tertullian, de Cor. 3).
There is little evidence as to the way in which
the Lord’s Day was observed in the earliest ages.
The Eucharist and probably the Agape were cele-
brated ; but perhaps to a great extent other occu-
pations went on much as usual. It would not be
easy for Christian working men to absent them-
selves from their avocations on a day when every-
one around them was working ; and this may have
been the reason why the synaxis took place at
night or before dawn, as in the examples in Acts
and in Pliny. St. Paul apparently began his
journey from Troas (Ac 20) on Sunday. ‘There is
no evidence in the earliest ages of any attempt to
transfer the obligations of Sabbath observance to
the Lord’s Day. The Jewish Christians already
had their day of rest on the Saturday. But, as
Zahn observes (Shkizzen aus dem Leben der Alten
Kirche, p. 214), the Gentile Christians must have
very quickly learnt all over the world to keep the
Lord’s Day ; they were never compelled to keep
the Sabbath, which was not one of the four ob-
servances enjoined in Ac 15”.
Tertullian, however, is the first to mention a
Sunday rest (Apologet. 16, de Orat. 23), saying
that the Christians postponed ordinary duties and
business only on that day, the day of the Lord’s
resurrection, and that they gave up ‘the day of
the sun’ to joy. He contrasts the Christian with
the Jewish rest by implication. He says that the
Christians did not kneel on the Lord’s Day (de
Orat. 23, de Cor. 3). This custom we already find
in Treneus (Fragm. 7), who traces it to Apostolic
times; and it was afterwards laid down in the
20th canon of Niczea.
For the 3rd and 4th cents., the Church Orders,
some of which have only lately come to light, and
the early Didascalia (i.e. the work as it was before
1t was incorporated in the Apostolic Constitutions,
and as we have it, for example, in the Verona
Latin Fragments, edited by Dr. Hauler) throw
some light on the question of the Lord’s Day.
The Christians are bidden ‘on the Lord’s Day (die
dominic), putting aside everything,’ to assemble
at church (Hauler, p. 44). The fragment breaks
off in the middle of a sentence explaining the
object of Sunday churchgoing (‘audire salutare
uerbum et nutriri ab. ..’); but we ean fill the
gap from other forms of the Didascalia, such
as the Syriac edited by Mrs. Gibson, from which
we see that the Eucharist is being spoken of (‘be
nourished with the divine food which endureth for
ever,’ Gibson, ch. xiii.).
coe ee 0 ΦΠ ῚΠῚΠῸπΠπποοἔοἔοὁΠΠ ΠΌΣτ τ σοἘὁὅΠ[ἔος , τῷἘπτ!ὸρττἀτστσντσο
τ
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
This appears to come
from the original Didascalia, and it is emphatiec-
ally said that the Lord’s Day is the great time for
the Christian assembly, for prayer, Eucharist, and
instruction ; and this emphasis is all the greater
as it was not yet customary to have public daily
prayers for all men. But about Α.Ὁ. 375 the
writer of the Apostolic Constitutions, in adapting
the Didascalia, alters this direction for Sunday
worship to a command to assemble twice daily,
morning and evening (11. 59). In the 7estament of
our Lord (c. 3507), the way is being felt towards
public daily service by providing daily forms for
the clergy and the presbyteresses, with whom the
devout might be invited to join [see, further, on
daily service, Wordsworth’s Ministry of Grace,
ch. vi.; and Cooper and Maclean’s Testament of our
Lord, p. 189}. We may then say that until the
latter part of the 4th cent. Sunday was the only
regular and universal day for Christian assemblies.
There is a possible local and temporary exception
in the Hippolytean Canons (§ 217, ed. Achelis),
which command daily service; but some have
concluded that this is an interpolation, as it is
thought to be in contradiction to § 226. These
Canons allow a bishop to celebrate the Eucharist
when he pleases. And again, a daily celebration of
the Eucharist is perhaps found in Cyprian (de Orat.
Dom. 18). But no further trace of this is found
till the latter part of the 4th century. The result
arrived at does not mean, however, that the Ciris-
tians were not bidden to pray daily ; from a very
early period, certainly from about A.D. 200 on-
wards, regular daily hours of prayer were pre-
seribed (e.g. Can. Hippol. § 223 11). But private
prayers are here meant, even though sometimes
they were said in church. For other synazxes in
the week, see below (ξ8 2, 3).
The Lord’s Day was the usual day for the ordina-
tion or consecration of a bishop; so the older
Didascalia in Mrs. Gibson’s form, § iii. [but this
is an interpolation from one of the following books],
the Egyptian Church Order (ed. Tattam, § 31), the
Apostolic Constitutions (vill. 4), and the Testament
of our Lord (i. 21); also in the Ethiopic Church
Order (§ 21), according to Achelis, though Ludolf
(ad suam Hist. Atthiop. Comment. p. 323) has ‘in
die sabbati.? The Canons of Hippolytus perhaps
mention Saturday, though Achelis gives ‘in ea
. . . hebdomade’; but the Arabie for ‘Saturday’
and ‘week’ are pronounced alike (see Rahmani,
Lest. D. N. Jesu Christi, p. Xxxvi).
The rest on the Lord’s day appears (especially
until the time of Constantine) to have been mainly
to allow of church-going. But in the edict of
Constantine in 321, the magistrates and people in |
cities are bidden to rest, and all workshops are |
directed to be closed ‘on the venerable day of. the
sun’; while no such obligation is laid on those
engaged in agricultural pursuits.
motive of the emperor in making
have been (and this is disputed),
much to bring about a weekly
Lord’s Day.
2. Wednesday and Friday fasts.—Almost from
the beginning we can trace an observance of these
two days for the purpose of fasting. In this way
the early Christians interpreted our Lord’s words
in Mt 9%, that they should fast when the bride-
groom should be taken away from them ; though,
as we shall see, some found a more particular
fulfilment of these words in the fast before Easter.
The reason why Wednesday and Friday were
chosen is not entirely obvious. The stricter Jews
had made a practice of fasting ‘twice in the week’
(Lk 1813), and, as we learn from the Didache (ὃ 8),
the Christians took over the practice, but changed
the days. Probably ever since the Return from
this decree may
it doubtless did
holiday on the
Whatever the |
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN 253
the Captivity, Monday and Thursday had been the
Jewish fasts, though we read of Judith fasting
daily save on Sabbaths and New Moons and the
eves of both and ‘the feasts and solemn days
of the house of Israel’ (Jth 8°). Monday and
Thursday were chosen, or were afterwards ac-
counted for, because there was a tradition that
Moses went up into the Mount on the latter day
and came down on the former. But these were
not matters of law, for the Mosaic Code prescribes
only the Day of Atonement as a fast ; and though
occasional fasts were ordered in times of trouble,
these were never permanent nor of universal obli-
gation. Thus the Pharisee’s boast in Lk 18” was
that he did more than he was obliged by law to
do (see, further, in Plummer’s δέ. Lake, in loc.).
In the sub-Apostolic age the Christians went a
step further and seem to have tried to make
the Wednesday and Friday fasts universal. The
Didache (δ 8) says: ‘ Let not your fastings be with
the hypocrites [the Jews], for they fast on the
second and the fifth day of the week; but do ye
keep your fast on the fourth day and on the
preparation’ (there is a change of construction :
νηστεύουσι δευτέρᾳ σαββάτων. ὑμεῖς δὲ
νηστεύσατε τετράδα καὶ παρασκευήν. For the latter,
νηστεύω With direct accusative, see the parallel
Apost. Const. vii. 23 and v. 15; and Oxyrhynchus
Logia, 2: ἐὰν μὴ νηστεύσητε τὸν κόσμον, and Testa-
ment of our Lord, ii. 6 and 12 [apparently]). A
reason was found for the choice of Wednesday and
Friday in the fact that on the former day the Jews
made a conspiracy against our Lord, and that He
was crucified on the latter. But this first appears
in Peter of Alexandria (+ 311), who gives this ex-
planation in his Canonical Epistle (canon xv.).
It reappears elsewhere, e.g. in Apost. Const. v. 15.
Another explanation is given by Clement of Alex-
andria (Strom. vii. 12). He says that the fourth
and sixth days are named from Hermes and A phro-
dite respectively. The true Christian or ‘Gnostic’
fasts in his life in respect of covetousness and
voluptuousness, from which all the vices grow.
Considering, then, that the symbolical explana-
tions differ, and that they are not found until a
somewhat later date than the first mention of
these days, it is reasonable to suppose that they
are afterthoughts. Yet it is probable that, when
the Jewish fast days had to be changed, Friday
was not accidentally fixed upon, but that our
Lord’s death on that day would make it appro-
priate as a fast ; and when once Friday was chosen,
Wednesday would follow from mere considerations
of convenience.
Other early authorities for week-day fasts are
Hermas, Tertullian, Hippolytus, the Hippolytean
Canons, and Origen. Hermas (Sim. v. 1) does not
mention the days on which it was usual to fast ;
but he says that he was fasting and seated on a
certain mountain, giving thanks to the Lord, when
he met the Shepherd, who asked him why he was
there. He replies that he is keeping a ‘station’
(στατίωνα ἔχω), which he explains as being a
fast. Tertullian expressly mentions Wednesday
and Friday (de Jejun. 2 and 14: ‘stationibus
quartam et sextam sabbati dicamus, et jejuniis
parasceuen ’—a difficult phrase, since the sixth day
and ‘parascene’ are one; perhaps the meaning is
that Wednesday was a ‘half-fast’ [de Jejun. 13]
in Tertullian’s time, and Friday a whole one, or
perhaps Tertullian means Good Friday here by
‘parasceue’). He says that the Eucharist was
celebrated on those days (de Orat. 19). For Hip-
polytus, see below (§ 3) on the Saturday fast. The
Hippolytean Canons, which, whether they repre-
sent Roman usage or Alexandrian, probably date
from the first half of the 3rd cent., prescribe fasts
‘feria quarta et sexta [et quadraginta],’ though it
254 CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
approves of individuals adding other fasts to these
(§ 154; the bracketed words seem to be an inter-
polation). Origen speaks of W ‘ednesday and Friday
as days ‘quibus solemniter jejunamus” (17. Lev.
Hom. x., but see 11. 4 2, below).
But hereafter there is a break, except that Peter
of Alexandria gives evidence for Egypt, and that
in the Edessene Canons of the first half of the 4th
cent. there are directions for the Eucharist on
Sundays, for service ‘on the fourth day,’ and for
service ‘on the eve’ [of the Sabbath] at the ninth
hour (canons 2, 3). Apparently the observance of
these two days was not universal, at any rate in
the East, till towards the end of the 4th century.
There is no mention of them in the Testament of
our Lord (c. 850 A.D. ἢ, which alludes to the posst-
bility of a fast day falling in the week (i. 22), but
does not prescribe one. There is in this curious
Church Order a regulation for bishops and _pres-
byters to fast three days a week, perhaps only for
one year from their ordination, but they are not
tied down to any fixed days, and the rule is ex-
pressly said to be ‘for the priests only.’ The
Arabic Didasculia (§ 38, c. 380 A.D. 3), which is
probably based on the Testament, mentions ex-
plicitly Wednesday and Friday as the two fast
days of the week, and says that when a festival
falls on these days they shall pray and not receive
the holy mysteries, and shall not interrupt the
fasting till the ninth hour [see a German trans-
lation of these later chapters in Funk’s Apostol.
Konstitutionen ; the rest is not published]. There
is abundant evidence towards the end of the 4th
cent. for these days: Apost. Const. v. 15, vii. 23;
Apost. Can. 69 (68); pseudo-Ienat. ad Phil. 13;
Epiphanius, Her. lxv. 6 (ed. Dionysius Petavius,
| lib. iit. 6, p. 910), and Expos. Fid. 21. The Apos-
| tolic Constitutions are here (vii. 23) based on the
Didache, and repeat its language about the change
of day from those of the ‘hypocrites.’ The Apos-
tolic Canon makes it incumbent on all, under
penalty, to keep these days, unless in sickness.
Pseudo-Ignatius, who is probably the same as the
author of the Apost. Constitutions [so Harnack,
Brightman ; but Lightfoot (Jqnatius?, i. 265 f.)
thinks otherwise] re-echoes their language. Epi-
phanius says that these two days were observed
everywhere (ἐν πᾶσι κλίμασι τῆς οἰκουμένης) ; he calls
them τετράς and προσάββατον. Bp. J. Wordsworth
conjectures that the restoration of these days in
the East was largely due to Epiphanius (Min. of
Grace, ch. VI. ii.). Probably in Egypt and in
ilany parts of the West their observance was
continuous,
Usually the Eucharist was celebrated on
Wednesdays and Fridays; perhaps often (as the
Arabic Didascalia may suggest) at a late hour,
so that the fast might be preserved, though Ter-
tullian speaks (de Orat. 19) of the service being
during the hours of fasting on these days, and of
scrupulous communicants reserving the elements
In private so as not to break the fast. In ‘Silvia’
(tv. 3, in Duchesne’s Origines, Appendix) the ob-
ervance of Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent is
spoken of: *Diebus vero quadragesimarum
quarta feria ad nona in Syon [the traditional scene
of the descent of the Holy Spirit, possibly the site
re x ange Beene called by Epiphanius and St.
il verusalem the Church of the Apostles]
proceat’ur juxta consuetudinem totius anni, et
ΟΠ ἈΠ ἊΣ quae consuetudo est ad nonam agi
preter oblatio. .. . Sexta feria autem similiter
Omnia aguntur sicut quarta feria,’ which must
M. ἧς : = the Eucharist was usually celebrated on
reat Duck. ἽΝ none at 3 p.m. except in Lent,
(p. 130 n. 4, Ene. « Νὴ Ba ia” an bids Se ee
, - “Silvia” says that on these
days, unless a festival of the martyrs fell on one
5
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
of them, even the catechumens fasted. In the 5th
cent. an exception to the Wednesday and Friday
Eucharist is mentioned by Socrates (HZ v. 22) in
the case of the Wednesday and Friday before
Easter.
These days were called ‘half-fasts,’ semi-jejunia
(Tertull. de Jejyun. 13), because on them Christians
broke their fast at 3 p.m. or even at noon; or
more frequently ‘station days’ as in Hermas (J.c.,
though he does not specify the days) and in Ter-
tullian (de Jeyun. 14). This isa military metaphor.
Tertullian (de Orat. 19) says: ‘If the Station has
received its name from the example of military life
—for we are God’s military [ef. 2 Co 104, 1 Ti 1'8]—
certainly no gladness or sadness chancing to the
camp abolishes the Stations of the soldiers ; for
gladness will carry out discipline more willingly,
sadness more carefully.’ And St. Ambrose says:
‘Our fasts are our encampments which protect us
from the devil’s attack ; in short, they are called
Stations, because standing and staying in them
we repel our plotting foes’ (Serm. 25, ed. of 1549,
aloe).
? 3. Saturday.—There was a considerable diverg-
ence of custom with regard to the observance of
Saturday. In the East it was commonly regarded
as a feast, while in many parts of the West it
was a fast, that of Friday being continued to the
Saturday, and the added fast being called a ‘super-
position’ (superpositio, ὑπέρθεσις). Tertullian (de
Jejun. 14) mentions and condemns the custom of
fasting on Saturday: ‘ You [‘ psychic’ Christians}
sometimes continue your station even over the
Sabbath, a day never to be kept as a fast except
at the Passover season.’ St. Jerome writing to
Lucinius in A.D. 398 (Ep. 71) discusses the question,
and says that it had been ‘treated by the eloquent
Hippolytus’ and others; but he does not tell us
what hen opinions were. The Council of Elvira
in Spain (6. 305 A.D.) ordered superpositions each
month except in July and August (canon 23); and
in canon 26 says that the error is to be corrected
‘ut omni sabbati die superpositiones celebremus,’
which may mean that superpositions were to be
held every Saturday (Hefele), or that this weekly
fast was henceforward forbidden (Bp. J. Words-
worth). The latter meaning would suit canon 23
better, but Hefele’s construction suits canon 43.
St. Augustine says that in his time they did not
fast at Milan on Saturday (Ep. liv. ad Januar. § 3).
Writing in the 5th cent., Socrates (HE v. 22) says
that in his day almost all Churches celebrated the
sacred mysteries on the Sabbath of every week
[Saturday], yet the Christians of Alexandria and
Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, had
ceased to do this. This ‘ancient tradition’ may
probably go back before the 4th century. Socrates
goes on to say that the Egyptians near Alexandria
and those of the Thebaid held synaxes on the
Sabbath, but, unlike other Christians, ‘after hav-
ing eaten and satisfied themselves with food of
all kinds [the Agape ?], in the evening make the
Offering (περὶ ἑσπέραν προσφέροντες) and partake of
the mysteries.’ Sozomen (HE vii. 19) repeats
Socrates’ statements. ἢ
The Testament of our Lord (i. 25), according to
our present Syriac text, prescribes Eucharists on
Saturday or Sunday ; but we must probably correct
‘or’ into ‘and,’ by the omission of one Syriac
letter ( οἿ into ©), and the rule will then agree
*Dom Leclercq (Dict. d’Archéol. Chrét. s.v. ‘Agape,’ col. 822)
thinks that in Socrates and Sozomen there is no trace of an
Agape, but only of a Eucharist. But it appears clear to the
present writer that the words ‘eating and satisfying themselves’
point to the Agape, and that the whole purpose of the custom
described is to keep up the example of the Last Supper. For
a full discussion of the omgin and date of introduction of the
Agape, see Hastings’ (forthcoming) Dict. of Religion, s.v.
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
with the Arabic Didascalia, § 38. In the Apostolic
Constitutions (ii. 59) Saturday and Sunday are
specially appointed for Divine service; and we
note that in this passage Saturday is the author’s
interpolation into his source, the old Didascalia
mentioning only Sunday (Hauler, Verona Fraq-
ments, p. 44). Pseudo-Ignatius forbidsa Christian
to fast on Sunday, save on Easter Even [the read-
ing of the last words is doubtful, but the sense is
clear], lest he be a ‘Christ-slayer’ (χριστοκτύνος).
And so the same author in Apost. Const. vii. 23
bids his hearers feast on the Sabbath and the
Lord’s Day, except on Easter Even ; and in v. 13,
15, he bids them leave off fasting on the seventh
day, save on that Sabbath when the Creator was
under the ground. The Apostolic Canons strongly
make the same prohibition as to fasting on ordi-
nary Saturdays (Canon 66 [65)).
As we saw above, Alexandria did not celebrate
the Eucharist on Saturday for some time before
Socrates. St. Athanasius (Apol. con. Arian. 11)
implies that it was celebrated on Sunday only.
He replies to a charge against Macarius of break-
ing a chalice, and shows that the place alleged
was not a church, that there was no one there to
perform the ‘sacred office,’ and that the day was
not the Lord’s Day, and did not require the use of
it [the sacred office]. This at least shows that
there was no fixed day except Sunday for the
Eucharist. And Brightman (Journ. of Theol.
Stud. i. 92) thinks that the same is implied in the
Sacramentary of Serapion (¢. 350 A.D.), which gives
‘The first prayer of the Lord’s day’ (κυριακῆς),
without arranging for any other day. But this is
hardly conclusive, especially as Thmuis was not
Alexandria, and Socrates says that the ‘neigh-
bours of Alexandria’ did have a Saturday Euchar-
ist. By A.D. 380 the latter was already established
in Alexandria (Timothy of Alex. Respons. Canon.
13, see Brightman, /.c.).Cassian says that in his
time there were no public services in the day
among the Egyptians except on Saturday and
Sunday, when they met at the third hour for
Hely Communion (Jnst. iii. 2). St. Augustine
sums up the matter by saying that in some places
no day passed without the sacrifice being offered ;
in others it was only on Saturday and the Lord’s
Day, or, it may be, only on the Lord’s Day (Ep.
liv. ad Januar. § 2).
For Phrygia and Cappadocia we have no satis-
factory evidence with regard to the observance of
Saturday in the 4th century. The 49th canon of
Laodicea in Phrygia (6. 380?) says that during
Lent the bread shall not be offered except on
Saturday and Sunday, from which it may pote
be inferred that these two days were ‘liturgical’
all through the year. St. Basil in his 93rd Epistle,
ad Cesariam (v.l. Ceesarium ; in the Paris ed. of
1618, Ep. 289), says that he communicated four
times a week, on the Lord’s Day, Wednesday,
Friday, and the Sabbath, and on other days if
there were a commemoration of any saint (v./.
martyr); he refers to and defends the practice of
rivate reservation, and says that in Egypt each
ayman kept the Eucharistic elements in his own
house and partook when he liked. Thus the fact
that Basil communicated on the days mentioned
does not necessarily imply a Eucharist on those
days.
te is noteworthy that Saturday and Sunday have
remained in the Greek Church as the only ‘ liturgi-
eal’ days in Lent, as provided in the Laodicean
canon ; whereas the Nestorians provide Eucharistic
lections for every day in certain selected weeks in
Lent (called the ‘weeks of the mysteries’) with
the one exception of Saturday.
II. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR.—In addition to the
weekly observances, there were annual commemo-
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN 255
rations of events in our Lord’s life, although their
development was slow. Two of these, Easter and
Pentecost, passed to the Church from the Jews ;
while others, such as Good Friday, Lent, Ascen-
sion, Christmas, Epiphany, Advent, are of purely
Christian origin.
1. Easter.— (a) The name.—‘ Pascha’ (πάσχα)
was the common name for Easter at least from
the 2nd cent. onwards in Greek and Latin Chris-
tianity ; and it is of some importance to gather
from the earlier writers the reasons for its use, as
they will show us the exact meaning of the com-
memoration. πάσχα is taken from the Aramaic
xnoS (pish@), the equivalent of Heb. nop (pesch)
‘the passover.’ Syrian Christians, however, have
0
usually written the word in the form iS 52
y
(pesha) as if from wo 49 ‘to rejoice’ (see
Payne - Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus, in loc.);
though, in translating into Syriac from Greek,
James of Edessa and others use the form lomo
(as in the Testament of our Lord, passim); and
y
the Lexicons give a verb ‘to celebrate
Easter.’ The meaning in Syriac literature is
usually ‘ Easter,’ though the Nestorian writers,
like their descendants to this day, use it in the
sense of ‘Maundy Thursday.’ The older Greek
and Latin writers commonly derive it from
πάσχειν, ‘to suffer, and draw analogies from
etymology between the paschal lamb and the
suffering Christ. Thus, perhaps, Justin Martyr
(Dial. 40; he is showing how the lamb sacrificed
as the passover Is a type of the Passion); and
most probably Irenzus (Her. Iv. x. 1: ‘Moses
foretold Him after a figurative manner by the
name given to the passover, and at that very
festival did our Lord suffer, thus fulfilling the
passover’). And so perhaps Tertullian (adv. Jud.
19, Migne, vol. ii. col. 670): ‘It is the Lord’s
passover, that is, the Passion of Christ.’ Lactan-
tius expressly adopts this etymology (Div. Inst.
iv. 26, Migne, vol. 1. col. 531): ‘Pascha nominatur
ἀπὸ τοῦ πάσχειν, quia passionis figura est.’ Augus-
tine, on the other hand (Ep. lv. 1, ad Januar.,
A.D. 400) denies this interpretation, while he pro-
poses a scarcely better one: ‘The word Pascha
itself is not, as is commonly thought, a Greek
word; those who are acquainted with both lan-
guages affirm it to be a Hebrew word. It is not
derived, therefore, from the Passion because of the
Greek word πάσχειν, signifying to suffer, but it
takes its name from the transition of which I have
spoken, from death to life; the meaning of the
Hebrew word Pascha being, as those who are
acquainted with it assure us, a passing over or
transition. To this the Lord Himself designed to
allude when He said: ‘‘ He that believeth in me is
passed from death to life... 2”?
The question then arises, What did these earlier
writers mean by Pascha? Was it the com-
memoration of the Passion, or of the Resurree-
tion? Irenzus wrote a work, περὶ τοῦ πάσχα
(quoted by psendo-Justin, Quest. et resp. ad
Orthodoxos), which is probably the letter to Victor
from which Eusebius gives extracts (HE ν. 24).
In this he speaks of a festival preceded by a fast
of varying duration (see below, e); and he may
use the word πάσχα of the festival or of the festival
and fast combined. Bp. J. Wordsworth (Ministry
of Grace, 111. ὃ 1) says that the Christian πάσχα
always in the first three centuries and often in the
fourth means the celebration of the fast of Good
Friday, extended no doubt by ὑπέρθεσις or super-
position in most cases over Easter ; and he adduces
=
956 CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
Tertullian, adv. Jud. 10, as above (but this hardly
shows it), and de Bapt. 19 (‘ Pascha atfords a more
solemn day for baptism, when all the passion of
the Lord, in which we are baptized [tinguimur],
was completed’). We may add de Orat. 18, where
he says that they did not give the kiss of peace
‘die paschie’? when there was a general fast. But
in de Cor. 3 he seems to use the word of Easter Day ;
he says that the Christians did not kneel ‘a die
Paschie in Pentecosten usque’; and in de Sejun.
14 he speaks of celebrating Pascha, and of the fifty
ensuing (exinde) days being spent in exultation,
which is suitable language if Pascha means Easter
Day, but hardly if it means Good Friday. It may,
however, in these passages, mean Easter and the
preceding fast, and this would suit the remark
which follows in de Jejun. 14, that Saturday was
never a fast ‘nisi in Pascha.’ Origen (6. Cels.
viii. 22) distinguishes παρασκευή from πάσχα, and
doubtless means Easter by the latter. He men-
tions the observance of the Lord’s Day, of the
Preparation, of Pascha, and of Pentecost; and
cannot here mean every Friday by the ‘ Prepara-
tion,’ for then he would also have mentioned
Wednesday, as in Hom. wm Lev. x. (see above,
I. § 2).
One may conjecture that there was some diver-
gence in the first three centuries both as to the
name and as to the actual observance of this com-
memoration. It seems likely that in many cases
the Resurrection and the Passion were observed on
the same day. This must usually have been the
case with the Quartodecimans, who observed the
fourteenth day of the lunar month; but it was also
apparently often the case with those who kept
the Sunday, for, as we shall see below, the fast
observed before the Sunday was often only of one
day’s duration, and did not always include the
Friday. Even well on in the 4th cent. we find
a relic of this in the Testament of our Lord, where
the Friday before Easter is not mentioned as the
day of commemorating the Passion but as a pre-
paration for the festival, and the Passion and
Resurrection are apparently commemorated ἰο-,
gether, just as the Ascension and Pentecost were
often joined (see below, ὃ 2 6). There is nothing
# priort incongruous in commemorating and giving
thanks for the Redemption of mankind on a day
of rejoicing, especially when a severe fast of a
day or two had just preceded. The probable con-
clusion, then, is that Pascha usually meant, before
the 4th cent., the commemoration both of the
Death and of the Resurrection of Christ, the festi-
val with its preceding fast, and that the erroneous
derivation from πάσχω favoured a certain indefi-
niteness in the use of the word. This derivation,
it may be observed, as well as the equally
false Syrian one, probably explains why a name
with such a very Jewish association became so
popular. When, somewhat later, a distinction
liad to be made between Good Friday and Easter
Day, the names πάσχα σταυρώσιμον and πάσχα ava-
στάσιμον Were invented (Ducange, s.v. ‘ Pascha’)
\nother use of the name Pascha is to be noted.
+ the Zestament of our Lord (i. 28, 42, ii. 8, ΠῚ:
-, 15) it means the forty days before Easter,
though of these forty days only the last two
were fa i
_ Holy Week is called ‘the last week
ol Pascha. The end of Pascha is to be after
the Saturday at midnight, The ‘forty days of
Pa eha re pec ially mentioned, Similarly in
A post, Can. 69 OS) we find τὴν ἁγίαν τεσσαρακοστὴν
πάσχα. bb bil the 7estament, Pascha is used
in this In this work, however,
\ ὁ also read οἱ ‘the feast of Pascha’ (1. 42), when
Widows (presbyteresses) are to give alms and bathe.
The bathin Was on the Thursday before Easter.
*Pascha’ was sometimes used for Holy Week.
Thus in Apost. Const. v. 18 we read: ‘ Fast in the
days of Pascha beginning from the second till the
Preparation and the Sabbath, for they are days of
sorrow, not of feasting.” And so perhaps Can.
Hipp. § 195 ff. (below, αἰ).
Other names for Easter were: among the
Latins, ‘Dominica gaudii’ (Bingham, Ant. xx. v.
δ); among the Greeks, μεγάλη κυριακή ; while the
ρ ρ y 0
common Syrian name was and is Ἰλίου Ὁ» Pots
; x
‘the feast of the Resurrection.’
(ὁ) Early observance of Easter.—The Apostles,
no doubt, continued to keep the Jewish Passover
(Ac 20°); but it is uncertain if the first Gentile
Christians observed it in any way, or whether
they were content with the weekly commemo-
ration. It is not even certain if the Jewish
Christians kept it in any way as a Christian
festival. Yet the phrases τὸ πάσχα ἡμῶν...
Χριστός and ἑορτάζωμεν (1 Co 5%) would be speci-
ally appropriate if the Christians at Corinth were
at the time when St. Paul wrote from Ephesus,
namely, before Pentecost (1 Co 168), observing an
Easter festival. But it is significant that there is
nomention of Easter in the Apostolic Fathers or
in Justin Martyr ; and its absence in the Didache
is specially noteworthy, since that Church Order
mentions the Lord’s Day, the fast before baptism,
and the Wednesday and Friday fasts. We can,
however, trace the observance of Easter at Rome
back to the time of Pope Xystus, 6. 120 A.D., for
Ivenzeus tells us (ap. Eusebius, HE ν. 24) that
Xystus and his immediate successors, while not
observing the Quartodeciman practice themselves,
yet were at peace with those who did; and from
what follows it is clear that [renzeeus means that
Xystus observed the Sunday as Easter Day. In
Asia Minor the observance can be traced back
still further; for Polycarp, as Irenzeus says (ἐ0.),
traced his custom of keeping Easter to St. John.
The conclusion may probably be, either that
Easter was not universally observed as an annual
commemoration early in the 2nd cent., or, more
probably, that it had not then the great import-
ance which it acquired later in the century, from
the disputes as to the day when it should be kept.
(c) Lhe Quartodeciman Controversy. — A brief
summary only of this question is necessary for
the purposes of this Dictionary ; for more detailed
accounts of it, reference may be made to the works
mentioned at the end of this article. The con-
troversy arose in the 2nd cent. and came to a
head in the last decade of it; it was concerned
with the question whether the Paschal commemo-
ration should follow the day of the week or the
day of the lunar month on which the events
commemorated originally occurred. Those who
upheld the former practice no doubt laid chief
stress on the Resurrection of our Lord, since they
fixed on Sunday for their commemoration ; while
the latter, who were called Quartodecimans or
τεσσαρεσκαιδεκατῖται (Socrates, HEH v. 22, Sozomen,
HE vii. 19), probably at first emphasized our Lord’s
death, as they adhered to 14th Nisan, the day on
which He died, or was thought by them to have
died ; whereas, on no calculation did He rise on
that day. ‘The theory has, indeed, been advanced
by the Tiibingen school that the Quartodecimans
commemorated the Last Supper rather than the Pas-
sion or Resurrection. According to the Synoptists,
the Last Supper appears to have taken place on the
evening of 14th Nisan, and the Crucifixion to have
been on the 15th; while, according to the Fourth
Gospel, the Death of our Lord would appear to
have been at the time of the killing of the
Paschal lambs, and the Last Supper therefore to
have taken place at the end of 13th Nisan. We
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
are not here concerned with the seeming contra-
diction between the Gospels except in so far as
the Tiibingen school deduced from the known
facts that the Quartodecimans could not have
accepted the Fourth Gospel, because their prac-
tice rather agreed with the Synoptists. Western
readers need, however, to be reminded that in
the ordinary Eastern reckoning, at any rate the
ecclesiastical reckoning, then as now, the Last
Supper and the Crucifixion fell on the same day ;
for the day began at sunset. Thus, if the Quarto-
decimans observed 14th Nisan, it must have been
because they thought that our Lord both cele-
brated the Last Supper and also died on that day.
It is a pure assumption that their Paschal com-
memoration began at the moment when the lambs
were killed. In that case they would have been
rather Quintodecimans. It is generally agreed
that the lambs were killed, at any rate in ancient
Jewish times, in the afternoon of 14th Nisan,
i.e. When that day was drawing to a close. The
inference, then, is that the Quartodecimans made
their Paschal commemoration coincide with the
day which began at the Last Supper and ended
soon after our Lord’s death, and that they thought
that that occurred at the time of the killing of the
lambs. The deduction is the exact opposite of
that drawn by the Tiibingen school, and is that
the Quartodecimans followed the Fourth Gospel
(as they, perhaps rightly, interpreted it) rather
than the Synoptists. The supposition that they
commemorated the Last Supper in particular has,
moreover, no basis of fact. And the view given
above is further supported by the fact that in
the time of Melito (A.D. 170) the Quartodecimans
clearly accepted the Fourth Gospel. Melito, in
one of his fragments, speaks of our Lord’s three
years ministry, which he could never have gathered
from the Synoptists (‘de Incarn. Christi,’ in Routh’s
Reliquie sacre, vol. i.).
It has been thought by some (as by Hefele) that
the Quartodecimans kept their commemoration of
the Resurrection on the third day after 14th Nisan,
1.6. on 16th Nisan, or even on the Sunday after.
But this is very improbable. If it were so, why
should they have broken off their fast on 14th
Nisan? It is much more likely that they com-
memorated the Passion and the Resurrection
together.
The history of the controversy is given by
Eusebius (HF ν. 23, 24), who takes up tle ques-
tion at its third and most acute stage, namely,
at the dispute between Victor and Polycrates at
the very end of the 2nd century. He tells us that
synods held in that century unanimously decided
that ‘the mystery of the resurrection of the
Lord should be celebrated on no other but the
Lord’s day, and that we should observe the close
of the paschal fast on this day only.’ These
synods were held in Palestine, Rome (under
Victor), Pontus, Gaul (under Irenzeus), and
Osrhoéne in N.-W. Mesopotamia. Perhaps the
last-named synod was held at the famous Edessa
or Ur-hai, which is in that district. There were
also personal (.6. not synodical) letters of Baechy-
lus, bishop of Corinth, and many others, all of whom
concurred in the decision mentioned above. On
the other side ‘Asia’ (i.e. probably the Roman
province, though the Quartodeciman practice ex-
tended to other provinces also—even to Antioch),
led by Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, maintained
that the paschal commemoration should take place
on l4th Nisan, on whatever day of the week it
should fall. Polyerates, who is very highly praised
by St. Jerome (de Viris Illustr. 45) and by im-
plication by Eusebius, who preserves his letter (/.c.),
alleges the example of ‘ Philip, one of the twelve
Apostles, who fell asleep in Hierapolis, and his
VOL. I.—17
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN 257
--
two aged virgin daughters, and another daughter
who lived in the Holy Spirit and now rests at
Ephesus’; also of John ‘who was both a witness
and a teacher, who reclined upon the bosom of
the Lord, and being a priest wore the [sacerdotal]
plate (τὸ πέταλον). He fell asleep at Ephesus.’
He also adduces Polycarp, Melito, the martyr
Sagaris, and others, who all agreed with his
practice.
Victor attempted to excommunicate all ‘ Asia’ ;
ἀποτέμνειν ws ἑτεροδοξούσας. . . πειρᾶται are HKuse-
bius’ exact words. But Socrates (HE v. 22) de-
clares that he did actually excommunicate them.
He probably issued a letter of excommunication,
but it was not effective. For Eusebius goes on
to say that Irenieus, bishop of ‘Gaul,’ intervened
in the dispute in the interests of peace, and he
who ‘was truly well named became a peacemaker
in the matter.’ Part of Irenieus’ letter is pre-
served by Eusebius, and it is specially interesting
as mentioning that ‘the presbyters before Soter
who presided over the Church which thou [ Victor]
now rulest, Anicetus and Pius and Hyginus and
Telesphorus and Xystus, neither themselves ob-
served [the fourteenth day] nor permitted those
after them to do so; and yet’ they were at peace
with those who did observe it; and also that when
Polycarp went to Rome in the time of Anicetus
(bishop of Rome), the two bishops ‘disagreed a
little about certain other things,’ but immediately
made peace, ‘not caring to quarrel over this
matter’; nor did it interfere with their remaining
in communion with one another, or with Anicetus
allowing Polycarp to celebrate the Eucharist in
his church at Rome, ‘manifestly as a mark of
respect’ (ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ παρεχώρησεν ὁ ᾿Ανίκητος τὴν
εὐχαριστίαν τῷ Πολυκάρπῳ κατ᾽ ἐντροπὴν δηλονότι). It
has been suggested that these words mean only
that the two bishops communicated together ; but
in that case they are mere repetitions of what had
just been said, and there would be no special mark
of respect.
Eusebius here does not mention the intervening
dispute in which Melito, bishop of Sardis, figures.
But in iv. 26 he speaks of him, and from the
account we gather that he was a prolific writer ;
a list of his books is given. In the quotation from
Polyerates in v. 24 we find the name of Melito
appearing as a Quartodeciman, but it is not said
that he was a writer. From the earlier passage
we learn that he wrote a book περὶ τοῦ πάσχα,
from which a quotation is given: ‘ While Servilius
[Rufinus gives ‘Sergius’] Paulus was proconsul of
Asia, at the time when Sagaris suffered martyr-
dom, there arose in Laodicea [in Phrygia] a great
strife concerning Pascha, which fell according to
rule in those days (ἐμπεσόντος κατὰ καιρὸν ἐν ἐκείναις
ταῖς ἡμέραις), and these things were written [sc. be-
cause of the dispute].’ So McGiffert [‘ Eusebius’
in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers] renders these
words, though it is not obvious what they mean ;
for when did not Pascha fall according to rule?
For other explanations see Salmon in Smith-Wace,
Dict. of Chr. Biog. s.v. ‘Melito.’ Eusebius goes
on to say that Clement of Alexandria refers to
Melito’s work, and himself wrote one with the
same title, ‘on occasion’ (ἐξ αἰτίας) of Melito’s
treatise, ¢.c., probably, in opposition to it, though
Hefele thinks that Clement’s book was meant to
supplement Melito’s.
The Paschal Chronicle mentions that Apolinarius,
bishop of Hierapolis, of whom Serapion, bishop of
Antioch (6. 200 A.D.), is the first to speak—but he
was then dead—-wrote a book περὶ τοῦ πάσχα, and
preserves two fragments of it. It is disputed
whether Apolinarius was a Quartodeciman. If
so, he was not an extreme partisan; he certainly
wrote before the discussion became acute, as in
258 CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
the time of Polyerates. He held (the Paschal
Chronicle states) that our Lord, being the true
Paschal Lamb, was slain on the day ot the Pass-
over feast. Some have asserted that there were
two parties of Quartodecimans, the one Judaizing
and the other not. But it is perhaps unnecessary
to divide them, with Hefele, into ‘ Ebionites’ and
‘ Johanneans.’ Eusebius (iv. 27) mentions Apolin-
arius’ writings, but not the work in question.
There were thus three stages in the controversy :
(1) the discussion between Polycarp and Anicetus,
ὁ. 150 A.D., When they agreed to differ, and parted
amicably ; (2) the dispute at Laodicea about
A.b. 170; (3) the bitter contest between Victor
and Polyerates about A.D. 190.
The other Churches, as a rule,—those outside
‘ Asia,’—agreed with Victor in his practice, but
disapproved of his excommunicating the Quarto-
decimans. The Roman Pascha gradually _pre-
vailed, and was aflirmed by the Council of Nica
in 325, in whose decision the bishop of ‘ Asia’
acquiesced. Thenceforward the Quartodeciman
practice was confined to a few communities which
were considered heretical. It lasted till the 5th
cent., and Sozomen (HE vii. 19) speaks of it as
still going on in his day, 6. 443 A.D.
(d) Determination of Easter: Paschal eycles.—
The defeat of the Quartodecimans did not ensure
that all should keep Easter on the same day, for
different calculations were in use for determining
the paschal full moon. This had long been the
case. For a time the Christians were dependent
on the Jews for the date of their festival. The
Hippolytean Canons (§ 195, ed. Achelis) say that
the week when the Jews celebrate Pascha is to be
observed by all with the utmost zeal as a fast.
And the older Didascalia, according to Codex
Sangermanensis (Gibson’s Didasc. 1903, p. 97),
bids the Christians ‘keep your fast with all care,
but commence when your brethren of the Nation
keep Pascha’; the Verona Fragments are wanting
here. And in the 4th cent. pseudo-Pionius, in
his Life of Polycarp (§ 2; for the date see Light-
foot’s Jgnatius, ili. 429), says that ‘the Apostle
{Paul] plainly teaches that we ought neither to
keep it outside the season of unleavened bread, as
the heretics do, especially the Phrygians, nor yet,
on the other hand, of necessity on the fourteenth
day; for he said nothing about the fourteenth
day, but named the days of unleavened bread,
the Passover, and the Pentecost, thus ratifying
the Gospel.’
On the other hand, the Apostolic Constitutions
(v. 17) expressly say: ‘Be no longer careful to
keep the feast with the Jews, for we have now
no communion with them’; and the Jews are
said to have erred in their calculations. [The
passage inserted before this in Dr. Donaldson’s
translation in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library,
taken from Epiphanius, belongs to the older
Didascalia, and is not part of the Apostolic Con-
Stilutions at all).
_And long before this Hippolytus had made an
elaborate calculation, so that it might be no longer
necessary for the Christians to follow the Jews
Who had gone wrong in their computation through
lax calculations of the lunar year. Hippolytus
lollows the system adopted by the Greek astro-
+ to harmonize the lunar and solar years.
: makes the luna year to he 354 days of twelve
mths, which alternate ly have 30 and 29 days.
[πὶ ipply the difference of 11} days between the
of en i. ee ne saath jah he three months
Η, τας λαό εἰν n ver nt years (δ 114=90).
l bw¢ yeal periods tovether, for
convenien e of dete mining the day of the week
a ν᾽ τὴ as the day of the year, and: he thus makes
a cycle of 16 years, a matter of fact, the
homers
oO eBlelt
>
but, as
|
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
ee ________ Φ[ὄ σσαοσσσσο
lunar year is longer by nearly nine hours than
Hippolytus reckoned it, and this error made the
cycle very soon to be obviously wrong. Calcu-
lating backwards on this cycle, he fixed on Friday
25th March A.D. 29 as the day of the Crucifixion,
and this computation, though quite erroneous, has
ever since been the basis of a large part of the
Church Calendar (see on Christmas below, 8 3).
The same date, March 25, is also found in the
Acts of Pilate, which probably was written after
Hippolytus, and was indebted to him. Epiphanius
(Her. 1. 1, contra Quartodecimanos, lib. 11. tom. 1)
says that some, following the Acts of Pilate, always
kept Pascha on March 25. These Christians, who
thus anticipated a reform much desired in modern
times, were not strictly Quartodecimans, for they
abandoned 14th Nisan, although they observed
Pascha on any day of the week, and so were
separated from the Catholics. A slight moditica-
tion on Hippolytus’ system was made (6. 243) by
pseudo-Cyprian in his de Pascha Computus (see
Dr. Salmon’s article, ‘Chronicon Cyprianicum,’ in
Smith-Wace, Dict. of Chr. Biography).
The Alexandrian Church is thought by Dr. Sal-
mon to have used the Metonic cycle of nineteen
years, which, somewhat modified, is still in use.
Anyhow, the Alexandrians and Romans frequently
kept Easter on different days. Another source of
error was the determining of the vernal equinox,
which at Rome in the 3rd cent. was thought to
fall on 18th March, at Alexandria from 6. 277 A.D.
onwards on 19th March (the calculation was made
by Anatolius of Laodicea). The date was changed
to 2Ist March (as it is now) in the reign of Dio-
cletian.
The later disputes in Britain between the Colum-
ban and Augustinian missionaries were due to the
former using a cycle which had been employed at
Rome itself about A.D. 300, but had long been
given up. The Columban missionaries were in no
real sense Quartodecimans, though they professed
to follow St. John.
(e) The fast before Easter.—In the ancient litera-
ture we find two aspects of this fast. In the first
it is a preparation, whether for the paschal com-
memoration itself or for baptism, whether (more-
over) the former emphasized the Death or the
Resurrection of our Lord. In the second it is
designed to mark the sadness of Christians in
the days when ‘ the Bridegroom is taken away ’—
namely, the days when our Lord’s body was in the
tomb. In this case it must be looked upon as a
Good Friday fast, extended by ‘superposition’ to
the Saturday. As the normal time for baptism
was Easter, usually early on Easter morning,—a
fact which the discovery of so many Church Orders
has lately made abundantly clear,—it follows that
the resultant fast would be the same, whichever
account of its origin is the more primitive.
For the first aspect we have the Didache. This
Church Order, as has been said, does not mention
Easter. But it gives what seems to be an ex-
haustive list of the fasts known to the writer at
the beginning of the 2nd cent., and says (§ 7):
‘Before the baptism let him that baptizeth and
him that is baptized fast, and any others also who
are able ; and thou shalt order him that is baptized
to fast a day or two before.’ It then prescribes the
Wednesday and Friday fasts. We thus have the
curious result that a fast of one or two days is
mentioned earlier than the festival which at that
time, or at any rate soon after, followed it; and
the fast is connected not with the death of our
Lord, but with baptism. It is significant that in
the Didache not only the baptized and the bap-
tizer fast, but also ‘any others who are able.’
And the silence of the Apostolic Fathers and
Justin Martyr about Easter makes it not impos-
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN 259
sible that early in the 2nd cent. the pre-baptismal
fast was emphasized more than the paschal festival.
Trenzeus also speaks of the fast before Easter Sun-
day in a way which seems to exclude the idea of a
Good Friday fast extended to Saturday. His words
are thus given by Eusebius (HE ν. 24): ‘Some
think that they ought to fast for one day, others
for two days, others even for several, while others
reckon forty hours both of day and night to their
day. And this variety in its observance has not
originated in our time but long before, in that of
our ancestors’ (. . . of δὲ καὶ πλειόνας᾽ οἱ δὲ τεσσαρά-
κοντα ὥρας ἡμερινάς τε Kal νυκτερινὰς συμμετροῦσι τὴν
ἡμέραν αὐτῶν «.7T.d.). Some have put a stop after
τεσσαράκοντα (among others Rufinus, who trans-
lated Irenzeus into Latin), making the writer say
that some fasted forty days. But a forty days’
fast, as we shall see, was an invention of the 4th
cent., and Rufinus is interpreting Irenzeus by
the practice of his own day. Moreover, this
punctuation makes no sense of the words that
follow, for no one can suppose that there was an
absolute fast, night and day, for forty days, and,
if not, the reference to ‘night and day’ has no
pe Treneus seems clearly to mean that the
ast lasted, variously, for one day, for two days,
for several days, while some made a continuous
fast of forty hours. The words, especially ‘ several
days,’ seem definitely to determine his point of
view, that the fast was a preparation for the festi-
val rather than an extension of Good Friday. The
Church Orders detinitely speak in the same sense.
Baptism is described as taking place before the
Easter Eucharist, and the directions for the paschal
fast and solemnities generally follow immediately
after the directions for baptism. The arrange-
ment suggests that in the mind of the author of
the lost ancestor of so many of these manuals, —
for most of them are of one family and follow the
same outline,—the preparation for baptism was the
original ohject of the Lenten fast. The Canons of
Hippolytus (§§ 150-152; but these are bracketed
by Achelis as probable interpolations) speak of a
baptismal fast of the newly baptized, and those
who fast with them. In § 106 a fast of the candi-
dates on the Fridays is mentioned ; on the Satur-
day they are exorcized (§ 108) and keep vigil all
night, and are baptized at cock-crow (§ 119). The
Egyptian Church Order (Sahidic Eccles. Canons,
§ 45) prescribes a Good Friday fast. The Verona
Latin Fragments are wanting in the parallel pas-
sage, but make the fast a two days’ one in a later
chapter (Hauler, p. 116). The Zestament of our
Lord (ii. 6) says definitely : ‘ Let them fast both
on the Friday and on the Saturday’ ; and this is not
improbably also the meaning of both the Hippoly-
tean Canons and the Egyptian Church Crder. The
latter, at least, in a later section (§ 55) speaks of
the fast as a two days’ one. Now the Egyptian
Church Order and the Verona Fragments say that
if a sick person cannot fast on the two days, he
is to fast on the Saturday. The Testament of
our Lord (ii. 20) implies the same thing. But this
puts the idea of a Good Friday fast extended over
the Saturday out of the question. Even the Apos-
tolic Constitutions, which exhibit a later stage and
a longer fast, speak of the two days’ absolute fast,
and say that if any one cannot fast on the two
days he is at least to observe the Saturday (v. 18).
It is a characteristic of this last named Church
Order to retain ancient features even when some-
what inconsistent with its own later point of view.
The other aspect, namely, of a Good Friday fast
extended, is found in Tertullian. He speaks of
the ‘Psychies,’ —i.e. the Church at large, from
which he had now separated,—thinking that those
days were definitely appointed for fasts in which
the Bridegroom was taken away. ‘The same lan-
guage is found in the chapter of Apost. Const. just
quoted, which thus combines the two ideas. It may
not improbably be gathered from the evidence that
the former point of view is the original one, and
that the Lenten fast originated in the preparation
for baptism, and that the second point of view was
an afterthought.
The length of the fast was originally, as we
have seen, one day, or two days, or forty hours.
But it was an absolute fast. Another custom
grew up in some countries in the 3rd cent. of ob-
serving the whole week before Easter, not as an
absolute fast, but as a time of severe abstinence
from food. It was called ‘ the week of xerophagy’
(for the name οἵ. Tertullian, de Jejun. 2, 9). This
is mentioned in the Hippolytean Canons (§ 197),
which allow bread and salt and water only, and
by Dionysius of Alexandria in his Epistle to
Basilides (can. 1). He says that ‘all do not carry
out the six days of fasting either equally or alike ;
but some pass even all the days as a fast, remain-
ing without food through the whole ; while others
take but two, and others three, and others four,
and others not even one.’ It is possible, as many
think, that Dionysius is the author of the Hippoly-
tean Canons, and that they represent Alexandrian
usage, not Roman. The Montanists observed a
two weeks’ fast, a custom which they kept up till
the 5th cent., when, as Sozomen tells us (HE vii. 19),
they were distinguished by fasting Jess than their
neighbours ; formerly they had fasted longer, when
Holy Week had been the maximum (cf. Tertullian,
de Jejun. 15, when he says that the Montanists
offered to God two weeks of xerophagies in the
year, Saturday and Sunday being excepted).
Epiphanius says that the Catholic Church ob-
served a whole week, as opposed to the Quarto-
decimans, who observed only one day (Her, 1. 3,
lib. li. tom. 1).
Fasting for forty days was unknown till the 4th century. To
maintain this proposition we must, with Achelis, eliminate ‘et
quadraginta’ from Can. Hippol. 154(the canons having obviously
suffered interpolations), unless these words could refer to the
‘forty hours’’ absolute fast mentioned by Irenzus ; and simi-
larly we must, with almost all scholars, reject the words in
Origen’s tenth Homily on Leviticus : ‘ Habemus enim quadra-
gesime dies jejuniis consecratos,’ which come just before he
speaks of the Wednesday and Friday fasts. We have the
homily in Rufinus’ translation only, and Rufinus was notori-
ously lax in interpolating and altering Origen’s words. These
eliminations will be generally agreed to, for we can see the
forty days’ fast growing before our eyes in the 4th century.
We find τεσσαρακοστή mentioned in the fifth canon of Nicza,
A.D. 325, but as a season only (the holding of synods is the
subject), doubtless as a solemn time, but without any reference
to fasting. Duchesne seems to have overlooked this point,
which adds to his argument (Origines, viii. § 4). In the 7'esta-
ment of our Lord (ii. 8) the ‘ forty days of Pascha’ are spoken of
asa time of vigil and prayer, specially used for the preparation
of catechumens for baptism, but it is nota fast. On the other
hand, in the Apostolic Canons (69 or 68), 6. 400 A.D., we read of
τὴν ἁγίαν τεσσαρακοστὴν τοῦ πάσχα aSacompulsory fast. This
is one of the indications of a comparatively early date for the
Testament. Duchesne (/.c.) has traced in Athanasius’ ‘ Festal
Letters’ the growth of the fast. At first we read of the time of
Lent and of the week of the fast, but later on of the fast of
Lent and the Holy Week of Pascha.
In the Edessene Canons (can. 7; see ‘Syriac Documents’ in
the Ante-Nicene Christ. Libr. p. 39) a forty days’ fast is pre-
scribed ; ‘and then celebrate the day of the Passion and the
day of the Resurrection : because our Lord. . . fasted forty
days, and likewise Moses and Elijah.’ . . . Can this bea relic
of the observance of the Passion and the Resurrection on the
same day?
In Apost. Const. v. 13 the forty days are exclusive of Holy
Week, and so in pseudo- Ignatius (Philipp. 13), and in St.
Chrysostom (Hom. 30 in Gen. $1). In the Testament of our
Lord they include Holy Week.
Socrates (HE ν. 22) says that the fasts before Easter differed
in his day. At Rome they fasted for three continuous (cvvzu-
μένας) Weeks, save on Saturday and Sunday ; in Hlyricum and
Greece and Alexandria for six weeks, which they called tecrupe-
κοστῆ ; Others, beginning their fast seven weeks before Easter,
fasted three periods of five days only, but still called it rerrup~-
κοστή. A difficulty is seen in this passage because Socrates had
just said that every Saturday was a fast at Rome. Duchesne
proposes to emend Socrates as far as the word ‘continuous’
is concerned, and supposes that: the three weeks were the first,
fourth, and sixth weeks of Lent. He justly remarks that the
260 CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
divergence of fasting, while the same name τεσσαρακοστή was
kept, points to the fact that the ‘ forty days’ were introduced
for another purpose than that of fasting. In fact, the preva-
lence of forty days is due largely to the fact that catechumens
were under instruction for that time. The catechumenate was
indeed often longer, though St. Jerome (Zp. 61) says that in
his time forty day's was the usual period. We find two years at
Elvira, three years in the Egyptian Church Order and the
Testament of vur Lord, though a good deal of discretion was
allowed. But in any case, at the beginning of the forty days
the selected candidates for baptism (competentes) were put
apart and went through special instruction, with prayers,
benedictions, and exorcisms, as is described at length in the
Church Orders.
(f) Palm Sunday appears for the first time in
the Pilgrimage of ‘Silvia.’ Formerly we had only
known of it as being kept at the end of the 5th
cent., a hundred years later; it is mentioned in
the life of Euthymius (+ 472). The appearance of
the festival at Jerusalem is significant. It was
doubtless due to the desire to commemorate our
Lord’s entry into Jerusalem on the spot where it
happened. ‘Silvia’ says: ‘On this day, at the
seventh hour (1 p.m.) all go to the church on the
Mount of Olives, where service is held; and at
5 p.m. they read the Gospel story of the events of
the day, and all proceed on foot to Jerusalem, the
people crying, Blessed is he who cometh in the
name of the Lord; some bearing palm branches,
some olives; and so the bishop, after the type of
our Lord, is conducted to the Holy City very
slowly.’ The palms and olives are an instructive
comment on the Gospel account.
(g) Maundy Thursday is not in early times men-
tioned as being observed in commemoration of the
Last Supper. Duchesne (Orig. viil. § 3) seems to
think that it was so observed at Rome at least,
in the primitive ages, but there is no evidence for
it. The earliest authority for an Eucharist on this
day is the Testament of owr Lord (6. 3502), which
in a very difficult and apparently corrupt passage
prescribes it (ii. 11); probably, as a comparison
of the Copto-Arabic tr. of the work with James
of Edessa’s Syriac shows, in the evening (see
Cooper-Maclean’s note, p. 226). On this day also
the deacon offered ‘a lamp in the temple’ (7d.).
‘Silvia,’ at the end of the same century, describes
the Eucharist in the church called ‘The Martyrium’
or Golgotha, in the afternoon; it was over by
4 p.m., and then there was—on this occasion alone
in all the year—a celebration of the Eucharist in
the little chapel of the Cross, to the east of Gol-
gotha. The bishop celebrated, and all communi-
cated. In Africa at the same time there was an
evening Eucharist on this day, and the people were
exempted from the customary fast before Holy
Communion on this oceasion by the Third Council
of Carthage, A.D. 397 (can. 29: ‘excepto uno die
anniversario quo ccena domini celebratur,’ Mansi-
Labbe, ili. col. 885). It will be seen that, strictly
speaking, these Eucharists, if celebrated after sun-
set, were at the beginning of Good Friday rather
than on the Thursday. St. Augustine (Zp. liv.,
see below) says that there were in his time two
Eucharists on the Thursday, one for the sake of
those who could not fast till evening, and would
not receive the Eucharist otherwise.
“a the preparation for baptism this Thursday
p — an important part. The candidates were
vi den to bathe on this day, apparently as a
ceremonial washing (Hippol. Can. 106; Egyptian
Chu 5
t
» (so Lagarde rightly]; Test. of our
h Or 7
Lord, i. 6; \ugustine, Epp. liv. 10, lv. 33 ad
ε tari), sathine at Pascha Was not confined
to cables tentes . in the Yestament the widows
Spat rat me ¥, idden to bathe on that day
app 5. also to have been on that
day the cust
min some places of avashine the feet
7 e@ cCoOmne / Ἵ } 7 Ὶ Ὑ
ἐν an wpeten in memory of the pedilauium of
Sule Ἷ ]
Jn + t custom which afterwards cave the name
‘ > Py) ] Γ =
to Maundy Thursday (from the ‘new command. |
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
ment,’ mandatum, Jn 13*4). Elsewhere the pedi-
lauiuwm took place after baptism. The council of
Elvira (can. 48) forbade priests or clergy to wash
the feet of the newly baptized. Pseudo-Ambrose
(de Sacramentis, iii. 1) says that this was the cus-
tom at the place where he wrote (not Milan ὃ), but
that it did not obtain at Rome. In the Gallican
Church also it was common (Hefele, Cownevis, i.
158, Eng. tr.).
(h) Easter Week.—The observance of the days
after Easter is mentioned in the Apostolic Con-
stitutions (‘the great week [Holy Week] and that
which follows it,’ viii. 32). This fortnight was to
be a time of rest for slaves, that they might be
instructed. St. Chrysostom (Hom. 34 de Res. Chr.)
also mentions Easter Week. In ‘Silvia,’ Easter,
as well as Epiphany [Christmas] and the Dedica-
tion, has an octave during which ‘stations’ are
held at the various churches in and near Jeru-
salem. But, with this exception, octaves outside
Easter Week are Western and not Eastern.
2. Pentecost and Ascension. —(a) The name
‘ Pentecost’? had in the first four centuries two
meanings, the fiftieth day after Easter, and the
whole season of fifty days after that festival.
(2) It is used as a day in NT: Ac 2!(‘the day of
Pentecost’), 2016 (id.), 1 Co 168 (‘until Pentecost’) ;
the Jewish nomenclature was continued in the
Apostolic age. We find the same sense in suc-
ceeding ages, though perhaps not so frequently
as the other. A fragment of Irenzeus, quoted by
pseudo-Justin (Quast. et Respons. ad Orthodoxos,
115) seems to speak of the day: ‘Irenzus... in
his treatise περὶ τοῦ πάσχα ... makes mention of
Pentecost also, on which (ἐν ἢ) we do not bend the
knee because it is of equal significance with the
Lord’s Day.’ Pseudo-Justin in the corresponding
question has ἀπὸ τοῦ πάσχα ἕως τῆς πεντηκοστῆς.
The 43rd canon of Elvira (6. 305 A.D.) has: ‘ut
cuncti diem Pentecostes celebremus.’ ‘Silvia’
(vi. $1) has ‘a Pascha usque ad Quinquagesima,
id est Pentecosten,’ and (§ 3) ‘ Quinquagesimarum
die, id est dominica.’
(8) On the other hand, the use of the name for
the whole season is also common. ‘Tertullian (de
Bapt. 19) says that ‘after Pascha, Pentecost is
a very extensive (latissumum ; v.l. letissimwm)
space for conferring baptisms, wherein, too, the
Resurrection of the Lord was repeatedly proved
among the disciples, and the hope of the Advent
of the Lord indirectly pointed to, in that at that
time, when He had been received back into the
heavens, the angels told the Apostles that He
would so come as He had withal ascended into the
heavens, of course at Pentecost.’ But he goes on
to say that Jeremiah signified ‘the day of the
Passover and of Pentecost, which is properly a
feast day.’ In de Cor. 3 he has ‘from Pascha to
Pentecost.’ In de Idol. 14 he says that the Jews
would not have shared with Christians the Lord’s
Day, nor yet Pentecost. Thus he uses the word in
both senses. Origen talks of ‘ living in the season
of Pentecost’ in the same passage (6. Cels. vili. 22
in which he talks of observing certain days, as,
for example, the Lord’s Day, the Preparation, the
Passover, or Pentecost. He refers to the Descent
of the Spirit. The 20th canon of Nica forbids
kneeling in the ‘days of Pentecost,’ as on the
Lord’s day. This is unlike St. Paul’s usage; he
knelt at this season (Ac 20° 21°). The Testament
of our Lord speaks of ‘ the days of Pentecost’ (i. 28,
42, 11. 12); it forbids any one to fast or kneel
then, for these are ‘the days of rest and joy.’ St.
Basil speaks of the ‘seven weeks of the holy
Pentecost’ (On the Spirit, ch. 27, aliter § 66).
The quotations given above show that Pente-
cost as a Christian festival goes back at least to
It is rather curious that there is no
Irenzeus.
MES τ΄ -τ- ---------- ---ἰἶα-΄Ἧἃο-ς-- τ ---
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
reference to it between the NT and that Father ;
and with this fact we may compare the silence of
the earlier writers about Easter ; but, as Duchesne
remarks (Orig. viii. § 4), Pentecost is implied
rather than explicitly mentioned in early Christian
writings.
(6) The Ascension.—The fortieth day after Easter
was not, so far as we know, observed as a com-
memoration of our Lord’s going up to heaven until
at least the middle of the 4th century. In the
Edessene Canons (can. 9) the Ascension 15 observed
with Pentecost: ‘At the completion of fifty (v.2.
‘forty,’ but this is clearly a later correction) days
after His Resurrection, make ye a commemoration
of His Ascension.’ And so in ‘Silvia’ on the day
of Pentecost there is a ‘station’ at the Mount of
Olives, at the church called Imbomon, ‘ that is in
that place whence the Lord ascended into heaven,’
where the lection of the Ascension is read. This
‘station’ is held after another ‘in Syon,’ where
the lection of the Descent of the Holy Ghost is
read. Thus in this account both events are com-
memorated on the same day. The curious thing
is that in ‘Silvia’ there is also an observance of
the fortieth day after Easter; but then the ‘station’
is at Bethlehem, and there is no mention of the
Ascension. The coupling together of the two
events, which has its parallel in the joining to-
gether of Good Friday and Easter, as mentioned
already, is illustrated by the passage from the
Epistle of Barnabas cited above (I. §4); the writer
thought that the Ascension fell on a Sunday.
Compare also Tertullian, de Bapt. 19 (see above,
§ 2a).
Ascension Day is not found in the Testament of our Lord
(c. 350 A.p.?) or in any of the earlier Church Orders, but it is
found in the Apostolic Constitutions, the author of which made
it his aim to increase the festal cycle (vy. 19, vili. 32). Sermons
preached on this occasion are found in the 4th cent., by Euse-
bius of Emesa (?) c. 350 A.p., Epiphanius, Gregory of Nyssa,
and Chrysostom. The title of Gregory’s sermon calls the
festival ἐστισωζομιένη, Which apparently means ‘an extra festival.’
It does not apvear certain, however, that these Fathers kept it
on the fortieth day after Easter. St. Augustine (ΕἾ. liv. $1,
ad Januar.) treats it as universal in A.p. 400: ‘They are held
as approved and instituted either by the Apostles-themselves or
by plenary councils... for example, the annual commemoration
by special solemnities of the Lord’s Passion, Resurrection, and
Ascension, and of the Descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven.’
3. Christmas and Epiphany.—(«) Their origin.
—These festivals are of much later date than
Easter and Pentecost, and were probably unknown
till nearly A.D. 300. They were both, in their
origin, one festival, and both were meant to com-
memorate the Nativity of our Lord; but the East
fixed on one day and the West on another as the
date of the birth of Christ, and so in course of
time two separate festivals emerged.
Before we consider the evidence for the obsery-
ance of 25th December and 6th January as festi-
vals, it will be desirable to investigate the reason
why these two days were chosen. The most prob-
able solution of the matter, in the light of our
present knowledge, is that of Duchesne (Origines,
ch. vili. § 5), whose theory is followed here. The
date 25th December was first arrived at apparently
by Hippolytus. Other calculations had fixed on
18th or 19th April or 29th May (Clement of Alex-
andria, Strom. i. 147, ed. Potter, Oxford, 1715,
p. 407: ‘on the 25th day of the month Pachon’ ;
see the whole passage); and about A.D. 243 the
treatise de Pascha Computus of pseudo-Cyprian
(see above, 11. § 4 d) named 28th March. The cal-
culations of Hippolytus, which were his mature
results (for he had formerly fixed on 2nd January),
prove all over the West. They are found in
115 Commentary on Daniel (iv. 23, p. 244, ed. Bon-
wetsch ; aliter iv. 9). They depend on the assump-
tion that the earthly life of our Lord, from His
conception to His death, lasted an exact number
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN 261
of years. The upholders of symbolical systems
of numbers treated all fractions as imperfections.
Acting on this idea, Hippolytus fixed on 25th
March for the Annunciation, because he had, as
he thought, discovered that the Crucifixion took
place on that day (see above, § 1d); he reckoned
the Saviour’s life as thirty-two years, from B.c. 3
to A.D. 29. Adding nine months, he arrived at
25th December as the day of the Nativity.*
The other date, 6th January, is not so easily ac-
counted for. But Duchesne mentions a coincidence
which increases the probability of his theory as to
25th December being correct. Sozomen (HE vii.
18) says that ‘the Montanists who are called
Pepuzites and Phrygians’ celebrated the Passover
on 6th April. They reckoned that the world had
been created on ‘the ninth day before the kalends
of April,’ the vernal equinox, and that the sun
was created ‘on the fourteenth day of the moon
occurring after the ninth day before the kalends of
April’; and they always celebrated the Passover
‘on this day, when it falls on the day of the Re-
surrection,’ otherwise they celebrated it on the fol-
lowing Lord’s day. They probably, then, thought
that our Lord died on 6th April; and, as Duchesne
remarks, that ‘the Passover of Christ, being the
true Passover, must fall due at typical maturity
reckoned from the origin of all things.’ But
reckoning nine months from 6th April, on the same
reasoning as that of Hippolytus, we arrive at 6th
January.
We do not read of either of these days being
observed as festivals in the 3rd century. The
first mention of such a commemoration on 25th
December is in the Philocalian Calendar (see
below, § 5), which was copied in 354 A.D., but
represents the official observances at Rome in
A.D. 336. We find the entry: ‘viij kal. Jan.
Natus Christus in Bethleem Jude.’ It is not
indeed absolutely certain that 25th December was
at that date observed as a feast; but it is highly
probable that this was so, asthe other days, coim-
memorations of bishops of Rome and martyrs, seem
to be noted in order that they might be observed.
This was more than a century after Hippolytus.
It will be observed that the theory given above
of the choice of 25th December takes no account
of the heathen festival of the sun held on the same
day. But it is quite possible that when, in the
4th cent., the Christians began to observe the
Nativity as a festival, they seized on the coincidence
between the day as calculated by eee and
the heathen feast-day, and Christianizing the latter
as the Birth of the true Sun of Righteousness,
showed a good example to the pagan world by
making the day a true holy day.
The Eastern festival of 6th January may be
traced to about A.D. 300 among the orthodox.
Clement of Alexandria, indeed (Strom. l.c.), says
that the followers of Basilides celebrated the day
of Jesus’ baptism, ‘spending the whole preced-
ing night in lections.’ But the earliest orthodox
mention of the day isin the Passion of Philip of
Heraclea, in the Diocletian persecution, A.D. 304.
Philip says: ‘Epiphaniz dies sanctus incumbit’
(Ruinart, Act. Mart. Sine. p. 410). That it was
of recent introduction when the 7'estament of our
Lord was written (6. 9560 3), appears from there being
no regulations for it as there are for Pascha and
Pentecost. It is only just mentioned in that work
0 n
(‘ Epiphany,’ Syr. Lt). And during the greater
* Other Patristic assumptions were that the ministry of our
Lord lasted one year only, the ‘acceptable year of the Lord’
(Lk 419; see, e.g., Clem. Alex. Z.c., ‘It was right for Him to
preach for one year only’), and that Jesus was baptized on His
thirtieth birthday (Lk 325 ὡσεὶ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα). This last idea
accounts for the baptism of Christ being commemorated on 6th
January.
262 CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
vart of the 4th cent., and in some countries even
ies 6th January was the only day observed in
the East. The sixth Edessene canon prescribes
‘the Epiphany of our Saviour, which is the chief
of the festivals of the Church [this is significant],
on the sixth day of the latter Kanun,’ i.e. 6th
January. Epiphanius knew of no other day. In
Har. \i. (‘the Alogi,’ lib. ii. tom. 1) he speaks of
“a.D. vi Id. Nov.’ as being 60 days before the
feast ‘of the Epiphanies,’ when Christ was born
according to the flesh (§ 16), and of ‘the day in
which He was born, that is, of the Epiphanies,
which is the sixth of January.’ Cassian, at the
end of the 4th cent., speaks of ‘Epiphany, which
the priests of that province [Egypt] regard as the
time both of our Lord’s baptism and also of his
birth in the flesh, and so celebrate the commemo-
ration of either mystery not separately as in the
Western provinces, but in the single festival of
this day’ (Conferences, x. 2). Even later, Gen-
nadius (de Vir. Ilustr. 59) says that ‘Timothy the
bishop wrote on the Nativity,’ and that this work
was thought to have been composed at Epiphany.
Only 6th January was observed at Jerusalem in
the time of ‘Silvia,’ when there was a ‘station’
at Bethlehem at night. As the manuscript is
defective, we do not know whether there was a
celebration of the Eucharist there, but it is prob-
able that there was one, and this nocturnal
‘station’ may have been the origin of the Christ-
mas midnight Eucharist of later days. The name
of the Eastern festival was the ‘Epiphanies’ or
‘Theophanies.’ Traces of the older custom in the
East of observing 6th January only are found in
the 6th cent. at Jerusalem, where Cosmas Indico-
pleustes mentions it. He says that the Nativity
and the Baptism were observed on the same day
(Migne, Patr. Gr. vol. Ixxxviii. 197). The Ar-
menians still observe only that day.
The Easterns, however, even at the end of the
4th cent., began to adopt the Western day in
addition to their own; and probably soon after-
wards the Westerns adopted the Eastern day as a
separate festival. And thereafter on 25th December
the Church commemorated the Nativity, and on
6th January other manifestations of our Lord’s
Divinity and glory. In the East the Baptism,
With its manifestations, was and is alone emphasized
on 6th January. In the West, as St. Augustine
says early in the 5th cent. (see below), the coming
of the Wise Men was the great commemoration.
The Calendar of Polemius Silvius (A.D. 448) com-
bines it with our Lord’s baptism and the miracle at
Cana (Wordsworth, Min. of Grace, viii. § 1; Miene,
Patr, Lat. xiii. 676). In the present day all three
events are commemorated.
St. Chrysostom in A.D. 386 tells us that Christ-
mas, as distinct from Epiphany, had been only
lately introduced at Antioch, less than ten years
before (in Diem Natalem, ed. Montfaucon, Paris,
309 A). : In de Beato Philogonio (i. 497 C)
he speaks of Epiphany, Easter, and the other
festivals taking their origin from Christmas ; for,
if Christ had not been born, He would in no wise
have been baptized, for that is the feast of the
In the Apostolic Constitutions both
| heophanies.
Chri and Epiphany are mentioned (v. 13)
and this i
1718, ii.
stmas
3
nd t one of the chief factors in determining
the date of that Syrian document. At Alexandria |
both festivals
for Paul,
Mission of
tive
And on the
were observed before the year 432;
bishop of Emesa, preached there on his
peace aiter the Council of Ephesus on
Sunday before Christmas, on Christmas Day
following Sunday, New Year’s Day 433
(Smith-Wace. Dict Ch» - Ὦ; ξ δος A
Θ Lith we, Dict. Chr. Biog. iv. 26). sv. ‘Paulus
In the West. St. Augustine
tells.us that both
days were observed in his time
; he says that the
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
Epiphany was kept ‘per universum mundum,’ but
that the Donatists would not accept it. He implies
that it had been introduced from the East, and
says that the Donatists did not love unity, and did
not communicate with the Eastern Church where
that star [of the Magi] appeared (Sermon 202 in
Epiphania Domini, iv.; see also Sermons 199-204.
The six Sermons are almost entirely taken up with
the coming of the Wise Men).
(ὁ) Advent. —The first trace of this season is
in the canons of Saragossa in Spain (Concilium
Cesaraugustanum), ὁ. 380 A.D. (Mansi-Labbé, iii.
633), which provide that from xvi kal. Jan. to the
‘day of Epiphany, which is viij Id. Jan.,’ all are
sedulously to attend church (can. 4). We notice
here that 25th December is apparently unknown
to this council, and that the preparatory season
before 6th January is a solemn season of prayer
and churchgoing, but not of fasting; much as the
‘forty days of Pascha’ are in the 7estament of our
Lord. The latter work speaks of the ‘days of
Epiphany,’ which may mean the days after Epiph-
any, or possibly the days before it, just as the
‘days of Pascha’ mean in this work the forty
days before Easter, and the ‘days of Pentecost’
mean the fifty days before Whitsunday. But the
reference to Advent is too uncertain to be built on.
4. The Presentation of Christ in the Temple.—
For this commemoration ‘Silvia’ is our earliest
authority. On this day, she says, all the presby-
ters preached, and last the bishop himself, ‘on the
events of the day, when Joseph and Mary bore the
Lord into the temple, and Simecn saw Him, and
Anna the prophetess, the danghter of Samuel’ (sic).
Then the Eucharist was celebrated. ‘Silvia’ calls
this day ‘ Quadragesima de Epiphania,’ i.e. 14th
February. The assembly was at the Church of
the Anastasis. Here we have a clear indication of
the way in which festivals at Jerusalem increased
out of a desire to commemorate Gospel events in
the holy places. From Jerusalem this festival
spread elsewhere ; but we do not hear of it, except
in ‘Silvia,’ till the 6th century. Its name then was
ὑπαπαντή or the Meeting [of our Lord and Simeon]
—a name still retained by the Greeks.
Although Hippolytus had fixed 25th March as
the date of the Annunciation, no trace of any
observance of the day as a festival is found in the
first four centuries, nor indeed for long after.
Possibly its frequent concurrence with the Paschal
solemnities or the Lenten fast prevented this. The
Nestorians keep neither the Presentation nor the
Annunciation.
5. Commemorations of Saints, etc.—These can
be glanced at only briefly in a Dictionary of Christ
and the Gospels. They were originally of local
origin, and did not at once become popular except
in the places where they began. ‘The earliest
known collection of local ‘saints’ days is the Philo-
calian Calendar of A.D. 354, which may be con-
veniently seen in Ruinart’s Acta Martyrum Sin-
cera et selecta, p. 617, and in Migne’s Patrologia
Latina, vol. xiii. ; reference may also be made to
Bishop Lightfoot’s essay in his Clement (i. 246, on
‘The Liberian Catalogue’). It is the only extant
calendar which is certainly older than A.D. 400,
though portions of a Gothic calendar remain which
may be dated shortly before that year. The so-
called Hieronymian Martyrology is much later
than St. Jerome. The Christian section of the
Philocalian Calendar (for it has also a heathen
section) is a Roman list. It has two parts: the
Depositio (burial) episcoporwm, and the Depositio
martyrum. Under the first head it contains twelve
names: Dionysius, Felix, Sylvester, Miltiades,
Marcellinus, Lucius, Caius, Stephen, Eusebius,
Marcus, Eutichianus, Julius. Julius and Marcus
come out of their calendrical order (not Marcus in
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
Ruinart), and are probably later additions (Light-
foot). The second part begins with Christmas
(as above, § 3), and contains no other festival of
Christ. It is, no doubt, the official list of martyrs
commemorated at Rome at the time. Its names
are all local, except Cyprian and Perpetua and
Felicitas, which are African. In all there are 37
entries, as given by Ruinart ; but some have more
than one name. The first part begins at vi kal.
Jan., and its latest date is vi Id. Dec. Of the
second part vili kal. Jan. is the beginning and Id.
Dec. is the end. The beginning of the year must
therefore have been reckoned as Christmas Day
(25th December), or at least some day between
13th and 25th December. It is interesting to note
in this early calendar ‘ii kal. Jul. [¢.e. June 29]
Petri in Catacumbas et Pauli Ostiense Tusco et
Basso Coss.,’ that is the translation of the vodies
of these Apostles.
A Syriac Martyrology published in 1866 by Pro-
fessor Wright must also be mentioned, as, though
the copy in the British Museum dates from 411,
it gives (if careful examination be applied to it)
earlier lists still. It is an Eastern Martyrology
translated into Syriae and abridged at Edessa
about 409 A.p. from a collection made in Greek
out of local calendars. It has two Roman entries,
one African, and the rest are Eastern; it must
have been originally Arian, as it does not contain
the name of Athanasius, but has that of Arius (‘at
Alexandria, Arius the presbyter’). Analysis shows
it to have been made up of the local lists of Nico-
media, Antioch, and Alexandria. The two latter
appear to have contained, at about A.D. 350, 24
and 26 entries respectively. This shows the limited
numbers of commemorations in the 4th century.
The lists, however, speedily grew to large dimen-
sions. For other early calendars reference may be
made to the works mentioned below.
The observance of the death-days (natales) or
burial days (depositiones) of martyrs may be traced
back to the 2nd cent., c. 155 A.D. ; the letter of
the Smyrneans on the martyrdom of St. Polyearp
speaks (§ 18) of his burial-place ‘where the Lord
will permit us to gather ourselves together... to
celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom for the
commemoration of those that have already fought
in the contest, and for the training and preparation
of those that shall do so hereafter.’ This letter
was written soon after the martyrdom (see Light-
foot’s Ignatius and Polycarp, 111. 353ff.). St.
Cyprian says that the death-days of the martyrs
were to be carefully noted, that they might observe
such commemorations with Eucharist (Zp. 12, to
his presbyters and deacons). The 18th Edessene
Canon orders commemorations of the martyrs. And
such commemorations are mentioned by St. Basil
(Ep. 98, as above, I. § 3).
For the purposes of this Dictionary, the obser-
vances of the days following 25th December are
of interest, as being closely connected with the
Nativity of our Lord. These observances date
from the 4th century. St. Gregory of Nyssa,
reaching the funeral oration of his brother St.
asil (who died Ist January 379), says that they
were then celebrating these saints’ days, which
were convenient (he remarks) because Apostles and
Prophets were first constituted and ordained, and
after that pastors and teachers. He first mentions
the commemoration of the Apostles and Prophets
after Christmas, namely, Stephen, Peter, James,
John, Paul; and then Basil (in Laudem Fratris
Basilii, ad init., ed. Paris of 1638, p. 479). It does
not necessarily follow that the saints mentioned
were commemorated on different days. The Apos-
tolic Constitutions mention a commemoration of
the martyrs and ‘blessed James the bishop’ [the
Lord’s brother], and ‘the holy Stephen our fellow-
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN 268.
servant’ (v. 8; so viti. 32). The Syriac Martyr-
ology mentioned above gives St. Stephen on 26th
December, St. James and St. John on 27th Decem-
ber, St. Peter and St. Paul on 28th December.
With this we may compare two later usages, the
Armenian and the Nestorian (East Syrian), as
these separated Christians have retained many
early customs which others have dropped. The
Armenians, who do not observe 25th December as
Christmas, commemorate St. David and St. James
the Lord’s brother on that date, but follow the
Syriac Martyrology for the other days, save that
they transpose 27th and 28th December (Duchesne,
Orig. viii. § 5. 2). The Nestorian usage is some-
what different. That Church keeps its saints’ days
according to the movable Christian year rather
than according to the month, and most of them
fall on Fridays. The Fridays after Christmas
(25th December), if there are sufficient before Lent,
are (1) St. James the Lord’s brother, (2) St. Mary,
(3) St. John Baptist, (4) St. Peter and St. Paul,
(5) Four Evangelists, (6) St. Stephen; and other
festivals of later origin follow (Maclean, Hast
Syrian Daily Offices, p. 264 1f.).. Duchesne con-
jectures that the ‘Four Evangelists’ is a trans-
formation of St. James and St. John, the latter
having attracted to him the three other Evan-
gelists, and the former being omitted. The
Orthodox Easterns now commemorate St. James
the Lord’s brother on the Sunday after Christmas.
‘Silvia’ has not, like the Apostolic Constitutions,
a general martyrs’ festival ; nor yet have the other
Church Orders. But considering the great develop-
ment of festivals in ‘Silvia,’ it is not improbable
that she did describe such a general commemora-
tion; only the manuscript breaks off suddenly in
the middle of the account of the Dedication festival,
and we cannot be sure of what was in the lacuna.
Speaking generally, we note a difference between
these commemorations and the festivals of our
Lord. The former were at first local only, and of
inferior importance. The Nestorians to this day
keep up a sharp distinction between the two, calling
nD ΕΝ
the former L209 commemorations, the latter
lots festivals, or 1.4;80 ots festivals of our
nN =
Lord; and the distinction is ancient.
Dedication festivals were common in the 4th
cent., though they are not mentioned in the Church
Orders, even in those, like the Testament of our
Lord, which describe the church buildings min-
utely. These festivals concern us here only as
contributing to the calendar Holy Cross Day,
which was the commemoration of the dedication
in 335 of the churches built by Constantine on the
site of the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary, and of the
alleged discovery of the true cross by St. Helena,
Constantine’s mother. ‘Silvia’ says that the anni-
versary was observed with great ceremony in her
time, many pilgrims from distant lands attend-
ing, and the churches being adorned as at Easter
and Christmas. This day (14th September, but
among the Nestorians 13th September) passed from
Jerusalem to Constantinople; at Rome it was not
introduced till the 7th century.
Of the other days of Apostles, Martyrs, or Con-
fessors, most of which are of Jater introduction
than the 4th cent., it may be observed that the
majority, at least, are due to the local dedication
of a church named after the saint at Rome, Con-
stantinople, or elsewhere. See Duchesne, Orig. ch,
Vili. passim.
RECAPITUCATION OF FESTAL CYCLES. —
Fathers of the first three centuries: Pascha and
Pentecost.
CALF
264
Testament of our Lord: Pascha, Pentecost, and
Epiphany.
' Apostolic Constitutions: Ascension, Pentecost,
Pascha, Christmas, Eten ye Apostles days
(plural), St. Stephen and All Martyrs’ day (singu-
lar)—viii. 32 Lagarde (a/iter 33). Add St. James
the Lord’s brother, v. 8. [The sections of the
Apost. Const. mentioned in this article are all
Lagarde’s]. ; all f
Pilgrimage of ‘Silvia’: Epiphany with octave,
Presentation, Palm Sunday, Easter with octave,
Fortieth day after Easter, Pentecost (including
Ascension), Dedication (Holy Cross Day).
Cappadocian Fathers and Syriac Martyrology :
Add St. Stephen, St. Peter and St. Paul, St. James
and St. John. : :
The account of the Christian calendar is thus
brought down to about A.D. 400. For festivals
introduced after that date reference may be made
to the various works on Christian history and
antiquities.
LITERATURE. —(1) General: Duchesne, Ovigines du culte
chrétien (Eng. tr. from third ed. entitled Christian Worship,
its Origin and Evolution); Bp. J. Wordsworth, Ministry of
Grace. —(2) Calendars: Achelis, Die Martyrologien, 1900 ;
Dom Butler, notice of Achelis’ book in Journ. of Theol.
Studies, ii. 147; and Duchesne and Wordsworth as above.—
(3) On the Lord’s day: Zahn, Skizzen aws dem Leben der Alten
Kirche, 1894, ch. vi.; Hessey, Bampton Lectures, 1860; Tre-
velyan, Sunday, 1902.—(4) Christmas: Salmon, paper on
Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel in Hermathena, vol. iii.
Dublin, 1893; and Duchesne and Wordsworth as above.—
(5) The Quartodeciman Controversy: Salmon, Jntroduction
to NT, Lect. xv.; McGiffert’s note on Eusebius, HE vy. 22,
in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers ; Schaff, Church History, ii.
209 f.; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, i. 298 ff. (2nd Eng. ed.);
Schurer, ‘ Die Paschastreitigkeiten’ in Zettscrift fiir hist. Theol.
1870, p. 182 ff.—(6) Paschal Cycles: Hefele, Conciliena. i. 317 ff.;
Salmon, article in Smith-Wace, Dict. Chr. Biog. on ‘ Hippolytus.’
A. J. MACLEAN.
CALF.—See ANIMALS, p. 63”.
CALL, CALLING.—
1, Terms.
(a) OT.
(Ὁ) Gospels.
(c) Epistles.
2. Secular calling.
3. Spiritual calling.
(a) Our Lord’s Messianic vocation.
(4) The Apostolic calling.
(c) Other calls to service.
(d) The Gospel call in Christ's own teaching.
Literature.
1. THE TERMS.—(q) The OT.—The substantive
call” is not found in the English Bible. If used of
an animal’s call, it tends to imply a significant
note—e.g. a mother’s call to her brood (Bunyan,
PP ii. 62)—not a mere emotional cry. The English
verb ‘call’ has for its primary meaning ‘to speak
loudly.’ In Hebrew we note the same implication
In ΝῊ, 6... Pr 8!; but in Hebrew the word still
more strongly suggests articulate human speech,
even perhaps in Ps 147° (although the partridge
probably derives its name 7p from its calling).
It is indeed the technical word for reading (e.g. Is
Ogle). Ῥ
“: and prayed aloud.
: the Hebrews read aloud
Bi suspected Hannah (1S 113) not because her lips
moved In private prayer—rather because in the
intensity and modesty of her desire she prayed
Without sound. Loudness may express authority ;
or if may be a simple effort to attract notice.
\ny Way, a ‘call,’ Hebrew or English, is a loud
and definite communication from one person to
another Kither lancuace may use the verb in-
transitively, but always with a sort of latent
transitiveness, In Greek, on the other hand
καλέω 15 transitive. What is implied in the other
languages is explicit in this one.
* receives
calling is by nam We
not to contuse this with the mere
though, accordine
80 much power is
Definiteness
reinforcement
\ are probably
giving of a name:
to the ideas of the ancient world,
Wrapped up in names that there
(and p rhaps
| autho itv)
When thi ;
CALL, CALLING
may be a certain infiltration of that thought in
the Biblical usage of calling by name. But, more
simply, one’s name arrests one’s attention, and
assures one that the call is addressed to him. In
Deutero-Isaiah it is said that Jehovah has a name
for every star (Is 4056 [we need not discuss whether
the stars are here conceived as alive], imitated in
Ps 147). That signifies His power; it is rather
His condescension that is shown when He calls
the prophetic servant, Israel, by name (Is 43}).
Again, He calls Cyrus ‘by name’ to his historic
functions (Is 4585: +4, cf. also Ex 31° [P]). If our
text is to be trusted, Jehovah even ‘surnames’
Cyrus (Is 454). It is a mark of kindliness when a
servant is not simply ‘waiter’ or ‘guard’ to his
rich employer, but has a name and a recognized
personality of his own. (Here ef. Ex 331"). To
‘surname,’ at least in the strict sense, is a still
stronger proof of friendly interest ; surnames are
a token of some new destiny, or else imp]
knowledge of idiosyncrasies. (Acc. to P, ἀπο ἂν
renames ‘Abram’ and ‘Sarai,’ Gn 175: 15, while
Moses renames ‘ Hoshea,’ Nu 1810, ef. also the
surnames given by our Lord to the three leading
Apostles, Mk 31% ?7). It is also in Deutero-Isaiah
that we find the emergence of ‘call’ in a sort of
theological sense; the ‘call’ of Abraham (51? ‘I
called him’).
Another important section of the OT for our
terminology is the ‘Praise of Wisdom,’ Pr 1-9.
Several things are noticeable here; the loud call
—Divine Wisdom as a street preacher (81, cf. 1°°) ;
the solemn religious conception of the call rejected
(174); the call as an invitation to a feast (ch. 9).
This last usage (‘call’=‘ invite’), while obsolete
in modern English, is found in its literal sense
both in OT and NT of our version; 6.5. 1 K 1°, Jn
2? AV).
Still another group of OT passages may seem
to require notice—those describing the ‘call’ of
various prophets. The term is not so used in OT
(unless Is51*?—see above—Abraham isa ‘ prophet’
in Gn 207 [E]). But there is a passage which would
lend itself excellently to this interpretation—the
tale of the call of the young Samuel, where we
have three interesting parallel usages: Jehovah
‘called ἐο Samuel’ (1S 3 literally), ‘cadded Samuel’
(v.8), ‘called . . . Samuel, Samuel’ (v.?°).
There are therefore several usages of the word
‘to call’ in OT which we ought to keep in mind
as we approach the Gospels. It means command,
or it means invitation. It means a summons to
special function, or it means (along with that) a
peculiar mark of gracious condescension.
(ὁ) In the Gospels, the verb may occur in the
literal sense (Mt 208). But in general a compound
form is preferred for such sense; e.g. when Jesus
calls (προσκαλεσάμενος) His disciples near Him for a
short talk (Mk 10”). We have the simple form in
one important passage when James and John are
‘called’? (Mk 12° |) Mt 4?! ἐκάλεσεν), though the
compound (προσκαλεῖται) is found in Mark’s record
of the selection of the Twelve (3°), while in the
pouetel in Luke (6) προσεφώνησεν is employed.
t might be argued that, even here, the mere word
‘called’ means no more than ‘called to Himself.’
Still, in view of OT antecedents, that is question-
able. Anyway, as a matter of fact, those ‘calls’
were commands and invitations, to ‘leave all’
(Mk 1035) and follow Jesus—to take up solemn
functions in His service. When compounds of
καλέω are used, or when φωνέω is used, we need not
suspect deep religious or theological significance in
the word. Yet here again the fact has to be dealt
with. Jesus may simply ‘call to’ (φωνεῖν) Barti-
meus (M k 10%) ; but the result of the conversation
(and miracle) is that he who had been blind ‘fol-
In two other
lows Jesus in the way’ (10°),
CALL, CALLING
assages the group of meanings associated with
Pr 1-9—privilege rather than authority ; invita-
tion, rather than command—come to the front:
‘I came not to call (καλέσαι) the righteous, but
sinners’ (Mk 2”, Mt 918; Lk 5* adds ‘to repent-
ance’), and ‘many are called (κλητοί), but few
chosen’ (Mt 22; in 2016 these words are rightly
dropped by RV as not belonging to the original
text).
(6) Though our concern is with the Gospels, we
cannot refuse to consult the Epistles for the light
they may throw on Gospel usage. They give us a
cognate substantive; not ‘call’ but ‘calling.’
‘Call’ as a substantive occurs in English much
earlier than our AV, but presumably the purely
physical idea—the audible call—was too strongly
marked in it to allow of its standing for God’s
address to the conscience. ‘Calling,’ which was
preferred, reproduces the form of the Greek sub-
stantive κλῆσις. This term is mainly Pauline (e.g.
1 Co 156), though it extends into Hebrews (3!) and
(at least so far as the verb is concerned) into 1 Peter
(1 271), As moulded by St. Paul, there is no
doubt that the ‘call’ is primarily one to salvation
(Ro 88-8), though it may also signify special
(Apostolic) function (Ro 1'). The Epistle to the
Hebrews preserves the same twofold reference.
All believers ‘partake of a heavenly calling’ (31),
but none may take high honour or office upon
himself except when ‘called’ by God_ thereto
(54). Later in the history of English speech, the
physical implications of the noun ‘call’ having
been in some measure rubbed off, it came into
religious use, so as generally to displace ‘ calling.’
We say the ‘call’ not ‘calling’ of Abraham; but if
Scripture had used a substantive, ‘calling’ would
have been installed by our translators in this
phrase. The NT ‘calling’ is a single definite act
in the past, whether personal conversion [sometimes
acceptance of Inwinely imposed duty] or the historic
mission of Christ. He who ‘called’ us is holy
(1 P 1). In our modern use of ‘ calling,’ some-
thing seems borrowed from the idea of a worldly
calling, viz. habitwalness. Ace. to Murray’s Dic-
tionary, 1 Co 7” introduced—almost by an accident
—the use of ‘calling’ for worldly rank, station,
external surroundings. ‘Hence,’ it adds, ‘ ‘‘ call-
ing” came to be applied to the various means of
bread-winning.’ [ ie exegesis of the verse is dis-
puted, but the view the Dictvonary proceeds on
seems to be right. It is not, of course, pretended
that ‘calling’ in 1 Co 7° means exactly trade or
profession. St. Paul would never make it matter
of conscience that a Christian should refrain from
changing his trade]. Both these senses—viz. (1)
station, and (2) trade—are often (unwarrantably,
the Dictionary seems to think, as far as ety-
mology goes) regarded as Divine vocations. This is
surely obscure. If 1 Co 7” taught so little, can we
hold it responsible for a twofold set of meanings?
May not professional ‘ calling’ rather mean, in the
first instance, ‘what I am called ’—William [the]
Smith, John [the] Tailor? a still humbler etymo-
logy. However that may be, the idea of Divine
vocation in daily concerns could not be ruled out
from Christian thought. Thus inevitably Chris-
tians have been led to formulate the idea of a
lifelong Divine vocation, covering all externals,
but centring in the heart. It may be repeated
that ‘calling’ (the substantive) is not found in the
Gospels ; of course the word is not found anywhere
in the EV in the sense of ‘ trade.’
2. SECULAR CALLING.—It is unnecessary to pass
under review the oceupations followed by our Lord
in youth and by His postles. See artt. TRADES,
CARPENTER, FISHING, etc.
3. SPIRITUAL CALLING.—(a) Our Lord Himself,
who calls all others, was ‘called of God’ (He δ᾽) to
CALL, CALLING 265
-
the Messiahship. It is an irrelevant sentimentality
that dwells too much on the ‘carpenter of Naza-
reth.’ Jesus was full of the consciousness of His
calling, its requirements, its limitations. Not to
cite the Fourth Gospel—abundant signs of this,
but in the usual golden haze blurring all sharp
outlines—we have Mk 1°8(?) 9217 104, Mt 5!” 1574
etc. ete. It is one of the services of Ritschl to
recent theology—with anticipations in von Hof-
mann—that he has made prominent the thought of
Christ’s vocation, displacing the less worthy and
less ethical category of Christ’s merit. In the
Gospels this vocation is expressed by the word
‘sent’ or I ‘came’ (as above; or ‘him that sent me,’
Jn 451 ete.), not by ‘call.’ If there is any one
point in our Lord’s life where it may be held that
the ‘call’ definitely reached Him,—where He
became conscious of Messiahship,—we must seek
it at His baptism (Mk 1%!!; three parallels).
(4) In dealing with the call addressed by Christ
to His disciples, we begin with the Apostles.
Taking the different Gospels together, we seem to
recognize three stages. (1) According to St. John,
Christ’s first disciples were Galileans who, like
Himself, had visited the Jordan in order to be
baptized by John: Andrew, John, Simon Peter,
Philip, Nathanael (presumably = Bartholomew ;
see art. BARTHOLOMEW, above), and presumably
James the brother of John (Jn 1555), The only
one mentioned as called with a ‘follow me’ is
Philip (1%) ; and it is possible that this is rather
an invitation to follow on the journey to Galilee
than through life (and death). For the rest, we
have acquaintanceships and attachments appa-
rently forming themselves—elective affinities dis-
played, rather than the Master’s will exercised ad
hoc; but the result, according to St. John, is
the formation of a small yet definite circle, who
are disciples (25: 15. 17 ete. etc.) of Jesus now, as
others are (and as they themselves previously were)
of John the Baptist. (2) The Synoptists tell us of
the call in Galilee (‘Come ye after me,’ Mk 1'7||
Mt 4” ; «He called them,’ Mk 1°°|| Mt 42") of Peter,
Andrew, James, John. The first two are called
with a sort of pleasantry ; they are to be ‘fishers
of men,’ in allusion to their former occupation.
St. Luke has the same narrative (51:1) in a more
picturesque form ; the borrowing of Peter’s boat,
in order to teach from it as a pulpit; payment
after sermon in the form of a miraculous draught
of fishes; Peter’s fear as a sinner at the near
presence of the supernatural; the same kindly
bon mot; all four fishermen [? v.7] on the spot;
all four becoming disciples. Here the call (see
art. DISCIPLE below) involves leaving everything
to follow Christ (Lk 5", Mk 1078 ef. 118:.:20. Mt 1927
cf. 47-2), Previous acquaintance with these men
may have induced Jesus to begin His teaching
by the Sea of Galilee [an ‘undesigned coinci-
dence’ ?]. Other members of the disciple circle in
Galilee must have been added one by one ; some by
elective affinity! Not all volunteers might be re-
pelled like the scribe of Mt 819} Lk 9°. Matthew
the publican, however (Mt 9°, Lk 5°”? Levi, Mk
214. Levi the son of Alpheeus), is calied straight
from his place of toll to ‘follow,’ and instantly
obeys ; a memorable incident. (3) The final ‘ call”
in this series appears when Jesus ‘calls to him
whom he himself will,’ and ‘appoints twelve, that
they may be with him, and that he may send them
forth to preach and . . . cast out devils’ (Mk 3%
ete. ; so too, though less clearly, Lk 618; not in
Mt.; 10! ‘his twelve disciples,’ v.? ‘the twelve
apostles’). (4) Or, if there is another stage still,
it is marked when they are ‘sent out’ for the first .
time (Mt 10°, Mk 6’, Lk 91), or when in conse-
quence of this the name ‘apostles’ (see art.
APOSTLE) is attached to them. Thus, in the case
3
200 CALL, CALLING
of at least twelve men, the call has issued in a
very definite calling; permanent, and in a sense
official. i j
(c) Another group possesses a varied interest.
It includes volunteers ; it relates ‘calls’ to service
addressed to those who were not destined to be
Apostles ; it otters examples of the call rejected.
There are four cases; the rich young ruler (Mk
10" ete. and parallels), and a group of three found
together (Lk 9°7-®*; partial parallel Mt 815-23. The
scribe (see Mt.) who volunteers means, or professes
to mean, discipleship in the intenser sense. He will
follow ‘wherever the Master goes’; he will ‘leave
all,’ like the Twelve ; the stumbling-block of pro-
perty, which was too much for the young ruler,
is no stumbling-block to him. This volunteer
meets not with welcome but rebuff; and, so far as
we know, there is an end of jis gospel service.
Again, the man whose father is just dead—that
seems the inexorable sense of the words—is needed
immediately as a herald of the ‘kingdom of God’
(so Luke). And the other volunteer, who, with
less urgency (so far as we are told) is anxious
‘first’ to bid farewell to his home eirele, is ‘ look-
ing back’ trom the plough. St. Luke seems well
justified in making these narratives introduce a
wider mission (that of the ‘Seventy’). And here
we get important light on the demand that the
rich young ruler should give away his property.
This may have seemed to our Lord’s discernment
necessary for the man’s own safety—does not the
sequel point in that direction? But, even inde-
pendently of that, though a Christian might be a
man of means (see below), a wandering preacher
could hardly be. These were calls to service, which
met, temporarily or finally, with tragic refusal.
Whatever else the refusal may have implied is
God’s secret.
(d) So far we have dealt chiefly with authority ;
when we consider the few cases in the Gospels
where the call is generalized—‘not the righteous
but sinners’ (Mk 2!" || Mt 913 || Lk 5%) ; ¢ many called,
few chosen’ (Mt 224)—invitation comes to the
front. The parable depicting the Kingdom of God
as a feast (Mt 2224, ik 14161.) while, of course, a
parable and not to be pressed too far, emphasizes
this. Its language recalls Pr 9. And it has been
remarked that the well-known lovely “ gospel
Invitation" (Mt 11°88°) strongly suggests Divine
Wisdom speaking. More questionable is the idea
started by Bruce in the Expos. Gk. Test. that Jesus
literally invited outcasts to a free meal at a public
hall in the name of Levi (Matthew)—a sort of
Free Breakfast or Midnight Supper. On the other
hand, the very earliest form of the general call is
pure authority ; ‘Repent’ (Mt 427, Mk 115).
_In all these cases, language itself helps us to
vindicate the great truth, that the call of Christ
is not merely a call to some external form of
service under rapidly vanishing conditions, but a
addressed to heart and conscience; in other
meds; that ( hristianity is essentially a religion,
itse, this truth becomes clearer in the Epistles,
ΜΒ Fourth Gospel, than in the earlier and
reflective Gospels; but, in regard to our
if as bse Ἀν hig the teaching of Christ
traces the plain outlines within which
call
or in
‘calling,’
Himes
His \postles afterwards work, Perhaps we ought
to note here difference at least in language
betwe n Christ and St. Paul. Tio the latter, the |
ar ire €0 ipso the ‘elect’ or * predestinated ’
(Ro 8 ; to Christ, ‘ calling (inviting) comes
first Mt 22"), and selection follows ; ‘after trial? as
it = been expressed. Our Lord’s words, therefore,
Γ ' ᾿ at x “ > 3
mag esate lun calling as a calling to service and |
‘ hough we ars ] j -
: gt are adr > :
friendship and lov. dmitted to His
sured.
to His language in the Fourth Gospel, one
nll Is not as
‘civen’
| was forbidden to the Jew (Lv 114, Dt 147).
According
CAMEL, CAMEL’S HAIR
to Christ may ‘perish’ (Jn 1712. The ‘unfruit-
ful’ branch is ‘ taken away,’ ‘cast forth,’ ‘ burned’
(Jn 15°), All must stand before His judgment-
seat ; a thought which the parables spoken in view
of separation, parables addressed to His own, parti-
cularly emphasize (Mt 25; some parallels). All
must ‘take up the cross’ and ‘follow Christ’ to
the uttermost (Mk 8* ete. ete.). The last com-
mand addressed to a friend by Christ, like the
first, is ‘follow me’ (Jn 2119: »).
The question has been raised whether Jesus’
call did not imply a sort of fanaticism based on a
mistaken expectation of the near end of the world.
This is at least suggested by the purely eschato-
logical view of the Kingdom of God (see art. KING-
DOM OF GOD, below) in the Gospels, as taught by
Bousset, J. Weiss, and others. [Lf the imputation
of fanaticism were historically warranted, all
Christians must have been required to live in a
fashion possible only to the first few; the call to
repent must have been swallowed up in the call to
share the Master's wandering life; our ‘high
calling’ (Ph 34), as declared by Christ, must have
been deeply tinged with delusion. It is enough to
point in reply to women friends of Jesus; to homes
whose hospitality He consented to share ; to a con-
vert under exceptional circumstances not called
nor even permitted to be with Christ, but sent
home to be a witness there (Mk 5!9 || Lk 839), The
grain of truth in this heap of error has been indi-
cated above. Our Christian calling is not merely
to salvation, it is to service. One may add, that
the principles of the Master’s own teaching are
likely to reveal lessons of severity for the Chris-
tian conscience which have been neglected in the
past—to the great loss of both Church and world.
LITERATURE.—See further, for (a), the present writer’s Christ
and the Jewish Law; A. Ritschl, Justification and Reconcilia-
tion, vol. iii. (translation) p. 445; Baldensperger, Selbstbe-
wusstsein Jesu, 1888 [2nd ed. 1892, 3rd ed. with altered title in
progress] ; artt. by present writer on ‘Dawn of Messianic Self-
consciousness’ in Hapos. Times, 1905 , a different view, Forrest’s
Christ of History and of Experience, 1897, p. 93 ff. For (b) see
Bruce, Training of the Twelve; Latham, Pastor Pastorwi;
for (6) and (1) compare Ecce Homo, ch. 6, ‘Christ’s Winnowing
Fan’ (characteristically dwelling rather on the ioral aspects of
the Divine message]; also Bruce’s treatment of Mt 9913 and
parallels [notes on all three should be read in Hapos. Gr. Testa-
ment}. The last paragraph of the above article refers to dis-
cussions begun by J. Weiss, Die Predigt Jes: vom Reiche
Gottes, 1892; Bousset, Jesu Prediat in ihrem Gegensatz zum
Judentum, 1892; cf. also especially J. Weiss, Die Nachfolge
Christi und die Predigt der Gegenwart, 1895; good reply in
Harnack’s Wesen des Christenthums, 1900 (translation, ‘ What
is Christianity ?’); interesting reference to such views and to
later developments in Lewis Muirhead’s Bruce Lecture on ‘ The
Eschatology of Jesus,’ 1903.
Robert MACKINTOSH.
CALYARY.—See GOLGOTHA.
CAMEL, CAMEL’S HAIR.— The camel is by
far the most useful of all animals in the East.
There are two kinds of camels—the Turkish or
Bactrian camel and the dromedary. The first is
larger, has a double hump, and is capable of sus-
taining greater burdens; the latter is swifter, has
a single hump, and is far less affeeted by extreme
heat. The camel has been domesticated from
time immemorial; it is now at least nowhere
found in its aboriginal wild state, and nature has
adapted it to its specific environment. Its nostrils
are close and flat, to exclude the dust of the
desert ; its feet are heavily padded, and its an-
atomy shows provision for the enduring of great
privation. It mocks hunger and thirst alike; it
can go without water from sixteen to forty days.
The camel forms the staple wealth of the Arab
of the desert, who utilizes every part of the animal,
even to the dung, which is used as fuel. Its flesh
Tts
milk is extremely nutritious, and on fermentation
becomes an intoxicant. A thick mat of fine hair
CANA
CANAANITISH
267
protects the animal against the extremes alike of
heat and cold.
The camel is mentioned three times in the
Gospels, on two occasions as a synonym for size
or bulkiness; Mt 102: (=Mk 10“, Lk 18%), ‘It
is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye,
than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom
of God’; and 23% ‘ Ye blind guides, which strain
out the gnat, and swallow the camel.’ In the
former of these passages two attempts have been
made to evade the Oriental hyperbole, firstly, by
reading κάμιλος, ‘a rope,’ for κάμηλος ; and, again,
by explaining the ‘eye of the needle’ as the
small door for foot-passengers which is generally
made in the frame of the large entrance-door of
an Eastern house. The expression ‘eye of the
needle,’ however, is only the English equivalent
of the Greek words denoting a ‘hole.’ The eye of
a needle stands for something narrow and hard to
pass, as in the Egyptian proverb, ‘Straiter than
the eye of a needle’ (Burckhardt, 396). A similar
proverb is given by Freytag (ii. p. 19), ‘ Narrower
than the shadow of a lance and than the hole of a
needle.’ And in the Koran we have (vii. 38), ‘As
for those who declare our signs to be lies, and who
scorn them, the doors of heaven will not be open
to them, nor will they enter Paradise, until a
camel shall penetrate into the eye of a needle’—
that is, never.
In the second of the two passages above, the
camel is contrasted with the gnat, ‘Ye blind
guides, which strain out a gnat, and drink down
a camel.’ The gnat stands for an emblem of
smallness in the Koran (ii. 24, ‘God is not
ashamed to strike a proverb out of a gnat’). In
Arabic the elephant rather than the camel is
chosen to designate hugeness, as in the song of
Kaab ibn Zuheir—
‘If there stood in the place which I stand in an elephant,
Hearing and seeing what I see and hear,
His shoulder muscles with dread would be twitching’ ;
and the camel is an emblem of patience and silent
endurance, and goes by the name of ‘ the father of
Job.’ The elephant must have been a not un-
familiar object in Palestine in the first century,
but would naturally be thought of in connexion
with Hellenism and idolatry.
Camel's hair or wool, as it is called, is woven by
the Arabs into tent-covers, and also into rough
outer garments for the peasantry. In Israel this
coarse mantle was the badge of the prophet (Zee
134 ‘The prophets shall be ashamed each one of
his vision, when he prophesieth ; and they will no
more wear a hairy garment in order to deceive’) ;
and in 2K 15. Elijah is described as being an
“owner of hair’ (3yv 5y3, that is, wearing this
garment of the prophets; AV, ‘an hairy man’),
and girt with leather. As the successor οἱ Elijah
and of the prophets, John the Baptist adopted the
same dress (Mt 34, Mk 1%). It is generally sup-
posed that the Oriental mystic or sufi is so named
from his dress of wool (suf) ; cf. Rev 11°.
T. H. Weir and HENrRy E. DOSKER.
CANA (Kava τῆς Γαλιλαίας) is mentioned four
times in the Fourth Gospel. It was the scene of
our Lord’s first miracle (Jn 2!:"); the place to
which ‘a certain king’s officer (βασιλικός), Whose son
was sick at Capernaum,’ came to find Jesus (448) ;
and the native place of the disciple Nathanael
(212). After the miracle, Jesus ‘went down’
(κατέβη) to Capernaum ; and the king’s officer be-
sought him to ‘come down’ (καταβῇ) to heal his
son. Those references place Cana of Galilee on
higher ground than Capernaum. There is no
other direct evidence as to its position,
Josephus states (Vita, 16) that he resided for a
time ‘in a village of Galilee which is named Cana.’
From this village he made a descent during the
night upon Tiberias (17). Later (41) he speaks of
residing in the great plain, the name of which
was Asochis. If these residences are one and the
same place, the Cana of Josephus may well be
Khirbet Kana or Kanat el-Jelil, on the N. slopes
of the plain of Buttauf, and about 8 miles N. of
Nazareth. This, however, would not decide the
site of St. John’s Cana. [The Kava of Ant. xv. v. 1
should be, according to BJ 1. xix. 1, Kavaéa].
Etymology and tradition are divided between
the above mentioned site on the plain of Buttauf
and Kefr Kennd, a hamlet on the direct road to
the lake, and about 34 miles N.E. of Nazareth,
where there is a fine spring. Etymology certainly
favours Khirbet Kana, the doubling of the medial
‘nun’ being against Kefr Kenna. Tradition is
indecisive. The references in Placentinus (/fin. 4),
Phocas, John of |Wiirzburg, Quaresmius (£/uci-
dationes, ii. 852f.), ete., favour Kefr Kenna, where
the monks of the Greek and Latin Churches have
considerable ecclesiastical properties. On the
other hand, the notices of Theodosius (A.D. 530),
Saewulf, Brocardus, Fetellus, Marinus Sanutus
(p. 253), and others, suit the northern site.
In later times, Robinson (BRP? ii. 348 f., ili. 108)
supports the claims of Ahirbet Kana, and is fol-
lowed by Ritter, Thomson, Ewald, Socin, Keim,
and others. Eusebius and Jerome (Onom. s.v.
Kava) identify Cana with Kanah* in Asher (Jos
19°85), This could not be Kefr Kenna, which is not
in Asher, but might be Ahirbet Kana (Encye.
Bibl. i. 638). Other recent writers contend tor
Kefr Kenna, among whom are Guerin, de Sauley,
Porter, Tristram, ete. The balance of evidence is
perhaps on the side of the northern site (Hastings’
DB i. 346”). Conder (PEF Mem. i. 288) suggests
as a possible site a spot nearer to Nazareth than
Kefr Kenna, called ‘Ain Kanda, and not far from
Reineh. Dr. Sanday appears to support this, and
claims Guthe as agreeing (Sacred Sites, 24n.).
LITERATURE. — Hastings’ DB i. 346; Encyc. Bibl. i. 637;
Robinson, BRP? ii. 348 f., iii. 108; Conder, PEF Mein. i. 288 ;
Stanley, SP 368 ; Guérin, Gadilée, i. 175 ff. ; Thomson, Land and
Book, 420 ἢ. ; Tristram, Land of Israel, 455 ; Socin, Pal. 358, 367 ;
Murray, Pal. 366; Buhl, GAP 219f.; Ewald, Gesch. vi. 180n. ;
Keim, Jesus of Nazara, iv. 116n.; Ritter, Comp. Geogr. iv.
378 ἢ, A. W. ΟΟΟΚΕ.
CANAANITE.—See CANANZAN.
CANAANITISH.—The RV rendering of Xavavaia
(AV ‘of Canaan’) in Mt 15” (only here in NT).
The word is used to describe the woman who
came out of the borders of Tyre and Sidon, desiring
to have her daughter healed who was grievously
vexed with a devil. St. Mark (7325) calls her a
Greek (Βλληνίς), a Syro-pheenician (Συροφοινίκισσα) by
race. A Canaanite, signifying properly ‘dweller
in the lowland,’ is used in a wider or a narrower
meaning in the OT, Canaan being a name applied
either to the strip of seacoast from Gaza to Sidon,
or, more loosely, to the whole possession of Israel,
or that part which lay west of Jordan (Gn 10%;
ef. Jos 51, Nu 13%, Gn 11*!). The LXX renders
Canaanite (3732) indifferently by Φοίνιξ and Xavay-
aios (Ex 64, Jos 5!, Nu 13°: @%), Jo 15%, while in
Ex 16” and Jos 5” we find jy32 yas tr. by μέρος τῆς
Φοινίκης and χώρα τῶν Φοινίκων. These coast in-
habitants being the great traders of the old world,
‘Canaanite’ or ‘ Phoenician’ was often used simply
to mean ‘a merchant’ (Is 298 [LXX ἔμποροι), and
cf. Hos 12’, Zeph 1).
The woman who came to our Lord was a
‘Canaanite’ in the sense that she belonged to
the stock of the old Pheenicians of Syria termed
‘Syro-pheenician’ to distinguish them from those
of Africa. These were heathen, and between them
* This Kanah is prohably the modern village of Kana, 7 miles
S.E. of Tyre (Encye. Bibl. ii. 2652 ; Hastings’ DB ii, 831).
268 CANANAAN
CANDLESTICK
and the Jews existed the bitterest hostility ; see
Jos. ὁ. Apion. i. 13 (who mentions the Pheenicians,
especially of ae with the Egyptians as_ bearing
the greatest ill-will towards the Jews). This fact
makes instructive a comparison between our Lord’s
treatment of this woman and His dealing with the
woman of Samaria; ef. especially Jn 4° with Mt
15%. The Clementines (Bonn. ii. 19, 11]. 73) men-
tion her by the name of Justa, and maintain that
the Lord first won her from heathendom, and after
that was able to heal her daughter, whose name 15
given as Bernice.*
LITERATURE.—The Commentaries on the Gospels, esp. Swete
on Mk 726; the articles in Hastings’ DB and the Encyc. Bidl.;
Trench, Miracles, ad loc.; Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus
the Messiah, ii. 37ff.; Expos. Times, iv. [1892] p. 80ff.; W.
Archer Butler, Serm. i. 155ff.; Lynch, Serm, to my Curates,
p. 317ff. ; Ker, Serm., 2nd ser. p. 200 Εἰ. ; Bruce, Galilean Gospel,
p. 154 ff. J. Β. Bristow.
CANANAZAN.—‘ Cananean’ (RV, following the
reading Kavavaios adopted by Lachmann, Tischen-
dorf, Tregelles, WH, and modern scholars gener-
ally) or Canaanite (AV, following the TR reading
Kavavirns) isa description applied by St. Matthew
(10) and St. Mark (93:8) in their lists of the
Twelve to the second of the two Apostolic Simons,
who is thus distinguished from Simon Peter.
There can be no doubt that ‘Canaanite,’ which
means an inhabitant of Canaan, is a false render-
ing. The Gr. for Canaan is Χαναάν (Ac 7" 131),
and for Canaanite, Χαναναῖος (Mt 15°") not Kavavirys.
Transliterating the Kavavirns of the TR, the AV
should have spelled the word ‘Cananite,’ as indeed
was done in the Geneva Version, and in some edi-
tions of the AV, though not in that of 1611. But
it is practically certain that Kavavatos (which in
the text of Mk. especially is very strongly sup-
vorted, e.g. by NBCDLA) is the correct reading.
fhe word seems to be a construction from the
plural form s73y3p of the late Heb. jx3p, correspond-
ing to the Biblical δ}, ‘jealous’ (see Schiirer,
HJP, τ. ii. 801. ; and note that the noun ΣΝ,
which in the Heb. text of the OT is used in the
sense of ‘zeal’ as well as of ‘jealousy,’ is sometimes
rendered in the LXX by ζῆλος [Is 9° 9011}. This is
borne out by the fact that St. Luke, on the two
occasions on which he gives a list of the Apostles
(Lk 6%, Ac 1%), employs ὁ Ζηλωτής, instead of
ὁ Kavavaios, to describe Simon—which seems to
show that the two epithets are synonymous.
Jerome, who in the Vulg. Pacis the form
“Cananeus,’ in his Com. in Matt. interprets it ‘de
vico Chana Galilee’; and he has been followed
by many scholars in modern times, who have
taken the name to be a corruption of Kavaios, and
to mean ‘a man of Cana,’ probably Cana in
Galilee. This view, however, now obtains little
support, though Cheyne (Zneyc. Bibl. ii. col. 2624,
lv. col. 4535) appears to favour it. Meyer (Com.
on Matt., inloc.), while holding that the form of
the word makes the derivation from Cana impos-
sible, maintains that it is nevertheless ‘derived
from the name of some place or other’; and
would explain its use in Mt. and Mk. from the
fact that Simon, as a quondam zealot, ‘bore the
SUPHAME YN8IP, ζηλωτής, A name which was correctly
interpreted by Luke; but, according to another
tradition, was erroneously derived from the name
97 α place, “and accordingly came to be rendered
‘ 73 τῷ IN τὸ τς Pay Srp σαν seems need-
that ὦ he form ἘΣ LV ee i pest, oe τὸ ΟΝ
: ς αναναίος must be derived trom the
name of a place. The termination -afos is common
a πο Gres ized ren lering of names of sects (e.g.
ἀρισαῖος douxatos, ᾿Εσσαῖος ; see Grimm-Thayer,
" Nevavesor is to be distinguished fr τ K
(Mt 104), which means a Zealot
Apostle Simon. See Canana AN,
γ ὦ
«νανίτης, TR Καναναῖος
and is the designation of the |
| Lexicon, s.v. Kavavaios). And Kavavaios from 1383p
is as natural as Φαρισαῖος from xiv, stat. enphat.
of Aramaic j¥19 for Heb. owns (see Schiirer, HJP
II. ii. 19). J. C. LAMBERT.
CANDLE.—Candles were not much in use in an
oil-bearing country like Palestine, and are not
referred to in the Bible. But the word occurs
in the AV 8 times as the translation of λύχνος
(‘lamp’); and λυχνία (‘lampstand’) is always trans-
lated ‘candlestick.’ [On the other hand, λαμπάς,
which is generally translated by its derivative
‘lamp,’ should be rendered either ‘torch’ or ‘lan-
tern’; for it generally refers to a lamp which
could be earried out of doors (Mt 25'-, Jn 18%, and
even Ac 208, where the λαμπάδες ixavai may have
been torches that had been brought in by those
who had assembled by night), thus corresponding
to Heb. 7°55].
The λύχνος (Heb. 13, 13, the latter used only in a
figurative sense) was, as a rule, an earthenware
vessel, like a tiny flat teapot, with a flaxen wick
(Mt 12°) in the spout, and supplied with oil
(mostly from olives, but also from sesame, nuts,
radishes, or fish), through a hole in the centre,
from an ἀγγεῖον (Mt 25+) or other vessel. It could
either be carried about (Lk 158) cr set on a stand
(Mk 451: ete.) For illustrations of lamps see
Hastings’ DB, vol. iii. p. 34.
In the teaching of the Son of Man the illumi-
nating sign of God’s presence in the world is
human example and personal witness, as, ¢.g., in
the ministry of John the Baptist (Jn 5%). The
Christian lite is to be one that lightens and kindles
others (Mk 4?!), and points men to the ‘ Father of
lights’ (Mt 5"). It must, therefore, first be itself
lit. That is the key to the difficult passage in Mt
Gt, Lk 11% Light may be everywhere, yet it is
of no use unless received by the eye, which is the
lamp of the body. Sin makes a man see dimly or
double, and must be renounced with an undivided
mind if the life is to be illumined with Divine truth
and love (Hapos., 2nd ser. i. [1881] 252 ff. ; cf. 180 ff.,
372 ff).
But one other important quality Christ illus-
trated by the use of the lamp, viz. watchfulness.
It was the custom in private houses, as well as in
the temple, to keep lamps burning through the
night (Pr 9118), So, in view of the subtlety and
suddenness of temptation and trial, the disciple
must have his loins girded and his lamp lit (Lk
12). The parable of the Ten Virgins with their
λαμπάδες teaches a similar lesson. Of Christ as the
Lamb it is said that He is Himself the lamp (λύχνος)
of the Holy City (Rev 21”).
A. NORMAN ROWLAND.
CANDLESTICK.—In RV of the Gospels this word
is without exception correctly changed into ‘stand,’
λυχνία being the stand which held the little oil-
fed lamp. It might mean anything from a laxuri-
ous candelabrum, generally of wood covered with
metal, to a bit of stonework projecting from a
cottage wall. It was to the lampstand in lowly
domestic use (cf. 2 K 410) that Christ referred in
Mk 4°! as being necessary to complete the value
of the lamp for those in the house (Mt 5!) and
those who enter it (Lk 816 113%), And the lesson is
that if we have received a truth or a joy through
Christ, who is the Light of the World, it is com-
mon sense and common justice not to hide it in
fear or selfishness, but to use it as a means of
illustrating our Father God and illumining those
around us (Mt 51°), Practical illustrations of this
parable are found in Mk 51-20, Mt 102782, Lk 1024
1778 (cf. Lk 15% 2 32),
LITERATURE. —Maclaren, God of the Amen, p. 292; Expositor,
252 ff., 372 ff., 6th ser. 271 ff.
A. NORMAN ROWLAND.
2nd ser. i. [1881] pp. 180 ff.,
CAPERNAUM
CAPERNAUM.—
1, The name.
2. Description of the localities.
3. Identitication.
4. Capernaum and Bethsaida.
5. References in NT.
6. History.
i Literature.
The question as to the position of Capernaum is
of great importance for the Gospel story. It is
the pivot on which hinges the determination of
the scene of the greater part of our Lord’s active
ministry. The three places, Capernaum, Chorazin,
and Bethsaida, must all be taken together, and
they must in any case be not far from the Plain of
Gennesaret. This plain is undoubtedly the modern
el-Ghuweir (1.6. ‘the little Ghér’ or ‘hollow’);
there is also no doubt that Chorazin is the modern
Kerdzeh. The present article is written in the
belief that Capernaum is Tell Haim (which is the
view of the majority of scholars), and that Beth-
saida was the port (now called e/-Araj), on the
Lake, of Bethsaida Julias (et¢-7e//).
1. The Name.—The correct form of the name is
undoubtedly Καφαρναούμ. This is found in all the
oldest authorities to the end of the 4th cent. (Evv.
codd. opt. ; Verss. antiq. Latt. Syrr. Egypt. Goth.;
Jos. BJ, Onomast. Euseb. Hieron.). The spelling
Καπερναούμ begins to appear in the 5th cent., but
after that date rapidly covered the ground. In
Josephus (Vita, § 72), mention is made of a village
the name of which Niese prints as Κεφαρνωκόν, but
there are many various readings, and the text is
pretty certainly corrupt. The exact relation of
the ancient name to the modern does not work out
very clearly. It is easy to understand how Caphar
(mod. Kefr=‘village’), as a habitation of living
men, might become 7 οἱ in the sense of ‘a heap of
ruins’ (strictly =‘mound,’ but there is no mound
on the site). But there are difficulties in the way
of regarding Him as a contraction for ‘ Nahum’ ;
and some good philologists (Buhl, op. e7t. inf., ef.
Socin, Guthe, 7b.) prefer to regard Yell Hun as a
corruption of Tenhim or Tanhim, which occurs in
Jewish authorities.
2. Description of the localitizs.—The beautiful
Plain of Gennesaret is closed on the north-east by
a spur of the hills which slopes down gradually to
the Lake. In the hollow formed by this, on the
rising ground where the caravan-route begins to
ascend the ridge, is the ruined khin of Khan
Minyeh. On the low ground beneath, and also on
the ridge above, there are a few more inconspicuous
remains ; and between the /Adn and the Lake is
a fountain (‘Ain et-Tin). Rounding the little pro-
montory, on which is a German hospice, we come
to a bay, on the further side of which is a group
ofsprings. One of these is described by Sir Charles
Wilson as ‘by far the largest spring in Galilee,
and estimated to be more than half the size of the
celebrated source of the Jordan at Banias’ (Re-
covery, etc. ii. 348). The waters of this spring
come to the surface with great force, and, after
being collected in a strongly-built reservoir, cae
were carried by an aqueduct, in part cut through
the rock, round the promontory and to the rear of
Khan Minyeh; from thence they were used to
irrigate the plain. The modern name of this
fountain is ‘Ain et-Tdbigha. he ancient name
was ‘Seven Fountains’ (J¢tin. Hizros. ed. Vindob.
p. 198) or Heptapegon (of which e¢-7abigha is an
echo). A full mile and a half, or two Roman
miles farther, are the ruins of Το Him. These
cover a considerable extent of ground, half a mile
in length by a quarter in breadth. The houses
generally were built of blocks of black basalt. A
single public building of larger size (74 ft. 9 in.
x56 ft. 9 in.) was of white limestone.
commonly identified with the synagogue.
This is
CAPERNAUM 269
‘Seen alone there might have been some doubt as to its
character, but compared with the number of ruins of the same
character which have lately been brought to notice in Galilee,
there can be none. Two of those buildings have inscriptions in
Hebrew over their main entrances; one in connexion with a
seven-branched candlestick, the other with figures of the
paschal lamb, and all without exception are constructed after
a fixed plan, which is totally different from that of any church,
temple, or mosque in Palestine’ (Wilson, Lecovery, ete. ii. 344).
Two Roman miles up the course of a stream
which enterst he Lake just beyond Tell Him, are
ruins which bear the name of Kerdzeh ; but between
Tell Hiim and the mouth of the Jordan there are
no more ruins and no special features. Across the
Jordan a little way back from its mouth, is e¢-Tell,
which is now generally held to mark the site of
Bethsaida Julias. This was in ancient times con-
nected by a paved causeway with a cluster of
ruins on the shore of the Lake, now known as
el-Araj.
3. Identification.—It will be seen that there is
really not very much choice. Chorazin is cer-
tainly Aerdzeh, and Bethsaida Julias, built by the
tetrarch Philip, is pretty certainly et-Tel/. The
alternatives for Capernaum are thus practically re-
duced to Khin Minych and Tell Hum. And the
broad presumption must be in favour of the latter,
as Capernaum was no doubt the most important
place at this end of the Lake, and the ruins are
here far more extensive than those at Ahén
Minyeh, as well as demonstrably ancient. The
khan at Khan Minyeh appears to have been built
in the 16th cent. (Sepp, op. cit. inf. p. 165),
though the place name first occurs in the time of
Saladin.
Is this broad presumption overruled by any
decisive consideration? A few minor arguments
have been adduced against it. Capernaum was a
place where tolls were collected (Mk 2™ ||), and it
is thought that this would be more natural on the
main caravan road: but a place of the size of
Tell Him must in any ease have had its tolls, and
there was certainly a road along the north end of
the Lake leading to Bethsaida Julias (Guthe). The
bay of et-7abigha is much frequented by fish, and
the beach is suitable for mooring boats. But there
is little, if any, trace of ruins that are not quite
modern. The ruins about Khdn Minyeh are also
inconsiderable, though further excavation is needed
to bring out their real character.
The point that seemed for a time to outweigh
all the rest turned upon the position of the fountain.
Josephus, who is our earliest and best authority,
expressly says that the Plain of Gennesaret was
watered by the fountain of Capernaum (BJ MI. x 8).
The only fountain to which this statemeut can apply
is that of et-Tdbigha. There are other fountains, but
none of them could be said in any sense to irrigate
the plain as in ancient times this fountain certainly
did. This indication might seem prima facie to
support the claims of Khdn Minyeh. The fountain
is a short mile from this site, and two short
(Roman) miles from Tell Him. But it has to be
remembered that these large villages or towns on
the Sea of Galilee had each its ‘territory.’ Thus
Josephus speaks of the ‘territory’ of Hippos
(Ἱππηνή, BJ ill. iii. 1) ; and the ‘Gerasene’ demoniac
(in Mk 5!” ||) is a case of the same kind—the
swine were not feeding in the town itself but in
its territory. In like manner the fountain was
situated within the territory of Capernaum, whether
it was at Khdn Minych or at Tell Hin.
This leaves room for the natural presumption to
tell in favour of Tell Him. And the identification
is confirmed by the fact that the pilgrim Theo-
dosius (c. 530 A.D.), coming from the West, arrived
at Heptapegon before he came to Capernaum:
this he would have done if it were at Yell Him,
but not if it had been at Ahdn Miny2h (itin.
CAPERNAUM
Hieros. p. 138; οἵ. JThSt v. 44). Other indica-
tions, whether Biblical or derived from the narra-
tives of the pilgrims, are all indecisive.
Just for a time there was a certain swing of the
pendulum (which may be said to have reached its
height in the last decade of the last century) In
favour of Khan Minyeh. But the balance of the
criticism of the last fifty years is pretty clearly
on the side of Tell Him. But absolutely decisive
results can only be obtained, if at all, by thorough
and systematic excavation.
4. Capernaum and Bethsaida.—The two ques-
tions of Capernaum and Bethsaida are so closely
connected, that a word should be added upon the
latter. The only Bethsaida in these parts known
to general history is that of which we have just
spoken as located at et-Tell to the east of the
Jordan. It has often been thought necessary to
postulate a second Bethsaida, which is most com-
monly placed at the bay of ef-7dbigha. The main
reasons for this are two. (a) In Jn 12”, the Beth-
saida of the Gospels is described as ‘ Bethsaida of
Galilee,’ whereas Bethsaida Julias was, strictly
speaking, in Gaulanitis (BJ τι. ix. 1). (6) The phrase
εἰς τὸ πέραν in Mk 6* seems to imply that Bethsaida
was on the opposite side of the Lake to the scene of
the Feeding of the Five Thousand. These reasons
are, however, insuflicient to warrant the invention
of a second Bethsaida so near to the first, and
itself so wholly hypothetical. In the bay of et-
Tibigha there are no ruins to prove its existence.
On the other hand, (a) there is evidence enough to
show that ‘Galilee’ was often loosely used for the
country east of Jordan and of the Lake (BJ τι. xx.
4, Ill. ui. 1; Ant. XVIII. i. 1, 6); and the geo-
grapher Ptolemzus speaks of Bethsaida Julias as
‘in Galilee,’ just as St. John does (Buhl, GAP
p. 242). Political boundaries were so shifting, and
the adjustments of territory in these little princi-
palities were so constantly changed, that a loose
use of terms grew up, and the more familiar names
were apt to displace the less familiar. (6) The
phrase εἰς τὸ πέραν cannot be pressed ; it might be
used of an oblique course from any one point on
the shore of the Lake to any other: Josephus (Vita,
ὃ 59) uses διεπεραιώθην of taking ship from Tiberias
to Taricheze, which are on the same side of the
Lake, and very little farther from each other than
Bethsaida from the scene of the miracle.
5. References in the Gospels.—So far as our Lord
had any fixed headquarters during His Galileean
ininistry, they were in Capernaum. It is called
His ‘own city’ (ἰδία més) in Mt 91. The same
close connexion is implied by the special reproach
addressed to the city in Mt 112 (=Lk 10"). The
public ministry, in the more formal sense, was
rf oes i here by the call of the four leading Apostles
< ); and here, too, were the labours of which
πὸ a a graphie and typical description on the
abbath that followed (Mk 121-54\\), We have re-
peated mention of a particular house to which our
resorted, Which was probably St. Peter’s.
the early part of His ministry He must
hav ag much time here, but during the latter
© This visits can have been only occasional.
Perhaps we should be right in inferring from
{ le presence of the ‘centurion’ (Mt 8°, Lk 77%)
tha 3 τ + Che had a small garrison here.
πηλξτραν ie (us that this centurion, though a
ue, had built the Synagogue of the place. Is
" to ) 8 nguine to believe that this was the very
ening ὕ16 remains of which are still most con-
a 89 , ; 1 ΠΣ ΤΕῚ Ἴνα eres ‘ There appears to be
_ bagi ἴθ ie " thi t they are really the
imilar buildings ¢ ι- wi ‘ae ὲ PL senna es with
age ih γρρε ee sewhere in Galilee brings out
features of the eround plan, and
the presence «
© presence of religious emblems seems to render
| this probable.
CAPERNAUM
The richness of the architecture
(cf. pl. xvii. in the present writer’s Sacred Sites of
the Gospels) may seem to suggest that the ruins
date from the palmy days of Galilean Judaism
(A.D. 140-300), and Schiirer refers them to this
period. But there is one argument that perhaps
points in a different direction. There was a syna-
gogue at Chorazin hardly less elaborate than that
at Capernaum, though with its ornaments cut in
the BeeE basalt, and not in limestone (Wilson,
Recovery, ii. 3, 4, 7). Now, we know that when
Eusebius wrote his Onomasticon, the site of Chor-
azin was already ‘deserted’ (Onomast., ed. Kloster-
mann, p. 174). This desertion is not likely to have
been very recent. And it is perhaps after all more
probable that elaborate building took place at a
time when Galilee had a prince of its own with
architectural ambitions, who must have gathered
around him a number of skilled artificers at
Tiberias. The Herods were all builders; and the
period of their rule was probably that in which
Galilee enjoyed the greatest material prosperity.
6. Later history.—Vrom A.D. 150 onwards the
shores of the Sea of Galilee became a stronehold
of Rabbinical Judaism. ‘The fanaticism of this
district would not tolerate the presence of Chris-
tians; it is expressly stated by Epiphanius (Π ὦ».
xxx. 11; ef. Harnack, Expansion of Christianity,
li. 261) that down to the time of Constantine no
one had ever dared to erect a church either at
Nazareth or Capernaum, or at other places men-
tioned in the neighbourhood. That means that
there must have been a complete break in the
Christian tradition ; so that, when we read later
that a church was built on the supposed site of
Peter’s house, it is not likely that the guess had
any real authority (/tin. Hieros. pp. 112f., 163,
197). Still Capernaum was one of the sacred
places, and from the 4th cent. onwards it was
trequented by Christian pilgrims. Eusebius (and
Jerome after him) mentions the place as on the
Sea of Gennesaret, but throws no further light
upon it beyond fixing its distance as two Roman
miles from Chorazin (Onomast. pp. 120, 174). We
have seen that Theodosius came to it from Tiberias
after passing through Magdala and Seven loun-
tains (/tin. Hieros. p. 187 f.). Areulfus (ὁ. 670 A.D.)
did not enter Capernaum, but saw it from a neigh-
bouring height stretching along the Lake, and ob-
served that it had no wall (7b. p. 273f.). The nun
who tells the story of St. Willibald (c. 723 A.D.)
makes him first come to Capernaum, then to Beth-
saida, then to Corazaim, ubi Dominus demoniacos
curavit, where there is an evident confusion
between Chorazin and Gerasa (mod. KKersa), the
scene of the healing of the demoniac. The same
blunder occurs in the anonymous Life, so that
it probably goes back to St. Willibald himself
(see Tobler, Vescript. Terr. Sanct. pp. 26, 63). We
have seen that the history of Khan Minych, so far
as we can trace it, belongs to the Saracenic and
Turkish periods. Saladin halted at ad-Maunaja m
1189, but the building of the khdn is referred by
Sepp to Sinan Pasha under Suleiman the Magnifi-
cent (1496-1566).
_ LireRATURE.—The most important descriptions and discus-
sions are as follows :—Qn the side of those who would place
Capernaum at Khdn Minyeh: Robinson, BRP 2 ii. 403-408, iii.
344-360 ; Sepp, Newe Entdeckungen (Miinchen, 1896); α. A.
Smith, HGHL 4p. 456, and in Hneye. Biblica. On the side of
those who identify Capernaum with Tell Ham: W. M. Thomson,
LB (ed. 1901) pp. 350-356, cf. also 359f.; Sir Charles Wilson,
The Recovery of Jerusalem (London, 1871), ii. 375-387; and a
solid phalanx of the most judicious German writers, e.g. Furrer
in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexikon (1871); Socin (in Baedeker’s Pal.3
p. 291f.); Schurer, GUV ii. 445f.; Guthe, Kurzes Bibelwérter-
buch, and elsewhere; Buhl, GAP (1896) pp. 223-225, cf. 242.
The writer of this article gave a hesitating adhesion to the
former view in Sacred Sites of the Gospels (Oxford, 1903), but
retracted that opinion in J7ASt for Oct. 1093, vol. v. pp. 42-48.
W. SANDAY.
CAPTAIN
CAPTAIN.—I. This word is the AV rendering of
two Greek terms in the Gospels :—(1) χιλίαρχος,
properly ‘leader of a thousand’ (Jn 18”, RV ‘chief
captain,’ RVm ‘military tribune’; see also Mk
671, Ae DATS 32. 33. 37 9974. 26. 27. 28. 29 9310. 15. 17. 18. 19. 22
247 2 23, Rev 6 1918), (2) στρατηγός, properly
‘leader of an army,’ ‘ general’? (Lk 22+ 2; see also
Ac 41 5%. 26),
1. χιλίαρχος is used (α) in a vague general sense
of a superior military officer, and (4) technically
as the Greek equivalent of the Roman prafectus
or tribunus militum. The Roman garrison in the
citadel at Jerusalem, consisting of a cohort (τάγμα
=NT σπεῖρα, ‘ band’ [καθῆστο yap ἀεὶ ἐπ᾽ αὐτῆς τάγμα
Ῥωμαίων, Jos. BJ ν. ν. 8]) of provincial troops,
Syrian Greeks, and Samaritans, whose command-
ant would be a civis Romanus (Ac 22°), while they
would be presented with the Imperial franchise on
their discharge, was reinforced during the Pass-
over by additional troops which were stationed in
one of the Temple buildings (Mommsen, Prov. Rom.
Emp., ng. tr. 11. 186). The χιλίαρχος is also called
φρούραρχος by Josephus (Ant. XV. xi. 4, XVIII. iv. 3);
see Schiirer, H/JP 1. 11. 55. The legion consisting
normally of 6000 men, the six tribunt took com-
mand for two months in turn. Palestine, however,
being a Roman province of the second rank, did
not possess a full legionary garrison. Mommsen
gives its strength, at a subsequent period, as con-
sisting of a detachment (a/a) of cavalry and five
cohorts of infantry, or about 3000 men.
2. στρατηγὸς τοῦ ἱεροῦ, the commandant of the
Temple Levites. Josephus mentions the ‘captain’
(orparnyss) of the Levitical guard in the time of
Claudius (Ant. XX. vi. 2), and in that of Trajan
(BJ vi. v. 3). Possibly the officers (ὑπηρέται) who
assisted in the arrest of Jesus (Jn 189, cf. 73% 4°)
belonged to this body. This ‘captain’ of the
Temple (2 Mac 34 6 προστάτης τοῦ ἱεροῦ) is mentioned
in Jer 20! LXX as ἡγούμενος and in Neh 11" as
ἀπέναντι τοῦ οἴκου τοῦ θεοῦ, ‘the ruler of the house
of God’ (Vulg. princeps domus Dei = nan ὙΠ ws
Mishna, Middoth i. ὃ 2). The duty of this ‘ captain
of the mount of the Temple’ was to keep order in
the Temple, visit the stations of the guard during
the night, and see that the sentries were duly
posted and alert. He and his immediate subal-
terns are supposed to be intended by the ‘rulers’
(ἄρχοντες) mentioned in Ezr 9’ and Neh. passim
(στρατηγοί or ἄρχοντες). See Schiirer, HJ P τι. i. 258.
The chief constable of this priestly corps of Temple
police was naturally himself a Levite.
LITERATURE.—Josephus, Ant. x. viii. 5, xv. Xi. 4, xvii. iv. 3,
XxX. vi. 2, BU v. v. 8, VI. v. 3; Schtirer, HJP 1. ii. 55, 11. i. 258;
Hastings’ DB, article ‘ Captain.’
P. HENDERSON AITKEN.
II. Besides these two military or semi-military
uses of ‘captain’ in the Gospels, we have to notice
the employment of the term as a title for Christ
in He 910 (AV and RVm) and 12?(RVm)._ In both
cases the corresponding word in the Greek text is
ἀρχηγός, ἃ word which otherwise is found in the
NT only in Ac 315 5*! (both times in Acts applied
to Christ, and in each case rendered ‘ Prince,’ with
‘Author’ as a marginal alternative in 31).
In accordance with its derivation (ἀρχή and
ἡγέομαι), ἀρχηγός originally meant a leader, and so
naturally came to be applied to a prince or chief.
From this the transition was easy to the further
meaning of a first cause or author, which is not
infrequent in the philosophical writers. For the
‘Captain’ of AV in He 2”, RV substitutes ‘author,’
giving ‘captain’ in the margin; and in 12? both
VSS have ‘author,’ though RV again gives ‘cap-
tain’ as a marginal rendering.
But when Jesus is called ἀρχηγὸς τῆς σωτηρίας
(210), the meaning is not merely that He is the
Author of our salvation. The context suggests
CARE 271
-------------ςοοςςς--ς--- -“ ΠΟ
that the idea of a leader going before his saved
ones (cf. 67°) ought to be adhered to (see Davidson,
Hebrews, ad loc.). Similarly when He is called τῆς
πίστεως ἀρχηγός (127), the idea is that of one who
has led the way along the path of faith. In both
cases the term ‘Captain’ may be unsuitable, since
it is apt to suggest military images which had no
place in the writer’s mind; but ‘leader,’ at all
events, should be retained, since the idea of leader-
ship and not of authorship seems best to express
his purpose (see Bruce, Hxpositor, 3rd ser. viii.
[1888] p. 451). For a full treatment of the subject
in its apologetic and homiletic aspects, Bruce’s
chapter on ‘The Captain of Salvation’ (op. cit.
pp- 447-461) should be read in whole.
LITERATURE.—The Lexicons of Grimm-Thayer and Cremer,
s.v.; W. R. Smith in Expos. 2nd ser. [1881] ii. 422; Ὁ. Brown,
ib. 5th ser. [1895] ii. 484 ff. See also C. J. Vaughan, F. Rendall,
and B. F. Westcott on He 210; J. A. Selbie in Hastings’ DB iv.
102"; and F. H. Chase, Credibility of the Acts, 129.
J. C. LAMBERT.
CARE (μέριμνα, μεριμνάω, μέλω, ἐπιμελέομαι).- ΤῊ6
teaching of Jesus on care has been slightly obscured
for English readers of the NT by the change in
meaning through which this word and the word
‘thought’ have passed. Prope:ly meaning trouble
or sorrow, ‘care’ was from an early period con-
founded with Lat. ewra, and from the idea of
attention thus obtained was held to express the
particular trouble of the mind due to over-atten-
tion, viz. anxiety (see Hastings’ DB i. 353), while
in modern language care, and especially its com-
pounds ‘ careful ’ and ‘ carefulness,’ are often used
im a sense which indicates no trouble, but the
well-directed effort of the mind in relation to
present affairs and future prospects. The AV
rendering ‘take no thought’ (Mt 055-91. 34) is still
more misleading. As used by the translators, it
meant ‘distressing anxiety ’ (see Trench On the AV
p. 39; Hastings DB iv. 754). That the phrase μὴ
μεριμνᾶτε is not ‘take no thought,’ but ‘be not
anxious’ (RV), seems clear by the derivation of
μέριμνα from μερίς, with its sense of dividing and,
as applied to the mind, of distraction; and is
rendered certain by comparison with the word
θορυβάζω or τυρβάζω coupled with it in Lk 1031, and
with the expressive phrase μὴ μετεωρίζεσθε used in
Lk 12°, which expresses the metaphor of a ship
tossed and helpless on the waves (see Cox in Lz-
positor, Ist ser. 1. [1875] p. 249).
The warning of Jesus against care is therefore
in no sense applicable to reasonable forethought
(πρόνοια). Man cannot live his life like the birds
and the flowers, without a sense of the present
necessity and the impending future. He can and
must think, plan, and toil. The forethought and
work necessary to provide food and raiment for
himself and for those dependent upon him, are part
of the Divine discipline of character. A careless
life would be essentially a godless life. But
Christ’s reproofs are directed against all feverish-
ness and distraction of mind. Whatever is the
exciting cause of the distress—how food is to be
obtained (Mt 6%: 76, Lk 12° *4) or clothing (Mt 678-2,
Lk 1251. 38). how the unknown future is to be met
(Mt 6*4) though there seems no obvious source oi
supply (Mt 10°; ef. Mk 68, Lk 9° 10° 4), though the
duties of life press hardly (Lk 10#), and though
there is impending and certain peril (Mt 10! 12!)
He says, ‘ Be not anxious.’
The argument of Jesus against care is clothed
in language of rare geniality and_ felicitous-
ness. ‘ Which of you by being anxious can add a
cubit to his stature’ [rather, “ἃ span to his age’)?
Worry does not help forward the great designs of
life. It cannot even accomplish ‘that which is
least.” It may take a span from one’s age; it
cannot prolong life. It is futile, and it is needless
3
CARE
CARPENTER
as well. Nature reads to man the lesson of trust.
The wild flowers, though their life is so brief, are
decked with loveliness by the great God. God
takes care for the flowers. And He is your
Heavenly Father. The argument is @ minort ad
majus. God’s care for the flowers is a constant
rebuke of His children’s feverish anxiety concern-
ing their own wants. The Providence, unforget-
ful of ‘that which to-day is, and to-morrow 15 cast
into the oven,’ is, in relation to His children, an
all-wise and all-loving Fatherhood.
But the geniality of the argument does not
disguise the seriousness with which Jesus regarded
‘rare. The context of the locus classicus (Mt Linusiere
Lk 122-4) is not the same in the two Evangelists.
St. Matthew attaches the warning against care to
the saying, ‘No man can serve two masters...
ye cannot serve God and mammon.’ In Lk. it
follows as a deduction from the parable spoken
against covetousness and the closing saying, ‘So
is every one that layeth up treasure for himself,
and is not rich toward God.’ There is no need to
decide the question of the priority of the two
accounts, for the moral context of both is practi-
cally the same. Care arises from a division at the
very centre of life, an attempt to serve both God
and mammon, to ‘worship the Lord and serve
other gods,’ or it arises from the radically false
idea that ‘aman’s life consisteth in the abundance
of the things which he possesseth.’ Such a false
estimate of values, involving the desire for and the
pursuit of material goods for their own sake, in-
evitably produces the fever and distraction of mind
called care, and it is the moral condition out of
which it arises, as well as the consequences which
it engenders, that makes it so serious a fault in
the eyes of Christ. ‘The cares of this life’ are
part of the hostile influences which choke the good
seed of the kingdom, so that it bringeth forth no
fruit to perfection (Mt 13; ef. Lk 84). Ina mind
so preoccupied by worldly interests and anxieties
the word of Christ may survive, but it never
comes to maturity, or produces its potential
harvest in life and service. Hence the severity
which underlies the gentleness of Christ’s rebuke of
Martha (Lk 10*- #7). She was distracted about much
serving, anxious and troubled about many things,
and her worry spoiled her temper, and the service
of Christ to which her love for Him impelled her.
So serious indeed may be the consequences of this
distress of soul, that Jesus, in His warning against
the evil things which may overcharge the heart,
and make men utterly unprepared for the coming
of the Son of Man, combined with surfeiting and
drunkenness ‘ the cares of this life’ (Lk 2184):
In opposition to care Jesus sets trust in the
Heavenly Father. The assurance of His intimate
knowlege of life and all its needs, and of His lov-
ing care, ought to exclude all anxiety concerning
the wants of the present, and all’ fear of the
uture. But trust in God’s love must be continu-
ally subordinate to the doing of God’s will. The
urance of His Fatherly love and providential
‘1s mediated to loving obedience. Thus in
. nding | rth the J welve (Mt 10°; ef. Mk 68, Lk
, and in the case of the Seventy (Lk 1034), Jesus
bid roe make no elaborate provision for their
piysieal needs. God takes care of His servants
when they are in the path of obedience to His will.
And imilar]
care
syahees tae Me when He warns His disciples that
{ be brought before the ecclesiastical and
civil authorities because of their allegiance to Him,
He calls upon th m to have no anxiety as to the
reply they shall cive (ΜΙ 1019. Mk 184% Lk 1911).
Ji sus Wo ild have them b lieve that the moral
order and the providential order of the world are
essentially one ind are both « ontrolled bw the love }
of the Heavy nly Father, so that they who seek |
His Kingdom and do His will shall not want any
good thing.
Christ’s own life is the supreme example of
perfect: peace, conditioned by absolute trust in the
Heavenly Father, and loving obedience to His
will. ‘The pressing necessity gave Him no anxiety,
and the impending peril no fear. ‘Thou wilt keep
him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee,
because he trusteth in thee’ (Is 26%).
LITERATURE.—Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Care’; Maclaren, Serm.
pr. tn Manchester, 1st ser. p. 235; Dale, Laws of Christ, p.
157; Munger, Appeal to Life, p. 149; Alex. Macleod, Serm.
p- 119; Fairbairn, City of God, p. 317; Drummond, Nat. Law
in the Spir. World, p. 123; Expositor, τ. xii. [1882] 104, m1. ii.
[1885] 224; Moore, God is Love, 82; Allon, Indwelling Christ,
110; Zahn, Bread and Salt from the Word of God, 287.
JOSEPH MUIR.
CARPENTER.—Mt 13° ‘Is not this the ecar-
penter’s son?’ The question of Christ’s own
countrymen, when they were offended at the lowly
station of the Teacher at whose wisdom they mar-
velled, tells us the exact conditions under which
Jesus passed His early years. The parallel Mk 63
‘Is not this the carpenter?’ is still more interest-
ing, for it tells us how Jesus Himself was occupied
in His youth and early manhood. This flashlight
photograph of the artisan in the workshop is all
we know of the eighteen years between the visit
to Jerusalem in His boyhood and the baptism
which marked the entry on public life. The
passage Mt 13°%°7|| Mk 61:8 presents a curious and
quite undesigned antithesis to Sir 38%-*4, specially
these words, ‘ How can he get wisdom that holdeth
the plough? . .. so every carpenter [Heb. xy,
Gr. τέκτων, RV ‘artificer’] and workmaster that
laboureth night and day. . . . They shall not sit
high in the congregation . . . and they shall not
be found where parables are spoken.’ Possibly
this reference explains why the people were speci-
ally offended at Jesus the carpenter for presuming
to speak in the synagogue and in parables. The
passage of Sirach quoted is from the chapter
describing the honour of a physician, with which
may be compared the proverb, ‘ Physician, heal thy-
self,’ quoted by Christ in similar circumstances at
Nazareth, when they said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’
An attempt to make Mk 63 conform to Mt 1355 is seen in some
old MSS (including the good cursives 33-69) as well as in Eth.
and Arm. versions, where we find ‘ carpenter’s son’ in place of
‘carpenter.’ This reading must represent a very old text, for
Origen (c. Cels. vi. 36) says, ‘ Nowhere in the Gospels current
in the Churches is Jesus Himself called a carpenter,’ alluding
apparently to other Gospels in which this trade was ascribed to
Christ. It is also clear that the TR reading must be as old,
for Celsus founded on it. One may gather that the change in
MSS and versions was not merely accidental or harmonistic but
deliberate, and due to those who considered that Jesus was
dishonoured by being described as a carpenter. Justin Martyr
(Dial. ὁ. Tryph. 88) supports TR in an interesting manner
when he says that Jesus, ‘when amongst men, worked as a car-
penter, making ploughs and yokes, thus teaching the marks of
righteousness, and commending an active life.’ Such making
of ploughs and yokes is precisely the kind of work expected of
a country carpenter like one at Nazareth, though possibly
Justin’s words are a rhetorical expansion of Mk 63. A curious
anecdote is recorded by Farrar, to the effect that Libanius, a
pagan sophist and devoted admirer of Julian the Apostate,
inquired of a Christian, ‘What is the carpenter doing now?’
The answer was, ‘He is making a coffin.’ Very soon afterwards
came the news of Julian’s death. [Strangely enough, in relating
this anecdote, Farrar himself quotes in Life of Christ ‘car-
penter’s son,’ but in Life of Lives he has ‘ carpenter’).
Whichever of the above readings be adopted,
however (and in Mk 6% the TR is supported by all
the chief MSS), the probability is that Joseph by
this time was dead, and that Jesus as his reputed
son had carried on the business. Nor are we to
reckon this as anything derogatory to the Lord.
On the contrary, it is another proof of His con-
descension, when, though He was rich, yet for our
_sakes He became poor (2 Co 89). By His toil at
the bench He has dignified and consecrated manual
labour. We may derive the practical lesson ex-
pressed in Faber’s hymn, ‘Labour is sweet, for
CAVE
Thou hast toiled.” Even more to us than St. Paul
the tent-maker is Jesus the carpenter. He was
not an Essene, holding Himself aloof from tem-
poral affairs, but a true. Son of Man, taking His
part in the business of life.
the good tidings of the kingdom, He preached the
gospel of work. The work that His Father had
given Him to do was not the exceptional duty of
the teacher, but the ordinary industry of the
artisan. His first pulpit was the carpenter’s
bench, and His first sermons were the implements
and utensils He made for the country folk of
Galilee.
Attempts have been made to find in Christ’s
parables and other utterances some reference to
the trade in which for so many years He was
actively engaged. The metaphor of the green
wood and the dry (Lk 2351), and the similitude of
the splinter and the beam (Mt 75:5), are the nearest
approaches to such reminiscences (cf. also one of
the recently discovered ‘Sayings of Jesus’: ‘Cleave
the wood, and there you will find me’), but are too
slight to found on them any inference. Yet may
He not have often sighed in the workshop of
Nazareth as He handled the nails and the hammer,
and thought of the day when the Son of Man must
be lifted up? As in Holman Hunt’s famous sym-
holical picture, the figure of the young carpenter
with outstretched arms released from toil as the
sun went down, would make the awful shadow of
the Cross.
LITERATURE.—The various Lives of Christ; WH App. on Mk
6°. With Holman Hunt's Shadow of Death, referred to above,
may be compared Millais’ The Carpenter's Shop (otherwise
known as Christ in the House of His Parents). See The
Gospels in A7rt, pp. 110 and 112; Farrar, Christ in Art, p.
274 ff. ARTHUR POLLOK Sym.
CAVE (72>, 7h, or7\aov).—Caves, both natural
and artificial, abound in Palestine ; the soft chalky
soil of Syria readily lends itself to both. Caves
were used in Palestine for a variety of purposes ;
originally as dwelling-places * (cf. the ‘ Horites’ or
“cave-dwellers,’ Gn 14° 362%, Dt 2”, see also Gn
1930), In the Hauran there must have been many
of these; sometimes regular underground towns,
such as the ancient Edrei, existed: + even at the
present day there may be seen in Gilead (Wady
Ezrak), a village, named Anab, of Troglodyte
dwellers; in this village there are about a hundred
families.t Caves were used, further, as places of
refuge (J¢ 67, 1 S136 14", 1 K 184, He 11°8, Rev 6"),
as hiding-places for robbers (Jer 7", cf. Mt 21,
Mk 1127, Lk 1946), as stables,§ as cisterns,|| as folds
for flocks, and, above all, as burying-places (Gn
2319 499 Jn 1158); the accounts of the burial caves
discovered in the lower strata of the site of ancient
Gezer are of the highest interest. **
It is, however, in reference to the place of birth
and the place of burial of Christ that the chief
interest in caves centres here. Justin Martyr
(Dial. c. Tryph. \xxviii.), in recounting the story
of the birth of Christ, says that it took place
in a cave (ἐν σπηλαίῳ τινι) near the village of
Bethlehem.t+ That cave-stables, both ancient
and modern, are to be found in Palestine, admits
of no doubt. Conder tt says that there are ‘ in-
numerable instances of stables cut in rock, resem-
* Recent excavations in Palestine have thrown considerable
light on Troglodyte dwellings, see PE F'St, 1903, pp. 20-23.
aa Reisebericht iiber Hauran und die Trachonen,
p. 44 ff.
t Nowack, Hebraische Archdologie, i. 136.
§ Conder, Tent Work in Palestine, p. 145.
|| PEFSt, 1903, p. 315.
§| Jewish Encycl. iii. 634.
** See PEF'St, 1902, pp. 347-356 ; 1903, pp. 14-20; 1904, pp.
18-20, 113, 114.
ΤΊ Cf. also Tobler, Bethlehem in Paldstina, pp. 145-159;
Palmer, ‘Das jetzige Bethlehem’ in ZDPV xvii. p. 89 ff.
tt Op. cit. p. 145.
VOL. I.—18
Before He preached’
CELIBACY 273
bling the Bethlehem grotto. Such stables I have
planned and measured at Tekoa, ’Aziz, and other
places south of Bethlehem, and the mangers exist-
ing in them leave no doubt as to their use and
character.’ It seems, therefore, not unreasonable
to accept the ancient tradition that Christ was
born inacave. See art. BETHLEHEM.
Rock-hewn tombs, or caves for burial, were of
four distinct kinds: (1) tombs which were cut
down into the rock, in the same way in which
graves are dug at the present time in European
countries; the body was let down into these ;
(2) tombs cut into the face of the rock, into which
the bodies were pushed ; (3) tombs, somewhat like
the last class, excepting that within, against the
wall, there was a kind of step, about two feet
high, upon which the body was laid; (4) tombs
which were little more than a shelf cut into the
rock, just long enough and high enough to hold
the body. The first three of these classes varied
very much in size; in the case of the first, the
top, which was level with the ground, was covered
with a stone slab; the others were closed by means
of a stone slab which could be pushed aside (Mt
27°), or else a small door was fixed αὖ the entrance.
Tombs were not infrequently furnished with an
antechamber, from which one entered into an
inner space, the tomb proper, through a low door-
way. As a rule, a raised shelf ran round the
burial-chamber, and upon this the body was laid ;
that part on which the head rested was slightly
higher.* See, BURIAL, TOMB.
The data to be gathered from the Gospels are
not numerous; see Mt 27°, Mk 15*6, Lk 9855, Jn
1] 8 901-12,
LITERATURE.—Guthe in ZDPYV’,, ‘Zur Topographie der Grabes-
kirche in Jerusalem,’ xiv. 35-40; Schick in ZDPYV, ‘ Neu aufge-
deckte Graber,’ xvi. 202-205, where a very interesting plate is
given; T. Tobler, Bethlehem in Paldstina, pp. 124-227, S.
Gallen, 1849 ; Badeker, Palestine and Syria, p. cxi ff., Leipzig,
1898 ; the references, given above, in PEF'St. See also W. R
Smith, RS 197f., and the ‘Index of Subjects’ in Hastings’ DB,
Extra Volume. W. O. E. OESTERLEY.
CELIBACY.—According to the ordinary Jewish
view, marriage was of universal obligation (cf.
for instance, Yebamoth vi. 6; Kethuboth v. 6, 7;
Gittin iv. 5). There does not appear to be evi-
dence whether exceptions were recognized as pos-
sible because of some special vocation, as that to
particular forms of the prophetic office. In the
time of Christ the Essenes in general eschewed
marriage, though one section of them practised it
(Josephus, Ant. Xvi. i. 5; BJ τι. vili. 2). The
teaching of Christ does not contain any explicit
reference to this difference between the Essene
practice and the ordinary Jewish view. His teach-
ing about divorce and His reassertion of the primi-
tive law of marriage (Mt 5*!- 19°9, Mk 101-25, Lk
1018) imply not only that He was dealing with mar-
riage as an existing Jewish institution, but also
that He contemplated it as a permanent element
in Christian life. It is not unnatural to draw a
similar inference from His presence at the mar-
riage at Cana (Jn 21:11).
St. Matthew records a saying of Christ in which
it is contemplated that by a special vocation some
are called to celibacy. Christ’s prohibition of
divorce led the disciples to say that, without free-
dom to divorce, ‘it is not expedient to marry.’
Our Lord in His reply recognized that there are
some for whom this ‘saying’ of the disciples is
true, but only those ‘to whom it is given.’ He
explained that there were three classes who might
be regarded as having the vocation to celibacy:
—(1) ‘Eunuchs which were so born from their
* Nowack, Heb. Arch. i. 191; Benzinger, Heb. Arch. pp.
225-227; Latham, The Risen Master, pp. 32ff., 87, 88, and see
the two illustrations at the commencement of the work,
CELIBACY
mother’s womb,’ i.c. those whose physical consti-
tution unfitted them for marriage; (2) ‘eunuchs
which were made eunuchs by men,’ 7.c. those ‘ who
by actual physical deprivation or compulsion from
men are prevented from marrying’ (Alford); (3)
‘eunuchs which made themselves eunnchs for the
kingdom of heaven’s sake,’ 7.¢. those who by volun-
tary self-sacrifice abstained from marriage in order
that they might be (#) more faithful citizens of
the kingdom of heaven in their own personal life,
or (ὁ) more effective instruments for the strength-
ening or expansion of the kingdom of heaven. He
then repeated in a different form, ‘ He that is able
to receive it, let him receive it’ (Mt 191°"), the
previous statement that the ‘saying’ of the dis-
ciples, to which He had thus given a higher and
deeper meaning, was not a maxim for all His fol-
lowers, but only for those who, having the Divine
call to the celibate life, had with it the Divine gift
of power to obey the call. This particular saying
is not recorded by any of the Evangelists except
St. Matthew. There is a connected line of thought,
however, in words recorded by St. Luke; for in
Lk 1839. (also in TR and RVm of Mt 19” and
in TR of Mk 10”) a wife is mentioned among
those relatives whom Christ contemplates His
disciples as leaving for the sake of the kingdom
of God (Lk.), or for His name’s sake (Mt.), or for
His sake and the sake of the gospel (Mk.) ; and it
is promised that those who make such acts of self-
sacrifice shall receive great rewards in the present
time and shall hereafter inherit eternal life. In
Mt 19 and Mk 1091 the warning that ‘many that
are first shall be last ; and the last first’ is associ-
ated with this promise; and in Mt 201-16 the par-
able of the Labourers in the Vineyard is added to
illustrate that maxim.
It is a mistake to interpret Mt 558 (‘ Every one
that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath
committed adultery with her already in his heart’)
as a condemnation of marriage ; the context shows
the meaning to be that to cherish the desire for
fornication or adultery is the same thing as com-
mitting those sins in the heart. Nor is there any
disparagement of marriage in the words, ‘They
that are accounted worthy to attain to that world
and the resurrection from the dead neither marry
nor are given in marriage’ (Lk 20") ; the meaning
is shown by the context to be that the physical
accompaniments of marriage belong to the present
world, not to the future life, which, as it has not
death, has not birth. Lk 1456 (‘If any man cometh
unto me, and hateth not hisown... wife, ...
yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my dis-
ciple’) refers not to celibacy, but to the general
law that a Christian must be prepared to sur-
render everything human for the sake of Christ, if
called by God to do so, or if such surrender be
necessitated by faithfulness to the obligations of
the Christian religion.
On the whole, then, the teaching of Christ may
be summarized to the effect that (1) marriage is
a good state, contemplated as the usual lot, in
ordinary Christian life, of those who have not
received some special call; (2) celibacy is the
ibject of a distinct vocation involving dangers
ving attached to it high promises. It is
probable that the regard paid to celibacy in the
Church was based partly on the refer-
ences to 10 in the teaching of ¢ hrist. and partly on
interences connected with the fact of His birth
from & virgin. Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 111.
RD ernie a saying of Christ, with the intro-
. I Ne LOM says, the following : ‘He who
who is not ἢ ithe Hoe eaves and he
peut ic: Ree pie ; he who
let him remain unmarried ὼ Sofie ei ἧς spot
med. some have thought
Christian
XV. 97) quotes a
1 married, let
With purpose
CELLAR
this saying to be a reminiscence of 1 Co 78-27
ascribed to Christ because of the words ‘not 1,
but the Lord’ in 7; but Clement apparently has
our Lord’s words in Mt 1913 in view, for a little
later in the same chapter he says, ‘They who
have made themselves eunuchs from all sin tor the
kingdom of heaven’s sake, these are blessed, they
who fast from the world.’
Clement of Alexandria also refers to a conversation between
our Lord and Salome mentioned in the lost ‘Gospel according
to the Exyptians’ (Strom. 11. vi. 45, ix. 63, 64, 66, xiii. 92; Hae.
Theod. 67). Our Lord is there reported to have said that death
would have power ‘as long as ye women bear children’; that
He ‘came to destroy the works of the female’; and that the
kingdom of God would come ‘when ye shall have trodden
down the garment of shame, and when the two shall be one,
and the male with the female, neither male nor female.’ Part
of this last quotation is also in pseudo-Clement of Rome, 12:
‘The Lord Himself, being asked by one when His kingdom
should come, said, When the two shall be one, and the outside
as the inside, and the male with the female, neither male nor
female.’ In interpreting these sayings, notice must be taken
of Clement of Alexandria’s comment that our Lord spoke in
condemnation not of marriage, but of sins of the flesh and the
mind, and to show the natural connexion between death and
birth ; and of the further words of Salome, ‘Then I did well in
not bearing children,’ with our Lord’s reply, ‘Eat every herb,
but that which hath bitterness do not eat.’ It is possible that
in these passages the ‘Gospel according to the Egyptians’ pre-
served an echo of Mt 1912, or some saying of our Lord unre-
corded in the NT. It is not likely that the actual words were
spoken by Him, since, as Lightf οὔ (Apostolic Fathers, 1. ii.
237) pointed out, they differ in character from the utterances
recorded in the authentic Gospels, and the reference to Salome
as childless contradicts facts, though, as regards this last point,
‘Then I did well in not bearing’ might easily be a copyist’s
mistake for ‘Then I should have done well if I had not borne’
(xocrdis οὖν ἐποίησα for καλῶ: οὖν ἂν ἐποίησα).
LITERATURE.—Neander, Life of Jesus Christ, ὃ 224; Lange,
Life of the Lord Jesus Christ, ii. 473, 474; Stier, Words of the
Lord Jesus, iii. 13-18 ; Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah, ii. 335, 336; Dalman, Words of Jesus, pp. 122, 123 5
Alford on Mt 1911-12; Knabenbauer on Mt 1912; Dykes, Mani-
Sesto of the King, p. 245ff.; Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, i.
352 ff., ii. 73 ff. ; Martensen, Christian Ethics, iii. 7-46.
DARWELL STONE.
CELLAR.—Used only once in the Gospels, in
Lk 11%, where RV gives ‘cellar’ for AV ‘secret
place,’ following the correct reading κρύπτη, ‘a
vault,’ ‘crypt,’ or ‘cellar,’ not κρυπτόν, ‘hidden.’
Josephus uses the same word, κρύπτη, in a way
to make its meaning very clear: ‘They set a
tower on fire, and leapt into the cellar beneath’
(Bd, V. vil. 4):
Abundant proof is forthcoming from the exa-
mination of the ruins of many ancient Eastern
houses, from allusions in the Bible (ef. 1 Ch 2727: 28)
and in other writings of the times, as well as from
modern dwellings in the Kast which are typically
Oriental, that many ancient houses were provided
with ‘cellars beneath,’ and that ordinarily these
‘cellars’ were used as store-houses rather than as
dwelling-places.
Looking at the passage Lk 11% in the light of
the connexion in which we find it in Mt 54-16
and Mk 451, the idea is that a course of conceal-
ment on the part of Christians is unreasonable,
and contrary to the Divine design. Christians are
‘the light of the world,’ the light by which the
mass of mankind may see the things of religion.
As such they cannot escape observation if they
would, and they should not wish to escape it if
they could, for this would be contrary to the very
purpose of God in making them sources of light.
The unreasonableness of such a course, from
cowardice or any other motive, is what is set forth
in this and the other significant figures used by
our Lord: ‘No man, when he hath lighted a lamp,
putteth it in a cellar, neither under a bushel, or a
bed (Mk.), but on a lamp-stand, that they which
come in may see the light.? The very purpose in
lighting the lamp is that men may see it, or see by
it. Is it, then, to be put in the cellar, where people
do not live, or under a bushel or a bed, where it
would be obscured? Is it not rather to be put on
δὰ
—
CENSUS
the lamp-stand, where all comers may see it, and
see by it?
LITERATURE.—Meyer, Com. in loc.; Expositor, τι. i. [1881] p.
252 ff. Gro. B. EAGER.
CENSUS.—This English word does not oceur in
the NT, the Greek term ἀπογραφή being rendered
taxing in AV and enrolment in RV both in Lk 2?
and in Ac 5%, In the former case, with which
we are mainly concerned, ‘enrolment’ is certainly
the better word; for the purpose of the enumera-
tion was apparently not fiscal. That mentioned
by Gamaliel, however, was a valuation as well as
an enumeration, and it was called ‘the taxing’ with
some reason. It was also better known than the
other ; par excellence it was ‘the census’ because
a great tumult arose under Judas of Galilee in con-
nexion with it, which made the occasion famous.
That which took place at the time stated by St.
Luke was so little known by the period when his
Gospel was written, that he thinks it needful to
insert a note about its date, lest it should be mis-
taken for the other. ‘This was the first enrol-
ment made when Quirinius was governor of Syria.’
This note, however, has been itself a matter of
great perplexity, because the date thus indicated
does not apparently tally with the ascertained facts
of secular history. For the discussion of this in-
tricate question see articles BirTH OF CHRIST,
DATES, and QUIRINIUS.
The nature of the census of Lk 2'? is a topic of
some interest, on which light has been shed by
Ramsay in Was Christ born at Bethlehem? (1898).
It seems to have been an enrolment by house-
holds, such as Kenyon (Classical Review, March
1893), Wilecken, and Viereck have shown was the
practice in Egypt. Augustus had a great belief
in the proper and systematic enumeration of his
subjects, and the reckoning of them by households
was a method which was carefully followed every
fourteen years in Egypt. Many of the actual
census papers have been found in that land in
recent times, the earliest as yet discovered re-
ferring to the year 20 A.D. (Ramsay, op. cit., Pre-
face, p. x note). This was quite different from
the fiseal statistics compiled annually under the
direction of the provincial governors of the Roman
Empire, papers dealing with which have also been
found. The household enrolments took place in
cycles of fourteen years, and were dated according
to the emperor in whose reign they were carried
out. No mention was made in them of the value
of property and stock, as in the annual returns,
and tle only financial purpose they served was to
determine who were liable for the poll-tax exacted
from all subjects between the ages of fourteen and
sixty. This poll-tax was the tribute («jvcos) re-
ferred to by the Pharisees in the question to Christ
as to the lawfulness of payment (Mt 22” ; see art.
TRIBUTE). It would seem that in Syria women as
well as men were required to pay this tax (Ramsay,
op. cit 147 note); and if that was the case also in
Palestine, this fact may possibly explain why, on
the first oceasion when the enrolment that was the
basis of the poll-tax was made, Mary accompanied
Joseph to Bethlehem despite her critical con-
dition.
The discovery of the household-enrolment papers
in Egypt throws light on the statement of Lk 2!
‘there went out a decree from Cesar Augustus
that all the world should be enrolled.’ ‘ All the
world’ (πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην) was formerly supposed
by some scholars, such as Kitto (Cycl. of Bib. Lit.,
art. ‘Cyrenius’), to mean merely the whole land of
Palestine, so as to escape the difficulty that secular
history, so far as then known, was silent as to any
general census. The meaning of the phrase cannot
be so restricted. It means certainly the whole of
CENSUS 275
the Roman Empire, which in the days of Augustus
meant for all practical purposes ‘the inhabited
earth.’ Not only was Rome itself included, with
all the provinces, whether in Italy or elsewhere,
but also those lands which, though having kings of
their own, were really under the Roman suzerainty.
Such was that portion of Syria under the dominion
of Herod the Great.
The silence of history as to such an enumeration
as was now to be made is no proof that it did not
take place; for of other enumerations to which
casual allusion is made by historians, Augustus
himself in his record of his achievements makes no
mention, except in so far as Roman citizens were con-
cerned. The counting of aliensubjects was probably
not deemed of sufficient importance to be chronicled.
Moreover, the household enrolments which have
been traced back in Egypt by extant papers to
A.D. 20 suggest at least that there may have been
earlier ones in A.D. 6 and B.c. 8, which brings us
back to the approximate period to which St. Luke
refers. It may here be observed that the Evan-
gelist does not actually say (Lk 91), and very likely
does not mean, that the intention of Augustus was
that one single enumeration should be made of the
whole Roman world. The tense of ἀπογράφεσθαι
rather signifies that a census of this nature on
the household-enrolment principle was to be the
practice, this being the first occasion of its being
ordered ; which precisely tallies with the following
verse when rightly rendered, ‘This was the first
enrolment made at the time when Quirinius was
governor of Syria.’ A fuller discussion of this latter
statement is reserved for the article QUIRINIUS.
The enrolment with which we are particularly
concerned, then, would be appointed for B.c. 8; but
in the case of Herod’s kingdom it was not achieved
till about a couple of years later, apparently for
reasons which Ramsay has indicated, but which
need not here be reproduced. They refer to the
strained relations which then existed between
Augustus and Herod. When it was made, the
usual Roman method of enrolment at the residence
of those enumerated was not followed, but one
more in consonance with Jewish ideas. The people
had often before been numbered by their tribes,
and Herod probably judged that, especially on this
first occasion of such an enrolment, the use and
wont would be more acceptable to his subjects than
a method new to them, and would be less likely to
arouse resentment or even tumult. The Roman
practice was to interfere as little as possible with
the usages of the nations which had been sub-
jugated ; and therefore we may reckon that the
particular method of taking the census would be
left to the decision of the ruler of the district.
Accordingly it was arranged that the tribal
method should be followed, and that in subordina-
tion thereto the enrolment should be by persons
registering themselves at the place from which the
head of the family had sprung. Hence we read
that ‘ all went to enrol themselves, every one to his
own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee,
out of the city of Nazareth, into Judzea, to the city
of David, because he was of the house and family
of David, to enrol himself with Mary who was be-
trothed to him’ (Lk 2°). If, as Mt 1° leads us to
believe, Mary was actually recognized at this period
as Joseph’s wife, she would be enumerated as one of
his household, whatever her own Jineage was ; but
if St. Luke’s expression ‘betrothed’ is to be pressed,
would indicate not merely that the marriage was
not publicly known or officially recognized, but
that she herself must also have been of the family
of David, and as such was enrolled in her own
right. It may also be observed that the great
gathering of those who claimed to be of ‘ the stock
of Jesse’ would help to explain how, when Joseph
SSS
276 ‘CENTURION
and Mary arrived, ‘there was no room for them in
the inn’ (Lk 27).
Lirerature.—Lives of Christ and Commentaries on St. Luke ;
articles in Bible Dictionaries, as Smith, Kitto, aud Hastings ;
Ramsay, Was Christ born at Bethlehem? (1898); Zumpt, Das
Geburtsjahr Christi (1869); Zain, art. in Neue kirchl. Ztsch.
(1893); Schurer, WJ P 1. ii. 105.
ARTHUR POLLOK SYM.
CENTURION (Lat. centurio; in Mark always
κεντυρίων [15% 4); in Matt. and Luke and Acts
ἑκατοντάρχης ace. to N°, or ἑκατόνταρχος In other
uncials; the latter form being more Attic, the
former more frequent in Hellenistic [cf. Blass,
Gram., Eng. tr. p. 28, on fluctuation between first
and second declensions]; in Polybius the centurion
is called ratiapyos).—As the name denotes, a centu-
rion was an officer in the Roman army who had
command of a centuria containing 100 men. The
legion at its full strength consisted of about 6000
foot -soldiers, consequently it included 60 cen-
turions. These were of ditterent ranks or degrees
of promotion and importance, according to the
position oceupied in battle by their special com-
any or maniple. Though laughed at for their
fiobeaniled shoes and thick calves (Juv. Sat. xvi.
14. 24) and for their general unkempt roughness
(ib. xiv. 194), these officers were the very ‘ backbone
of the army.’ Their badge of office was the vine-
rod (vitis), which they freely used on the men,
eyen without the authorization of the tribune
(cf. Tacitus Annal. i. 23). Polybius describes the
ideal centurion as ‘not so much overventuresome
and fond of danger as possessing the faculty for
command, steady and serious (βαθεῖς ταῖς ψυχαῖς) ;
not prone to rush into battle nor eager to strike
the first blow, but ready to die in defence of
their posts if their men are overborne by num-
bers and hard pressed’ (vi. 24; cf. Vegetius,
li. 14).
_ The centurions mentioned in the NT are attrac-
tive specimens of the manly, serious-minded,
generous Roman. In the Gospel narrative two
centurions find a place. The one (Mt 85:18 Lk
7°) resident in Capernaum may probably have
been in Herod’s service; but in any case he was a
Gentile, for in his humble faith Jesus sees the
first-fruits of a world redeemed, and recognizes
that even if ‘the children of the kingdom’ prefer
the outer darkness to the light and joy within, the
provided feast will still be furnished with euests.
Che distinctive characteristic of this centurion’s
faith was his persuasion that a word of command
uttered by Jesus could set in motion forces suffi-
cent for the emergency, even as the κέλευσμα of
the Roman officer at once accomplished his will.
The μόνον εἰπὲ λόγῳ is the key to the incident, and
absolutely _ differentiates this centurion from the
βασιλικός οἵ Jn 476. who insisted that Jesus should
‘go down’ and heal his son.
Che centurion charged with superintending the
te cima eee
greatness that it Gide. ce See Ξ tribute to His
Senontic ( ‘ospels.. ‘Tl i te BS ae in each of the
Sak undecstend aa ὩΣ erms 0 the tribute are
who frequently tine es ἐν ae of St. Luke,
original form of : Sly a 4 ἣν see evidently *the
in the mouth of Eoin, ᾽ Naan Tit adie
than St. Luke’s Ὁ aE eaten B robe, Dile eee
on of God’ micht be sidan tenet ap Sey nn
in our Lord’s last ery, op&sted by the ather
LITERATURE
Ramsay's Ro ᾿
Cc wr de B Gall tom, A utiq. 8.υ."
208-2 ; St. George Stock’s
ted cine; 215; J. E. B. Mayor's Juvenal, notes
Marcus Dons,
CEPHAS,
OD DASSAICS (
See PETER,
CEREMONIAL LAW.—Seec LAW.
CERTAINTY
CERTAINTY.—The ways in which ‘certainty’
is expressed in the Gospels are frequently indirect.
So far, however, as certainty is expressed by direct
terms, various phrases are employed for the pur-
pose. Of these the most frequent are ἀσφαλής and
its derivatives ἀσφαλίζω, ἀσφάλεια, ἀσφαλῶς. ‘These
always express objective security; the certainty
nek is or might be verified, and which consists
in an accurate correspondence with facts.
Thus in his preface St. Luke (14) says he has ‘traced the
course of all things accurately . . . that thou mightest know
the certainty .. .’ (ἀσφάλεια, cf. Ac 5°3, 1 Th 53); the traitor
says, ‘Take him and lead him away safely’ (Mk 1444 ἀσφαλῶς, cf.
Ac 236 523 1623); Pilate says, ‘Command that the sepulchre be
made sure’ (Mt 2764. 65.66 ἀσφαλίζω, cf. Ac 1674). With these
passages may be compared the use of ἀσφαλής elsewhere in NT,
viz. Ac 2134 2230 2526, Ph 31, He 619. The derivatives of βέβαιος
are also employed, but with a force more or less distinctly
moral or subjective. Thus the disciples are said to have
‘preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and con-
firming the word’ (Mk 1629 βεβαιόω, cf. Ro 158, 1 Co 16.8, 2 Co
121, Col 27, He 23 139). Sometimes it is the disciples themselves
who are ‘confirmed’ or ‘stablished.? Outside the Gospels
βέβαιο: and βεβαίωσις occur with some frequency, being specially
characteristic of the Ep. to Heb. (cf. 2 P 110.19, Ro 416, 2 Co 17,
He 22 36 616.19 917, Ph 17). In Lk 2347 ὄντως occurs, ‘Certainly
this was a righteous man’; and in Lk 428 σάντως, ‘ Doubtless ye
will say to me. . .’ (cf. Ac 2122 284, 1 Co 910); but these are
adverbial qualitatives of no great importance. [It is hardly
necessary to remark that in the great majority of the passages
in which the word ‘certain’ occurs in the English versions, it
renders the indefinite pronoun τίς, where it has nothing to do
with certainty, but is merely an idiomatic phrase equivalent to
‘some’ in a quite indefinite sense].
With this use of language it is instructive to compare the
opposite ‘uncertainty’ which is expressed by ἀπορία, ἀπορέομαι,
commonly translated ‘ perplexed,’ though the meaning is rather
that of hesitancy than of perplexity, as one finds no way out of
a difficulty, and so is brought to pause. These words occur
in Lk 2125 and Jn 1322 ‘doubting of whom he spake’ (cf. Ac 2570,
2 Co 48, Gal 420), It is also worth while to compare such occa-
sional use of πίστις as ‘ given assurance unto all men’ (Ac 1721);
and that of πληροφορία, * full assurance’ (Col 22, 1 Th 15, He 611).
But apart from special terms expressing cer-
tainty, the broad fact itself has, of course, a large
place in the Gospels and in the mind of the Lord
Jesus. This is usually represented by saying that
a person or a thing is ‘known,’ where oiéa is the
verb employed. This verb is a ‘ perfect-present,’
and by its very form indicates the possession of
knowledge, not its acquirement. In a number of
passages the sense is accordingly best rendered not
by ‘I know,’ but by ‘I am sure of.’
The following are instances from the Gospels of this way of
expressing certainty :—‘ Fear ye not, for I am certain that ye
are seeking Jesus who was crucified’ (Mt 28°); ‘ Master, we are
certain that thou speakest and teachest straightforwardly ᾿ (Lk
2021); ‘We speak what we are certain of, and bear evidence of
what we have seen’ (Jn 311); ‘No longer do we believe through
thy report, for we ourselves have heard and are certain’ (442) ;
‘What sign doest thou that we may feel certainty, and may
trust thee?’ (630); ‘This is Jesus the son of Joseph ; we are
certain of his father and mother’ (642, cf. 727); ‘Give glory to
God; we are certain this man is a sinner. He _ therefore
answered, If he is a sinner I am not so certain; of one thing I
am certain, that, being blind, henceforth I see’ (924.25); ‘Even
now I am certain that whatsoever thou mayest ask of God, God
will give thee’ (1122) ; ‘He that hath seen beareth witness, and
his witness is true (ἀληθινή), and he is certain that he speaketh
true (ἀληθη), that ye also may believe’ (1989, cf. 2124). Some-
times cide is used of God’s knowledge with its unerring cer-
tainty ; and at other times of man’s ‘knowledge of God which
springs from personal trust and love.
It is characteristic that the grounds on which
certainty is shown in the Gospels to rest are moral
grounds rather than intellectual ; for commonly it
is moral certitude, not scientific security, which
is in view. On the one hand, the foundation of
certainty is the faithfulness of God: this is well
illustrated in the case of Zacharias (Lk 118-29). and
in that of Mary (vv.*78), On the other hand,
certainty is won through men’s trust (πίστις) in
God or in Christ. So the Lord said, ‘ Whosoever
shall say unto this mountain . .. and shall not
doubt (διακρίνω) in his heart, but shall believe . . .
he shall have it’ (Mk 11% || Mt 217). To Peter as
he began to fear and sink He said, ‘O thou of
' little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?’ (διστάξω,
CHAFF
CHANCE 277
Mt 145ὴ. And when it is recorded of the disciples
to whom the Lord appeared after His resurrection,
that ‘they saw him, and worshipped, but some
doubted’ (διστάζω, 2817), He met this mixed regard
by a great personal affirmation, and a great charge
laid on them, which formed in point of fact the
strongest appeal to their most certain trust. See,
further, art. ASSURANCE.
LITERATURE.—See the lit. at AssuRANCE, and add—E. White,
Certainty in Religion; J. Clifford, Christian Certainties ;
W. R. Harper, Religion and the Higher Life, pp. 88-100; G. A.
Coe, Keligion of a Mature Mind, 109-132; A. E. Garvie, The
Gospel for To-day, 34; Princeton Theol. Rev. i. 138 (Warfield) ;
Homiletic Rev. xlvi. 413 (Wright); Expos. Times, vii. 438, 533.
E. P. Boys-SMITH.
CHAFF.—The term used in English to denote
the protective coverings and appendages of the
growing corn—the glumes, scales, and awns—after
they have been dried in the ripening of the plant
and in the wind and sun, and separated from the
grain and straw. ‘The Greek word is ἄχυρον (Lat.
palea), ‘mostly used in plural for chaff, bran,
husks’ (Liddell and Scott); perhaps derived from
ax. indicating its pointed nature. But the older
authorities, and most writers on the Greek of the
NT, incline to regard the ἄχυρον as including the
cut or broken-up straw which mingles with the
chaff proper.
Schleusner, controverting the opinion of previous lexico-
graphers, says that the word for the outer integuments ( palea)
is ἄχνη, and that ἄχυρον includes totwm calamwin frumenti inde
a radice usque ad spicam que grana continet, and that it is
equivalent to the Heb. jim tebhen; and Post (art. ‘Straw’ in
Hastings’ DB) suggests the use of the Arab. word tiin, which
denotes the mingled chaff and cut or broken straw.
In reaping it was often the practice to leave all
the straw, except an inch or’ two cut off with the
ear. The dust of the chaff is in the LXX χνοῦς
(Ps 14 35°, Is 29°, Hos 13%), and once χνοῦς ἀχύρου
(Is 1713), and once κονιορτός (Job 9118).
The combination of broken straw with the chaff
is explained by the process of harvesting, thresh-
ing, and winnowing in Palestinian agriculture.
The threshing-machine, or threshing-waggon (see
art. ‘Agriculture’ in Hastings’ DB), which, by
repeatedly passing over the sheaves, broke up the
short straw into fragments, separated the grain
from its dried envelopes. The threshing-floor was
so placed, usually in an elevated and breezy posi-
tion, that the wind could be utilized to separate
the lighter, heavier, and heaviest materials from
one another, and the method of winnowing secured
that the grain should fall in the centre, the heavier
straw at a small distance from the grain heap,
whilethe broken straw and ΟΠ (ἄχυρον) were carried
away by the wind, either out of the threshing-floor,
or so that it could be swept together for burning.
The complete separation of the chaff, which in-
cluded fragments of the awns and straw, from the
corn was effected by means of the winnowing-fan
(πτύον), the broad shallow shovel with which corn
after threshing was thrown up against the wind,
and so finally cleansed of the chaff. See art.
‘Shovel’ in ΤΙ stines’ DB. This final stage of the
winnowing process is referred to by John the
Baptist in the only occurrences of the word ‘ chaft’
in the NT (Mt 3", Lk 817).
The imagery of the threshing-floor was finely
adapted to express the sweeping reform of the
national life which the ardent soul of the Baptist
expected to characterize the coming of the Jewish
Messiah. The chaff well represented (1) the in-
sincerity and hypocrisy of the national religious
leaders, profession without substance, looking at a
distance like grain, but proving on near inspection
to be chaff; and (2) the light irresponsibility, the
absence of true principle, in the uae who accepted
this formalism and pretence as genuine grain of
godliness. And the winnowing represented the
readiness with which such unsubstantial elements
of national character would be carried away by
the first wind of trial, or burnt up by the divinely
authorized Messiah, whose coming John expected
to be with swift discrimination and judgment.
John looked for the immediate separation of the
false from the true, the bad from the good. The
Christ would come as Malachi (3!°) predicted,
with searching and striking condemnation of all
that was worthless and injurious; and the com-
parative slowness and indirectness of our Lord’s
method was the moving cause of his perplexed
question, when he heard in the prison the works of
Christ, and sent -his disciples to ask, ‘Art thou
he that should come, or look we for another ?’
(Mt 118, Lk 7).
LITERATURE.—Mackie, Bible Manners and Customs, pp. 34-36 ;
Tristram, Eastern Customs in Bible Lands, ch. 6; Jahn, Bibli-
cal Archeology, pp. 66-73; Thomson, Land and the Book, pp.
538-540; Nowack, Heb. Arch. i. 233f.; artt. ‘Agriculture,’
‘Chaff,’ ‘Straw,’ in Hastings’ DB. T. H. WRIGHT.
CHAINS.—The usual NT word for ‘chain’ is
ἅλυσις. πέδαι (Mk 54 AV and RV fetters) are for
binding the feet. δεσμός is a more general term,
meaning anything to tie or fasten. AV renders
δεσμοί, ‘chains,’ in Jude ὅ, but RV _ substitutes
‘bonds.’ For critical reasons ‘chains’ disappears
from?) Ρ 23,
In NT chains invariably denote instruments for
binding, or restraining the liberty of the person,
e.g. the demoniac (Mk 5°), St. Peter (Ac 12°), the
dragon (Rev. 20!). Imbeciles appear always to
have received consideration, if not even reverence,
in the East ; but demoniacs, and persons suffering
from certain forms of delirium, have been treated
with horrible cruelty. Often they are loaded with
chains and bound to a staple firmly fixed in the
ground, The tortures applied are ostensibly for
the purpose of driving out the evil spirit that
possesses them.
Under the Roman law, vincula was a form of
punishment, or of safe custody. The prisoner was
chained to a soldier, who was responsible for his
safe keeping. The chain was fastened round the
right wrist of the prisoner and the left wrist of his
guard. To this chain St. Paul refers (Ac 28”, 2 Ti
1's), For greater safety two soldiers might be
assigned as guards to one prisoner, a hand of each
being chained to one of his. Thus St. Peter was
confined in the stormy days of the persecution (Ac
12°); and St. Paul, when Lysias thought him a
dangerous person (Ac 21%), The use of πέδαι in
their modern form may be seen to-day at Acre, in
the groups of Turkish prisoners chained together
by the ankles. W. Ewina.
CHAMBER.
CHANCE.—The word occurs only once in EV of
the Gospels, viz. in Lk 1051, where in the parable
of the Good Samaritan the priest is said to have
been going down that way ‘by chance.’ In the
original the phrase is κατὰ συγκυρίαν, Vulg. accidit
ut. The word συγκυρία is found nowhere else in
NT, and rarely in the Gr. authors. The idea of
‘chance’ is ordinarily expressed in Gr. by the nouns
τύχη, συντυχία, or by the verb τυγχάνω. Neither of
these nouns occurs in NT, and the verb, in its in-
transitive sense of ‘chancing’ or ‘happening,’ but
rarely. Examples are 1 Co 1557 εἰ τύχοι σίτου, which
EV translates ‘it may chance of wheat’ (the only
other occasion on which the word ‘ chance’ is found
in EV of NT), and 14” εἰ τύχοι, EV ‘it may be.’
See CLOSET, and GUEST-CHAMBER.
In the Gospels τυγχάνω is used in its intransitive sense, with
the idea, viz. of ‘happening,’ only once, and that is, curiously
enough, in TR reading of Lk 1029, the verse immediately pre-
ceding the one under consideration, where the robbers are said
»
278
to have left their victim ἡμιεθανῆ τυγχάνοντα. The τυγχοίΐνοντοι
here, as Meyer and others have pointed out, is not simply equi-
valent to ὄντα, though the AV translators appear to have so
regarded it. The expression properly means ‘half dead as he
chanced to be.’ The shade of suggestion is that the robbers left
him in complete indifference to his fate, to live or die just as
it might happen. The fact, however, that συγχ ἄνοντα 18 lacking
in NBDLE, al. justifies its omission from the text by WH and
other critical editors.
Unlike τύχη and συντυχία, συγκυρία does not denote
‘chance’ in the proper sense of the word, 1.6. some-
CHANCE
thing which ‘falls out’ independently of the ordi-
nary laws of causation (‘chance’ comes from the
Low Lat. cadentia, ‘a falling,’ and may have been
suggested by the falling of the dice from a dice-
box). Derived as it is from σύν and κυρέω (‘fall in
with’), it corresponds almost exactly to our word
‘coincidence.’ All that our Lord’s use of the phrase
κατὰ συγκυρίαν accordingly suggests is, that by a
coincidence of events a certain priest came by Just
as the wounded traveller lay helpless on the road.
And, as Godet remarks, He may even have used
the expression with a kind of irony, since ‘it is
certainly not by accident that the narrator brings
those two personages on the scene’ (Com. on Lk.
in loc.).
Apart from any further occurrence of the word
‘chance’ in EV of the Gospels, the idea of hap or
chance may seem to be conveyed by the use of
‘haply’? in Mk 11%, where Jesus is said to have
come to the fig-tree, ‘if haply he might find any-
thing thereon,’ and in Lk 14”, where He Himself
says of the builder who could not finish his tower,
‘lest haply when he hath laid a foundation, and is
not able to finish it.2. But in both cases we have
to do in the original simply with conjunctions and
particles, εἰ dpa in the one passage and μή wore in
the other.
As a matter of fact, the idea of chance was as
foreign to the ancient Jewish as to the modern
scientilic mind ; for while the scientist holds that
the universal reign of law renders the operation of
chance impossible, the Hebrew may be said to
have believed (cf. Pr 16) of every so-called chance
that ‘Eternal God that chance did guide.’ In
popular language the idea of things happening by
chance appears to be admitted in both OT and
NT (cf. 1 S 69, Ec 94, 1 Co 1527), as it constantly is
among ourselves. But in the case of the Scripture
writers, at all events, it denoted only human
ignorance of proximate causes, not the occurrence
of events independently of the Divine will (with
15 6° cf. v.", with Ec 94 ef. v.1, with 1 Co 15*7 ef.
3’, Gal 67),
As bearing upon the subject of chance, reference
may be made to the casting of lots by the Roman
soldiers for the garments of Jesus. ‘The incident
1s mentioned by every one of the Evangelists, and
is explained by John as referring only to His seam-
less tunic (Mt 27%, Mk 154, Lk 23% Jn 192 24)
Among the Jews the casting of lots was regarded
not as a reference of a question to the fickleness
of chance, but as a solemn appeal to the Divine
judgment (cf. Pr 16%), And though by the time
of Christ such a game of chance as dice-playing
(hie had been introduced into Palestine (cf. St.
wus ἐν τῇ κυβείᾳ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ‘by the sleight of
men, lit. ‘by the dice-playing, because of the
trickery and cheating which had come to be
associated with the game), it was repudiated by
ie e who adhered strictly to the Jewish law (see
Schiiret HJ P τι. 1. 36). With the Roman soldiers
1b was otherwise. Dice are thought by some to
have veen an invention of the Romans, and cer-
tainly aicing was very common among them. In
his famous ‘Crucifixion’ in the Church of Sta
Maria degli Angioli at Lugano, τ
Luini represents the
a game of dice to dis-
possession of the seam-
four soldiers as risine from
pute with one another the
CHARACTER
less robe. And more than one writer who has sought
to describe the awful scene of Calvary has con-
sidered it natural to suppose that the soldiers
would amuse themselves during the hours of wait-
ing by playing their favourite game (see Farrar,
Life of Christ, ad loc.). No information is given
us by the Evangelists as to the manner in which
the lots were cast. But it may be that a cast of
the dice-box was the plan which suggested itself
most readily to those rude men, and that they
actually gambled for the Saviour’s coat while He
hung above them on the cross, dying for the sins
of the world. See, further, art. LoTs (CASTING OF).
J. C. LAMBERT.
CHARACTER may be defined as the result of the
interaction between a personality and its environ-
ment; or, if the word is used in its special and
favourable sense, as the advantage gained by per-
sonality over its environment, especially by the
exercise of the will. In the terms of Aristotle
(Nic. Eth. I. vii. 15), it is ‘an energy of the inner life
on the lines of virtue.’ The question to be answered
is, How have the life and gospel of Christ made
this more possible? Tirst, He diminished the
moral weight and dread of life’s environment.
Secondly, He enlarged the resources and oppor-
tunities of personality.
4. The following are some of the powers which
the soul has to meet in conflict :—
(1) Suffering.—‘ lf a perfectly good man foreknew
what was going to happen to him, he would co-
operate with nature in both falling sick and dying
and being maimed, being conscious that this is the
particular portion assigned to him in the arrange-
ment of the Universe’ (Epictetus). Christ in-
spired men to put their foot on disease as an evil
(Mt 108, Mk 16'8), and won His first fame by His
own powers of healing (Mt 455-35 114° ete.). Such
deeds were good on the Sabbath day (Lk 6°*-), for
it was a breaking of Satan’s tyranny (Lk 131°).
(2) Death.—He died to ‘ deliver them who through
fear of death were all their lifetime subject to
bondage’ (He 2). Jesus not only so faced death
as to convince a Roman centurion and a dying
criminal that He was more than man (Mt 9753, Lk
23"), but did not in His teaching allow it to have
a decisive place in life, except to the fool (Lk 12”).
He spoke of it as a sleep (Jn 11"), which the good
man need not fear (Mt 1038), and as a going to the
Father and His many abiding-places (Jn 14'*),
(3) The world.—
‘If but the Vine- and Love-abjuring band
Are in the Prophet’s Paradise to stand,
Alack, I doubt the Prophet’s Paradise
Were empty as the hollow of one’s hand’ (Omar).
Jesus was in complete independence of all that the
world offers, accepting poverty (Lk 988), repudiat-
ing popularity (Jn 6%), not expecting to be waited
on (Mk 10%). ‘Be of good courage,’ He said, “1
have overcome the world’ (Jn 16%); and on ac-
count of the promise of His presence His disciples
were built up in the same αὐτάρκεια (Ph 4").
(4) Racial barriers.—‘ Tt isan unlawful thing for
aman that is a Jew to join himself or come unto
one of another nation’ (Ac 1038). Jesus struck at
the limitations of race prejudice and enmity in the
parables of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10") and the
Last Judgment (Mt 25*!"-). Though He sought
first the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Mt 10%),
He ‘opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all be-
lievers’ (Mt 88, ef. Mk 739), and thereby achieved
on moral lines what the status of Roman citizen-
ship created on legal lines. His short career was
an encounter with the dead hand and narrowing
force of nationalism (Mk 12%, Mt 214-44), and it was
in the name of Son of Man that He lived and died.
(5) Caste distinctions.—‘ It was the hereditary
disability the Aryans had succeeded in imposing
CHARACTER
CHARACTER 279
upon races they despised, which, reacting within
their own circle and strengthened by the very in-
tolerance that gave it birth, has borne such bitter
fruit through so many centuries’ (Rhys Davids,
Hibbert Lectures). ‘A workshop is incompatible
with anything noble’ (Cicero). Jesus kept the
same way open to all without regard to social or
religious status ; did not reject the rich (Mt 87 9!8*,
Lk 155), but counted their weaith a disadvantage
(Mk 107!-*3, Lk 6°). He chose His companions
from men who were mostly of no class (Mk 110
24), was known as the friend of publicans and
sinners (Mt 9", Lk 15!-*), and threw away His own
triumph to give Zacchieus a moral chance, ‘ foras-
much as he also is a son of Abraham?’ (Lk 191-10).
(6) Family control.—‘ To every individual,’ says
Sir Henry Maine, referring to the Roman civiliza-
tion, ‘the rule of conduct is the law of his home,
of which his parent is the legislator.’ Though
Jesus maintained the sanctity of the marriage tie
(Mt 194"), and illustrated as well as taught filial
obedience and honour (Lk 251, Jn 197: 37. Mk 7"),
He broke the decisive control of the family for
the sake of the individual personality (Mt 10°%-%
1248-50, Lk 999-62 1127-28) Mik 1025-89),
2. In the second place, Christ enlarged the re-
sources and opportunities of personality, by mak-
ing the soul conscious and confident of a new
environment, in which it could find release and
reinforcement. The secret of this spiritual en-
vironment which awakens and sustains the soul’s
faculties of faith, hope, and love is grace, in which
alone they can move and have their being. The
essential tact of grace is illustrated in the teach-
ing of Christ chiefly in the following doctrines—
the Divine Fatherhood, the Divine Forgiveness,
the Divine Indwelling, and the Divine Reappear-
ing. All that was dim or distorted in the human
views of these truths, which mean so much to
personality and character, He rectified and made
authoritative.
(1) The clear revelation of the Divine Fatherhood
had this immense bearing on character, that it
brought out the worth of the individual soul. It
is not necessary here to argue the question whether
we are really God’s sons, apart from faith in Christ.
It is enough for the purpose that Christ undoubt-
edly used the truth of the Divine Fatherhood as the
chief motive to the new ethic. The first and most
important effect on character is that the starting-
point is trust. Trust in God is illustrated in
contentment with circumstances, courage in regard
to human opposition. Whatever be the straitness
of life and however menacing the future, there may
well be trust in One who cares for the individual
with more than the purpose and solicitude of an
earthly father (Mt 67-8 711, Lk 12. 1. 22%), And as
for hostility, it is well worth standing firm for
truth and righteousness, for thus the approval of
the Father is gained (Mt 5": 13 1674-27, Lk 19:8. Jn
15°56 16'-3), The natural vehicle of such trust is
prayer, which Jesus Himself used for the solution
of His perplexities and the bearing of His burdens
(Lk 1071, Mk 1435 ete.), and which the disciples were
also to use freely and urgently (Lk 115:15.181).
This leads to the second characteristic of a life
that acts on the teaching of the Divine Fatherhood
—its religion will be in spirit and truth (Jn 459).
Prayer is no mere performance, but secret and real
(Mt 6°), in faith (Mk 11°*%4), with a softened
heart (Mk 1135), and looking for the highest
things (Jn 15° 1058). Religion is not a matter of
external or traditional compulsion, but rests upon
a gospel of Divine love (Mt 11% 237, Jn 6%: *).
The Father can care for nothing that is not spon-
taneous and sincere like childhood (Mk 105-51. 55.149
Mt 1851. 33), and the fruit of real growth (Jn 15°).
The consummation of life is to be so sanctified by
the truth as to enjoy God as Christ the Son Him-
self did (Jn 177°-*5),
And the bearing of the Divine Fatherhood on our
relations to our fellows produces a wise tolerance.
The disciples of Christ are to imitate the character
of Him who ‘maketh his sun to rise on the evil
and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on
the unjust,’ and refuse to treat any man as an
enemy (Mt 5%-48). Indeed, the truth of the Father-
hood is the great inspiration to kindness and
charity. The positive character of the ‘Golden
Rule,’ which is its Christian distinction, is directly
drawn from the ways of the ‘Father in heaven’
(Mt 7!!}*), and the blessedness of peacemakers is
in being called sons of God (Mt 5°). The parable
of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10°87) illustrates in
particular what the parable of the Great Assize
(Mt 25°'-4°) sets forth with ideal completeness, that
there is no real love to God which is not ex-
pressed in spontaneous and appropriate help to
every human being that requires it. Thus in the
teaching of Christ went forth ‘an edict of Uni-
versal Love’; ‘humanity was changed from a
restraint to a motive (cece Homo, ch. 10). And
that this was the secret of the Christian message,
is indicated in the parting commission, ‘Go ye and
make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them
into the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Ghost’ (Mt 281).
(2) The gospel of Divine Forgiveness has had a
distinctive and powerful effect upon the characters
of those who have accepted it. Indeed, it has pro-
duced a new type of character, which can be de-
scribed only as being born again (Jn 3°, 2 Co 5!* 18),
Forgiveness was by no means a new idea, for it has
never been set forth with more beauty and com-
pleteness than in the Prophets and the Psalmists of
the Old Testament. But Jesus was the first to
apply it to the individual soul with the view of pro-
ducing the character of a child of the Kingdom ;
and it was this which made His teaching seem
revolutionary and even blasphemous in the eyes of
the guardians of the Old Covenant (Mk 25:15, Lk
7°95), The average good person is now as much
as ever inclined to resent the ‘opening of the
Kingdom of heaven to all believers’ through the
remission of sins. It contradicts the view accepted
by all average moralists that it is by the mainten-
ance of virtue that heaven must be won, and that
any contradictory doctrine must loosen the bands
of character. Their view is necessary as a caution,
not only against the Antinomians, who treat the
fact of forgiveness as a term of logic, and argue
‘let us sin that grace may abound,’ but also
against all who preach faith as something apart
from ethicalenthusiasm. But St. Paul had leained
the secret of his Master when he flung himself
into the advanced position of ‘justification by
faith.’ Tt was Jesus Himself who had the daring
originality to base character on a new foundation
without fearing to debase it (Lk 747°", Mt 26° 38),
It must, however, be remembered that it was
not so much the intention of Jesus to set up a
rival type of character, as to restore the character
of those who had lost it; to give a new chance to
the personality that was overborne and fettered
by its environment. He was essentially a phiysi-
cian of the sick (Lk 5°7-*2), a seeker of the lost
(Lk 15. 19°, Mt 184), a giver of rest to the
heavy laden (Mt 11°°#-), fulfilling the words, ‘ He
shall be called Jesus: for he shall save his people
from their sins’ (Mt 151. οἵ. Jn 3"). The great
contribution, then, to the forming of character in
the gospel of Forgiveness is not that it adds any-
thing to the ideal of virtue, but that it unseals the
great motive of humlLle and adoring gratitude,
and opens the way for that tide of love which is
itself the fulfilling of the Law (Lk 7% 15*-°), The
280 CHARACTER
CHARACTER
business of Jesus was not the chiselling and polish-
ing of character, but primarily its creation among
the multitudes who would be shut out by the
Pharisees from the kingdom of righteousness. The
gospel does not so much teach how to be good as
why to be good. Yet it must be admitted that in
this teaching of grace as a redeeming power, Jesus
did not simply profess to level sinners up to the
virtuous. Rather He made the beatitude of the
forgiven appear in comparison with the self-com-
placency of the virtuous as sunshine to moonlight
(Lk 67-26 184), The result of thus opening the
fountains of a great deep was to be seen in a new
humility and tenderness, an unexampled moral
scrupulousness and solicitude, for the pride of the
natural man is overwhelmed by the sense of what
he owes (Mt 182!-5, John 21”, Gal 2°, Col 3!?- 38).
(3) The third illustration of grace through which
the scattered forces of character can be regathered
is the Divine Jndwelling, which, although not made
conspicuous in the Synoptists, is essential to the
Christian conception of character. The remark-
able transformation which came over the chief
Apostles after the events of Calvary and the
Garden, was expressly attributed by them to the
fulfilment of Christ’s promise to return and dwell
in them through the Spirit (Ac 191-6 2161. 38) Jn
14-18), The character that has learned its worth
from the Divine Fatherhood, and found its release
in the Divine Forgiveness, gains its strength and
means of independence from the Divine Indwell-
ing. The real strength of character from the
Christian point of view lies in the sense of weak-
ness and the dependence on grace. Its ideal is
not self- possession and self-complacency, but a
possession by Christ (Gal 239), and a pleasing of
Christ (Ph 1. And because its standard is so
high, namely, the perfection of God Himself (Mt
5%), the only chance of attaining it is to realize
that the sufficient power comes from the imparted
life (Jn 207!-*3), to take the yoke of Christ (Mt
1159), or to abide in Him (Jn 154). If we can rely
on God’s Fatherhood, we can be sure He will give
the best gift, the Holy Spirit (Lk 11), which is
to enable the disciples to do greater things even
than Jesus Himself (Jn 1413), because thus His
own power will be multiplied in and through them
(1 Jn 4:5" 38),
From the Christian point of view, then, char-
acter depends for its final strength and beauty on
the measure of its surrender and receptivity. Its
turning-point is found in that decisive acceptance
of Christ which is called ‘conversion,’ and which
is not mere acquiescence, but allegiance as well,
not only requiring an attitude of the soul, but also
its adventure with and for the Lord it has recog-
nized, W hen room has been made for the Divine
indwelling in immediate sequence to the Divine
forgiveness, there may be an assurance that
through grace and with much patience the fruits
of Christian character will come (Mk 48: 30. oe):
Christian character depends on Christ’s indwell-
me appropriately
; lor 1ts virtues, which are more
te rmed graces, are called ‘fruits of the Spirit,’
indicating that they are not the attainment
of the old nature, but the growth of the new,
according to the ‘law of the Spirit of life which
is In Christ Jesus our Lord.? In Gal 522: 23 they
are thus given: ‘ love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
3, £ odness, faithtulne ss, meekness, tem-
2 Pp L' ὃς: ‘faith, virtue, know-
patience, godliness, brotherly
idness, and | ‘yom which it will be seen
tl δ rere 18 no ordered system of ethics in
sit ics ere αἱ . t the sum and substance
partes ath is ἵν to be the gradual
iret l vine indwelling, that the
ristians are alike possessed
; and in
echiperance
of the
may s that Ch
and controlled by a power and spirit not their
own.
(4) There is one further contribution to the
making of character in the name of grace which
belongs to the Christian revelation, viz. the Divine
Reappearing. However erroneously it was con-
ceived, there can be no doubt that it exercised a
powerful effect upon the moral qualities of the early
Christian community (1 Th 1 10), and its essential
truth is still responsible for much that is unique
in Christian ethics. It was sufficient to slay
worldly ambitions outright, so that men sold their
possessions (Ac 4533), and at a later age secluded
themselves in hermit or monastic dwellings. The
journey of Israel to the Promised Land became the
framework of the Christian conception of life—a
pilgrimage through a wilderness. The result of
this view has been the withdrawal of much imagi-
nation and energy from the problems of the pre-
sent world in the name of an expected heaven—
whereas the real watching is in right employment
here and now (Lk 17% 2! 194-27), But it would be
a mistake to miss the great contribution made
by the doctrine of Christ’s reappearing to the
improvement of character (Lk 12°87, 1 Th 5%).
When it is understood in the light of the words
and example of Jesus Himself rather than of
Messianic expectations, which again and again
He disappointed in favour of spiritual interests
(Lk 054. Hy Jn 6013: 15, 25, 26. 41. 65-68; Ae 1123). its ettect is
purifying and searching to the last degree, and
arms the personality with the weapon of a new
hope in the conflict with its environment (Ph
915... The reappearing of the Saviour, whether
it be when physical disabilities fall from us at
death, or in some other way, is essentially a final
judgment (Mt 72&% 13% 2581-33; cf. 2 Co 5”) in
which hidden things will be brought to light (Lk
817 193. 8. Mt 2599-45),
Firstly, it gives a motive to purity of life which
no other religion has been able to supply (1 Jn 3°,
2 P 3!!"4), and to a consecrated use of every natural
faculty (Ro 121). The promise of the resurrection
rescues the body from the contempt with which
philosophers were inclined to regard it, for as com-
panion of the soul it is both sacred and serviceable
(1 Co 6°), It is to be changed from a body of
humiliation to the likeness of the body of His glory
(Ph 3531), and meantime its members are to be dis-
ciplined as instruments of righteousness (Ro 6!),
every ability being turned to good account (1 P
410. ΑΝ Col 310. ἘΠῚ
Next, it gives a deeper sanction to the social
relationships of life. The spiritual side of mar-
riage has been greatly developed by the revelation
of the issues of life (Mt 19*°, Eph 57°). The
relations of parent and children, of master and
servant, were likewise dignified by being seen δε
specie eternitatis (Col 3°°-* 41), and in the remem-
brance that for responsibility we must give account
(Lk 12-48), It was this truth which gave its special
meaning to Church membership, so that the Chris-
tian community was knit together with bonds
unknown in any contemporary clubs or guilds (Mt
181%. 20, Eph 128-4 919-22, 1 Co 1212-8), Thouch there
was discontent and division in the Church, and
even an occasional subsidence to the vicious levels
of pagan society, the ideal could be steadily built
up again in the sure hope of a radiant future,
when the secret working of the absent Bridegroom
in His own should be accomplished (Eph 5*’, Col
3° 4, 1 P 15). And this hope was a continual
summons to every Christian to rise and be worthy
of his calling (Ro 13", 1 Co 310-15 934),
Finally, the hope of a Divine reappearing exer-
cises its influence upon the common toil and ap-
pointed duty of every day. It is as if the owner
of an estate went away entrusting to each man his
CHARACTER
CHARACTER OF CHRIST 281
work, and bidding the porter to watch (Mk 13%).
Tt is required ‘that a steward be found faithful
(1 Co 4*+*) ; and it is well for the Christian if he
has used to advantage the talents given (Mt 2519-23),
and the opportunities offered on every hand for the
wider human service (Mt 25349), for there is an
appropriate reward (1 Co 3!214), Lowly service is
the path to ennoblement and the seats of influ-
ence (Mk 1043-4, Lk 1232-4),
The promise of the Divine Reappearing thus
supplements, as it were, the promise of the Divine
Indwelling ; for whereas the latter brings out the
need for the Christian’s faith in a power not his
own, the former requires that he be faithful with
the powers that are his own. And taking all
four aspects of the revelation of grace through
Jesus Christ together, we see that they equip His
followers for that conflict with environment out
of which character emerges, by giving the soul a
new worth, freedom, power, and motive.
This revelation is above all in the Cross, in
which Christ was most fully manifested (Lk 922,
Jn 1011 1223), There we see convincingly the love
of the Futher (Ro 833, 1 Jn 42°), who counted men
of such value (Mt 18-14, Lk 15!°) that He would have
all to be saved thongh at infinite cost (Jn 313-19).
There is the place of the breaking forth of forgive-
ness (Mt 265), the supreme illustration of that
redeeming love by which men’s freedom is pur-
*chased (1 P 138.19, Ro 147-9, Rev 15:6). There the
life was surrendered to the Father (Jn 1017. 18), to
be bestowed as an enabling power (Jn 1417-14, Ac 41°)
by an indwelling Spirit (Jn 112, Ro 8°f-), wherewith
He might bring many sons to glory (He 2”), And
there, finally, the eternal future was clasped to
the tragic present (Jn 127-32) as the ever-living
Son submitted to taste of death (He 29. 14), that
neither earthly trouble nor spiritual principality
might ever separate His people from Him (Ro 831-39,
ἘΠῚ ΒΥ.
In another summary, it may be said that the
Christian ethic revolves between two poles which
are discovered in the light of Christ’s teaching,
the inwardness of religion, and its practical nature.
The first had been neglected by the Jew and the
second by the Greek. And one-sidedness is still
only too possible, when, for instance, in the name
of Christianity the ascetic visionary holds to the
first alone, or the social revolutionary to the
second. But all ethical deductions can and must
be rectified by reference to the work and word of
Christ, who started from inward character and
aiined at social regeneration.
And in a final analysis of what Christ has dis-
tinctively done for character, it may be said that
(a) He treated the personality as a whole. All
ethical systems are based on one or other element
of our threefold nature. The pivot of the good life
was, according to Socrates, knowledge ; according
to Epicurus, feeling ; according to Zeno, the will.
Christ gave a due and natural place to each of
these ; for character with Him was not a system,
as it was with Greek, Jew, or Roman, or as it is
with Confucian or Mohammedan, but a growth
from within, deeper even than our own nature,
rooted in the ever-living grace of God. (b) He
treated it as free. ‘This also is crucial to Christian
character, and depends on the truth that the ulti-
mate fact of life is not Fate, but a God of grace, a
Father. Jesus looked for repentance as the first
consequence of His good tidings (Mk 115)... What-
ever a man’s past had been, he could be released
and renewed, if out of the darkness and bondage
he put forth the hand of faith. And so in the last
resort life is self-determined. These two essential
truths for the making of character, viz. the in-
tegrity and the freedom of personality, have been
recognized and realized in the light of the four
** Copyright, 1906, by Charles Scribner’s Sons
great truths enumerated above. Thus Christ has
enlarged the resources and opportunity of person-
ality, and enabled it to be victorious over its
material and moral environment.
Lirerature.—Sidgwick, History of Ethics; Martineau, Tynes
of Ethical Theory ; Seeley, Ecce Homo ; Wlingworth, Christian
Character; Wilson Harper, The Christian View of Human
Life; Church, Discipline of Christian Character; Knight,
The Christian Ethic; Martensen, Christian Ethics; Garvie,
The Christian Personality; Kilpatrick, Christian Charucter
and Christian Conduct, etc.; Herrmann, Protestant Ethics ;
Sermons by Butler, Newman, Martineau, Paget, Maclaren, Inge,
ete. A. NORMAN ROWLAND.
*“CHARACTER OF CHRIST.—
Introduction: (a) Aim. (0) Sources: (1) their trustworthi-
ness; (2) their sufficiency. (c) Theological value of a
study of the character of Christ.
i. Formative influences—
1. Parentage.
2. Home.
8. Education.
4. The years of silence.
i. The Vocation of Christ, the determining principle of His
character—
1. His Designation of His vocation.
2. His Dedication to His vocation.
5. His Confirmation in His vocation.
Characteristics of Christ—
1. Spiritual-mindedness: (1) His knowledge; (2) His
teaching ; (3) effect of His presence.
2. Love to God: (1) obedience, (2) trust.
3. Love to men.
- Social relations, and virtues manifested therein—
1. Family.
2. Friends: (1) His dependence upon them; (2) His
self-communications to them ; (3) their response
to Him.
8. Mankind: (1) lowliness ; (2) considerateness ; (8)
compassion ; (4) forbearance and forgiveness.
Virtues of His vocation—
1. Faithfulness.
2. Courage.
3. Patience.
4. Calmness.
5. Self-sacrifice.
Concluding Estimate—
1. His absolute goodness.
2. His sinlessness: (1) testimony of those who knew
Him; (2) His own self-knowledge and self-witness.
Literature,
lil.
Introduction.—(a) The aim of this article is to
make a purely ethical study of the character of
Christ. In such a study there must be no dogmatic
presuppositions regarding the constitution of His
person, whether favourable or hostile to the state-
ments of Nicene orthodoxy. There must be no
abstract separation of His humanity from His
Divinity, and no attempt to relegate certain acts
or phases to one side and others to the other side.
We must proceed in the case of Jesus Christ as
we do in that of the great men who have forced
succeeding ages to the task of understanding them,
though it may well be that in the end we shall be
constrained to set Him, with reasoned conviction,
in a class apart, high above the greatest of men.
(6) The sources for such a study are, of course,
the four Gospels. It is obviously impossible to
appeal to the Epistles, save for any reminiscences
they may contain of the historic Christ. Their
conceptions of the risen Christ cannot come here
into view. In thus restricting ourselves to the
earthly life of Christ, we are not excluding any
view which faith might take of His present exist-
ence. If Christ be alive now, He must be the same,
morally, as He was when on earth. ‘There is no
other Christ than the Christ of the Gospels.
As soon as we turn to the Gospels, we are met
by various critical problems. The solution of
these must be sought in the various works which
are devoted to their discussion. For the study in
which we are to be engaged two positions are
essential, which may be stated here as assumptions,
though they are in reality conclusions of the study
itself. (1) The first is the trustworthiness of the
Gospels as portraitures of Christ. Grant the
282 CHARACTER OF CHRIST
ordinary critical results, that the Gospels were
written late in the Ist cent., that contemporary
ideas and experiences have influenced their authors
or editors, that in some cases the Evangelists have
misunderstood or misreported their Master; yet
the fact remains, that the character of Christ, as
presented in these documents, was not, and could
not have been, an invention or a fiction, a product
of progressive meditation, or a creation of enthu-
siastic feeling. Do justice to the portrait of Christ,
let its harmony and its uniqueness, its profound
naturalness and its transcendent loveliness, make
their due impression, and the conclusion presses,
that the Christ of the Gospels is not a construc-
tion but a memory, an actual Figure, once beheld
by eyes of flesh, and now discerned through a
medium upon which contemporary influences have
had no distorting effect, and which, accordingly,
permits Him to be known as He was.
It may be said that, while these remarks are true
of the Synoptic Gospels, they cannot fairly be ap-
plied to the Fourth GospeJ. A distinction, how-
ever, must be observed. ‘The Synoptic Gospels are
mainly ethical in their aim and method. Onto-
logical and theological conclusions are certainly
suggested ; but they are not explicitly stated.
In the Fourth Gospel these results are avowed in
the Prologue, referred to again and again in the
body of the work, and summarized in the conclu-
sion. While thus frankly theological, however, it
presents its doctrinal positions as the result of an
ethical study, which it also gives. With the cor-
rectness of these doctrinal inferences we are not
concerned. Our sole interest lies in the portrait of
Christ ; and with respect to it two things are cer-
tain: it is in complete harmony with that given by
the Synoptists, it is another picture of the same
person ; and it can be regarded, as little as that of
the Synoptists, as an invention or fiction. For
our present purpose, accordingly, which is ethical
and not theological, we shall use the materials pre-
sented in the Fourth Gospel, for a study of the
character of Christ, with the same freedom and
confidence with which we turn to the Synoptic
narratives.
(2) The second assumption follows naturally upon
the first, and maintains the szficiency of the Gos-
pels for knowledge of Christ. It is obvious that
they do not aim at extensive completeness. They
are not chronicles ; nor are they biographies in the
modern sense. A shorthand report of the sayings
of Jesus, a minute record of His life, during even
the short period covered by the narratives, would
have swelled their brief outlines to portentous
volumes. It is certain that they do aim at inten-
sive or central completeness. We do not need to
know everything about a man in order to know him.
For the purpose of character study, much that is
interesting, that affectionate curiosity would like
to know, is needless and irrelevant. The materials
| ur study must be, and need only be, such words
aid deeds as express the whole man, and are the
“nic utterance and outcome of his very self.
‘lis is one aspect of the uniqueness of the Gospels,
ne element in the proof that they are memorials,
Inve ntions, that the Christ they represent is
f ia) "Ὁ There Is not the faintest trace of arti-
10] y, of an ingenious synthesis of heterogeneous
eements, No portrait painter, no artist in words,
Ἰ Mead d a figure of such perfect harmony.
ali ] * eis a nes about ‘ hrist which we
ἘΟΙΔ ας pacts ee Se vat such things have been
: 8 ἘΠΔΌΙΘ us to Know Christ. From the Gos-
i Ι, λάθοι ae anonee to know what manner of man
influ oe ; nh με Ho" Be oak now, and able to
a ie als ΤῊΣ 4 ; tue on this earth, it is
anfolding ste “ae munic ‘ations will be simply the
§ an application of the character
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
which was expressed in such words and deeds as
the Gospels record.
(c) The relation of a purely ethical study of the
character of Christ to the theological consideration
of His person is obvious. The one presents the
problem with which the other deals. However
high we may place Christ as a moral teacher, or
even as the founder of a religion, nevertheless, if
His moral type remain the same as that recog-
nizable in other pure and lofty souls, if His moral
achievement is generically the same as theirs, there
can be no problem of His person. Christology is
not merely an impossibility, it is a huge irrele-
vaney. Only if a study of the character of Christ
raise from within the question of His relation to
men on the one side and to God on the other, can
there be a theological problem of the constitution
of His person. Only in that case are the Christo-
logical elements in the NT warranted, and the long
controversies of subsequent theological development
justified. If the Divinity of Christ is not to be a
dead dogma, soon to be abandoned by the minds
which it perplexes and the religious instincts which
it depresses; if it is to be a living conviction, sus-
taining faith and unifying thought, it must not be
treated as though it hung, gaunt and naked, in a
metaphysical vacuum; it must be regarded and
expounded in its organic connexion with the char-
acter of which it is the necessary presupposition,
and from which it derives its intellectual cogency:
The only pathway to faith is that trodden by the
first disciples. Belief in the Godhead of Christ, if
it is to be more than a mere theologoumenon, must
be rooted in acquaintance with Him; and that
acquaintance is informed and enriched, made close,
luminous, and full, through the medium of the por-
traiture in which the character of Christ is dis-
closed to our reverent gaze.
i. FORMATIVE INFLUENCES.—In the making of
men, three factors are to be distinguished—influ-
ences opcrating from without, the reaction of
personality, and the agency of the Divine Spirit.
It would be a mistake, in the case of Christ, to
concentrate attention wholly upon the second of
these, as though He were a mere apparition in the
moral universe, standing in no vital or intelligible
relation to His visible or invisible surroundings.
The other factors are amply recognized in the
Gospel narrative. The first of them alone comes
into view in our present study. The operations of
the Spirit of God belong to the theological inter-
pretation of the character of Christ, and can be
understood only from the point of view of a definite
conception of His person, to which our present
effort is introductory. We approach our subject,
accordingly, by briefly indicating the influences
which operated on the youth of Jesus.
1. Parentage.—Pre-natal influence, whose mode
of operation is beneath observation, is an undoubted
fact. Parentage affords the conditions, physical
and psychological, under which that recapitulation
of the ancestral past, which gives to human char-
acter its richest and most interesting elements,
takes place in the individual. If we conclude
(anticipating our judgment) that in Jesus there is
reproduced and perfected the highest type of OT
spiritual life, the conditio sine qua non of this most
lovely product is to be found in His parentage.
This thought does not even suggest a supernatural
birth. The question of the Virgin-birth is part of
the wider and profounder problem, which we are
not now facing, whether His person is to be re-
garded as an evolution from beneath or an incar-
nation from above, the entrance of God, at the
crisis of human need, for the redemption and
perfecting of men. It remains true, however,
that whether we assume or deny the Virgin-birth,
it is to His mother we are directed in our view of
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
His parentage. The idea of her sinlessness is
certainly not even suggested in any record of her
life ; it is merely the logical result of the blunder
of making the sinlessness of Jesus depend on
physical conditions. Yet it is beyond all doubt
that she belonged to the inner circle of those who,
in Israel, best preserved the spiritual heritage of
the race ; and it is beyond cavil that of this deeply
exercised generation of waiting souls she was her-
self a choice and lovely representative. With a
fitness which suggests, in its tenderly human and
deeply religious quality, a Divine selection, she
filled the office of living personal medium, through
which the stream of spiritual energy, which flows
through the whole history of Israel, poured in upon
her Son, to well up within His soul in the finest
features and characteristics of the national re-
ligion. In part, at least, we understand Jesus
through His mother. Most assuredly, He was
more than a Hebrew ; but He was a Hebrew born.
What He came to be is determined, in His case as
in others, by the dark and mystic tabernacle
wherein His physical frame was formed, by the
bosom whereon He lay, and the life-force whereby
His own was nourished. Preparation is thus made
in birth for a character which shall be true to the
national type, and, at the same time, deeply and
broadly human.
2. Home.—Of all the characters who have risen
to eminence from the lowliest surroundings, Jesus
Christ is the most remarkable. What attracts
attention to His home, however, is not the contrast
between His early circumstances and His later
attainments, but the harmony between the setting
of His childhood’s years and the noblest of His
manhood’s virtues and achievements. The chief
quality of His home was its pure humanity. None
but the simplest elements of human life are here.
The home at Nazareth is as far removed from
luxury and artificiality on the one hand, as it is
from squalor or depravity on the other. The in-
ward features of the home correspond with its
outward conditions. The father and mother belong
to what we know as ‘the special seedplot of
Christianity.’ They were ‘poor in spirit’; they
‘waited for the consolation of Israel.’ Lofty
aspirations, prayers and songs inspired and moulded
by OT conceptions and forms, conversation en-
riched by the ideas of the profoundest thinkers on
religion whom the world has ever known, lives
instinct with pure and passionate devotion to God :
amid such benign and holy influences the plastic
soul of Jesus grew to its maturity. Such a home
provides a perfect environment for One whose
personal secret is His communion with God, whose
message is God’s fellowship with men.
Without mere fancifulness we can conceive what
the childhood of Jesus really was—contented,
happy, trustful. Certain features of His manhood,
His freedom from extremes of feeling, His openness
of mind, His wide and deep charity, find the con-
ditions of their growth in His childhood’s home,
with its thorough naturalness and its nearness to
central truth regarding God and man.
The words which record that ‘ Jesus advanced in
wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and
men’ (Lk 253), describe a perfectly normal human
growth, a development without breach or strain or
crisis, conducted by the Spirit of God, toward the
realization of the Divine ideal of humanity. It
is impossible to reconcile them with an abstract
conception of His Godhead; impossible also to
reconcile them with an equally abstract conception
of His ‘mere humanity’ (whatever that may be).
But it is certain they present a unique fact, which
must have full weight given to it in any estimate
of the character and the person of Christ. It
might be suggested, indeed, that the complete
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
283
normality of His growth may have been imperilled
by communications made to Him by His mother
regarding the mystery of His birth or the greatness
of His vocation. Such communications, however,
were not made before His twelfth year. Mary’s
words in the temple (Lk 248) make that certain.
Even on the supposition that certain communica-
tions were made at a later date, they may have
aided Him in the discovery of His relation to God
and His mission to men; but the thoughts they
may have awakened in His mind would not then
act injuriously upon the growth of a perfectly pro-
portioned human character. The greatness which
was coming upon Him was leading Him nearer to
men, not farther away from them. We must
always look for what is unique in Christ within
and not beyond His normal human character.
3. Education.—Hellenic or Roman culture might
be brilliant, but it was narrow, limited to the con-
ditions of life ina Greek city, or to the uses of a
ruling race. Its faults are plain; intellectual
pride, superficial cleverness, abundance of ideas
together with dearth of ideals. Conceive now the
training of a Hebrew boy. Ignorant of much that
a Greek lad knew, he was thoroughly instructed
in the books of the OT. These constituted a
national literature, which, on any fair comparison,
vastly excels the utmost that the Hellenic spirit
could produce, in its power to quicken and direct
the activities of the soul, to deepen it, and to
enrich it with noblest conceptions of human life
and destiny. Such a literature is the most
splendid instrument of education the world has
ever seen ; and such was the education even of a
carpenter’s son in an obscure village. No doubt
even a system so excellent might be perverted ;
but always in education the result is determined
not by the perfection of the instrument, but by
the reaction of the pupil. From school Jesus
might have gone on to be a Rabbi of the common
dogmatic and narrow type. If He did not, if His
thought is wide, His insight deep, His spirit noble
and gentle; if He moves on the plane of the
greatest prophets of the OT, and sees beyond their
highest vision; we must trace this result to His
education, and to the response made to it by His
quick and intelligent sympathy. It is because He
is moulded by the influences of the OT that His
character is at once more spiritual and more
universal than it would have been, had He been
steeped to the lips in Hellenic culture. The
measure of His acquaintance with the apocalyptic
literature which many of His contemporaries were
studying, cannot accurately be determined. But
we shall make a profound mistake, if we imagine
that we can explain His teaching or understand
Himself by any such reference. We can come
within sight of Him only by retracing the steps of
His own education, and approaching Him from the
point of view of the OT. The groundwork of His
character and the spring of His thinking are to be
found in the OT. What He came to be or to
reveal, beyond that stage of moral and religious
attainment, stands in organic connexion with it.
Other educational influences must be remembered
and their power duly estimated: the historic
scenes which were within His view, with the
splendid and tragic memories they were fitted to
awaken; the highways of the world’s business
which were visible from the hills behind which
Nazareth lay; the pleasant country which was
spread all around His home. Such aspects of His
character as His intense patriotism, His wide
humanitarian sympathies, and His feeling for
nature, find their antecedents in the physical
surroundings of His early years.
At this point we pause to note an incident which
enables us, as efficiently as a score of haphazard
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
284
reminiscences would have done, to discern the
fruition of His life’s preparation, so far as it had
gone. Here it is well to remind ourselves of the
reverence which is due to all childhood in our
endeavour to analyze its utterances. ‘How is it
that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be
about my Father’s business ?’ (Lk 2#*).* No plati-
tudes as to moral paternity, no pedantic references
to the Trinity, help us to understand this wonder-
ing question. ‘The words have no doctrinal mean-
ing. ΠΟΥ ought not to be used as proof of a
dogma. Did Mary ask her Son what He meant ?
If she had asked, could He have made her under-
stand 2? The words, however, while thus far re-
moved from ontological problems, do reveal most
surely what manner of child He must have been
who uttered them. He must have lived till that
hour in a fellowship with God which had known
no interruption, which had been so deep and holy
and tender, that Mary’s word, applied to an earthly
parent, provides its secret. ‘Thy father and I,’
said His mother; and He replied, surely not in
any self-conscious, didactic mood, but in glad and
confident adoption of her word, ‘my Father’s
business.’ It is certain that one who uttered this
phrase out of the fulness of a child’s unreflective
experience, had never passed through the agonies
of a violated conscience. His experience is not
the abnormal type to be seen in St. Paul, Augus-
tine, Luther, Bunyan, but the profoundly normal
type of the human relation to God, as God designed
it to be. Operating wpon Him, through parent-
age and home and education, operating within
Him in ways beneath consciousness and beyond
observation, the Divine Spirit had led Him into,
and enabled Him to abide within, a continuous,
loving fellowship with God, of which the earthly
relationship of father and son is the reflexion and
the symbol. It is certain that Jesus never knew
any inward dislocation of spirit, never passed
through agonies of conviction, or emerged into
the rapture of an experience which overwhelmed
the judgment with surges of emotion. His char-
acter is not created by the healing of some deep
breach of soul. It bears none of the marks of
manufacture. It is a steadfast growth, the unin-
terrupted unfolding of the wealth of ethical mean-
ing that lay, from the beginning, within His soul.
From the village street He passes to the temple
courts, to find Himself there at home, and to
occupy Himself with His Father’s concerns. From
the temple He returns to His village home, without
surprise and without disappointment, still to be in
His Father’s presence, and to be about His Father’s
business. ‘He went down with them, and came
to Nazareth; and he was subject unto them’
(Lk 251),
4. The years of silence.—For eighteen years we
lose sight of Jesus. When they are past, not His
physical frame only but His moral stature also
has reached its fulness. The years themselves,
apart from the incidents which must have filled
them, are the most potent of the formative in-
fluences which are our guide to the understand-
me, ΟΣ Jesus. ‘There are certain deeply marked
features of His character, which are the imprint
on Him of the passage of these silent years.
1) Quietness and confidence.—In His manhood
ὁ no restlessness as of one who is uncertain
ul, none of the strained eagerness of one who
rt
till in pursuit of undiscovered truth. Plato’s
image of the aviary in no way resembles the mind
ὦ Jesus, No distinction is to be found in Him
between possessing and having.
He possesses, or
rather is possessed by rst
, fundamental and universal
ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός , Our argument is not affected
rendering (AV and Vm), or that
| to His inventive genius.
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
principles. His life and teaching are their ex-
position and illustration. We may debate their
validity, but we cannot dispute the absolute cer-
tainty with which He grasped them, LHighteen
years of silence had breathed their restfulness into
Him, and conferred on Him the precious gifts of
a quiet mind and an assured heart.
(2) Foresight.—Jesus had no magical acquaint-
ance with future events. Yet it is most note-
worthy that He moved amid the circumstances
of His life with no hesitating step. It is not
merely that, as a religious man, He knows that
God has a plan for Him, and will submit to it,
whatever it brings Him, however grievous or dis-
appointing ; but also that He knew what the plan
was. He was in the secret of His Father. In His
speaking and acting there is no trace of hesitation
or doubt. He never acts on a mere balance of
judgment, never wastes a moment on conjecture,
not one moment on regret. He acts with instant
perception of what is wanted, and goes forward
with confident step and calm foreseeing eye. He
marvels (twice it is recorded of Him, Mt 81), Mk
66) ; but it is the wonder which is at once the
parent and the child of knowledge, not the stupid
astonishment of mere ignorance. Events which
threatened destruction to Himself and His mission
were met by Him with solemn recognition as the
issue of a purpose which He served with full in-
telligence. Such calm wisdom, such quiet faith-
fulness, such undisturbed peace, had a history ;
and it lies in these eighteen years of silent waiting.
(3) Serenity and self-possession.— He was haunted
by misconception, beset by malice, harassed by
malignity. Yet He preserved an austere reserve,
which permitted no rash action, no unguarded
speech. He met His enemies with a silence which
was no dumb resentment, but was on some occa-
sions a most moving appeal, on others a most solemn
judgment. No man can be thus silent who is
driven ignorantly toward an unknown destiny.
The silence of Jesus is proof that His life lay
within both His purview and His command. Only
in solitude and obscurity can such qualities be de-
veloped. Eighteen silent years are not too much
to make a soul like that of Jesus Christ, strong,
deep, calm, and wise. Not dogmatic prejudice,
but respect for the unity of Christ’s character, and
for the self-evidencing truth of the portrait pre-
sented in the Gospels, condemns, as an outrage
upon all psychological probability, the practice of
packing into the three recorded years alternations
of thought and purpose, and tracing supposed dis-
tinctions between the hopes with which He began
His career and the convictions which were forced
upon Him toward its close. Naturalism of this
sort is simply unnatural and foolish. There is
nothing too great to be the outcome of years so
sublimely silent. What He is to be was then
formed within His soul. What He has to say was
then laid up for utterance. What He has to do
and endure was then foreseen and then accepted.
ii, THE VOCATION OF CHRIST.—The unity of
Christ’s character stands out impressively in the
Gospel portrait. The allowances we make, and
the averages we strike, in estimating the conduct
of other men, are not needed in His case. Woven
of the strands of common life, it is yet ‘ without
seam throughout.’ When we seek to explain this
unity, it is not enough to refer to the will of Christ,
as though it were a power operating in an ethical
vacuum. His is the normal human will, which
realizes its freedom by identifying itself with some
all-determining principle. When we ask, further,
what this principle is, which thus determines His
will and unifies His life, we shall be in error if we
regard it as an absolutely new idea, to be ascribed
He is not with complete
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
CHARACTER OF CHRIST 285
appropriateness to be designated a religious genius.
He has nothing to reveal which is new, if by that
epithet we mean to indicate a conception which
has no organic relations with the past. Jesus, as
believer, thinker, preacher, starts from the OT.
His originality consists in perfectly understanding
it, in carrying out into concrete reality its ruling
conceptions. When, therefore, we seek for the
determining principle of the life and character of
Christ, we must turn to the OT. From childhood
to manhood He lived the life of the ideal Israel, in
communion with God and consecration to His
service. What is unique in Him is not some
idea, derived we know not whence, but His actual
adoption of the purpose of God toward Israel as
the purpose of His own life. When we endeavour
to enter sympathetically into the experience of the
Prophetic authors of the OT, and when we com-
pare with their writings the character and career
of Jesus, we are led to the conclusion : First, that
the core of the OT religion is God’s redeeming
purpose toward Israel ; and, second, that the voca-
tion of Christ, as understood and accepted by Him-
self, was to fulfil that purpose. In the nature of
the case we cannot have from Jesus a narrative
of the experiences which culminated in this great
resolve, or an abstract statement of His ideas upon
the topic of redemption. Yet, as we follow the
occasions of His life, we overhear pregnant sayings,
and we observe significant incidents, which cor-
roborate and illustrate the impression which His
whole career makes upon us. ‘These we may thus
arrange—
1. His Designation of His vocation.—When we
inquire how Jesus designated His life’s aim, we are
met early in the narrative with one general, yet
most definite statement. He is addressing an
audience composed of His own disciples, together
with a wider range of auditors for whom also His
words are meant. We have, indeed, no verbatim
report of what is usually called the Sermon on the
Mount. Its theme, however, is unmistakable. It
is the Kingdom of God as it exists at the stage
which, in the person of the Speaker, it has now
reached. Plainly, the Kingdom, as Jesus proclaims
it, is a new thing. Its righteousness is new. Its
blessings are new. At once the question arises,
and was thrown at the Preacher with bitter con-
troversial animus, How does this new Kingdom
stand related to that which had endured through
the centuries of Israel’s history, which was now
indeed obscured by political oppression, but which
was destined one day to receive a glorious vindica-
tion? How do its new views of God and man and
duty compare with the venerable system of law,
of which the Scribes and Pharisees were the ac-
knowledged defenders ?
Then Jesus pronounces words which place Him
in the central stream of the Divine purpose, and
designate Him as its goal and its complete realiza-
tion : ‘I came not to destroy, but to fulfil’ (Mt 817).
It is noteworthy that to ‘the Law’ Jesus adds
‘the Prophets,’ thus emphasizing that element of
the OT religion which the legalists of His day
were most apt to neglect. He grasps the OT as
a spiritual whole, and this totality of Divine
meaning He declares it to be His vocation to fulfil.
He has come into the world to carry forward all
that had been signified by Law and Prophets to
an end foreseen, or at least felt, by OT believers,
but not attained in their experience. In Him the
OT religion is at once perfected, and accomplished
as an abiding reality.
Such a consciousness as this may well suggest
thoughts as to the person of Him who thus asserts
Himself. What is important for us now, however,
is the fact that it was His consciousness, that the
vocation thus announced was the end for which
Jesus lived, and constituted the organizing principle
to which is due the perfect unity of His character.
The same impression of the loftiness and the
definiteness of His vocation, as Jesus conceived
it, is deepened by a consideration of other sayings
in which He condensed the purpose of His life.
While, of course, critical conclusions are manifold,
it is not reasonably open to doubt (a) that Jesus
claimed to possess authority to forgive sins, and
so dispense the characteristic blessing of the New
Covenant (Jer 3134, Mt 96) ; (δ) that He claimed to
possess a knowledge of God which, in its immediacy
and fulness, was generically distinct from that en-
joyed by the most advanced OT saint, and to be
empowered to reveal God, thus known, to men
(Mt 117"); (0) that He regarded His death as laying
the basis of the New Covenant, and being, there-
fore, the medium of its blessings (Mt 26% and
parallels).
Again, we cannot fail to feel, in connexion with
such words, the drawing on of a mystery in the
person of Him who uttered them. ‘lurning aside,
however, from all such suggestions, and refraining
from all doctrinal construction, we are, neverthe-
less, not merely permitted, but constrained, to ob-
serve that they described the commission under
which He acted. They disclose the root of con-
viction from which His character grew. ‘Take this
away, and His character falls to pieces, and be-
comes no more an ethical unity, but a congeries
of inconsistencies. The belief that He was com-
missioned of God to execute the Divine purpose
towards Israel, and, through Israel, towards the
world, moved Him from beginning to end of His
career, and made Him the character which He
was, which we come to know in the Gospels, and
which has put its spell upon all subsequent gene-
rations.
2. His Dedication to His vocation.—The de-
termining purpose of His life was not made known
to Jesus for the first time in the experiences of
His baptism. The consciousness which He then
manifests had certainly a history. The experiences
through which He then passed imply a perfectly
prepared soul. In His whole bearing, from the
moment of His approach to John, there is not a
trace of hesitation or bewilderment. A new thing,
no doubt, came to Him; but it did not take Him
by surprise or usher Him into a calling which He
had not foreseen, or from which He had shrunk.
By the discipline of the silent years in Nazareth,
by the operation of the Divine Spirit, acting along
with all external instrumentalities and beneath the
conscious movements of His own spirit, His mind
had been informed of the task which awaited Him,
His faculties had been exercised in the appropria-
tion of so great a destiny, His soul had been fed
at sources of Divine strength, and thus enabled to
accept in deep surrender the Divine appointment.
His character, when first we see Him pass out of
obscurity into the light of history, is not like an
unfinished building, with scaffolding to be cleared
away, and much still to be done before it be beau-
tiful or habitable. It is like a living organism,
rooted in the discipline of past years, perfected
by adequate preparation, and now ready for its
destined uses and its full fruition. His thirtieth
year found Him well aware of His vocation, and
waiting only for the summons to take it up. The
cry of the Baptist reached Him in Nazareth, and
He knew that His hour was come. ‘Then cometh
Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan, unto John, to be
baptized of him’ (Mt 518). His baptism is at once
Christ’s dedication of Himself to His vocation,
and the first step in its accomplishment. His
experiences at such an hour are too intimate and
profound to be comprehended even by the most
reverent study. But their meaning must gather
286 CHARACTER OF CHRIST
round three points—(1) First, the word ‘thus it
becometh us to fulfil all righteousness’ (v.1°). In
this pregnant saying we are conveyed back to the
heart of the OT. God is righteous when He fulfils
the obligations which He imposed on Himselt
when He instituted His covenant with Israel. 10
is still His righteousness which moves Him, when,
after Israel has sinned itself out of the covenant
relationship, He promises a New Covenant, and
brings near a better salvation. This is the right-
eousness which Jesus has full in view on the verge
of Baptism. If this righteousness is to be fulfilled,
He who is the executor of the Divine purpose
must not shrink from His task, whatever it may
bring Him, and he who has a lesser function in
the Kingdom must not withstand or hinder Him
through any mistaken reverence.
(2) Second, the symbolic deed of baptism. Here
also the only possible clue is to be found in the OT,
There we see the godly in Israel, themselves right
with God, bearing in their own souls the load of
the people’s transgressions. What is thus, through
successive generations, done and suffered by exer-
cised believers, is assigned in Deutero-Isaiah to the
Servant of the Lord, who is in that writing the
ideal Israel making atonement for the sins of
the actual Israel. In descending to baptism, Jesus
is certainly not acknowledging personal unworthi-
ness. Itisnot even enough to say that He is vicari-
ously confessing the sins of others. He is definitely
assuming the place and office of the Servant of
the Lord. Himself righteous, He assumes in His
deepest soul the load of human sin, and thus at
once fulfils the righteousness of God and ‘ makes
many righteous.’ The Baptism of Christ, accord-
ingly, is at once the culmination of a life’s experi-
ences, the product of long years of thought and
prayer, and the inauguration of a career whose
movement and whose goal were already plainly
before His inward eye.
(8) Third, the Divine response (y.16f.), A decision,
whose issues we cannot calculate, was accompanied
by a pain which we cannot fathom. The doctrine
of the two natures, even supposing it to be proved,
throws no light on the experiences of that hour.
Jesus never found relief in His Divinity from His
human suffering. He took refuge in prayer (Lk
371). The Father answered with an endowment
ample enough even for the task, an assurance strong
enough to raise Him above all doubt. The terms
in which the assurance is given form a synthesis
of the two great figures through whom in the OT
the consummation of the Kingdom is achieved, the
Messianic King and the Servant of the Lord (Mk
1"), and afford additional proof of the conscious-
ness with which Jesus began His ministry. What
we observe in lesser men, we see in Jesus—a great
purpose determining the life, creating the character.
In His case, as in others, to miss the purpose leaves
the character a hopeless enigma, the life a meaning-
less puzzle.
3. His Confirmation in His Vocation.—Jesus
does not sweep forward in emotional enthusiasm
from Baptism to the announcement of His claims.
The tide of His endowment ‘drove’ Him (St.
Mark’s phrase) not to cities and throngs, but into
desert solitudes, there to
win through conflict
ut was His by right. Jesus certainly did not
leseribe to His disciples in full detail the strife by
Which He won His soul. Something He did tell,
nd told it, as alone it could be told, in symbols.
Che point at issue in the conflict
ἘΣ ὲ is the vocation to
WilChh Jesus |
be as just dedicated Himself. That
ΜΗ ' ‘ ae the synthesis of all the lines of action
y Witch, in the OT, God’s purpose was being
gradually fulfilled: and specially the synthesis of
πλιὰ ignty and service, The strain of the Temp-
ion is directed to the rending asunder of these
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
two. The effort to which Jesus is summoned is to
hold them together in indissoluble connexion, and
not, under whatever subtle seductive influences,
to snatch at the one and renounce the other. Any
breach between them will mean the defeat of the
Divine righteousness. Failure here will make
Jesus not the Servant of the Lord but His
adversary, servant of His enemy. ‘The stages of
the Temptation, accordingly, turn upon the
humiliations which the element of service will
bring into His career, and their supposed incom-
patibility with the sovereignty, which is His goal.
Surely hunger and toil and poverty are insuper-
able barriers in the way of reaching that suprem-
acy which Jesus would exercise with such be-
nignant grace! The alternative lay clear before
Him, the pathway of supernatural power, leading
away from normal human experience, or the path-
way of service and suffering, leading nearer and
nearer to the throbbing heart of humanity. Jesus
made His choice, and in that great decision gained
His vantage ground. As for Him, He would be
man, and would stand so close to men that He
could assume their responsibilities and bear their
burdens. Thus Jesus won His victory, a solitary
man, in death grips with evil, with no strength
save the Spirit of God, no weapon save the Word
of God. It was a complete victory. Within a
character, thus welded by trial, there was no
room hereafter for breach with God or with itself.
Though other assaults will be made, though they
be made by His dearest (Jn 2%4), His most loyal
(Mt 1672-23), though in one final onslaught they
wring from the Victor sweat of blood, the certainty
of their overwhelming defeat is already guaran-
teed. In studying the character of Christ, we are
led from one surprise of loveliness to another ; but
we are never in any uncertainty as to its per-
manence, never haunted by any dread of its
failure. From the beginning there is the note of
finality and absoluteness.
iii. CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRIST.—AIl character
study is necessarily incomplete. A character which
could be exhaustively analyzed would not be worth
the pains taken in making the necessary investiga-
tions. The quality of mystery certainly belongs
to the character of Christ to a degree that suggests
a source of power, deeper and less restricted than
that which would suffice to explain shallower and
more intelligible personalities. No biography has
ever comprehended Him; the intent meditation of
nineteen centuries has not exhausted His fulness.
It would, accordingly, be both pedantic and unreal
to attempt a logical articulation of the elements of
His character or a classified list of His virtues. It
seems best, therefore, in this article to move from
the more general to the more particular, without
too great rigidity of treatment. We begin, then,
with those impressions of His character which are
at once the broadest and the deepest.
1. Spiritual-mindedness.—St. Paul’s great phrase
in Ro 8° φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος, ‘the general bent
of thought and motive’ (Sanday-Headlam) directed
toward Divine things, which is applied even to the
best men we know, with reserves and limitations,
exactly expresses the prevailing direction of
Christ’s life and character. He possesses the
spiritual mind to a degree which stamps Him as
being at once unique among men, and also true
and normal man, realizing the ideal and fulfilling
the duty of man as such. He moves habitually in
the realm of heavenly realities. He does not visit
it at intervals. He dwells there, even while He
walks on earth, and is found amid the throngs and
haunts of men. He carries with Him the aroma
of its holiness and peace and blessedness. That
His disciples were ‘with him’ (Mk 814) was the
secret of their preparation, the source of any wis-
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
CHARACTER OF CHRIST 287
dom they manifested, any success they achieved.
The most mature experience of the power of
Christ, and the most lofty conception of His
person, find their ultimate warrant in this, that
the unseen world becomes visible in His character.
Apart from this, they are composed of things so
unreal as feelings and opinions. Illustration and
proof of the spiritual-mindedness of Christ are too
abundant to be specified in detail. The following
points will sutfice to indicate its quality and signi-
ficance.
(1) His knowledge.—He Himself, on one occa-
sion, distinguished the objects of His knowledge
as heavenly things (ἐπουράνια), and earthly things
(ἐπίγεια, Jn 312). The former are the mysteries of
the Kingdom, the counsels of Jehovah, which in
the OT He makes known by the medium of the
prophets. The latter are the facts of human
nature, as that is essentially related to the being
and character of God, and is capable of receiving
and experiencing the powers and truths belonging
to the Kingdom of God. There is no doubt as to
the kind of knowledge He evinced, and believed
Himself to possess, regarding heavenly things. He
is not inquiring like Socrates, nor reasoning like
Plato, nor commenting like a scribe. He knows
with absoluteness and fulness (Mt 1127). He be-
holds with immediate direct vision (Jn 118 64), He
reports what He sees and hears (Jn 311 838 1515),
‘He does not in any formal way teach the religion
which lives in Him.... The thing itself He
merely expresses, nay, still more presupposes than
expresses’ (Beyschlag).’
Christ’s knowledge of earthly things, 1.6. His
insight into the subjective experiences of men and
the moral condition of their souls, has the same note
of absoluteness; and His judgments upon them
and His dealings with them have an authority
and finality which would be unwarrantable did
they not rest on perfect discernment (Mk 1031, Lk
739, Jn 142: 47275), Of this He Himself could not
but be aware; and, indeed, He expressly made it
His claim (Jn 1318}, Peter’s heart-broken appeal
(Jn 211") belongs to the incidents of the Forty Days,
and so cannot be used directly as proof ; but no
doubt it reflects the impression which the historic
Christ made upon those who knew Him, viz. that
He saw into their inmost souls with a discernment
as intimate and deep as God’s, which, like God’s,
could neither be evaded nor hindered.
Whether Christ possessed supernatural know-
ledge of facts in the order of external nature has
been much discussed, but does not now concern
us. We are not even concerned at present with
any explanation of His knowledge of Divine
things. But we are bound to note, and to give
full weight to the fact, that in the Gospel por-
traiture the world of heavenly realities, both in
themselves and in their earthly manifestations
and applications, is open to Jesus, that He is in
complete spiritual affinity with it, and speaks upon
all matters that belong to it with definite and
self-conscious authority. Even if His Divinity be
denied, it must be allowed that He is a man pos-
sessed of undimmed spiritual vision.
(2) His teaching.—Jesus is not a lecturer, mak-
ing statements, however brilliant and luminous,
of the results of investigation. He is a revealer,
disclosing in ‘the mother-speech of religion’ the
heavenly realities which were open to His inward
eye. His teaching, therefore, is inexhaustible,
begetting, in the process of studying it, the faculty
of ethical insight, and continuously raising, in the
effort to practise it, the standard of the moral
judgment. Yet it retains the quality of spiritual
delight which enchained its first listeners. It is
gracious in its unfoldings of the Divine compas-
sions ; in its disclosure not merely of the fatherli-
ness, but of the fatherhood of God ; in its invita-
tions, pleadings, promises; and, most of all, in
its astounding declaration, which pride deemed
blasphemous and humility never questioned, of
the Divine forgiveness, deep, and free, and fear-
less. It is holy and spiritual, rejecting conyven-
tional piety, emphasizing, as even the OT had not
done, the inward state of a man’s heart Godward,
describing the type of character required in citi-
zens of the Kingdom in terms of such unearthly
purity and loveliness, as would produce despair
were any other than Himself the speaker. It is
universal, perfecting the Law and the Prophets, in
this respect also, that it declared the height of
spiritual privilege to be attainable, not merely by
Israel, but by man as such, irrespective of merit or
privilege.
Such a voice had never been heard in Israel;
not Hosea’s, with its tears of Divine compassion ;
not Isaiah’s, with its royal amplitude; not his
who in pure and lofty song heralded the return
from Babylon; not John’s as it rang out from
hill to hill his summons to repentance. Aston-
ished by its novelty, wooed by its charm, bowed
by its authority, the multitudes followed a little
way as it called them heavenward; and some
elect souls rested not till they too entered the
universe of truth whence Jesus uttered His voice.
The greatest foe to faith is the haste which seeks
to construct dogmas about Christ before Christ is
known. ΤῸ some souls the time for dogma comes
late, or not at all. In any case, dogma, however
accurate, must rest on the trustworthiness of Jesus
in His disclosure of spiritual fact.
(3) The effect of His presence.—A spiritual mind
produces upon those who come under its influence
a twofold impression, that of remoteness and that
of nearness and sympathy. This is conspicuously
the case with Jesus. We have abundant evidence
of His having a dignity of presence, which smote
with awe those who had but occasional glimpses
of Him, and filled at times His most familiar
friends with fear, and also of His being the
kindest, gentlest, and most sympathetic of souls.
It could not be otherwise. To have discerned the
end which created His career, to make choice of it
with such full intelligence of all that it involved,
to live for it in such entire consistency with its
scope and requirements, means a moral grandeur
unapproached by sage or prophet. Separated from
the mass of men, removed from their pursuits, He
must have been. Yet the very greatness of His
vocation, the very depth of His insight both into
the purpose of God and the need of man, produced
in Him, along with that deep distinctiveness, the
kindliest appreciation of the little things which
make up the life of man, the most sympathetic
interest in ordinary human concerns, and an en-
tire approachableness to the humblest applicant for
counsel or comfort. This combination of a majesty
which smites to the ground the instruments of
prostituted justice, with a manner so tender that
babes smile in His arms and women tell Him the
secret of their care, must have its source deep in
the heavenly region which was His habitual abode.
2. Love to God.—The heavenly region which
Jesus inhabited was not an abyss of being where
the finite loses itself in the absolute. It was a
realm of persons, Divine and human, who dwelt
together in intelligent, spiritual fellowship. The
doctrine of ‘the One,’ which is found in every
climate and revives in every century, is not the
clue to Jesus’ thought of God. The key to His theo-
logy is the doctrine of the Father; His love to
the Father is the motive of His life. He pro-
claimed love to God, absorbing all energies, com-
prehending all activities, as the first, the great
commandment, of which the second, love to man,
|
God wrought ln
288 CHARACTER OF CHRIST
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
Mee we EE
is the direct corollary. But when we compare
His own obedience to the first commandment with
that of other men, avery significant distinction is
to be observed. ‘The most devout souls in their
nearest approach to God are conscious that their
love is not perfect. This defect is due in part to
sin, and the chastened soul rebukes the coldness
of its affection; and in part to finitude, and the
adoring soul continually aspires after higher at-
tainments. In the case of Jesus, the note, either
of compunction or of aspiration, is never heard.
The explanation of this is not that in later recen-
sions of the tradition such notes were struck out, in
deference to a mistaken sense of reverence, or to
support a novel view of His person ; but that the
impression of complete spiritual attainment belongs
to the very essence of the character as set forth
in the Gospels. We may dispute whether such a
character ever existed; but we cannot question
the fact that such a character has been portrayed,
with a verisimilitude which makes the portraiture
a greater miracle than the actual reality of the
character depicted would have been. Jesus loved
God perfectly: this is the only fair interpretation
of the record. ‘There is no trace of moral disparity,
no failure of mutual understanding, no sign of
effort on the part of Jesus to cross a chasm, how-
ever inconsiderable, between Himself and God.
He receives the communications of the Father’s
love without perturbation or amazement, as of
one overwhelmed by the Divine condescension ;
and He responds without extravagance of emotion,
in words which do not labour with overweight of
meaning, but are easy, natural, simple, and glad,
the very language of One who is the Son of such
a Father. He and the Father are one. ‘The
Synoptic picture, as well as that of the Fourth
Gospel, makes this feature plain. There can be
no doubt that this fact raises the Christological
problem in its profoundest form. What man is
He who thus receives and returns the love of God ?
Two of love’s characteristic manifestations,
moreover, are found in Christ in perfect exercise.
(1) Obedience. We have seen that the character of
Christ is created by the vocation to which He dedi-
cated Himself. We now observe that this vocation
is, in the view of Jesus, nothing impersonal, but
is the personal will of the Father. This is the
Father’s * business,’ and to it He, as the Son, is
entirely devoted. The will of the Father does not
mean for Jesus a series of commands. It is rather
to His deep conviction a purpose, moving through-
out His whole life, and comprehending every detail
of His activity. The obedience of the Son, accord-
ingly, is not a series of events. It is the identifi-
cation of His will with the will of the Father, and
a complete reproduction of that will in the whole
conduct of His life. Sayings in the Fourth Gospel,
such as 4% 688 829. bring into clear utterance the
impression conveyed by the whole career of Jesus,
and express an obedience which has lost the last
trace of distance between the will of the Son and
the will of the Father. Again, we must postpone
aii discussion of the possibility of such obedience,
and must emphasize the actuality of the repre-
sentation, ‘lwo things are plain: first, Jesus was
of being in complete and constant har-
d, and profoundly unconscious of
ightest failure to fulfil the whole will
of God; in | second, those who knew Him best
beli ved that in Him they had witnessed a unique
rat achievement, viz., an obedience absolutely
rfect. hoth } yt 9 ini j ]
pert th Ih 105 extent and in its inward quality.
‘Perfect love casteth out fear’ (1 Jn
Bid sus’ trust in God was, like His obedience,
τῆς en ἜΝ : ee to an ¢ ntire and unfailing
ipo rod, SO that whatever He did,
Him. In other servants of God
we observe, even in their deepest experiences, a
certain dualism of self and God, a self assisted to a
creater or less degree by God. This account would
not be adequate to the experiences observable in
the record regarding Christ. He is, without doubt,
a person, not will-less, but acting in complete self-
determination, and yet His deeds are the Father’s.
No process of analysis can distinguish in any word
or deed of His an element which comes from
Himself and another which comes from God. In
Christ we find a perfect spiritual organism—a man
so completely inhabited by God that His words
and deeds are the words and deeds of God. Follow
Him in His career, as it passes with unbroken
steadfastness from stage to stage of an unfolding
purpose, study Him in His dealing with men, and
note the sureness of His touch, penetrate the secret
of His consciousness as He from time to time lifts
the veil (Jn 520. 80 716 1249 1410. 24). and the result
to which we are forced is, that here is a human life
rooted in the Divine, filled and environed by it.
This is, of course, no ontological explanation ; but
it states the ethical and spiritual phenomenon
which demands an explanation; and this ex-
planation must reach to the sphere of personal
being.
Precisely at this point, however, when the facts
we are describing seem to pass beyond the limits
of normal human experience, we are summoned to
observe that the trust and obedience of Jesus were
not maintained without strenuous solicitude, or
the use of those means which aid the human spirit
in its adherence to God. His obedience was not
easy. His will, in its ceaseless surrender, was
subjected to increasing strain. He learned obedi-
ence by the things which He suffered (He 5°). The
‘disposition of obedience’ was always present.
‘But the disposition had to maintain itself in the
face of greater and greater demands upon it. And
as He had to meet these demands, rising with the
rising tide of the things which He suffered, He
entered ever more deeply into the experience of what
obedience was’ (A. B. Davidson on He 57°). His
ability to bear the strain to which He was thus
subjected is due to a trust in God which was con-
tinually revived by His habit of prayer, to which
there is such frequent and significant reference in
the narrative (Lk 321. 22, Mk 185, Lk 516 612. 18 Mt
148, Lk 91828, Mt 26%6-41, Lk 234). An increasing
revelation of the Divine will, an unceasing advance
in obedience, a continuous exercise of trust, are
the strands woven together in the character of
Christ. The product is that perfect thing, a life
which is His own, and is entirely human, which is
also, at the same time, the coming of God to man.
3. Love to men.—The source of this character-
istic, which shines resplendent from every page of
the narrative, is to be found in that which we have
just been considering, Christ’s love to God. Here
we must do justice to the facts brought before us
in the portrait. The noblest servants of God in
the field of humanity have done their work out of
a sense of obligation. They have received so much
from God, that they have felt themselves bound, by
constraint of the love of which they are recipients,
to serve their fellow-men; and in this service
their love for men has grown, till it has become no
unworthy reflexion of the love of God. It would
be, however, a miserably inadequate account of
the facts of Christ’s ministry among men to say
that He loved them out of a sense of duty, and
served them in discharge of a debt which He owed
to God. The vocation which formed His character
was not bare will. It was love, seeking the re-
demption of men. Jesus’ acceptance of this voca-
tion meant that His love to God entered into, and
blended with, the love of God to men. He loved
God, and the love of God to Him became in Him
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
CHARACTER OF CHRIST 289
the motive-power of His love to men. His love to
God and His love to men constitute one energy of
His soul. He turns toward the Father with the
deep intelligence and the full sympathy of the
Son ; and straightway He turns toward the world
with the widest and tenderest charity (Mt 1127-28,
ef. Jn10!°). Those, accordingly, upon whom Jesus
poured His love, never sought to distinguish be-
tween it and the love of God. Enfolded by the
love of Christ, they knew themselves to be received
into the redeeming love of God; and their grateful
love to Jesus was the proof and seal of the Divine
forgiveness. ‘Her sins, which are many, are for-
given : for she loved much’ (Lk 747). Long before
the doctrine of His Divinity was framed, the love
of Christ was regarded by its recipients as the
spiritual medium in which the Divine compassion
reached them. Hebrew thought did not work with
categories of being and substance. The human
heart never works with categories at all. But it
can identify love when it receives it ; and there-
fore it makes an experimental synthesis of the
love of Christ and the love of God, and sets Christ
in a relation toward God occupied by no other
man.
The love of God to man being such as He extends
to no lesser creature, implies that man has a value
for God which no other creature possesses ; and to
Jesus man has the same supreme value. Of this
value there are no earthly measurements, not any
created thing (Mt 103! 1212), not any institution,
however sacred (Mk 22"), not even the whole world
(Mk 8538), Even the moral ruin, in which sin has
involved human nature, does not diminish its value,
but rather accentuates its preciousness, and adds
to the love of God, and therefore also of Jesus,
a note of inexhaustible passion (Mt 180.1214),
Christ’s doctrine of man does not breathe the spirit
of 18th cent. individualism. Not for man as a
spiritual atom, self-contained and_all-exclusive,
does Jesus have respect. But for man akin to
God, capable of Divine sonship, He has deep and
loving admiration. Not for man, harassed with
passions for whose might he is not responsible,
guilty of acts which to comprehend is to pardon,
does Jesus have regard. But for man, meant for
so much and missing so much, framed for per-
fection, destroyed by his own deed, He has love
and pity, throbbing in every word, passing through
action and through suffering to the ultimate agony,
the final victory of the Cross.
iv. SOCIAL RELATIONS.—We have now to follow
the character of Christ, which we have been study-
ing in its origin, its development, and its leading
features, as it manifests itself in the relations in
which He stood to His fellow-men. The narratives
attempt no enumeration of incidents. ‘They pre-
sent us with typical instances, in which the true
self of Jesus is disclosed. From these we are able
to conceive the figure of Christ as He moved amid
the circles where human life is ordinarily spent.
1, Family.—It is difficult, from the very scanty
materials before us, to trace the relations of Jesus
towards the members of His family circle, and to
distinguish clearly their attitude towards Him.
Yet the following points may be regarded as cer-
tain: (1) The life of Jesus, prior to His baptism,
was spent within the family circle, and was char-
acterized by two features. First, a loyal and
affectionate discharge of the duties of a son, pre-
sumably as breadwinner for His mother. The very
astonishment of His fellow-villagers at His sub-
sequent career is sufficient evidence that during
the period prior to His public ministry He fulfilled
the ordinary obligations of family life. Second,
a deepening sense of His vocation, which, while
it did not render Him less dutiful as a son and
brother, could not fail to give Him a distinctiveness
VOL. I.—19
which would inevitably excite adverse criticism on
the part of His kindred, should they prove unsym-
pathetic or unintelligent.
(2) The attitude of His mother towards Him,
both before and after His baptism, was twofold.
(a) Belief in His unique mission and extraordinary
powers. Her words to Him in Cana of Galilee
(Jn 2%) are pointless, unless they express a per-
suasion, born of long pondering, and revived by the
recent events connected with His baptism, that He
has a mission which could be nothing less than
Messianic, and that the time has come for the dis-
play of powers with which necessarily He must be
endowed for the fulfilment of His task. (b) A
profound misconception of the nature of His
mission, and of the means by which it should be
inaugurated and carried on, together with a critical
attitude towards Him, in regard to what she
evidently considered an inexplicable, and even
blameworthy, negligence on His part to seize the
opportunity presented in the circumstances of the
feast. For this misunderstanding we need not
greatly blame her, for it was shared by His dis-
ciples even after the Resurrection ; unless, indeed,
we conceive, what is most probable, communings
between mother and son during those long silent
years, which might lead us to marvel that she,
who surely might have understood, failed as com-
pletely as others to discern His purpose.
(9) The attitude of His ‘brethren’ is still less
intelligent. There is no suggestion in the narra-
tive of any sympathy with Him whatsoever.
After thirty years together, they could find no
other explanation for His behaviour than tempor-
ary insanity, and could conceive no other plan
than to put Him under temporary restraint. If
His mother joined in this estimate and this pro-
posal (Mk 321), it must have been with the con-
viction that she had the right and duty of inter-
vening tosave Him from Himself, and rescuing Him
from a course which would prove fatal to His
mission as she conceived it. It is certain that she
joined His ‘brethren’ in making an approach to
Him, with the obvious intention of inducing Him
to change His plan of action (Mk 9351). Ata later
stage His brethren offered Him a final challenge
(Jn 7°-4). They did not believe in Him (v.°), and
therefore their suggestion to Him has not quite the
sense of Mary’s at Cana of Galilee. It expresses
their demand to have this matter of His Messiah-
ship (about which they had no doubts) settled once
for all by open demonstration: ‘ Manifest thyself
to the world.’
Here, then, is the situation of Jesus with respect
to His faniily. He loves His kindred as son and
brother ; but He knows that His vocation demands
the sacrifice of family life, and this sacrifice, with
its deep pain, He is prepared to make. He is
called upon, however, to endure a yet deeper pain.
Not only has He to leave the dear fellowship of
the home, and face a world which will prove in
the end ‘bitterly hostile, but among the members
of the home He can find no understanding hearts
to cheer Him and comfort Him on His lonely way.
Worse still, when His nearest and dearest with-
stand Him, or seek to divert Him from His
appointed path, He has to repel them in words
which He knows must keenly wound them. ‘To
be tempted by His very love for His mother and
His brethren to deviate from the line of obedience
to His mission, must have put a peculiar strain
upon His spirit, and brought Him most exquisite
pain. In each of the incidents alluded to above
we feel this note of pain : when He declines the
intervention of His mother (Jn 2*); when He
turns from His mother and His brethren to His
disciples (Mk 3%!) ; and when He has, in plain
words, to state to His brethren that they and He
290 CHARACTER OF CHRIST
belong to two different worlds of thought and
action (Jn 759, cf. 15%), That between Him and
His mother there was a bond of love deeper than
all misunderstanding, gains pathetic proof when
from the cross He commends her to His beloved
disciple: ‘Woman (the very word, γύναι, He had
used in Cana of Galilee, courteous and affectionate,
and yet suggestive of a cessation of the old relation-
ship of mother and child), behold thy son.’ ‘ Be-
hold thy mother’ (Jn 197).
2. Friends.—The vocation of Christ was one
which could be executed by Himself alone. Neces-
sarily He lived in a deep spiritual solitude, to
which no human being could have access. Yet no
sooner did He take up the burden of His mission
than He proceeded to surround Himself with com-
panions, and to cultivate human friendships. _In
the relations of Jesus to His friends three points
are to be noted.
(1) His dependence upon them.—It will be a pro-
found mistake if we conceive the end for which
Jesus lived in any barely historical or formal
manner. The end was the Kingdom of God, or
the New Covenant ; but these titles do not, in the
mind or language of Christ, stand for a political
or ecclesiastical institution. They mean, funda-
mentally, an experience of God generically identi-
cal with that enjoyed in Israel, but perfected, and
therefore also universalized. This experience is
destined, in the counsels of God, for humanity.
To secure it for mankind, so that under fit
spiritual conditions all men may enter into it,
is the task which Jesus in clear consciousness
definitely assumed. Suppose Him, however, to
have fulfilled His task as the Servant of the Lord,
He will lose His labour, unless He secure repre-
sentatives and witnesses, who shall declare to all
whom it concerns the accomplishment of God’s
gracious purpose. ‘This testimony, moreover, can-
not be borne by mere officials. Suppose, for in-
stance, that the Resurrection was a fact. Suppose,
further, that it had been verified by the investi-
gations of experts drawn from the chief seats of
learning of the ancient world. Nothing is more
certain than that this testimony, taken alone,
would not have advanced by a hairbreadth the
purpose to which Jesus devoted Himself. ‘esti-
mony to certain facts, there is no’doubt He re-
quired ; but this testimony would be valueless, did
it not presuppose, and rest on, personal acquaint-
ance with Himself, and participation in His own
fellowship with God. His representatives must
be His friends, bound to Him by personal ties of
close and intelligent sympathy ; capable of bear-
ing witness, not merely to a series of His acts, but
to His character and to His influence; having an
understanding not merely of His doctrine, but
of Himself. It was essential, therefore, that from
the outset He should have friends about Him, to
whom He should fulfil all the sacred obligations of
afriend. When, accordingly, He comes to give
them their commission, He makes it plain to them
that His vocation is their vocation, having the
same Divine origin, and carrying with it His own
spiritual presence (Lk 418.21. 48 Mt 1524 10442, Jn
20 “1, Mt 2819. 2),
How much the friendship of His disciples was to
Jesus, the whole narrative bears witness. Their
faith in Him was the. greatest encouragement,
apart irom
He could
culties of His
note of pathos
immediate
recelve
Divine assurances, that
as He faced the appalling diffi-
task. ‘There is an unmistakable
in His clinging to His disciples
When the natural support of family loyalty is
denied H m. ‘They were to Him brother, sister
mother. There can be no doubt that, had His
three most intimate friends watched unto prayer
His last agony would have been alleviated. It is
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
the pathos of His position that His friends never
knew how much He depended on them. ‘To them
He was the Strong One upon whom they leaned,
from whom they took everything, to whom, in un-
conscious selfishness, they gave but little. Love
must have been to Jesus a constant hunger.
Never in all His life did He get it satisfied; and
yet it never failed, but remained the master passion
of His soul. ‘ Having loved his own which were
in the world, he loved them unto the end.’
(2) His self-communications to them.—The chief
thing a friend can give to a friend is himself ; and
Jesus poured out on His friends the wealth of His
personality: His love (Jn 18%), His knowledge
(1515), His example (1315); so that, when He re-
views His life, He can plead with His Father His
own perfect fulfilment of love’s obligations (17&
8-12), The riches of Christ, thus bestowed upon
them, vivified their imagination, quickened their
emotion, enlightened their understanding, subdued
and renewed their wills, till they came to be not
wholly unfit representatives of Him on whose
errand they went. This influence, which Jesus
exerted, had none of the aspect of an impersonal
force. It consisted in the touch of spirit upon
spirit in the mystic depths of fellowship ; and this
touch is not to be conceived as having the equal
pressure of the atmosphere. Under certain con-
ditions, which are necessarily too deep and deli-
cate for analysis, the love of Christ gathered an
intensity which made His friendship in these in-
stances special and emphatic (Jn 113-5 1323). Yet
so exquisite was His tact, so evident His goodwill,
that those about Him, though they might quarrel
among themselves for pre-eminence, never brought
against Him the charge of favouritism. They
knew He loved them according to the measure of
their receptivity, and with a reserve of tenderness
and power for ever at their disposal. They assented
as in a dream to His own word, ‘ Greater love hath
no man than this, that a man lay down his life for
his friends’ (Jn 1518). Afterwards they awoke,
and remembered, and understood.
(5) Their resyonse to Him.—It is impossible to
miss the brighter aspect of their attitude towards
Him. They were glad in His company, happier
than the disciples of the Pharisees or of John,
happy as sons of the bride-chamber (Mk 235).
This joy of theirs in His presence throws a very
lovely light upon His character. He knew the
goal toward which His steps were taking Him,
and was standing within sight of the cross. Yet
no shadow from His spirit clouded theirs. They
rejoiced in Him, and in the new world of religious
experience to which He introduced them. ‘They
knew themselves to be possessed of privileges,
which from the point of view of the OT had been
no more than an aspiration. In the fellowship of
their Master and Friend they stood nearer to God
than the ripest saint of the OT, immeasurably
nearer than any legalist of their own day. This
joy of theirs in Him is, besides, reflection and
proof of His joy in them. It is strange, when we
consider the spiritual elevation at which He lived,
but it is certain, that He had a very real joy in
their presence. He delighted to stimulate their
minds by questioning, to enrich their conceptions
by definite teaching. He welcomed every indica-
tion of their growing intelligence ; and when He
discerned that they were awake to His meaning,
‘ He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit ? (Lk 1021).
They trusted Him.—The result at which Jesus
aimed in all His dealings with them was the pro-
duction in them of faith ; and by faith He meant
a trust in Himself as complete as that which men
ought to repose in God. Without doubt, this
raises far-reaching questions regarding His per-
It is| sonal relation to God. But the fact itself remains,
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
ee ee ee eee
as an element in the portrait of Christ, whether |
presented by the Synoptics or by the Fourth Gos-
pel, that Jesus directed men to Himself as the
source of all good, whether lower or higher (Mt
810. 18, and many instances connected with the
healing of the body ; Lk 7, and other instances
where spiritual effects are secured by faith, which
are to be found in the Synoptics, and more copi-
ously in the Fourth Gospel). His ‘ training of the
Twelve’ was not wholly fruitless. They gave Him
what He sought, though not with the largeness
and simplicity for which He longed.
It is noteworthy that their faith in Him is not
to be gauged by its verbal expression. That might
be surprisingly full, while the faith might be most
rudimentary ; or the expression of faith might well-
nigh be silent, while yet the trust itself remained,
scarce distinguishable from despair, and yet a root
whence life might come. From the beginning Jesus
produced an impression upon those admitted to His
company, for which they felt there was only one
possible interpretation; and this, even at that
early stage, they stated with great fulness (Jn 151:
45.49), Jesus, however, did not consider that His
end was gained, but proceeded with His education
of these men, and allowed all factors in the case,
especially such as seemed to exclude the possibility
of Messianic glory, to make their due impress.
Then, at the proper psychological moment, He put
the supreme question—‘ Who say ye that I am ὃ"
and received from Peter’s lips the confession of
His Messiahship (Mt 16!f-). Even then Jesus was
under no illusion with respect to the faith which
had received such emphatic expression. He made
allowances for an eclipse of faith which might
seem total; but still, in spite of all appearances, He
believed in His disciples’ faith in Him, not indeed
in their intellectual or emotional utterances, but
in the surrender of their wills to Him, and their
personal loyalty.
We are thus recalled to the darker side of their
relations with Him. Indeed, readers of the narra-
tive are apt to be more severe in their judgment
upon the disciples than was the Master Him-
self. Certainly their defects and shortcomings are
patent enough, and the contrast between their
Master and them can scarcely be exaggerated.
He has not where to lay His head; their minds
are occupied with the question of rewards (Mt
192"). He is meek and lowly in heart ; they dis-
pute about pre-eminence (Mt 18'%, Lk 2274). His
kingdom is for the poor in spirit; they lay plans
for private advantage (Mt 202°). It is not of this
world ; to the end they are thinking of physical
force (Lk 2249). He invites all to His fellowship ;
they are narrow and exclusive (Mk 940), Fury
is not in Him; they would invoke judgment upon
adversaries (Lk 954°), They boasted their cour-
age; but in the hour of His uttermost peril ‘ they
all forsook him, and fled’ (Mt 265). There can be
no doubt that these things greatly moved Him,
but the note of personal offence is entirely lack-
ing. There is astonishment at their slowness, but
no bitterness or petulance : ‘Do ye not remember ?’
(Mk 818); ‘Are ve also even yet without under-
standing?’ (15!) ; ‘ Have ye not yet faith ?’ (Mk 459).
Sometimes silence is His severest answer: ‘ Lord,
here are two swords! It is enough!’ (Lk 2235).
Me makes His very censures the occasion of further
instruction: ‘It isnot so among you.... The Son
of Man came to minister’ (Mk 10), Even when
His spirit was most grieved, there was no flash of
resentment, but oniy the most poignant tenderness :
‘Simon, sleepest thou ? couldest thou not watch one
hour?’ . . . (Mk 1437); ‘The Lord turned, and
looked upon Peter’ (Lk 2251),
This ignorance and waywardness on the part of
His disciples, combined with their genuine love
CHARACTER OF CHRIST 291
for Him and His abounding love for them, consti-
tuted a very severe trial of Jesus’ fidelity to His
vocation. ‘The greatest temptation,’ says a keen
analyst of character, ‘is the temptation to love
evil in those we love, or to be lowered into the
colder moral atmosphere of intense human affec-
tion, or to shrink from what is required of us that
would pain it.’ Jesus loved His friends. He knew
that His course of conduct would inflict upon them
unspeakable disappointment and distress ; and this
knowledge must have filled His own heart with
keenest pain. When, accordingly, the disciple
who most clearly confessed His Messiahship de-
nounced the path He had chosen, the path of suf-
fering, as inconsistent with the rank He. had led
His friends to believe was His, He felt Himself
assailed in what the author above quoted ventures
to call His ‘weakest point.’ It was the Tempta-
tion repeated; and as such Ie repelled it with hot
anger.
In the case of one of the Twelve, it is to be
noted that his criticism was not a temptation,
because it was not the result of uncomprehending
love, but of intelligent and bitter hate. Judas
discerned the inevitable issue of Jesus’ line of
action; perceived that it involved all his own
secret ambitions in utter ruin; and in revenge de-
termined to be the instrument of the destruction
which he foresaw. Again and again Jesus inter-
posed to save him by warnings, which Judas alone
could comprehend in their dreadful significance :
‘One of you shall betray me’ (Jn 1321, cf. 679 ‘One
of you [the Twelve] is a devil’). In the end
He had to let him go: ‘That thou doest, do
quickly’ (v.2").. The depth of Jesus’ acquaintance
with God, the honour He put on human nature,
may be measured by His dealing with Judas.
There are some things God cannotdo. This Divine
inability Jesus recognized, and made it the norm
of His own dealing with souls. We need not
apologize for Jesus’ choice of Judas. He chose
him for the very qualities which led Him to the
others, and which were, perhaps, present in Judas
in a conspicuous degree. He loved him as He
loved the others, and with a yet deeper yearning.
But there came a time when, in imitation of the
Father, He felt bound to stand aside. To have
sayed Judas by force would have violated the
conditions under which the redemption of man is
possible.
Even the briefest review of Christ’s relations to
His friends constrains the inference that, in the
essential qualities of friendship, He is perfect ;
and the supposition becomes altogether reason-
able, that, if He were alive now and accessible,
the possession of His friendship would be salva-
tion, and the loss of it would be the worst fate
that could befall any human being.
3. Mankind.—The attitude of Jesus toward His
fellow-men is determined by the function which
He had been led, through His deep sympathy with
God, to assume on their behalf. He believes Him-
self called to ‘fulfil,’ 1.6. to perfect, and so to
accomplish as permanent spiritual fact, the reli-
gion of the OT. We must not raise premature
questions, but we must not evade plain facts.
Jesus springs from the OT. He transcended it in
this, that He believed the privileges of the New
Covenant were to be verified, consummated, and
bestowed upon men, through His mission. This
mission He accepted, in clear prevision of what it
involved, and in deep love to God and to men. It
is plain that such a position carries with it unique
authority, and warrants claims of extraordinary
magnitude. He who knows Himself to be the
mediator of the highest good to men knows Him-
self to besupreme among men. This consciousness
is clear and unmistakable in the utterances of
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
He presents Himself to men as the object
Jesus. 3
of a trust and a reverence that are nothing less
than religious (Mk 2!7, Lk 1910, Mt 1022 1829).) He
passes verdicts upon their inner state that are not
less than Divine in their insight and their absolute-
ness (Lk 957-62, Mt 92: 6), He makes demands
which no one has a right to make who does not
know ‘Himself to be completely the organ of the
Divine authority (Mt 419 99 1921 1037). He claims
to be the arbiter of the final destinies of men (Mk
838, Mt 721-23 134 1627, together with the undoubted
teaching of the so-called eschatological discourses
Mt 251f-), a function which in the OT belongs not
even to Messiah, but to Jehovah alone (J1 31%, Mal
81 43). Such a consciousness, whose intensity sug-
gests, if it does not prove,a unique constitution of
the person of Christ, throws into high relief aspects
of the character of Christ which seem at a cursory
glance incongruous with it. F
(1) Lowliness.—The self-assertion of Jesus is not
the assertion of a self independent in its power
and dignity, but of a self which has no interest
save the cause of God, no glory that is not His.
At the heart of the self-assertion of Jesus there is
profound self-renunciation. It would be a mistake
to describe Jesus as selfless. He has a self, which
He might have made independent of God, which,
however, in perfect freedom of act, He surrendered
wholly to God. ‘The lowliness of Christ, accord-
ingly, is not mere modesty or diffidence. It is the
quality of a self, at once asserted and denied.
This paradox is carried out during His whole
career. In youth, when the purpose of His life is
being formed, there is no irritable self-conscious-
ness. In manhood, when the knowledge of His
mission is clear and full, and the spiritual distance
which separated Him from other men is obvious to
His inward eye, there is no outward separateness
of manner. ‘The life of the common people was
His life, without any trace of condescension or
hint of masquerade. His acceptance of the lowly
conditions of His life is so complete, that there is
no sense of incongruity on His part between what
He was and the world He lived in. In His teach-
ing He is able to attack pride without any risk of
having imputed to Him a pride more subtle and
more offensive. More remarkable still, He offers
Himself as a pattern of the very humility He is
inculcating, without raising any suspicion of un-
reality. The words, ‘I am meek and lowly in
heart’ (Mt 11), on the lips of any other man,
would refute the claim they make. In His case it
is not so. They mean that the self which lays its
yoke on men is already crucified, and has no claim
to make on its own behalf. Toward the close of
His life its open secret is given, when, at the Last
Supper, in full consciousness of His personal dig-
nity, He washed the feet of those who, He knew,
would fail Him in the end, and of one by whose
impending treachery His own would soon be nailed
to the cross.
(2) Considerateness.—With His idea of man and
His conception of His vocation, it was impossible
for Jesus to regard human personality as other
than sacred. All the dues of humanity, accord-
ingly, He paid with scrupulous exactitude. It
would be superfluous to search in the narratives
for instances of His justice, honesty, and truth.
The distinctiveness of His calling kept Him apart
from the ecclesiastical and political institutions of
His country; but He was careful not to disturb
them, even when He felt most critical of them
(Mt 1777, Mk 1217), and the charge of rebellion
was readily seen by Pilate to be baseless. The
same distinctiveness deprived Him of a business
career, and, therefore, of the sphere wherein many
virtues are most severely tried; but it is note-
worthy that the disciple company had a treasurer,
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
whose duty it was to take care of the money in-
trusted to him, and whose dishonesty became a
step toward Calvary (Jn 12°). Towards individ-
uals His attitude was wholly without respect of
persons. He paid men the honour of being per-
fectly frank and fearless in all His dealings with
them. He did them the justice of letting them
know the judgment He passed upon them. Herod,
Pilate, the Pharisees, stood before His bar and
heard their sentence. His fairness is never more
conspicuous than in His dealing with Judas, whom
He would not permit to suppose that he was unde-
tected, Jesus fully recognizing that a man’s proba-
tion can be carried on only in the light.
But there is due to human nature more than the
strictest honesty or truth. Jesus’ authority over
men, instead of leading Him to be careless in the
handling of a soul, impelled Him to an exquisite
carefulness which extended from the needs of the
body to the more delicate concerns of the mind.
If He imposes heavy tasks, He remembers the
frailty of the human frame: ‘Come ye apart, and
rest awhile’ (Mk 631), If the coming grief saddens
His companions, He turns from His own far deeper
sorrow to still their tumultuous distress: ‘Let not
your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid’
(Jn 141). If He must rebuke, His reproaches pass
into excuses: ‘The spirit indeed is willing, but the
flesh is weak’ (Mt 2641). Most lovely of all is His
treatment of those who might seem to have for-
feited all claim to respect. He laboured by a more
emphatic courtesy, a more tender chivalry, to bind
up the broken self-respect, and to rebuke that
insolent contempt of the sinful and degraded which
so deeply dishonours God. Before the ideal in
publican and harlot He bowed in reverence, and
constituted Himself its resolute defender.
(3) Compassion.—The respect which Jesus has
for human nature becomes, in presence of human
need, a very passion for helping, healing, saving.
The qualities which most deeply impressed the
men and women of His day, and which shine most
clearly in His portrait, are not His supernatural
gifts, but His unwearied goodness, His sincere
kindness, His great gentleness, His deep and
tender pity. By these He has captivated the
imagination, and won the reverence of humanity.
The narratives have felt the throbbing compassion
of Jesus’ heart, and have used the very phrase
with a sweet monotony (Mk 141, Mt 208: 936, Lk
718, Mt 1414 1582),
The compassion of Jesus is manifest in the
wonderful works which are ascribed to Him. All
of them, with the exception of ‘the coin in the
fish’s mouth’ and ‘the withering of the fruitless
fig-tree,’ which have a special didactic aim, are
works of mercy. They are, no doubt, proofs of
power ; but they are essentially instances of the
sympathy of Jesus, in virtue of which He enters
into the fulness of human need. The instinct of
one Evangelist has no doubt directed subsequent
thought toward the truth. When Jesus wrought
His healing miracles, He was fulfilling a prophecy
which had special reference to sin (Mt 81). By
no easy exercise of power did He relieve the dis-
tresses of men, but by a real assumption of their
sorrow. Every such act stands in organic con-
nexion with the deed of the Cross, in which He
bare the sin which is the root of all human
infirmities.
Yet more conspicuously the compassion of Jesus
is to be seen in the method of His ministry, which
led Him to seek the company of sinners, not
because their sin was not abhorrent to His nature,
but because He loved His vocation, and loved those
who were its objects. The disinterestedness which
Plato ascribes to the true physician deepens, in
the case of this Healer of men, to a pure and
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
CHARACTER OF CHRIST 293
burning passion. Twice His compassion found
vent in tears: once in presence of man’s mortality,
once in sight of the city whose abuse of privilege
had earned extremity of woe. ‘here are depths
here we cannot fathom, since there is mercifully
denied us perfect knowledge of the evil which
Jesus’ knowledge of God tully disclosed to His
view. Knowing God, living in unbroken fellow-
ship with Him, Jesus knew, as none other could,
what sin and death were. He lived and died with
the spectacle of their power ever before Him. His
knowledge is the measure of His compassion, and
both are immeasurable.
(4) Forgiveness.—Without doubt, Jesus believed
Himself to be the agent of the Divine love, the
mediator of the Divine forgiveness. He had power
on earth to forgive sins (Mt 9°). This forgiveness
He announced as the prerogative of His office ; but
the actual experience of forgiveness, as the redeem-
ing act of God, came through the love which Jesus
Himself manifested. His welcome of sinners was
their reception into the fellowship of God. This
is a fact which no prejudice against doctrine
ought to invalidate, which, probably, no doctrine
can adequately explain. Hence follow two features
of the portrait of Christ, each most significant and
suggestive. He accepted the gratitude of forgiven
sinners as though He were God’s own representa-
tive (Lk 74-5”) ; and He regarded sins committed
against Himself as committed against God, who
in His mission was seeking to save men. His for-
giveness of such offences, accordingly, is not meas-
urable in terms of quantity—unto seven times or
seventy times seven; but has the very qualities
of boundlessness and inexhaustibleness which He
attributes to the forgiveness of God. ‘There is
only one limitation, and that does not belong to
the character of God, but to the constitution of
human nature. There is a sin which hath never
forgiveness (Mt 123! 82, Mk 328 29, Lk 1219). It does
not consist, however, in a definite offence against
God or His Christ, but in a frame of mind, an
habitude of soul, which is psychologically beyond
reach of forgiveness. Apart from this limit, which
on God’s side is none, forgiveness is infinite.
When, accordingly, we proceed to examine the
sins committed against Jesus, we perceive that
they form an ascending scale of guilt, according
to the advancing measure of light and privilege
against which they were committed, and so also
of pain to Him and of peril to the transgressors.
First, there is the sin of those who were directly
responsible for His death. Dark and dreadful
though this was, compounded of the vilest qualities
of polluted human nature, it was, nevertheless,
even in its deadliest guilt, not a sin against abso-
lutely clear conviction. Hence the victim of so
much wrong prays even while the nails rend His
flesh: ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not
what they do’ (Lk 23). It is impossible to narrow
the scope of this petition to the unconscious instru-
ments, the Roman soldiers; it must extend also
to the Jews themselves, to the mob, and even
to their more guilty rulers. Peter (Ac 317) and
Paul (1 Co 28) cannot have been mistaken in their
interpretation of the crime which slew their Lord.
Second, there is the sin of those who deserted Him
in His need, and especially of him who denied his
Master with oaths and curses. They were bound
to Jesus by every tie of affection and of loyalty.
He trusted them, and they failed Him. Yet it
could not be said of them that they mew what
they did. Their action was without premedita-
tion, without real sense of its meaning. A spasm
of overpowering fear confounded their intelligence
and destroyed their resolution. Shameful it was,
and must have wrung the heart of Jesus with
it was committed
anguish; yet at its worst
against the Son of Man, not against the Holy
Spirit. They knew not what they were about to
do, but He knew (Mk 1451), and broke their hearts
with His free forgiveness (v.™).
Third, the sin of Judas. ΟἿ all the crimes of
which guilty man is capable, treachery is, in the
judgment of all men, the most dreadful; and
therefore Dante (Inferno, xxxi. 154) has placed
Judas in the jaws of Lucifer. Did Judas, then,
commit the sin against the Holy Spirit? It is
profitless to discuss the question. No absolute
verdict is possible. It is certain that Jesus dealt
with Judas, in clear light of truth, with the
utmost consideration, and with far-reaching for-
bearance. Appeal after appeal He made to him,
seeking to reveal him to himself, while scrupu-
lously shielding him from the suspicions of his
fellows, and retaining him to the last possible
moment within the sphere of loving influence.
Finally, He gave him that permission to do wrong
which human freedom wrings from Divine omni-
potence, and which is, at the same time, God’s
severest judgment upon the sinner (Jn 1327, Mt
26°) RV). Who can tell if it be not also God’s last
offer of mercy ?_ In the end (perhaps not too late),
the goodness of Jesus smote with overwhelming
force upon the conscience of Judas. He ‘repented
himself’ (Mt 278). Whatever value may be attached
to such repentance, whatever destiny may have
awaited Judas beyond the veil of flesh, which he
so violently tore aside, there can at least be no
more impressive testimony to the forbearance, the
love, and the wisdom of Jesus, than this over-
whelming remorse.
v. THE VIRTUES OF HIS VOCATION.—The end
for which Jesus lived determined all His actions,
and called into exercise all the virtues of His
character, as well the more general characteristics
of spiritual-mindedness, love to God, and love to
men, as the specific virtues of His social relations.
The vocation of Jesus, however, as Servant of the
Lord was definite ; and with respect to it He had
a definite work to do. Questions as to the concep-
tions which it implies with respect to the constitu-
tion of Christ’s person do not now concern us. But
we are concerned to observe that, in His discharge
of His duty, certain aspects of His character shine
forth with special beauty. They are such as these—
1. Faithfulness.—There is an unmistakable note
of compulsion in His life. He has received a pre-
cise charge, and He will carry it out with absolute
precision and unswerving fidelity. This is the
mind of the boy, when as yet the nature of His
mission cannot have been fully before Him (Lk
24). This is the conviction of the man, who has
come to know what office He holds, and what is
the thing He has to do or endure (Mt 1671, Mk 881).
Many specific expressions (e.g. Jn 494 945 11% 1)
and the whole tenor of His life convey the same
impression of a man looking forward to a goal, in
itself most terrible, yet pressing toward it with
unwavering determination. ‘The imperative of
duty, and the burden of inexorable necessity, are
laid upon His conscience ; and He responds with
complete obedience.
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who
displays a singular insight into the ethical condi-
tions of Christ’s work, mentions the virtue of
fidelity as being conspicuous in ‘the Apostle and
High Priest of our confession’ (He 3”: ®), and draws
a far-reaching parallel and contrast between Him
and Moses, as between a son and a servant. In
filial faithfulness there are three aspects: (4) per-
fect identification with the Father’s will,.()) entire
absorption in the Father’s concerns, (6) free access
to the Father’s resources; and these are plainly
seen in Christ’s discharge of His duty. ‘There is
not the slightest trace of servility. The will to
294 CHARACTER OF CHRIST
which He yielded absolute devotion is that of One
whom He perfectly loved and trusted, to whom He
could freely come for everything He required.
The absolute control of the Divine resources, which
is attributed to Him in the Fourth Gospel (Jn 18°),
is borne out by every trait of the Synoptic por-
trait. He was not toiling with inadequate resources
at an uncomprehended task. Even when the strain
upon His will is heaviest, and His whole soul shrinks
from what lies before Him, there is one word which
delivers His faithfulness from any suspicion of
bondage: ‘Father, if it be possible’? . . . (Mt
2639 42, Mk 1435, Lk 22:2).
2. Courage.—The courage of Jesus Christ is the
crown of His faithfulness. It was not tested by
such occasions as the sinking ship or the stricken
field, but by conditions yet more severe. Out-
raged prejudice, wounded pride of caste, threatened
privilege, were banded together to destroy Him.
They disguised themselves in zeal for the honour
of God. ‘hey, no doubt, attracted to their side
sincere, though unenlightened, loyalty to His cause ;
and Jesus must have known the reformer’s keenest
pain, the sense of wounding good and true men.
They sought alliances with powers most alien to
their professed aims. They found support in the
ignorant enthusiasm of the multitude, who mistook
the aims of Jesus, and in the more culpable mis-
understanding of His disciples and friends. The
Fourth Gospel is surely historic in representing
the breach between Jesus and the leaders of the
religious world of His day as having taken place
in the opening weeks of His ministry. It is in-
conceivable that the wide divergence of His views
from those of the Pharisees and Sadducees should
not have been manifest in the very first announce-
ment of them. He certainly was not, and His
adversaries could not have been, blind to the issues
of the controversy. It had not proceeded far,
when it became apparent to them that it could
be terminated only by their defeat or by His
destruction. With unscrupulous plans and bitter
hate they laboured to compass His ruin. With
sublime courage He persevered in His vocation,
though He was well aware that every step He
took only made the end more certain. When the
end comes, it finds Him spiritually prepared. He
moves with firm and equal tread. From the
loving fellowship of the Supper He passes, without
bewilderment, to the conflict of Gethsemane. From
the shadow of the trees and the darker shade of
His unknown agony, He goes to face the traitor,
with no other tremor than that of amazement at
such consummate wickedness (Lk 2248) ; and sur-
renders Himself to the instruments of injustice,
less their captive than their conqueror. Amid
the worst tortures men can inflict, we hear no
murmur. We do not merely observe, with what
of admiration it might have deserved, a stoical
fortitude, which proudly repels every assault on
the self-sufficiency of the human spirit. We
observe a more moving spectacle, the Servan tof
the Lord accepting unfathomed pain as the crown
of His vocation, thus rendering to the Father a
pertect obedience, and finishing the work given
Hiin to do.
3. Patience.—It is an error to describe patience
as a ‘passive’ virtue, if by that epithet is indi-
cated the spirit which makes no resistance, because
resistance 1s seen to be futile. Patience is rather
the associate of courage, and springs from the same
root, namely, identification of will with a great
and enduring purpose. Jesus has made the eternal
purpose ΟἹ God for the redemption of man the
controlling principle of His life ; and therefore
He is enabled to be patient, in the widest and
deepest meanings of the term. He patiently waits
Jor God. This lesson He learned trom the OT;
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
this gift He acquired in that deep communion
with God, which was the privilege of the OT
believer, and is the heart of all true religion.
Nothing is more remarkable in a man so intense,
endowed, moreover, with supernatural powers,
than His reserve. He is eager for the achieve-
ment of His task, straitened till His baptism be
accomplished (Lk 125°). Yet He is never betrayed
into rashness of speech or action. He maintains
His attitude of intent expectancy. ‘The idea of
an ‘hour’ for Himself, and for His work, and for
His great victory, known to the Father, and made
known at His discretion, lies deep in the heart of
Jesus (Mk 1382 1441, Lk 1021, Jn 24 421: 23 525-28 73) 820
1228: 27, 131171). To Him time was the measure of
God’s purpose ; death, ‘God’s instant.’ He μακρο-
θυμεῖ. suffers long with wayward or injurious persons.
God hides Him in His pavilion from the strife of
tongues, and from that sense of personal injury
which enkindles temper and provokes unadvised
speech. So identified is He with God, that offences
against Himself lose themselves in Divine forgive-
ness. His meekness is not weakness, but that
amazing strength which can take up a personal
wrong, and carry it into the Divine presence with
vicarious suffering. He ὑπομένει, endures in undying
hope the severest trial (He 12?:*). The idea that
His death was unexpected by Jesus, and felt by
Him to demand an explanation which He attempted
to provide in obscure suggestions and laboured
analogies, is most false to the profound unity of
His character. The Cross is the key to His char-
acter. This was the climax of His mission, the
introduction to the victory which lay beyond ;
and this, when it-came, He endured with a ‘ brave
patience’ which was rooted in His assurance that
His vocation was from God and could not fail.
This was His victory, even His patience (Rev 1%).
4. Calmness.—The patience of Jesus has for its
inner correlative deep serenity of soul. He lived
in God; and, therefore, He was completely master
of Himself. We observe in Him, as a matter of
course, that control of the so-called lower desires
of our nature which was the Greek conception of
sober-mindedness or temperance. We see, beyond
this, a more remarkable proof of self-possession
in His control over the very motives and desires
which impelled Him to devote His life to the
service of God and man. There-is no feeling of
strain in the utterances of His soul as He speaks
of or to His Father. The phenomena of excite-
ment or rapture, which disfigure so many religious
biographies, are wholly absent from the record of
His deepest experiences. In His attitude toward
men, whom He regarded it as His mission to save,
there is perfect sanity. The harsh or strident
note, which is scarcely ever absent in the speeches
of reformers, is never audible in His words. His
love for men is not a mountain torrent, but a deep,
calm current, flowing through all His activities.
We cannot, with verbal exactness, attribute to Him
the ‘enthusiasm of humanity,’ which the author
of Ecce Homo regards as the essential quality of a
Christian in relation to his fellow-men, if, at least,
the phrase suggest even the slightest want of
balance, or any ignorance of the issues of action,
or any carelessness with respect to them. He is
the minister of the Divine purposes, never of His
own emotions, however pure and lofty these may
be. Yet we are not to impute to Him any un-
emotional callousness. He never lost His calm-
ness ; but He was not always calm. He repelled
temptation with deep indignation (Mk 83%). Hypo-
crisy roused Him to a flame of judgment (Mk 3°
114-17, Mt 25136), Treachery shook Him to the
very centre of His being (Jn 1321). The waves of
human sorrow broke over Him with a greater
grief than wrung the bereaved sisters (Jn 11°*%),
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
There were times when He bore an unknown
agony, which could be shared by none, though
He sought for human sympathy up to the very
gates of the sanctuary of pain (Jn 1227, Mk 14#2-34).
Yet, whatever His soul’s discipline might be, He
never lost His self-control, was never distracted or
afraid, but remained true to His mission and to
His Father. He feels anger, or sorrow, or trouble,
but these emotions are under the control of a will
that is one with the Divine will, and therefore are
comprehended within the perfect peace of a mind
stayed on God.
5. Self-sacrifice.—‘ Christ pleased not Himself’
(Ro 15). These words, brief though they be, sum
up the character of Christ as St. Paul conceived
it. They convey, without doubt, the impression
made by the record of His life. If this estimate
is just, if Christ was an absolutely unselfish man,
if He made a full sacrifice of Himself, His char-
acter stands alone, unique in the moral universe.
We cannot make this statement without raising
problems of immense difficulty, which it is the
business of theology to face. But no mystery
beyond ought to restrict our acknowledgment of
ethical fact. Christ had a self, like other men,
and might have made it, in its intense individu-
ality, His end, laying a tax upon the whole uni-
verse in order to satisfy it. The ideal of self-
satisfaction was necessarily present to His mind,
inasmuch as it is inevitably suggested in all self-
consciousness. It was definitely presented to Him
in His temptation in the wilderness. But once
for all in that initial conflict, and again and again
in life, He beat back the temptation, rejected that
ideal, surrendered Himself to His vocation, and
sought no other satisfaction than its fulfilment.
His life is a sacrifice. He set the world behind
His back, and had no place or portion in it (Lk 958).
The way He went was the path of self-denial and
cross-bearing (Mk 84, Jn 1275-25), His death was
a sacrifice. ‘The death of one whose life was a
sacrifice must have had sacrificial significance for
God and man. It could not be a fate to be ex-
plained by an after-thought. It must have been
essentially an action, a voluntary offering made to
God, laid on the altar of human need. ‘The story
of the Passion, read from the point where He stead-
fastly set His face to go to Jerusalem to the point
where He went, as He was wont, to the Mount of
Olives, and so through every detail of suffering,
portrays, indeed, one led as a lamb to the slaughter,
but as certainly one who, having power to keep
His life, laid it down, in free surrender, in deep
love tothe Father (Jn 1017-18), He was endowed
with powers which He might have exerted to
deliver Himself from the hand of His enemies ;
He did not so exert them. He did not even
employ them to win one slightest alleviation of
His sufferings. He might have saved Himself;
yet, with deeper truth, Himself He could not save.
The self-sacrifice of Christ is the foundation of the
Kingdom of God, the purchase of man’s redemption,
the basis of that morality which finds in Him its
standard and its example.
Concluding estimate.-—When we have studied
the character of Christ from the points of view sug-
gested in the foregoing scheme, we are conscious
that we are only on the threshold of a great sub-
ject, to whose wealth of meaning no formal study
can do justice. The character of Christ presents
‘unsearchable riches’ to every sympathetic student.
Every generation, since His bodily presence was
withdrawn, has been pursuing that investigation ;
none has comprehended His fulness, or been forced
to look elsewhere for information and inspiration.
He has laid upon us the necessity of continuously
seeking to understand Him, and of applying, in
CHARACTER OF CHRIST 295
the manifold occasions and circumstances of life,
the fulness of the moral ideal presented in Himself.
1. When, however, we pause in our detailed study
—to whatever length we may have carried it—or
in our application of His precept and example—
however successfully, or with whatever wistful
consciousness of failure, we may have pursued it;
when we lift our gaze afresh to the portrait pre-
sented in the Gospels, the impression deepens upon
us with new and overwhelming conviction, that in
Christ there is achieved, as a fact of the moral
universe, goodness, not merely comparative, but
absolute. It is not merely that among the choice
spirits of our race He occupies the front rank,
but. that He stands alone. Jesus Christ is the
Master of all who seek to know God, in the sense
that His character is supreme and final in the
moral progress of humanity. He is completely
human. Like men, He pursued the pathway of
development. Like men, He was assailed by
temptation, and waged incessant warfare with
evil suggestions. Yet He is absolutely unique.
He is not merely better than other men. He is
what all men ought to be. It is not merely that
we see in Him an approximation to the moral
ideal, nearer and more successful than is to be
|discerned in any other man; but that we find in
Him the moral ideal, once for all realized and
incarnated, so that no man can ever go beyond
Him, while all men in all ages will find it their
strength and joy to grow up. toward the measure
of His stature. Again and again we are made to
feel, when we contemplate such virtues as have
been adverted to in the preceding pages, e.g. love
to God, love to men, consecration, unselfishness,
and the like, that there is the note of absoluteness
in His attainment. Betsween Him and the ideal
there isno hairbreadth of disparity. His fulfilment
of the will of God is complete. What God meant
man to be is at once disclosed and finished.
2. The positive conception of the absolute good-
ness of Jesus carries with it the negative conception
of His sinlessness. As we stand before the figure
in the Gospels, our sense of His perfection reaches
special solemnity and tenderness in the impression
of His stainless and lovely purity. Attempts, no
doubt, have been made to fasten some charge of
sin on Jesus, e.g. that of a hasty or imperious
temper; or eyen to extract from Himself some
acknowledgment of imperfection (Mk 1018). These
attempts have totally failed, and have exhibited
nothing so clearly as the fact that they are after-
thoughts, designed to establish the a@ priort dogma
that sinlessness is an impossibility. Such pro-
cedure is, of course, wholly unscientific. If a
record, otherwise trustworthy, presents us with
the portrait of a sinless man, we are not entitled
to reject its testimony because, if we accept it, we
shall have to abandon a dogma or revise an in-
duction. When, accordingly, we study the NT
with unprejudiced mind, two great certainties are
established beyond question.
(1) The impression of His sinlessness made upon
His disciples.—Some of these men had been in
close contact with Him, a fellowship so intimate
that it was impossible that they could be mistaken
in Him. Through this intimacy their moral ideas
were enlarged and enriched ; their spiritual insight
was made delicate and true. The men who created
the ethic of the NT are the spiritual leaders of the
human race, and they owed their inspiration to
|their Master. They knew all the facts. They
were spiritually competent to form a sound esti-
mate. Without a tinge of hesitation they ascribe
to Him complete separation from the very principle
of evil (1 P 225, 2 Co 571, 1 Jn 35, He 41574). ‘They
assign to Him an office which required absolute
| Sinlessness, knowing that any proof of deviation
296 CHARACTER OF CHRIST
from the holiness of God would have reduced the
claim they made on behalf of their Master to
utter confusion (Ac 314 752 2214, 1 Jn 21). A group
of men, who knew Christ thoroughly, believed Him
to be sinless. A generation, which had the facts
fully before them, accepted this as the truth re-
garding Jesus of Nazareth. Add to this the
mysterious effect the personality of Jesus had
upon those whose contact with Him was brief,
even momentary—Pilate (Lk 234), Pilate’s wife
(Mt 271°), the centurion who superintended the
judicial murder (Mk 159, Lk 2517), the malefactor
who died beside Him (Lk 234ff-), Among all the
witnesses the traitor himself is the clearest and
fullest (Mt 27+).
The knowledge which spirit has of spirit, the
insight of our moral nature, the verdict of con-
science, are all confounded if the taint of sin lay
on the soul of Jesus.
(2) His own self-knowledge and His own self-
witness, which establish the fact of a conscience
at once perfectly true and absolutely void of any
sense of sin.
(a) He taught His disciples to pray for forgive-
ness ; but He never set them the example of asking
it on His own behalf. He was their example in
prayer as inallelse ; but that which is a constituent
element in the prayers of all sinful men, the con-
fession of sin and the supplication of forgiveness,
does not appear in any prayer of His. ‘There is
even a scrupulous avoidance of any phrase which
would seem to include Himself in the class of those
whose prayers must contain this element, e.g.
Mt 6?. 14 711, where ‘ye’ is emphatic and significant.
(6) He is absolutely intolerant of evil. He
counsels the extreme of loss in preference to its
presence (Mk 953). He traces it to its source in
heart and will, and demands cleansing and renewal
there (Mk7!*?3), Yet nowhere does He bewail His
own pollution, or seek for cleansing. He lives a
life of strenuous devotion; but there is not a hint
of any process of mortifying sin in His members.
Such unconsciousness of sin is a psychological
impossibility, if His was simply the goodness of an
aspiring, struggling, human soul, striving after
the ideal, and ever drawing nearer it. By the
very height of His ideal He would be convicted of
shortcoming. But nothing in His language or
bearing suggests, even remotely, such a conviction.
We know this Man, and we know that in His own
consciousness there was no gulf between Him and
perfection, and that to His own deepest feeling
there was between Him and the Father perfect
moral identity. If this Man be a sinner, the com-
petence of the moral judgment is destroyed for ever.
(0) He required moral renewal on the part of all
men (Mt 183, Jn 3°). But there is no record of
the conversion of Jesus, and there is no hint of a
belief on His part that He needed it. True, He
accepted, or rather demanded, baptism of John;
but His action, as interpreted by Himself, plainly
implies that in uniting Himself with the sinful
people, He was under constraint of love, and not
under the compulsion of an alarmed and awakened
conscience. That there was anything in His ex-
perience analogous to a death to sin of His own,
and arising into a life of new obedience, is con-
tradicted by every line of the Gospel portrait.
(d) He loved and pitied sinners. His sympa-
thetic treatment of them stands in lovely contrast
with the cruelty of the Pharisaic method. Yet, in
with sinners His ah eas ice meee
before Calvary ees is ee τ i pel ma
most sympathetic high ἘΝ eit! OF closest and
δ ἔ ι With sinners there is com-
plete inward aloofness from their sin. The con-
tention that only a sinner can properly understand
ee ae a
CHARACTER OF CHRIST
a sinner, and fully sympathize with him, is purely
a priori, and absolutely refuted by the ministry
of Jesus. Did any philanthropist, any lover of
souls, ever sympathize as Jesus did with sinners?
Long before Christ, Plato had noted and disposed
of the fallacy that a man needs to be tainted with
sin before he can effectively deal with it. ‘ Vice
can never know both itself and virtue ; but virtue
in a well-instructed nature will in time acquire a
knowledge at once of itself and of vice. The
virtuous man, therefore, and not the vicious man,
will make the wise judge’ (Republic, 409). Let us
add, not a wise judge merely, but a loving friend
and helper. Sin is a hindrance, not a help, in
loving. The crowning help which Jesus bestowed
on sinners was the forgiveness of sins. ‘This was
beyond doubt a Divine prerogative, both in the
minds of those who observed His conduct and in
His own. If He exercised it, therefore, while
aware of His own sinfulness, He was uttering
blasphemy, and the worst verdict of His critics was
justifiable. His forgiving sin is absolute proof
that to His own consciousness He was sinless.
(e) He died for sinners. What has just been
said of His forgiving sinners applies with yet
mightier force to His deed in dying. He believed
it to be of such unique value for God that, on the
ground of it, He could forgive the sins of men.
Without trenching on the discussions that gather
round the death of Christ, and without attempting
any dogmatic statement, we are safe in asserting
that to Jesus His blood was covenant blood, rati-
fying the New Covenant which had been the pro-
found anticipation of OT prophecy (Jer 31%!#4),
No man, conscious of being himself a sinner, could
have supposed that his death would create the
Covenant and procure the forgiveness of sins. Since
Jesus certainly believed that His death would
have this stupendous effect, it is certain also that
He believed Himself to be utterly removed from
the need of forgiveness.
What is thus to be traced, as the implication of
our Lord’s dealing with sinners, becomes in the
Fourth Gospel His explicit self-assertion. It may
be that, had these utterances stood alone, they
might have been discounted as due to dogmatic
preconceptions on the part of the writer. Since,
however, they are in complete psychological har-
mony with the whole Synoptic portraiture, they
cannot be thusexplainedaway. ‘They are, besides,
precisely what might be looked for, and carry with
them strong internal evidence of their genuineness.
Innocence may be unconscious of itself, but not
that sinlessness which is the correlate of perfection,
Self-knowledge must accompany that goodness
which grows toward maturity, and maintains its
integrity against temptation. Jesus did not. live in
a golden mist. He may be trusted in His self-
witness; and the occasions mentioned in the
Fourth Gospel on which He bore such witnéss are
precisely those of great trial or deep experience,
when a man is permitted, nay required, to state
the truth regarding Himself. He bears witness:
(a) before His enemies, as part of His self-defence
(Jn 86), arguing from His purity of heart to His
undimmed vision of things unseen; (8) to His
own, as example and encouragement (Jn 1019),
revealing the secret of a serene and joyful life, as
part of His last charge and message; (vy) to His
Father, in an hour of sacred communion (Jn 113).
as the review and estimate of His life; (6) on the
cross (Jn 193”), as the summary of His long war-
fare, the note of final achievement of the whole
will of God.
If Jesus were in any degree sinful, He must
have known it, and had He known it He would
have told us. If He knew it and did not tell us,
we should have just cause of complaint against
=
CHARGER
Him, since, in that case, He must have allowed a
false impression to grow up regarding Him. If He
was sinful and did not know it, He must fall out
of the rank of the best men, because in that case
He lacks the noblest and most moving element in
the character of those who have agonized heaven-
ward,—a deep sense of demerit and an adoring
sense of the grace of God. But, in truth, the
mere statement of these alternatives and infer-
ences is intolerable. The conscience of the race
has been created by Jesus Christ. His character
is at once the rebuke and the inspiration of every
age. He is the moral ideal realized once for ali.
There is no other, no higher goodness than that
which is incarnated in Him; and, as has been
said, ‘the difference between the highest morality
that exists and a perfect one is a difference not of
degree, but of kind’ (Davidson, Theol. of O.T.).
‘To this affirmation regarding Jesus we are con-
strained to come. Nothing less is a fair inter-
pretation of the record. He stands alone. Man
though He be, He is distinguished from all men by
unique moral and spiritual excellence. Between
Him and God there is a relationship to which there
is no parallel in the case of any other man. The
absolute distinctiveness of the character of Christ
is not a dogma, constructed under philosophical or
theological influences. It is a fact to which every
line of the portrait bears unanswerable evidence.
Stated as a fact, however, it becomes at once a
problem which cannot be evaded. ‘* Whence hath
this man these things ?’ How the answer shall be
framed,—whether the Nicene formula is adequate,
or, if not, how it is to be corrected and supple-
mented, is the task laid upon the intellect and
conscience of the Church of to-day. It is certain
that upon the earnestness and honesty with which
she takes up that task will depend her vitality and
her permanence. It is certain also that intellectual
progress in apprehending the mystery of the Person
of Christ will be conditioned by moral progress in
apprehending, appropriating, and reproducing the
perfection of His character.
LireraturE.—The main source for any character study of
Christ must be sought in the Gospels themselves. The Lives of
Christ will, of course, give abundant information and help:
Neander, Edersheim, Didon, Weiss, Beyschlag, Keim. Works
dealing directly with the character of Christ as an ethical study
seem to be rare. All Dr. Bruce’s works are penetrated by the
ethical spirit: Training of the Twelve, Kingdom of God, Gali-
lean Gospel, Apologetics, Humiliation of Christ. Seeley’s Eece
Homo and Abbott’s Philochristus are helpful. An anonymous
work, The Gospel for the Nineteenth Century (Longinans,
Green, & Co.) has a most valuable study of the character of Christ.
Robinson's Studies in the Character of Christ (Longmans,
Green, & Co., 1900), Ullmann’s Sinldessness of Jesus, Forrest’s
Christ of History and Experience, and Pror. Garvie’s recent
papers in the Expositor, on ‘ The Inner Life of Christ,’ Godet’s
Defence of the Christian Faith, Mackintosh's Primer of Apolo-
getics, Nichol’s The Church's One Foundation, all deal with
aspects of the subject. References also are to be found in works
on Systematic Theology, by such writers as Dorner, Martensen,
Oosterzee, and in last-named author’s Image of Christ, as well
as in treatises on Christian Ethics; ef. also Stalker’s Imago
Christi; Fairbairn’s Studies in the Life of Christ, ch. iii. ; Werr-
mann’s Communion with God, p. τὸ ΤῸ ς Liddon’s BL, Lect. iv.
T. B. KILPATRICK.
CHARGER.—The utensil referred to (Mt 148-11,
Mk 625. 28) was a flat tray or salver (Gr. πίναξ) with
a narrow rim, and was usually made of brass, the
surface being plain or ornamented with engraved
or embossed designs, and varying in size from one
to three feet in diameter. At an Oriental meal
the tray is laid upon a low stool, the dishes being
placed upon it, while those who partake sit or
recline around it. The tray is also carried around
by an attendant when presenting wine or drinks
composed of water flavoured with lemon, rose, or
violet essences.
In the two passages that describe Salome’s re-
quest at Herod’s birthday feast, the charger is
mentioned as an essential part of the stipulation.
CHIEF PRIESTS
In both narratives the demand is for the head of
John the Baptist in a charger. In explanation of
this it has to be noted that the daughter of Hero-
dias had demeaned herself to play the part of a hired
Oriental dancer, with the usual accompaniments
of paint and jewellery, loose and showy costume,
and gestures of indelicate suggestion. The appear-
ance and dancing of the young princess had capti-
vated the guests already exhilarated by the royal
banquet, and prepared them to applaud anything
clever and audacious from the same person. ‘The
king entered into the spirit of the occasion, and
treating her as a paid performer, offered her for
her services anything she might desire. And so
when she requested that the head of John the
Baptist might be served up to her on one of the
trays from which the guests were being regaled, the
unfeeling jest implied that this would be to her both
her professional fee and her portion of the feast.
It was John the Baptist’s last testimony against
the artificial and insincere spirit of the age. When
such a crime could be so lightly committed, the
day of the Lord upon the nation could not be
far off. Afterwards, when Herod addressed his
questions to Christ, it was to find Him absolutely
silent (Lk 23°). The atrophy of moral feeling may
be gradual, and be relieved by intervals of wrestling
and regret, but at last unwillingness to feel becomes
inability to feel.
A touch of witty caricature or grotesque ex-
aggeration has often since then given pass and
plausibility to something essentially wrong and
in itself repulsive. When society is made selfish
and artificial by luxury and the love of pleasure,
it will keep its oaths of personal vanity although
the gratification should stifle the voice of sincerity
and truth. G. M. MACKIE.
CHICKENS.—See ANIMALS, p. 642.
CHIEF PRIESTS (dpycepets).—In the Gospels
ἀρχιερεύς properly denotes the individual who for
the time being held the office of Jewish high
priest; and when the word occurs in its singular
form, ‘high priest’ is the almost invariable render-
ing it receives throughout the NT, both in AV
and RV (in Lk 3? ἐπὶ ἀρχιερέως [Αννα καὶ Καιάφα is
rendered in AV ‘Annas and Caiaphas being the
high priests,’ and in RV ‘in the high priesthood
of Annas and Caiaphas.’ In Ac 19! ἀρχιερεύς, as
applied to ‘one Sceva, a Jew,’ is rendered ‘chief of
the priests’ in AV, ‘achief priest’ in RV). For
a general treatment of the office of the ἀρχιερεύς in
NT times, and also of the use of the word as a
title of Christ by the author of Hebrews, reference
must be made to art. HIGH PRiesT. But in the
Gospels and Acts the word occurs very frequently
in the plural form (cf. Jos. Vita, 38, BJ Iv. iii.
7, 9, 10, and passim), and on all such occasions,
both in AV and RV, it is translated ‘ chief priests.’
It is these ἀρχιερεῖς, not the ἀρχιερεύς proper, with
whom we are concerned in the present article.
The precise meaning of ἀρχιερεῖς, aS We meet it
in the Gospels and Josephus, is not easily deter-
mined. A common explanation used to be that
these ‘chief priests’ were the heads or presidents
of the twenty-four courses into which the Jewish
priesthood was divided (1 Ch 244, 2 Ch 814, Lk 15-8;
Jos. Ant. VII. xiv. 7), or at least that these heads
of the priestly courses were included under the
term (see, ¢.g., the Lexicons of Cremer and Grimm-
Thayer, s.v. ἀρχιερεύς ; Alford on Mt 24). Itistrue
that some support for this view may be found in
the expressions ‘all the chief (RV ‘ chiefs’) of the
priests’ (2 Ch 3614, Neh 127), ‘the chief priests’
(RV ‘ the chiefs of the priests,’ Ezr 105). But it is
noticeable, as Schiirer pointed out (‘Die ἀρχιερεῖς
im NT’ in SX for 1872), that in the LXX the word
298 CHILDHOOD
ἀρχιερεῖς is never used of the heads of the priestly
courses, and that the nearest approximations to
this term are such phrases as ἄρχοντες τῶν πατριῶν
τῶν ἱερέων (1 Ch 245), ἄρχοντες τῶν ἱερέων (Neh 127).
And most scholars now take the view that the
ἀρχιερεῖς were high priests rather than ‘chief
priests,’ not leading representatives from the
general body of the priesthood, but members of
an exclusive high priestly caste.*
As applied to this high priestly class, the word
ἀρχιερεῖς would seem to denote primarily the
official high priest together with a group of ex-
high priests. For by NT times the high priestly
office had sunk far from its former greatness. It
was no longer hereditary, and no longer held for
life. Both Herod and the Roman legates deposed
and set up high priests at their pleasure (Jos.
Ant. XxX. x. 1), as the Seleucidee appear to have
done at an earlier period (2 Mac 44; Jos. Ané. XII.
v. 1). Thus there were usually several ex-high
priests alive at the same time, and these men,
though deprived of office, still retained the title
of ἀρχιερεῖς and still exercised considerable power
in the Jewish State (ef. Jos. Vita, 38, BJ τι. xii.
6, IV. ili. 7, 9, 10, IV. iv. 3). In the notable case of
Annas, we even have an ex-high priest whose
influence was plainly greater than that of the
ἀρχιερεύς proper (cf. Lk 37, Jn 18% 4, Ac 4°),
But Schiirer further maintains that, in addition
to the ex-high priests, the title was applied to the
members: of those families from which the high
priests were usually chosen—the γένος ἀρχιερατικόν
of Ac 4°. It appears from a statement of Josephus
that the dignity of the high priesthood was con-
fined to a few select families (BJ Iv. iii. 6); and
that this was really the case becomes clear upon
an examination of the list which Schiirer has
compiled, from the various references given by the
Jewish historian, of the twenty-eight holders of the
office during the Romano-Herodian period (H.JP
Il. i. 196 ff., 204). Above all, in one passage (BJ
VI. ii. 2) Josephus, after distinguishing the viol τῶν
ἀρχιερέων from the ἀρχιερεῖς themselves, apparently
combines both classes under the general designa-
tion of ἀρχιερεῖς. Schiirer accordingly comes to
the conclusion, which has been widely adopted,
that the ἀρχιερεῖς of the NT and Josephus ‘ consist,
in the first instance, of the high priests properly
so called, 1.6. the one actually in office and those
who had previously been so, and then of the mem-
bers of those privileged families from which the
high priests were taken’ (op. cit. p. 206). These,
then, were in all probability the ‘chief priests’ of
the EV. They belonged to the party of the
Sadducees (Ac 5”; Jos. Ant. XxX. ix. 1), and were,
formally at least, the leading personages in the
Sanhedrin.t| But in NT times their influence,
even in the Sanhedrin, was inferior to that of the
seribes and Pharisees, who commanded the popu-
lar sympathies as the high priestly party did not
(Jos. Ant. XI. x. 6, XVII. i. 4; ef. Ac 534% 236f-),
LITERATURE.—Schiirer, HJP τι. i. pp. 174-184, 195-206, and
‘Die ἀρχιερεῖς im NT’ in SK, 1872, pp. 593-657: Edersheim. Life
an l Times of Jesus the Messiah, 1. p. 322f.; Ewald, HJ vii. Ῥ.
479 ff. ; Hastings’ DB, artt. ‘ Priests and Levites’ and ‘Priest in
δὲς ἫΝ Hauck-Herzog, PRE*, art. ‘Hoher Priester’; Jewish
Peet, EEL Priest. J. C. LAMBERT.
CHILDHOOD.+—i. Tur Cut_puoop or JESUS.—
In the Lukan narratives of the Infaney and Child-
hood our Lord is described both as τὸ παιδίον "Ingots
ἰῷ πάθεος unce with this view, Dr. Moffatt, in his Historical
eu es nis rend eoxstpeie “high priests,’ a plan which
las also been adopted by the editor of The Corrected Enulis
New Testament (1905). Rees ee
t When ἀρχιερεῖς are mentioned in the NT alor
σεῖς and πρεσβύτεροι, they almost invariably
ig With ypauuc-
occupy the first
place. ἐν
* For the Greek tern
see following article.
ns relating to the period of childhood,
CHILDHOOD
in His earliest years (Lk 27-*: so also in Mt 2
throughout), and ἃ5᾽ Ἰησοῦς ὁ παῖς when twelve years
old. Beyond, however, the brief stories of Mt 2and
Lk 2 we seek in vain for any information having
any authority whatever concerning the early years
of Jesus, or, for that matter, any part of His life
prior to the Ministry. And what small fragments
these beautiful stories are! This dearth of in-
formation for which so great a craving has been
felt has repeatedly been remarked on: yet, after
all, need we wonder very much at the silence of the
Evangelical narratives concerning these matters?
The early life of Jesus appears not to have come
within their scope; for the purpose of the Evan-
gelical compilation was not to furnish a ‘Life’ in
the modern sense, but to set forth a gospel. Their
interest in Jesus in this respect begins pre-emi-
nently with His baptism, as the simple exordium
of St. Mark’s Gospel indicates—‘ The beginning of
the gospel of Jesus Christ.’ Even in the case of
St. Luke’s Gospel, with its peculiar stock of early
narratives in chs. 1. 2, the preface to the Acts
indicates that its great concern was with the
things that Jesus did and taught (Ac 1. What-
ever may be our views as to the source and au-
thority of what is recorded in Mt 1. 2, and whether
we care to use the term ‘envelope’ (see Bacon,
Introd. p. 198) or not in speaking of this portion
of the Gospel, it is clear that these two chapters
are something superadded to the main body ot the
Synoptic tradition ; and it is the same with Lk 1. 2.
The main narrative begins in the case of each of
these Gospels at ch. 3, where parallels with St.
Mark also begin to be furnished.
All that we have in the Canonical Gospels con-
cerning the childhood of Jesus, strictly speaking,
is found in Lk 2°? The first twelve years are
covered by v.*, whilst v.® has to suffice for all the
remaining years up to the commencement of the
Ministry. The writer has nothing to tell save the
story of the Visit to the Temple, and contents
himself for the rest with simple general statements
in Hebraic phraseology tnat irresistibly reminds
us of what is said of ‘the child Samuel’ (1 S 951. 78),
He has used practically the same formula to cover
years of John the Baptist’s history (15°). As for
the story of the Visit to the Temple, there is that
about it which carries conviction that we have here
a genuine and delightful glimpse of our Lord in
His childhood—one only glimpse, which, however,
suffices to show us what manner of child He was,
on the principle of ex uno disce omnes. It is to be
noted that there is no hint that He was regarded
as a prodigy by His parents and the neighbours
with whom He travelled up to Jerusalem. ‘The
element of the merely marvellous is at a minimum.
The wonder that does show itself is in the region
of the spirit, and appears in the beautiful intelli-
gence and rare spiritual gleams (νν. “7 50) which the
Boy displayed, astonishing alike to the Rabbis
and to His bewildered parents.
The silence and restraint of the Canonical Gospels
on this subject are best appreciated when viewed
against the background which the Apocryphal
Gospels supply. Perhaps the most valuable ser-
vice that the latter writings render is that com-
parison with them so strongly brings out the
intrinsic value and superiority of our Canonical
Gospels. They show us conclusively what men
with a free hand could and would do. This is
conspicuously the case with reference to the early
years of Jesus. The extravagant and miraculous
stories told concerning His infancy and childhood,
taken by themselves, would suffice to crush out
the historicity of Jesus and consign Him to the
region of the mythical. We seek in vain in these
writings for anything like a sober account of our
Lord’s growth and general history during this
Lord Jesus.’
With every
touches of beauty and elements of
here and there be found, a survey of this Apocry-
phal literature gives fresh force to Edersheim’s
CHILDHOOD
period: we find nothing but a congeries of grotesque
wonder-tales concerning the doings of the Boy.
His miraculous powers prove to be of singular
advantage to Us ae for when a beam or plank
has been cut too short Jesus rectifies the mistake
by merely pulling it out to the required length.
He changes boys into kids, and anon restores them
to their former condition. He carries both fire
and water quite easily in His cloak. When play-
ing with other boys and making figures of various
beasts and birds, Jesus makes those He had formed
walk and fly, and eat and drink. Wonderful works
of healing are also ascribed to the Child ; and some
of them take strange forms, in curious contrast
to the stories of the works of Jesus found in our
Gospels. £.g. Simon the Cananean as a boy is
nigh to death through having been bitten by a
serpent. Jesus makes the serpent itself come and
suck out all the poison from the wound ; then He
curses it, and immediately the creature bursts
asunder. The cure of demoniacs, of lepers, of the
blind and maimed and sick, and the raising of the
dead, are all ascribed to the Child Jesus, and
always with more or less grotesqueness of cir-
cumstance. Strangest thing of all, a whole series
of vindictive and destructive miracles are given
which offer the most flagrant contrast to all that
we know of our Lord, and which, if true, would
have made Him a veritable terror to all with whom
He came into contact. Boys who thwart Him in
pay are immediately struck dead: others who
take action against Him are blinded. ‘It is true
the mischief is usually repaired by Him in re-
sponse to earnest entreaty; but the vengeful
malevolence is conspicuous throughout. In the
stories, again, relating to His early education,
Jesus is represented as being wn enfant terrible
to more than one master to whom He was sent
to learn His letters. But a comparison of the
story of the Visit to the Temple, as told in the
Arabic Gospel of the Infancy and other such writ-
ines, with the narrative as we have it in Lk 2,
serves as well as possible to show the untrust-
worthy character of the Apocryphal Gospels,
whatever curious interest may attach to them.
For the simple and natural statement of St. Luke,
that ‘all that heard Him were amazed at His
understanding and His answers,’ we find Him
represented as not only getting the upper hand
of the great Rabbis in relation to the knowledge
of the Torah, but as giving profound instruction
to philosophers in astronomy, natural science, and
medicine, explaining to them ‘physics and meta-
physics, hyperphysics and hypophysics,’ and many
other things.
The Apocryphal writings which, in particular, abound in
these tales of the childhood of Jesus, are the Gospel of pseudo-
Matthew, the Protevangelium of James, the Arabie Gospel of
the Infancy, and the Gospel of Thomas in its various forms.
The Thomas Gospel is mainly answerable for the stories of
vindictive miracles referred. to above. The Syriac form of this
Gospel is entitled in the MS (6th cent.) the ‘Boyhood of Our
allowance for whatever scanty
value may
remark (Jesus the Messiah, bk. ii. ch. 10): ‘We
dread gathering around our thoughts of Him the
artilicial Howers of legend.’ In default, however,
of authentic records there remains one expedient
for meeting the deep silence of our Gospels which
modern writers who essay the construction of a
‘Life of Christ’ are full ready to make use of.
All available knowledge regarding the times in
which our Lord lived, the surroundings and condi-
tions in which He grew up, and the manner in
which Jewish boys were educated (see artt. Boy-
HOOD and EDUCATION), can be employed to help
CHILDHOOD 299
us to form a sober and reverent conception of Him
in the days of His childhood. Perhaps, indeed,
such matters in their general treatment enter into
some Lives of Christ even to prolixity. It is a
true instinct, however, which bids us set aside
early and medieval legends, with all their naiveté,
and frame a conception of Him as living the life
of a normal Jewish boy of His own time and
station, distinguished only by a rare personal
charm of goodness and grace. The unfolding of
a human life in growing beauty and nobility of
character more truly proclaims ‘God with us’ than
could such miraculous accompaniments as would
tend to make the Child an object of mingled
wonder and fear. Painters who have represented
the Holy Child in simple human grace, without
the encircling nimbus, have not on that account
fallen behind others in suggesting His true
Divinity.
‘He came to Nazareth, where He had been
brought wp? (Lk 4!*)—how much that phrase
covers! The great factors entering into His
education were home training, the synagogue
both as a place of worship and as a school, the
many -ccloured life of the district in which He
spent His youth, the natural features of the
locality, and all the scenery round about Nazareth,
so full of beauty and stirring historical associa-
tions. Later on, after He had attained ‘years of
discretion,’ in our phrase, becoming a bar-mizvah
(ms) 73=son of commandment =one responsible for
compliance with legal requirements), as the Jews
express it, His repeated visits to Jerusalem to
attend the feasts would also count for much. If
we are to understand the visit mentioned in Lk 2
to be the first that Jesus paid to Jerusalem (though
the narrative does not explicitly say it was), we
may take it that at the age of twelve (Lk 2”) He
was regarded as having reached that important
stage in a boy’s life, although the usual age for
such recognition was somewhat later.
Jesus belonged to a people unsurpassed for the
care bestowed upon the education of children.
His earliest teacher would he His mother; and
we cannot doubt that of all Jewish mothers none
could excel Mary (‘blessed among women’) in all
such work. Among other things He would prob-
ably learn from her the Shema’ (Dt 64)—that-sacred
formula which attends the devout Jew from his
earliest years to his latest moment. This is quite
consistent with the fact that education was one of
the things for which the father was held respon-
sible as regards his son. At an early age Jesus
would be sent to school at the synagogue, there to
be taught by the hawzzan, or schoolmaster, to read
and recite the Jewish Scriptures. The instruction
given did not go beyond this, with writing and
possibly a little arithmetic as additional and sub-
ordinate subjects. It was in a supreme degree a
religious education, designed to fit children for the
practical duties of life. The education of Jesus
was just that of the great mass of the people:
unlike Saul of Tarsus, no béth ha-Midrash, or
college of Scribes, received Him as a student
(‘Whence hath this man these things?’ Mk 6°;
cf. Jn 7!5). Asa schoolboy, too, Jesus would have
His recreations. School hours were not excessive,
anounting to no more than four or five hours
a day. Truly Jewish games, however, were but
few. They had little or nothing corresponding to ,
our school sports; and the cult of athletics was
looked upon as something alien. Little children,
like those of other times and races, found amuse-
ment in playing at doing as grown-up people did :
and the words of our Lord in Mt 11%! very likely
contain not merely the result of His observation,
but a memory of His own childhood. For the rest,
as ἃ boy He would find abundant. means οἱ re-
300
CHILDHOOD
creation in rambling round about Nazareth amidst
the sights and sounds of nature. ‘The open-air
atmosphere of His preaching, with its abundant
allusions to the life of the field and to the varied
aspects of nature, betokens an early-formed and
loving familiarity.
On His visit to Nazareth, described in Lk 4, ‘ He
entered, as His custom was, into the synagogue on
the Sabbath day’ (v.®): and that custom, we may
be sure, was a growth from His earliest years.
Children, in those days, were admitted to religious
celebrations in the ‘'emple at an early age. A
boy’s religious life was considered to begin at the
age of four. Both boys and girls accompanied
their mothers to the synagogue when very young.
And Sabbath by Sabbath, throughout His early
peaceful years, Jesus was found in the synagogue
with His mother Mary; and a benediction and a
joy it must have been to all the frequenters of that
synagogue at Nazareth to look upon the fair,
Winsome, earnest face of the Child. When we
read, as we do, of boys playing in the synagogue
during worship and causing annoyance to their
elders, it interests us to recognize the counterpart
of a familiar experience in modern times; but
without taking anything from the naturalness of
our Lord’s boyhood, it is impossible to think of
Him in any such association. We can only think
of Him as showing forth a spirit of wondrous
grace, a growing responsiveness towards the
prayers and praises, becoming more and more
tamiliar and dear, a deepening love of the noble
words in which He heard the laws, the hopes and
the faith of Israel set forth. The whole unfolding
of His life in all the religious discipline and edu-
cation of the home, the synagogue and the whole
round of the Jewish year of feasts and fasts, must
have been beantiful to those to whose care He was
entrusted. When a boy became bar-mizvih, there
was a lightening of the paternal responsibility
regarding him, and a sense of relief surely found
expression in the benediction pronounced by the
father on that occasion—‘ Blessed be He for having
freed ine from this punishment.’
have been no room for such an utterance when
Jesus left His mother’s side, henceforth to take
His place among the men in the congregation.
Our most profitable reflections on the childhood
of our Lord, however, are best summarized in the
saying of Irenieus, to the effect that, in com-
letely participating in the conditions of human
ife, He became a child for the sake of children,
and by His own experience of childhood He has
sanctified it (adv. Haer. I. xxii. 4).
ii. CHILDHOOD IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS.—
It was only to be expected that Jesus would
exhibit an unquestionable love for children ; and it
is in complete accord with the whole tenor of His
teaching that He should specially emphasize the
importance and value of the child. The well-
known words of Juvenal, ‘Maxima debetur puero
reverentia” (Sat. xiv. 47), gain their profoundest
Signiicance when the attitude assumed by our
Lord towards children is considered. The story
of Jairus’ daughter (τὸ θυγάτριόν μου is the father’s
appealing expression in Mk 5%) suggests a special
tenderness in Jesus towards children for whom His
healing was sought; He could not resist such an
appeal as, ‘Sir, come down ere my child (τὸ παιδίον
mov) die’ (Jn 4%); and it was anything but in-
difference to the woe of a little heathen ΟἿΣ] (θυγά-
τριον, Mk 755) which made Him apparently reluctant
to yield to the entreaties of the Syropheenician
woman, Such cases, We may be sure, are only
representative of many more. And that our Lord
Himself had a singular attraction for children
admits of no doubt. His triumphal Entry into
Jerusalem and the Temple cannot have been the
There could
CHILDHOOD
only time when He had child-friends to greet and
attend Him (Mt 2115). It was no new thing for
parents to seek a Rabbi's blessing for their children,
but it was a unique charm in Jesus which led
mothers — surely mothers were at least among
‘those that brought them ’—to desire His blessing
for their little ones (Mk 10'!6 and_ parallels).
St. Mark’s special touch in describing how He
welcomed them (ἐγαγκαλισάμενος, v.'°) is entirely
true to the spirit of the Master. His benediction
was as remote from the perfunctory as it could be.
The teaching of Jesus concerning children and
childhood gathers round two occasions—when He
blessed the little ones (as above), and when He
rebuked the ambition of the disciples, —see Mk
97, Lk 9748, and Mt 18'4, with notable amplifi-
cations.
(+) In the former instance the untimely inter-
position of the disciples leads to the saying, ‘ Of
such is the kingdom of God.’ In Mark and Luke
this is followed by a further solemn saying—
‘Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God
as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein,’
Though Matthew lacks this in this connexion, he
has a corresponding utterance in 18° 4. Wendt
(Lehre Jesu, Eng. tr. ii. pp. 49, 50) considers that
all the stress of these words lies on the receptivity
demanded by Jesus on the part of those who would
enter the kingdom. ‘Not the reception of the
kingdom of God at a childlike age (sic), but in a
childlike character, He declares to be the indis-
pensable condition of entering the kingdom of God ;
and under this childlike character He does not
understand any virtue of childlike blamelessness,
but only the receptivity itself... .2 And no
doubt in the second of these sayings the manner
in which men are to receive the kingdom is set
forth with emphasis. Those who find themselves
for one reason and another outside the kingdom,
can obtain admission thereinto only when the
offer of its gracious blessings is received, not with
‘blamelessness’ indeed (which is out of the question
here), but, with the simple trust, the unpretentious-
ness, the earnest desire and the reality which are
characteristic of a child. But there is something
more than this in the words of Jesus. The first
saying has hardly its due weight given to it if we
stop here. ‘Of such is the kingdom of God.’ The
kingdom dclongs to such. And we cannot accept
‘the childlike’ as the complete equivalent of ‘such.’
Wendt, it is true, acknowledges children to be
‘susceptible subjects for the preaching of the king-
dom ot God’ (as above, p. 50); but are we to under-
stand that they are to be invited to receive it as
having been outside from the first? We verge here
on controversies that have loomed large on the
troubled way of the diversified development of
Christian thought and opinion. But the saying
of Jesus, as it stands, surely implies that the king-
dom comprises not only the ἀπ] οὶ but little
children χης children as well. They are its in-
heritors. They may forfeit its blessings subse-
quently by their own act, or others may be speci-
ally responsible for their failing to retain their
inheritance (Mt 18°); but that is another matter.
As Bengel says (on Mt 19%), “ τοιοῦτος notat sub-
stantiam cum qualitate.’ And the relation of our
Lord to humanity at large makes this but the
natural interpretation of His words. ‘If they who
are like little children belong to the kingdom of
heaven, why should we for a moment doubt that
the little children themselves belong to the king-
dom?’ So Morison, who is altogether admirable
on this point (see especially Com. on Mt 19").
(6) The way in which Jesus dealt with the dis-
ciples’ dispute concerning precedence (Mk 9°3-*7 and
parallels) further brings out the qualities of child-
hood which were most precious in His eyes, and
CHILDREN
the value and importance He attached to little
children themselves. The little one He called to
Him and so lovingly embraced (St. Mark’s special
touch again), was held up to the disciples as an
example and guide to greatness. To be great in
the kingdom of heaven (Mt 181+ +) it was necessary
to have a spirit of simplicity and humility such as
was seen in the child in whom self-regard and self-
seeking had as yet no place. It is one of our
Lord’s great paradoxes. To be childlike is to be
truly great. The same truth is emphasized in a
saying which in varying form is found twice over
in each of the Synoptics—the man who wishes to
be first shall be last; the man willing to be least
shall be great. We here learn further how Jesus
regards little children as in a real sense belonging
to Him. To receive a little child as belonging to
Him, bestowing loving care upon it, is a high
service rendered to Him and to God ny whom He
was sent. In Mt 10*-# the importance attached
to such service is strikingly expressed in the pro-
gressive series in which Jesus promises a reward
to those who thus receive His messengers—a pro-
phet, a good man, ‘one of these little ones.’ It is
most natural to understand that in using such an
expression as the last our Lord actually referred
to some children who were hard by when He was
speaking. And as here, soin the more extended
sayings in Mt 18, whatever the reference to child-
like and lowly-minded disciples in general, the
words of Jesus must apply to children themselves.
The terrible warning of Mt 18° applies to those
who hinder such little ones in relation to the king-
dom. Though it is not expressly so stated, what
is said about receiving children suggests that
such a wrong done to any child is as a wrong done
to Christ Himself. The preciousness of a little
child in the sight of ‘our Father in heaven’ is
emphatically asserted by Jesus in Mt 184. The
children’s angels, He says, are ever in the presence
of God (v.”). Whether this remarkable saying be
understood as referring to guardian angels or to
representative angels (in some way corresponding
to the Zoroastrian /ravashis or ‘spiritual counter-
parts’—see art. by Dr. J. H. Moulton in Journal
of Theol. Studies, July 1902), it clearly declares
that no little one is an object of indifference with
God, no wrong inflicted upon a child can escape His
notice. The closing saying of this group (vy.!*"*)
embodies the illustration of the one stray sheep,
found in another connexion in Lk 15, and teaches
that, whatever ruin may befall ‘one of these little
ones,’ it is not a matter of the Divine pleasure and
ordination that even one such should be ‘cast as
rubbish to the void.’ See also art. CHILDREN,
which is written from a different standpoint.
LirERATURE.—The various Lives of Christ (Edersheim, Keim,
Didon, Farrar, Andrews, D. Smith, etc.); artt. Boynoop, and
Epucation ; cf. art. ‘Education’ in Hastings’ DB and the
Encyc. Biblica; Brough, Childhood and Youth of our Lord ;
G. A. Coe, Education in Religion and Morals, 1904; 8. B.
Haslett, Pedagogical Bible School, 1905 ; R. Rainy, Sojourning
with God (1902), p. 151; Donehoo, Apocryphal and Legendary
Life of Christ ; Ramsay, Education of Christ; Schirer, HJP ;
Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, ii. 48 ff. ; G. B. Stevens, Theology of
the N17’, pp. 81, 93. J. S. CLEMENS.
CHILDREN.—In the regeneration of society
which has been wrought by the forces brought
into the world by Christianity, the family, of
course, has had its part. Or rather, since to Jesus
also the family was the social unit, this regenera-
tion began with the family and spread outwards
from it. The emphasis laid by our Lord on the
institution of the family deserves even to be called
extraordinary. Not only did He habitually ex-
hibit sympathy with domestic life in all its phases,
and particularly reverence for women and tender-
ness for children: and not only did He adopt the
vocabulary of the family to express the relations
————
CHILDREN 301
subsisting between Himself and His followers, and
even as His choicest vehicle for conveying to them
a vitalizing conception of their relations to God,
‘from whom,’ as that one of His servants who
best represents His teaching in this aspect of it
declares, ‘every family in heaven and on earth is
named’ (Eph 3%); but, deserting His customary
reserve in dealing with social institutions, in the
ease of this one alone did He advance beyond
general principles to specific legislation. (Cf. F. G.
Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Social Question,
p. 145 fh).
This specific legislation does not directly con-
cern children. It is true that childhood owes as
much to the gospel as womanhood itself (cf. e.g.
Uhlhorn, Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism,
Ρ. 182). And the causes of the great revolution
which was wrought by the gospel in the condition
of children and the estimate placed on childhood,
are undoubtedly rooted in the life and teaching of
our Lord, and are spread on the pages of the
Gospels. But we shall search in vain in the re-
corded teaching of Jesus for either direct legisla-
tion, or even enunciation of general principles
reculating the relations of parents and children, or
establishing the position of children in the social
organism. He has left us no commandments, no
declarations, not even exhortations on the subject.
He simply moves onward in His course, touching
in life, act, word on the domestic relations that
were prevalent about Him, and elevating and
glorifying everything that He touched. Thus He
has handed down to us a new ideal of the family,
and lifted to a new plane our whole conception of
childhood. (Cf. Shailer Mathews, The Social
Teaching of Jesus, Ὁ. 10] ft).
The domestic economy which forms the back-
ground of Jesus’ life, and is assumed in all His
dealings with children and in all His allusions
to them and their ways, is, of course, the whole-
some home-life which had grown up in Israel
under the moulding influence of the revelation of
the Old Covenant. Its basis was the passionately
affectionate Semitic nature, and no doubt certain
modifications had come to it from contact with
other civilizations; but its form was determined
by the tutelage which Jehovah had granted His
people. (Cf. Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social
Life in the Days of Christ, chs. vi.-ix., and The
Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, bk. 11. chs.
ix. and x.; also Hastings’ DB, articles ‘Child,’
‘Family.’ For later Jewish child-life see Schechter,
Studizs in Judaisin, xii. ; and, above all, L. Low,
Die Lebensalter. Cf. also Ploss, Das Kind im
Brauch und Sitte der Volker).
The tender love which the Hebrew parent bore to his child,
and the absorbing interest with which he watched and guided
its development, doubtless find partial expression in the multi-
plicity of designations by which the several stages of childhood
are marked in that pictorial language. Besides the general
terms for ‘son’ (ven) and ‘daughter’ (bath), eight of these have
been noted tracing the child from its birth to its maturity :
yeled (fem. yalddh), the ‘birthling’; yonek, the ‘suckling’ ;
‘6lél, the suckling of a larger growth, perhaps the ‘ worrier’ ;
gamil, the ‘weanling’; taph, the ‘toddler’; ‘elem, the ‘ fat
one’; naar, the ‘free one’; δαμῆγ, the ‘ripe one.’ (So Ham-
burger, WF i. 642, after whom Edersheim, Opp. citt. p. 103 f.
and i. p. 221, note 3).
This series of designations may, of course, be more than
matched out of the richness of Greek speech. Here the general
term of relation, ‘child’ (* τέκνον, dimin. ἢ tezvev), parts into
the more specific ‘son’ (ἢ υἱός, dimin. υἱάφιον, vidiv) and
‘daughter’ (* θυγάτηρ, dimin. * θυγάτριον) ; while the multitude of
terms describing stages of growth quite baffles discrimination.
The grammarians have handed down to us each his several list,
among which that of Alexion (Hust. 1788, 22), for instance,
enumerates ten stages between the newborn infant and the
mature young man: * βρέφος ; * παιδίον; ἢ παιδάριον; rosdiaxos ;
* σαῖς; παλλκξ, OY βούπαις, OY ἀντίπαις, OF μελλέφηβος ; ἔφηβος;
μειράκιον ΟΥ̓ μειραξ; νεανίσκος ; * νεανίας. Needless to say, the
sequences of such lists cannot be taken too strictly. And
equally needless to say, they by no means exhaust the synonymy.
* Those terms which occur in NT are marked by an asterisk,
302 CHILDREN
CHILDREN
ee ——__——_—_________aninnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnES
Alexion’s list, for example, does not contain even all the
terms of this class that occur in the Gospel narratives. The
series afforded by them would run something like this: βρέφος,
νήπιος, θηλάζων, παιδίον, παιδάριον, Toss, νεανίσκος, tO which would
need to be added the distinctively feminine θυγάτριον, κοράσιον
[reidioxn), παρθξνος. re
It is not difficult to recognize the general distinctions between
these terms. (For the detailed synonymy see especially
Schmidt, D. Synonymik d. griech. Sprache, c. 69, for the terms
belonging distinctively to childhood; c. 152 for those describ-
ing the stages between childhood and maturity ; and c. 47 for
some terms denoting youthfulness ; cf. Thayer, Lex. N T, 8.0.
xziz). Tezvov (with its diminutive τεκνίον, Jn 1383 only) is, like
υἱὸς and θυγάτηρ, used in the Gospels only of relationship,
literal or figurative, never of age (for the synonymy of τέκνον,
υἱός, and παῖς, see an interesting discussion by Hohne in
Luthardt’s ZKWL, 1882, p. 57 ff. ; and cf. Cremer and Thayer,
g.vv.). For the rest, βρέφος is here, as in post-Homeric Greek in
general, distinctively the ‘newborn baby’ (1 P 22), the ‘child
in the arms’ (in Homer it is the unborn child, the embryo, as
also often in later Greek, e.g. Lk 141-44): and νήπιος and θηλάζων
(the NT substitute for θηλώσις, bnruusos) range with it as
descriptive of early infancy. Παιδίον is equally distinctively the
‘little child,’ although its application is somewhat broad , now
it is entirely synonymous with βρέφος (Lk 159-66 etc., Mt 28 etc.,
Lk 1815.16), and again it designates a little maiden of twelve
years of age (Mk 54!- 42), Its companion diminutive σαιδοριον iS
ordinarily employed of a somewhat older ‘lad,’ and may very
well be so used in the only passage where it occurs in the
Gospels (Jn 69), The simple ταῖς has a range sufficiently wide
to cover all these stages, from infancy itself (6... Mt 216) up to
youthful maturity (Hippocrates says up to the age of 21). It
designates, says Schmidt (p. 429), ‘the child of all ages up to
complete young manhood ; παιδάριον, the child up to his first
school years; ra:3iov, exclusively the little child.’ Nexvozos is
the appropriate designation of every stage of youthful maturity
from so early an age that usipeéxzov or ais might be inter-
changed with it up to so late a period—about 40—that it is on
the point of giving way to old age. Of the distinctively
feminine terms that occur in the Gospels, παρθένος is a term of
condition rather than of age, and occurs only in connexion with
Mary (Mt 123, Lk 127) and in the parable of the Ten Virgins (Mt
951.7.11), and παιδίσκη is employed only in the secondary sense
of ‘maid-servant’ (Mt 2659 and parallels, Lk 1945). The diminu-
tives θυγάτριον and κοράσιον, though capable of employment with
quite a wide range, yet naturally imply tenderness of years
where tenderness of affection is not obviously conveyed by them
(e.g. Mk 725, Mt 935). Thus it appears that in the narratives of
the Gospels there is brought into contact with our Lord every
stage of childhood and youth from the cradle to maturity—the
baby on its mother’s bosom (Lk 1815), the little child, boy (Mk
924) and girl (Mk 725) alike, children of a larger growth (Jn 427,
Lk 851), and the maturing youth (Lk 744, Mt 1979).
What Jesus did for children, we may perhaps
sum up as follows. He illustrated the ideal of
childhood in His own life as a child. He mani-
fested the tenderness of His affection for children
by conferring blessings upon them in every stage
of their development as He was _ occasionally
brought into contact with them. He asserted for
children a recognized place in His kingdom, and
dealt faithfully and lovingly with each age as it
presented itself to Him in the course of His work.
He chose the condition of childhood as a type of
the fundamental character of the recipients of the
kingdom of God. He adopted the relation of
childhood as the most vivid earthly image of the
relation of God’s people to Him who was not
ashamed to be called their Father which is in
heaven, and thus reflected back upon this relation
a glory by which it has been transfigured ever since.
The history of the ideal childhood which Jesus
Himself lived on the earth is set down for us in the
opening chapters of Matthew and Luke, especially
of Luke, whose distinction among the Evangelists
is that he has given us a narrative founded on
an investigation which ‘traced the course of all
things accurately from the first’ (Lk 15). Accord-
ingly, not only does he with careful exactitude
record the performance by our Lord’s parents in
His behalf, during His infancy, of ‘all things that
were according to the law of the Lord’ (Lk 2%);
but he marks for us the stages of our Lord’s erowth
in His progress to man’s estate, and thus brings
Him before us successively as ‘baby’ (916 βρέφος)
‘child’ (2” παιδίον), and “hoy? (2% rats), until in
His glorious young-manhood, when He was about
30 years of age, He at last manifested. Himself to
Israel (3%). The second chapter of Luke is thus in
effect an express history of the development of
Jesus; and sums up in two comprehensive verses
His entire growth from childhood to boyhood and
from boyhood to manhood (230. 82). The language of
these succinct descriptions is charged with sugges-
tions that this was an extraordinary child, whose
development was an extraordinary development.
Attention is called alike to His physical, intellec-
tual, and spiritual progress ; and of each it is sug-
gested that it was constant, rapid, and remarkable.
Those who looked upon Him in the cradle would
perceive that even beyond the infant Moses (Heb.
1139) this was ‘a goodly child’; and day by day as
He grew and waxed strong, He became more and
more filled not only with knowledge but with
wisdom, and not only with wisdom but with grace,
and so steadily advanced ‘not alone in power and
knowledge, but by year and hour in reverence and
in charity.’ Man and God alike looked upon His
erowing powers and developing character with ever
increasing favour. The promise of the goodly child
passed without jar or break into the fruitage of
the perfect man: and those who gazed on the babe
with admiration (22: %-%8), could not but gaze on
the boy with astonishment (25) and on the man
with reverence.
It is therefore no ordinary human development
which is here described for us. But it is none the
less, or rather it is all the more, a normal human
development, the only strictly normal human de-
velopment the world has ever seen. This is the
only child who has ever been born into the world
without the fatal entail of sin, and the only child
who has ever grown to manhood free from the
deterioration of sin. This is how men ought to
grow up: how, were they not sinners, men would
crow up. It is a great thing for the world to
have seen one such instance. As an example it is
indeed set beyond our reach. As the ideal child-
hood realized in life, it has ever since stood before
the world as an incitement and inspiration of quite
incaleulable power. In this perfect development
of Jesus there has been given to the world a model
for every age, whose allurement has revolutionized
life. He did not, as Ireneus (adv. Her. 11. xxii.
4, ef. Iff. xviii. 4) reminds us, despise or evade the
humanity He had assumed ; or set aside in His own
person the law that governs it: on the contrary,
He sanctified every age in turn by Himself living
His perfect life in its conditions. ‘He came to
save all by means of Himself,’ continues Irenieus,
‘all, Τ say, who through Him are born again unto
God,—infants and children, and boys, and youths.
. . . He therefore passed through every age,
becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying
infants; a child for children, thus sanctifying
those who are of this age, being at the same time
made to them an example of piety, righteousness,
and submission ; a youth for youths, becoming an
example to youths, and thus sanctifying them for
the Lord.’ . . . On the few details given us of the
childhood of our Lord see artt. BoyHOOD OF JESUS
and CHILDHOOD.
During the course of His life begun with this
ideal childhood, Jesus came into contact with
every stage of youthful development, and mani-
fested the tenderness of His feeling for each and
His power and willingness to confer blessings upon
all. A lurid light is thrown upon the nature of
the world and the character of the times into
which He was born by the slaughter of the Inno-
cents, which marked His advent (Mt 916-399). But
one function which the record of this incident per-
forms is to serve as a black background upon which
His own beneficence to childhood may be thrown
up. Mothers instinctively brought their babies to
Him for benediction ; and when they did so, He
was not content until He had taken them in His
CHILDREN
arms (Mk 1015, cf. 9%). His allusions to children
in His teaching reflect the closeness of His ob-
servation of them. He celebrates the delight of
the mother in her baby, obliterating even the
pangs of birth (Jn 167’); the fostering love of the
father who cuddles his children up with him in
bed (Lk 11’); the parental affection which listens
eagerly to the child’s every request, and knows
how to grant it only things that are good (Mt 79,
Lk 11-38). He notes the wayward impulses of
children at play (Mt 1115, Lk 7**). He feels the
weight of woe that is added to calamities in which
the children also are involved (Mt 1839) ; and places
among the supremest tests of loyalty to Him, the
preference of Him even to one’s children (Mt 19”,
1} 115519:9. vets Mike LO).
A number of His miracles, worked for the benefit
of the young, illustrate His compassion for their
sufferings and ills. The nobleman’s son at Caper-
naum, whose healing Jesus wrought as a second
sien when He came out of Judea into Galilee (Jn
446-54) was at least a ‘child’ (ais, 451), for so the
servants call him in cold sobriety ; and probably
was a ‘little child ἡ (4%), although it is, of course,
possible that on the lips of the father the diminu-
tive expresses tenderness of affection rather than
of age. The possessed ‘ boy’ (παῖς, Mt 17!8, Lk 9%)
—the only son of his father (Lk 9°°)—whom Jesus
healed as He came down from the Mount of Trans-
alHiction had dated from his earliest infancy (ἐκ
παιδιόθεν, Mk 97!), was more certainly distinctively
a ‘little child’ (Mk 95). Jairus’ ‘ little daughter’
(θυγάτριον, Mk 5**)—also an only one—whom Jesus
raised from the dead in such dramatic circum-
stances (Mt 938-76, Mk 52°, Lk 811-56) and who is
spoken of in the narratives indifferently as ‘ child’
(παῖς, Lk 851- 54), «little child’ (παιδίον, Mk 539: 10. 41)
and ‘ maiden’ or ‘ girl’ (κοράσιον, Mt 974: 55. Mk 5");
ταλιθά, Mk 5*'), we know to have been about twelve
years old (Lk 83). We are not told the exact age
of the ‘little daughter’ (θυγάτριον, Mk 7*—here
probably the word is the diminutive of age, not
of affection, as it occurs in the narrative, not the
conversation) of the Syropheenician woman ; but
we note that St. Mark calls her also distinctively
a ‘little child’ (παιδίον, 7%). The only son of the
widow of Nain (Lk 711-18). the desolate state of
whose bereft mother roused so deeply the pity of
our Lord (7:5), is addressed indeed as a ‘young
man’ (νεανίσκε, 714), a term so broad that it need
imply no more than that he was in his prime ; but
the suggestion of the narrative certainly seems to
be that he was in his youthful prime (7!5). Thus
is rounded out a series of miracles in which our
Lord shows His pity to the growing youth of every
stage of development.
When on that great day on the shores of Gen-
nesaret Jesus appeared to His disciples and gave
to His repentant Apostle His last exhortation, He
commanded him not merely ‘ Feed my sheep,’ but
also ‘Feed my lambs.’ Though the language,
doubtless, rather expresses His love for His flock
than distributes it into constituent classes, we
may be permitted to see in it also the richness of
our Lord’s sympathy for the literal lambs of His
fold. Certainly -He provided in His kingdom a
place fo. every age, and met the spiritual needs of
each. ‘Touching illustrations of this are offered us
at the two end stages of youthful development
(Lk 18! βρέφος ; Mt 19” νεανίσκος), in the blessing
of little children and the probing of the rich young
ruler’s heart, which are brought into immediate
contiguity in all three of the Synoptics as if they
were intended to be taken together as a picture of
our Lord’s dealing with youth as a whole, perhaps
even as together illustrating the great truth that
in the kingdom of God the question is not of the
CHILDREN 303
hour of entrance,—first or eleventh,—but of the will
of the Master, who doeth what He will with His
own (Mt 9015).
What is particularly to be borne in mind with
respect to the blessing of the little children (Mt
1910 15. MSO ae kel 815-47): is: that theses little
children’ (radia, Mt 19314, Mix 10% 14, Lk 1816)
were distinctively ‘ babies’ (βρέφη, Lk 1815). There-
fore they needed to be received by Jesus ‘in his
arms’ (Mk 1016); and only from this circumstance,
indeed, can all the details of the narrative be
understood. It is from this, for example, that
the interference of the disciples, which called out
the Master’s rebuke, ‘ Let the little children come
to me; forbid them not,’ receives its explanation.
The disciples, to speak briefly, had misapprehended
the nature of the Lord’s mission: they were re-
garding Him fundamentally as a teacher sent from
God, who also healed the afflicted ; and they con-
ceived it to be their duty in the overstrain to which
He was subjected to protect Him from needless
drafts on His time and strength by the intrusion
of those needing no healing and incapable of in-
struction. It seemed to them out of the question
that ‘even the babies’ (Lk 1815) should be thrust
upon His jaded attention. They should have
known better; and Jesus was indignant that they
did not know better (Mk 1015), and took this oe-
casion to manifest Himself as the Saviour of infants
also. Taking them in His arms and fervently
invoking a blessing upon them (Mk 101 κατευλόγει),
He not only asserted for them a part in His mission,
but even constituted them the type of the children
of the kingdom. ‘Let the little children come
unto me,’ He says; ‘forbid them not: for of such
is the kingdom of God.’ And then proceeding
with the solemn ‘ Verily ’—‘ Verily I say unto you,
Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God
as a little child, shall in no wise enter therein’
(ΜΠ 01} 8 Ek 18) ch vit or):
Wherein this childlikeness, in which alone the
kingdom of God can be received, consists, lies on
the face of the narrative. Certainly not in the
innocence of childhood, as if the purpose were to
announce that only the specially innocent can
enter the kingdom of God. Our Lord was accus-
tomed to declare, on the contrary, that He came to
call not the righteous but sinners, to seek and
save that which was lost; and the contradiction
with the Jesson of the publican and the Pharisee
praying in the temple, which immediately pre-
cedes this narrative in Luke, would be too glaring.
But neither can it consist in the humility of
childhood, if, indeed, we can venture to speak of
the most egoistic age of human life as character-
istically humble ; nor yet in its simplicity, its art-
lessness, ingenuousness, directness, as beautiful as
these qualities are, and as highly esteemed as they
certainly must be in the kingdom of God. We can-
not even suppose it to consist in the trustfulness
of childhood, althongh we assuredly come much
nearer to it in this, and no image of the children
of the kingdom could be truer than that afforded
by the infant lying trustingly upon its mother’s
breast. But, in truth, it is in no disposition of
mind, but rather in a condition of nature, that we
must seek the characterizing peculiarity of these
infants whom Jesus sets forth as types of the
children of the kingdom. Infants of days (βρέφη,
Lk 18) have no characteristic disposition of mind ;
and we must accordingly leave the subjective
sphere and find the childlikeness which Jesus
presents as the condition of the reception (not
acquisition) of the kingdom in an objective state ;
in a word, in the helplessness, or, if you will, the
absolute dependence of infancy. What our Lord
would seem to say, therefore, when He declares,
‘Of such is the kingdom of God,’ is, briefly, that
304 CHILDREN
CHILDREN
those of whom the kingdom of God is made up are,
relatively to it, as helplessly dependent as babies
are in their mothers’ arms. The children of the
kingdom enter it as children enter the world,
stripped and naked,—infants, for whom all must
be done, not who are capable of doing.
There was another occasion on which even more
formally Jesus proclaimed to His disciples child-
likeness as the essential characteristic of the chil-
dren of the kingdom (Mt 18!4, Mk 9°8-87, Lk 946-48),
The disciples had been disputing among them-
selves who of them should be greatest. Jesus,
calling to Him a little child, placed it in their
midst and said, ‘ Verily I say unto you, Except ye
turn and become as little children, ye shall in no
wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ There
could not have been uttered a more pointed intima-
tion that the kingdom of heaven is given, not
acquired ; that men receive it, not deserve it. As
children enter the world, so men enter the king-
dom, with no contributions in their hands. We
are not, indeed, told in this narrative, in express
words, that the child thus made the type of the
children of God was a‘ newborn baby’ (βρέφος) : it
is called only a ‘little child’ (παιδίον). But its ex-
treme infancy is implied : Jesus took it in His arms
(Mk 959) when He presented it to the observation
of His disciples; and we must accordingly think
of it as a baby in a baby’s helplessness and de-
pendence.
We do, to be sure, find in our Lord’s further
words a requisition of humility (Mt 18+): ‘ Who-
soever then shall humble himself like this little
child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven.’ To become like a little child may cer-
tainly involve humility in one who is not a child ;
and it is very comprehensible that our Lord should
therefore tell those whom He was exhorting to
approach the kingdom of heaven like little chil-
dren, that they could do so only by humbling
themselves. But this is not the same as declaring
humility to be the characteristic virtue of child-
hood, or as intimating that humility may ground
a claim upon the kingdom of heaven. What
our Lord seems to tell His followers is that they
cannot enter the kinedom He came to found ex-
cept they turn and become like little children ; and
that they can become like little children only by
humbling themselves; and that therefore when
they were quarrelling about their relative greatness,
they were far from the disposition which belongs
to children of the kingdom. Humility seems to
be represented, in a word, not as the characterizing
quality of childhood or of childlikeness, but rather
as the attitude of heart in which alone we can
realize in our consciousness that quality which
characterizes childhood. That quality is conceived
here also as helplessness, while childlikeness con-
sists in the reproduction in the consciousness of
the objective state of utter dependence on God
which is the real condition of every sinner.
rom the point of view thus revealed in object-
lesson and discourse, it was natural for our Lord
to speak of His disciples as ‘babes.’ ‘I thank
thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,’ He
cries on one momentous occasion (Mt 112, Lk 102),
‘tiat thou didst hide these things from the wise
and understanding, and didst reveal them unto
babes’ (νηπίοις, the implication of which is precisely
weakness and neediness). And then He proceeds
with a great declaration the very point of which is
to contrast His sovereion pow er with the neediness
of those whom He ealls to His service. Similarly
as the end approached and the children (παῖδες) in
the temple were greetine Him with hosannas, He
met the indignant challenge of the Jews with the
did ye never read,
nd sucklings thou
words of the Psalmist : ‘Yea,
Out of the mouth of babes a
hast ordained praise?’ (Mt 211%). The meaning is
that these childish hosannas were typical of the
praises rising from the hearts of those childlike
ones from whose helplessness (because they owed
much to Him) His true praise should spring.
From the more general view-point of affection
our Lord derived the terms by ue He expressed
His personal relations to His followers, and a large
nart of the vocabulary of His proclamation of the
<ingdom of God is drawn from the relationships of
the family. Hisdisciples are His ‘ children? (τέκνα,
Mk 1052), or with increasing tenderness of expres-
sion, His‘ little children’ (7exvia, Jn 13°), His
‘babies’ (παιδία, Jn 21°), and perhaps with even more
tenderness still, simply His ‘little ones’ (οἱ μικροί,
Mt 10” etc., but see art. LITTLE ONES). Similarly
the great King, whose kingdom He came to estab-
lish, is the Father of His people ; and they may
therefore be free from all fear, because, naturally,
it is the good pleasure of their Father to give the
kingdom to them (Lk 1253). Every turn of expres-
sion is freely employed to carry home to the hearts
of His followers the sense of the Fatherly love for
them by Him who is their King indeed, but also
their Father which is in heaven (Mt 51%: 45. 48
61. 4, 0, 8. 9. 14. 15. 18 6°2 711 10:9. 29 1333 O3% Mk IES Wilk
055 1118 1230. 32, Jn 2017); and they accordingly His
sons (Mt 5° *, Lk 20°), His children (Jn 112. 115),
and therefore heirs of His kingdom. In this re-
presentation, which finds its most striking expres-
sion in such parables as that of the Prodigal Son
(Lk 1511), it is, to be sure, rather the relationship
of father and child that is emphasized than the
tenderness of the age of childhood. Neither is it
a novelty introduced by our Lord; it finds its
root in Old Testament usage. But it is so
characteristic of our Lord’s teaching that it may
fairly be said that the family was to His mind the
nearest of human analogues to the order that ob-
tains in the kingdom of God, and the picture
which He draws of the relations that exist be-
tween God and His people is largely only a ‘ trans-
figuration of the family.’
Such an employment of the relationships in the
family to figure forth those that exist between God
and His people could not fail to react on the con-
ceptions which men formed of the family relation-
ships themselves. By His constant emphasis on
the Fatherhood of God, and by His employment of
the helplessness of infancy and the dependence of
childhood as the most vivid emblems provided by
human society to image the dependence of God’s
people on His loving protection and fostering care,
our Lord has thrown a halo over the condition of
childhood which has communicated to it an emo-
tional value and a preciousness, in the strictest
sense, new in the world. In the ancient world,
children, though by their innocence eliciting the
affection, and by their weakness appealing to the
sympathy, of their elders, were thought of chiefly
as types of immaturity and unripeness, The Chris-
tian world, taught by its Lord, reverences their
very helplessness as the emblem of its own condi-
tion in the presence of God, and recognizes in their
dependence an appeal to its unselfish devotion,
that it may be an imitator of God. This salutary
respect and consideration for childhood has no
doubt been exaggerated at times to something
very much like worship of the childlike ; and this
tendency has been powerfully fostered by the preva-
lence in sections of Christendom, since the 14th
cent., of an actual cult of the infant Saviour (cf. E.
Martinengo-Carresco in The Contemporary Review,
Ixxvii. 117, ete.), and the early rise and immense
development in the same quarters of a cult of the
Madonna, to the tender sentiments underlying
which all the resources of the most passionate
devotion, the most elevated literature, and the most
CHILDREN OF GOD CHILDREN OF GOD 305
perfect art have been invoked to give widespread | ing of Jesus about the children of God. The
influence (see especially Zéckler, art. Maria die
Mutter des Herrn in PRE®, xii. 309, ete., who
gives an extensive classified bibliography. Cf. in
general H. E. Scudder, Childhood in Art, also in
The Atlantic Monthly, ἵν. and lvi.). Such ex-
aggerations cannot, however, obscure the main
fact that it is only from Jesus that the world has
learned properly to appreciate and wholesomely to
deal with childhood and all that childhood stands
for. Cf. art. CHILDHOOD.
BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD.
CHILDREN OF GOD.—The teaching of Jesus
Christ about the children of God cannot be under-
stood apart from His teaching about the Father-
hood of God : indeed, it is from the latter stand-
point that it must be approached. In such an
approach the main positions seem to be as follows :—
(1) Jesus asserts absolutely the fatherly nature
of God. His use of the name ‘Father’ implies
that the fatherly nature is eternal in God. God
does not become Father; He is ‘the Father.’ All
knowledge of God is deficient which does not
‘know the Father’ (Mt 117%, Jn 14°"). This
fatherly nature of God necessarily manifests itself
in all God’s dealings. He cannot be other than
Father, and ‘he maketh his sun to rise on the evil
and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the
unjust’ (Mt 5*).
(2) This eternal Fatherhood in God is comple-
mented by an eternal Sonship in God. Jesus used
ee enally the name ‘My Father.’ It implied a
special relationship between the Father and Him-
self, which is summed up by Jolin, ‘The only be-
gotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father’
(Jn 138),
(3) The fatherly heart of God does not rest
satisfied in the eternal Sonship in God. He desires
the response of filial love from all who are capable
of giving it (cf. esp. Lk 15)-*2, Jn 4%), Neets
assumed that the filial attitude is expected from
allmen. This is implied in His method of teach-
ing. The Divine Fatherhood is woven into its
texture. Therefore the picture of God the Father
is offered to everybody, with its necessary appeal
to the hearer to enjoy the filial relationship. Since
the outlook of the gospel is universal, the sonship
may be universal. Even ‘ publicans and sinners’
may enjoy the filial feeling.
(4) But Jesus taught plainly that this filial atti-
tude is not general amongst men. He told the
Jews that they were of their father the devil (Ju
84), and distinguished ‘the good seed, the sons of
the kingdom,’ from ‘the tares, the sons of the evil
one’ (Mt 13%); cf. also Mt 2315-33,
(5) Certain conditions are laid down as essen-
tial to the enjoyment of the filial relationship to
God. These conditions are usually described by
Jesus in terms of character. The children of God
are ‘peacemakers,’ are those who love their
enemies, and who do the will of the Father (cf.
Mt 5% ## 125): they ‘do good and lend, never
despairing,’ and are ‘ merciful’ (Lk 655-38. But in
the discourses in John’s Gospel, Jesus Himself is
otfered as a touchstone for the filial relationship
(cf. Jn 8#-47), In this connexion the demand for
the new birth must be noticed. Jesus connected
entrance into that Kingdom which He came to
found, with being ‘born anew’ (Jn 3°); He de-
manded that His disciples should be converted and
become as little children if they would enter the
Kingdom (Mt 18° ||). It may fairly be said that in
the mind of Jesus there is an intimate connexion
between these two modes of teaching. The moral
character betitting the children of God is secured
by the new birth ‘of water and of the Spirit’ (Jn 3°).
From these propositions we can gather the teach-
VOL. I.—20
relationship is apprehended by Jesus ethically,
not physically. ‘To identify Divine sonship with
human birth brings the relationship down to the
physical sphere. Jesus kept it in the religious
sphere. The Fatherhood of God is an ethical
attitude eternally present in the Godhead ; man’s
Divine sonship is his ethical response to this
Divine Fatherhood. God is ever waiting to wel-
come men as sons, and to give them the position
of sons at home (Lk 15). But their assumption of
this filial position depends upon their adoption of
the filial attitude, ‘I will arise and go to my
father.” As Wendt says, ‘God does not beconie
the Father, but zs the heavenly Father, even of
those who become His sons. . . . Man is a true son
of God . . . from the fact of his comporting him-
self as a son of God’ (Teaching of Jesus, i. p. 193).
This religious attitude which betokens Divine
sonship, includes four elements. (a) Children of
God love their heavenly Father. Love is:the
golden bond in all home relationships. Jesus
declares it to be the sovereign law in the true
relationship between man and God. For He
taught that the greatest commandment is to love
the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and
mind and strength (Mt 22%7, Lk 103. When
claiming to have come forth from God, He said to
the Jews: ‘If God were your father ye would love
me,’ where love of Himself is identified with love
of the Father whom He revealed.
(ὁ) Children of God obey their heavenly Father.
This is implied in all Jesus’ exhortations to men
to do the will of God. It is clearly stated in these
sentences: ‘Whosoever shall do the will of my
Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother,
and sister, and mother’ (Mt 1259), ‘ Not every ore
that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of
my Father which is in heaven’ (Mt 7”); ef. also
Mt 213! 24% ||.
(ὦ) Children of God trust their heavenly Father.
This mark of Divine sonship is emphasized in the
Sermon on the Mount. Jesus exhorts His disciples
not to be as the Gentiles, but to rely upon their
heavenly Father’s knowledge of their needs and
His desire to help them. Anxiety must be banished
from the hearts of God’s children, who are fed and
clothed by their Father (Mt 64, Lk 677).
(d) Children of God try to be like their heavenly
Father. They are to be perfect, even as their
heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5%). This must not
be interpreted, as it often is, ‘Be as perfect as
your Father.’ Its exhortation is to take the fatherly
character of God as the standard of perfection.
‘Be ye perfect, even as He is perfect.’ The Father
loves all men: let His children do likewise. By
thus taking the fatherly character of God as the
standard, His children will fulfil the second great
law, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’
(Mt 22%). The natural man adopts other ideals of
perfection ; but the children of God try to be like
their Father.
Jesus gave immortal expression to the desires
characteristic of the children of God, in ‘the
Lord’s Prayer.’ That prayer is put into the lips
of those who can say ‘Our Father which art in
heaven.’ It includes all the marks of God’s chil-
dren that have been found elsewhere in the teach-
ing of Jesus. The hallowing of the Father’s name
implies the sanctification of His children after His
likeness. The prayer ‘Thy will be done’ lifts us
to the loftiest level of obedience. Only those who
trust God can pray ‘Give us our daily bread,’
and can limit their desires for material good to
such humble bounds. The prayer breathes through-
out the spirit of love: that spirit is the warp into
which the weft of the petition is woven.
Ln a he CREE UR TG
306
CHILDREN OF GOD
The blessings enjoyed by the children of God
are all the good that Jesus Christ came on earth: to
offer to men. This good is summed up in the
phrase ‘the kingdom of God’ or ‘the kingdom of
heaven.’ All the children of God are members ot
that Kingdom; ef. Mt 13:8 188: The Kingdom is
God’s protfered blessing : ‘It is your Father's good
pleasure to give you the kingdom’ (Lk 1235), ale
Kingdom includes the blessings of forgiveness
(Mt 6'4\|); of guardian care (Mt 6); of the Holy
Spirit (Lk 1113); of eternal life (Jn 57!-3 17%) ; and
finally, the enjoyment of the Mather’s house (Mt
πὸ πὶ 142-2)!
This identification of the blessings enjoyed by
the children of God with the good of the Kingdom,
leads naturally to the statement that the ethical
attitude characteristic of the children of God can
be secured by faith in Jesus Christ. He not only
spoke of Himself as the Son of God; He also
declared that His revelation of Sonship made son-
ship possible to men. Considerable importance
attaches to the solemn words in Mt 1157 ‘All
things have been delivered unto me of my Father :
and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father ;
neither doth any know the Father, save the Son
and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal
him.’ They declare that the knowledge of the
Father must be experimental. Only one who has
lived as a son can know the Father. Men do not
know God primarily as Father. They think of
Him as King, as Judge, as Law-Giver; and be-
cause they are sinners they cannot know Him
purely as Father. The shadow of the broken Law
falls across God’s face, making it appear the face
of a judge, and falls upon the attitude of men,
chilling it into that of servants. But ‘the Son’
knows God as Father. He has no fear of Him as
Judge; He claims to be Himself the King in the
kingdom of God (Mt 25"); He is conscious that
He has never broken God’s law. Therefore He can
know God as the Father; and He is able to reveal
God to men as Father. Jesus does this by ransom-
ing captive spirits from the bondage of sin and
death (Mt 2058), by persuading them to trust the
fatherly love of God, and by strengthening them
to break away from the self-life in favour of the
life of surrender (Mt 1674-27 ||).
The close connexion between this great word
and the gracious invitation which follows it (Mt
11°88), must not be overlooked. That invitation
shows the universality of Christ’s outlook. The
Son is willing to reveal the Father to a//. But the
connexion explains the personal note in the invita-
tion. Jesus does not say ‘Go to the Father’; He
says ‘Come unto me, and I will give you rest.’
This is because He is the revealer of the Father ;
and the rest He offers is rest in the Fatherhood of
God. The chapter describes the discouragements
that darkened the noon of His ministry. He found
rest to His own soul in the Father: ‘TI thank thee,
O Father . . . Even so, Father’ (vy.2: 3). This
rest He desires to give to others. The only
way in which men can come to the Father is by
coming to Himself.
Iwo things are implied. One is that the Father-
hood of God is made accessible to men in Jesus
Christ. He is the appointed trysting-place where
men are sure to meet their heavenly Father. He
was lifted up as an ensign (Is 11!-}"); when the
nations see Him they know where to seek God.
Phe children of God are scattered on the dark
mountains of ignorance. Jesus is the trysting-
place w here they are gathered at the feet of their
heavenly Father (Jn 11%). If men come to Him,
they see the Father. The other fact is that Jesus
ae men knowledge of the Father by teaching
maint ie as eee ee live: Ἑ They
PK i vly in heart (cf. Mt 53-5); He
CHILDREN OF GOD
can make them so. They must also learn obedi-
ence to the Father’s will. He offers to teach them
this, saying with marvellous condescension, ‘Take
my yoke upon you, and learn of me.’ He is wearing
the yoke of obedience to the Father, and He finds
it ‘easy.’ A yoke is made for two. Jesus invites
each man desiring to be a son of God to put his
shoulder under the other end of His own yoke.
Then he will walk in step with the great Elder
Brother. Thus learning from Jesus, he will become
a worthy child of God.
This great word has special significance because
it forms a link between the Synoptic teaching and
the teaching of Jesus in John’s Gospel. ‘There
the enjoyment of filial privileges is made to depend
upon man’s relation to the Son (see especially Jn
519-47 G28-40 819. 28-55), The words declaratory of the
love of God in sending the Son to save men are
variously assigned to Jesus and to the Evangelist.
But even if they are the Evangelist’s reflexion
upon the words of Jesus, they do no more than
sum up the teaching of the Lord in the chapters
quoted above.
In particular, it may be noted that Jesus claimed
kinship with the Father because ‘I do always the
things that are pleasing to him’ (Jn8*). This is
in harmony with His reference to men who do the
Father’s will, as His ‘brethren’ (Mi 12%). Men
who accept His revelation of God and duty
become His brethren; all these ‘brethren’ are
related to God as His children. They comport
themselves in a betlitting manner, which is essenti-
ally different from the self-centred conduct of
unregenerate men. This filial demeanour is gained
by faith in Jesus as the Saviour. He offers Him-
self to men as the Redeemer, through whom the
can break away from sin and adopt the filial atti-
tude toward God (Mt 238, Jn 101: 25:29),
This conception of the teaching of Jesus on this
subject is expressed by the Evangelist John in the
striking sentence, ‘As many as received him, to
them gave he the right to become children of God,
even to them that believe on his name: which
were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God’ (Jn 115 1).
Here men are described as becoming children of
God by believing on the name of Jesus. They
attain the dignity by a new birth that is from
above. Their natural birth does not make them
children of God. Before they stand in this rela-
tionship they must receive a Divine energy. This
energy is brought to them by the Word made flesh,
who ofters Himself to the world. Moreover, this
reception of Christ is a continuous exercise of
faith (τοῖς πιστεύουσιν), implying an attitude God-
ward that is maintained from day to day.
If an illustration may be permitted, it would
seem that Jesus represents men as like Robinson
Crusoe’s first canoe. It was designed to float in
the water and was capable of doing so: but it
could not get into the sea. So it lay on the shore
like a log. Man is designed for fellowship with
God, and is capable of living in filial relationship
with Him. But before he can realize this destiny,
he must be carried away from his native selfishness
and be launched on the sea of Divine love. Jesus
Christ is the mighty deliverer who can lift men
out of death in sin and brine them to the Father.
When men believe on Him, this purpose is fulfilled.
They realize their destiny and become children of
God. Then they spread their sails to the wind of
heaven, and have ‘life that is life indeed.’
The scope of this article does not include the
general teaching of the Epistles on this topic. But
a brief reference must be made to that teaching in
so far as it involves a distinet reference to Jesus
Christ. In general it may be said that the teach-
ing of the Epistles reproduces all the main features
CHILIARCH
CHOICE 307
of the teaching of Jesus. The children of God are
possessors of a new life that has come to them by
taith in Jesus Christ: Ro 81:13, Gal 239, 1 Jn 23 5},
This new life manifests itself in a new moral state
befitting God’s children and due to the power of
Christ : Gal 51°25, Eph 21 10. Col 35:10: In this con-
nexion it may be noted that Christians are called
‘children of light,’ who before becoming Christians
were ‘ children of disobedience,’ suffering ‘ the wrath
of God’ (Eph 2? 5°, Col 3°). Thus Christ is the
Saviour through whom the children of God are re-
born and morally renewed.
In particular, three descriptions of God’s children
are connected with aspects of Christ’s work. (a)
As Redeemer, He secures man’s adoption into the
family of God (Ro 81!*!5, Gal 955-46. This ‘adop-
tion’ has been interpreted, in connexion with the
antithesis between sonship and servitude, to denote
the emancipation of sons enslaved by sin. This
is the shade of meaning prominent in Galatians.
In Romans the idea of adoption of those not pre-
viously sons is emphasized. In both cases, how-
ever, the adoption is due to the redeeming work
of Jesus Christ, ministered to men by the Holy
Spirit. The word ‘adoption’ is not used in He-
brews. But the idea is found there in the figure of
the Author of salvation leading many sons to glory
(2'°), (8) As High Priest, Jesus secures access to the
Father for all who come unto God by Him (Eph
218, He 7°+-*). This priesthood is exercised by Him
as our ‘ Brother,’ and was granted to Him in view
of His experience of our temptations (He 217 4%),
(y) As King, Jesus Christ bestows a rich inherit-
ance upon all His brethren. The children of God
are ‘joint-heirs with Christ’ (Ro 817).
In regard to this whole question, it should be
remembered that in all probability our human
speech cannot describe adequately relations that
reach into the eternal, and concern God. The
figure of ‘children’ is an analogy rather than an
exact parallel. Therefore we should be misunder-
standing the teaching of Jesus if we pressed the
analogy too far and sought to discover the exact
counterpart of each element of the human relation
in that which we bear to God. Also it is important
to recall that Jesus was not concerned with abstract
relations. His purpose was practical and religions,
and He used terms just so far as they served that
purpose. His terminology was consistent ; it may
not seem conclusive on all points that suggest
themselves to abstract reasoning.
LITERATURE. —Articles in Hastings’ DB on ‘God, Children of,’
‘Jesus Christ,’ ‘Romans,’ and ‘Regeneration’; Commentaries
on the NT, especially those of Sanday-Headlam, Westcott, and
Lightfoot; Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology; Watson,
The Mind of the Master; Bruce, Kingdom of God, and St. Paul's
Conception of Christianity; Wendt, Teaching of Jesus; Bey-
schlag, NT Theology ; Coe, Religion of a Mature Mind, 187-216,
Education in Religion and Morals, 65 ff., 373 ff.; Dalman,
Words of Jesus; Stevens, Christian Doct. of Salvation, and
Theol. of NT. J. EDWARD ROBERTS.
CHILIARCH (y:A‘apyos).—The title of this mili-
tary officer is twice used in the Gospels: Jn 18%
and Mk 6% (AV ‘captain,’ ‘high captains’; RV
‘chief captain,’ ‘high captains’; RVm ‘military
tribune(s), Gr. chiliarch(s)’). It is the Greek
equivalent for the Roman office of tribunus
militum, an office of great historical antiquity,
from the analogy of which the famous tribuni
plebis took their name. The tribunus militum is
called by Momsen ‘the pillar of the Roman mili-
tary system’; he was an officer commanding a
cohort. See, further, LEGION.
A chiliarch with his ‘band’ (σπεῖρα) is repre-
sented by St. John as coming with Judas to take
our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. If this is
to be understood strictly as standing for a tribunus
militum and his cohort, the use of so large a force
would point to a great (real or assumed) fear of
popular disturbance on the part of the authorities.
The words may, however, be used in a general
sense for a body of troops under an officer (see
Westcott, ad loc.).
In St. Mark’s account of the martyrdom of John
the Baptist, Herod the tetrarch of Galilee is repre-
sented as making a feast to his μεγιστᾶνες (highest
civil officials), χιλίαρχοι (highest military officers),
and πρῶτοι τῆς Γαλιλαίας (leading provincials). These
‘chiliarchs’ were officers of the army of the tet-
rarch, which would be organized on Roman models.
For the association of μεγιστᾶνες and χιλίαρχοι cf.
tev 64, (See Swete’s δέ Mark, ad loc.).
M. R. NEWBOLT.
CHOICE.—In the Gospels, choice is always ex-
pressed by one small group of closely connected
words, viz. ἐκλέγομαι, ἐκλεκτός, ἐκλογή. And these at
once define the nature of the choice, which is not
that of ‘decision,’ but that of ‘selection.’ Perhaps
the English term which more precisely than any
other answers to ἐκλέγειν is to ‘cull,’ to choose here
and there one, that is to say, out of a larger number
laid out in view. And this force of the word is
rather emphasized by the fact that in the NT the
active voice of the verb is not employed, but only
the middle or passive, with derivatives which are
passive in character. It is not, then, the action of
choosing which is prominent, but its result; or
else the status or nature of that which is chosen.
And this point is of some importance in view of
the use to which some passages of the NT have
been put by those who have attempted to elaborate
from them doctrines of election or predestination.
Stress is never laid chiefly on the election or pre-
destination of the Almighty, but on the fact that
such and such are actually found among those
whom God has culled for Himself, and who consti-
tute His own people. It would be an advantage to
accurate Christian thought if the rendering ‘elect’
were eliminated from the NT, and were replaced
by ‘chosen’ or ‘select,’ although it is a direct de-
rivative of the original.
The central meaning of the terms employed is well shown in
the following cases :—‘ He marked how they chose out the chief
seats’ (Lk 147); ‘Mary hath chosen the good part’ (1042); ‘He
called his disciples, and chose from them twelve, whom also he
named apostles’ (61), with which other passages relating to the
choice of the Twelve should be compared, viz. Jn 670 1516.19
1348, Ac 12, and, as essentially the same, Ac 124; cf. also 1 Co
127.28, Ja Z4. A further selection for some special service is
indicated in such passages as—‘God made choice among you
that by my mouth...’ (Ac 157, cf. 6° 1522-25); ‘Many are
called, but few chosen’ (Mt 22/4). And by an almost insensible
gradation the use of the word passes on to such instances as the
choice of Saul, ‘a chosen vessel’ (Ac 91°), ‘the Christ of God,
his chosen’ (Lk 23%, ef. 98), and the chosen people of God (Ac
1317, Eph 14, 1 P 24-69), The last named appear in a group of
passages in the Gospels (on the lips of Christ Himself) which
are of apocalyptic character, and in all which the English render-
ing is unfortunately ‘elect’; e.g. ‘Shall not God avenge his
chosen?’ (Lk 187); ‘For the sake of his chosen whom he chose,
he shortened the days’ (Mk 1320. 22. 27 || Mt 2422.24.31), To these
there are many similar instances in the Epistles (Ro 899 119. 7. 28,
Col 312, 2 Ti #10, Tit 1, 1 P11; cf. Rev 1714). Individuals are
spoken of as chosen (Ro 1099, 1 P 513, 2 Jn 1.15), and also angels
(1 Ti 521); while God’s purpose of selection is mentioned (Ro
911), and the status of those selected (1 Th 14, 2 P 11%).
From the foregoing it is clear that in the
Gospels, and in the NT generally, ‘choice’ ex-
presses a selection of some among other alterna-
tives, and commonly selection for some special
service ; God’s people being selected that they may
become His servants who serve Him and so serve
all in the furtherance of His purposes of love,
rather than on their own account alone. More-
over, God’s choice is always viewed as an actual
fact seen in its results, and never as an intention
in advance ; except perhaps in reference to St.
Paul’s apostolate and Jacob's destiny, both of which
are, however, so referred to only when seen in
retrospect. See ELECT, FREEWILL.
E. P. Boys-SMITH.
308 CHORAZIN
CHORAZIN. — Mentioned once only in the
Gospels, Mt 11°=Lk 10", along with Bethsaida,
as one of the ‘cities’ (πόλεις) where most of Jesus’
mighty deeds were done. The name is not found
in the OT nor in Josephus; and it is not certain
whether it be the same place as 0773 or 0°13 men-
tioned once in the Talmud (Jenahoth, 85a), where
the superior quality of its wheat is praised.
Jastrow’s Dictionary gives ‘Karzayim near Jeru-
salem,’ Dalman’s ‘o7%72 name of place.’ One MS
has O72, two ’2; see Rabbinowicz, Varia Lectiones ;
Neubauer, Géographie du Talmud, p. 220. Most
MSS of the NT spell Xopaf(e)iv, others, especially
in Luke, Xwpagiv; so Stephen in Luke, but not
Elzevir, Mill; D both times Χοροζαΐν, and the same
form prevails in the Latin texts: C(h)orozain.
Why the editions of the Peshitta, even Gwilliams’,
v
spell pele Kordzin, we fail to see. Barhebraeus
x 0
gives expressly «οἱ 3Q9D Kurzin as the vocalization
x X»
of the Peshitta, and Chorazin as that of the Greek.
Neither the grammatical form of the name (on
which see Schwobel, ZDPV xxvii. 134) nor its
etymology is sufliciently clear. The place has
been identified with /¢hersa on the eastern shore
of the Lake of Galilee, but more probably with
Nhirbet Kerdzeh, 4 kilometres N. of Tell Him, first
discovered by Thomson in 1857. Eusebius calls it
a κώμη (oppidunr), 12 Roman miles from Capernaum,
in his time deserted; but 12 seems to be a mis-
spelling of the MS for 2, as given by the Latin
translation of Jerome (Eusebius, Onomasticon,
ed. Klostermann, 174. 25, 175. 25).* On the ruins
of Kerazeh, especially its synagogue, see the
literature quoted by Schiirer, αὐ γῇ" § 27, n. 59.
Cheyne’s list of Proper Names (in the Queen’s
Printers’ Aids to the Student of the Holy Bible)
recommends the pronunc:ation Cho-ra’zin; this is
supported by the modern form Kerdzeh, if it be the
same name; the acceutuation of the first syllable,
common in German, has the support of Awrzin in
the Peshitta ; in Latin Chorozain. 'The medieval
explanation of the name ‘hoc mysterium meum’=
“NIT 19, goes back to Jerome (OS 61. 8). There
was once a tradition that the Antichrist was to
be born in Chorazin, and that its inhabitants were
Proud of this, and therefore the place was cursed
ry Jesus; see Hapos. Times, xv. [1904] p.° 524.
The name Chorazin is, like that of Nazareth, an
interesting illustration of the scantiness of our
literary tradition.t Es. NESTLE.
CHOSEN ONE.—This, like ‘Beloved’ (wh. see),
seems to have been a pre-Christian designation of
the Messiah. ὁ ἐκλεκτός μου occurs in the LXX of
Is 42', and is there defined as Ἰσραήλ. But in the
Book of Enoch ‘the Elect one’ is a common title
of the Messiah (οἵ, 405 49? 513 5 526-9 615-8. 10 691),
Traces of it still survive in the Gospels, but there
seems to have been a tendency to avoid its use,
perhaps on the ground that it might seem to favour
so-called ‘Adoptionist’ views of the nature of
Christ’s relation to God. Lk 985 substitutes ὁ
ἐκλελεγμένος (NBLE (1), 274™8 Syr Sin a ff. 1. ve.
* In the Latin text (OS2 114. 7) the name is spelt ‘ Chorazin,’
not ‘Chorozain,’ as stated in Encyc, Bibl., where also the
modern name Kerazeh is once spelt with K, as if it were ἢ.
t Among the mighty works done in Bethsaida the feeding of
the 5000 is certainly to be reckoned (Lk gl0t., where toiginiacees
οὖν aa is to he explained from Βυθσαιδά Ξε οῖχος ἐπισιτισικοῦ [OS
174. 7, 188. 75]). Hence it is tempting to find one of the mighty
works done at Chorazin in the healing of the demoniac in the
land of the Gerasenes « 25
the G r Ge reesenes (S25), and to combine this
name with Chorazin. In his Philoloyiea Sacra (1896, p. 21) the |
present writer suggested that the prominent part played by the
swine in that story may be derived from a localname like Ras
el-chinzir or Teli alnt-l-chinz
i t r. The plural of chinzir (swine) is
chanazir, of which ὦ
horazin wight be a transposition.
CHRIST IN ART
codd. aeg. aeth.° arm) for Mk.’s ὁ ἀγαπητός, and
in Lk 2355 we have ‘ the Messiah of God, the Elect.’
Elsewhere the evidence is more doubtful. ὁ ἐκλεκτὸς
τοῦ θεοῦ occurs in Jn 1* in &* 77, 218, Syr Sin
Cur e, and is adopted by Burkitt, Evangelion Da-
Mepharreshe, ii. 309. Lastly, ‘approved Son’ is
given by Syr Sin in Jn 338 for τοῦ μονογενοῦς υἱοῦ
τοῦ θεοῦ. St. Mark and the editor of the First
Gospel after him seem to have avoided the ὁ ἐκλεκτός
μου of the LXX (Is 42!) in their accounts of the
Baptism and Transfiguration, and to have fallen
back on a Christianized version of Is 42! preserved
for us in Mt 12}87!, in which ὁ ἀγαπητός μου had
taken the place of ὁ ἐκλεκτός μου of the LXX.
Connected with the use of this title of the Mes-
siah in the Gospels is the question as to the mean-
ing of the aorist εὐδόκησα in Mk 172=Mt 3%=Lk
3%, Bacon (Journ. Theol. Lit. xvi. 136-139) urges
that this means ‘(on whom) I fixed my choice,’ 1.6.
‘whom I elected,’ and refers in the thought of the
Evangelist to the Divine election of Christ by God
(ef. AJTA ix. 451 ff.). So far as the First Gospel
goes, there 1s much to be said for this. We might
bring together the following passages 3!717° ἐν @
εὐδόκησα, 1177 πάντα μοι παρεδόθη ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρύς μου,
2818 ἐδόθη μοι πᾶσα ἐξουσία ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς, and
possibly the ἦλθον of δ᾽ 915 104 and the ‘sending’
of 1029 1553, as all in the mind of the Evangelist
referring to the Divine choice, endowment, and
mission of the eternally existing ‘Son’ (cf. 11%)
into the world. To these should be added the
citation in 1218 ‘Behold my son (servant?) whom
I adopted, my beloved in whom my soul was well
pleased,’ where the aorists are most easily ex-
plained as expressing the Divine selection and ap-
pointment of the Messiah in a pre-temporal period.
In the thought of the Evangelist, Jesus, born of the
Virgin by the Holy Spirit, was the pre-existent
Messiah (=Beloved) or Son (1127) who had been
forechosen by God (3! 17°), and who, when born
into the world as Jesus, was ‘ God-with-us’ (1*).
In this respect the writer of the First Gospel shows
himself to be under the influence of the same con-
ception of the Person of Christ that dominates the
Johannine theology, though this conception under
the categories of the Logos and the Divine Son is
worked out much more fully in the Fourth than in
the First Gospel. On the other hand, terms such
as ‘choice,’ ‘adoption,’ which at an early period
seem to have been borrowed from the Jewish Mes-
sianie doctrine to express it, and which survive
here and there in the Synoptic Gospels and in the
Acts (ef. 9533 [Fl. Gig.] and 2 P 117) are absent from
St. John. Such terms were probably gradually
dropped out of use because they could be used to
support the view of the adoption of the man Jesus
to be the Son of God, which they certainly did not
originally express. W. C. ALLEN.
CHRIST. — See ATONEMENT, AUTHORITY OF
CHRIST, BirTH OF CHRIST, DATES, DEATH OF
CHRIST, MESSIAH, PERSON OF CHRIST, PREACHING
CHRIST, ete. ete.
CHRIST IN ART.—i. SymMBo.ts.—The representa.
tion of Christ by means of symbols is not earlier
than that by means of pictures. There are found
in the Catacomls at Rome at the commencement
of Christian art not only the Fish symbol, but also
pictures of the Good Shepherd, and of our Lord in
certain Gospel scenes, all before the middle of the
2nd cent. ; and of these the Good Shepherd carry-
ing a sheep occurs in the Catacomb of Domitilla
before the end of the Ist century. It will be, how-
ever, convenient to begin with the Symbols, pro-
ceeding thence through the Types to more direct
representations of Christ.
1. The Fish was the most popular symbol of our
28° ΝΣ
CHRIST IN ART
CHRIST IN ART 309
Lord in the middle of the 2nd cent., and continued | the fabled indestructibility of its flesh) and the
so till the end of the 4th, when it suddenly went
out of use. More than one cause made it so general.
Originating as an acrostic (the Greek word for
‘fish,’ [XOTS, standing for ᾿Ιησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός,
Σωτήρ), it formed a most convenient secret sign
among the Christians, being readily understood by
the initiated as representing Christ in the fulness
of Hisdivinity. It carried with it also the thought
of the sacramental feeding upon the Son of God,
which is so prominent in early Christian art: 6.0.
the two paintings in the crypt of Lucina, which
belong to the middle of the 2nd cent., and repre-
sent two baskets of bread, each containing a glass
cup of wine and resting upon a fish. The earliest
known representation of this symbol is even more
significant: it occurs in the Fractio Panis fresco,
recently discovered by Wilpert in the Catacomb of
Priscilla, which belongs to the beginning of the
2nd cent., and is a picture of a primitive celebra-
tion of the Communion,—seven people are seated
at a table on which lie five loaves, two fishes, and
a two-handled mug, while the bishop or president
at the end of the table is in the act of breaking a
loaf. In this deeply interesting picture of the
Eucharist we see a further reason why the Fish
symbol was felt to be appropriate ; it carried the
mind to the miracle of the loaves and fishes, which
was an early type of the Eucharist because of Jn
6°59, The Fish symbolizes not only the Euchar-
ist, but the sacrament of Baptism as well; this is
brought out by the common representation of a fish
as swimming in the water (see below under ‘Sym-
bolic Scenes’). ‘We little fishes,’ says Tertullian
(de Bapt. i.), ‘after the example of our Jchthus
Jesus Christ, are born in water.’ Cf. St. Clement
below, under ‘ Other Symbols.’ This double sym-
bolism is tersely expressed in the 2nd cent. inscrip-
tion of Abercius recently discovered by Ramsay at
Hierapolis :—‘. . . everywhere was faith my guide,
and gave me everywhere for food the Jchthus from
the spring.’
2. Other Symbols.—The Fish was early combined
with other symbols, suchas the Dove, the Cross, the
Ship, the Shepherd, and especially with the Anchor,
the combination of the Fish and the Anchor (first
found on the sarcophagus of Livia Primitiva about
the middle of the 2nd cent.) being a hieroglyph for
the common epitaph ‘Spes in Christo.’
There is an early mention of Christian symbols in St. Clement
of Alexandria (Peed. iii. 11): ‘ Let the engraving upon the gem
of your ring be either a dove, ora fish, or a ship running before
the wind, or a musical lyre, the device used by Polycrates, or a
ship’s anchor, which Seleucus had carved upon his signet. And
if the device represent a man fishing, it will remind us of an
apostle, and of children drawn out of water.’
All these symbols, it will be noticed, are com-
mon ones, such as would not excite comment among
pagans. However, the Dove (at first a symbol of
peace) and the Ship (which represented the
Church), the Lyre (a symbol of Orpheus, see below)
and the Anchor of hope (see also under ‘ Cross’)
are not direct symbols of Christ; nor, except by
way of the Eucharist, are they representations of
bread, wine, or the grape. The Agnus Dei, a post-
Constantinian symbol, may more conveniently be
considered under the head of ‘ NT types.’
In medieval art a trace of the Fish symbol survived—as
indeed it survives to-day—in the vesica piscis, a figure which is
still customarily restricted to the seals of ecclesiastical persons
and corporations. The Dove, at first used as an emblem of
peace, sometimes with an olive branch in its mouth (though it
occurs in pictures of the Baptism of Christ in the Catacombs),
was the recognized symbol of the Holy Spirit in the apsidal
mosaics of the 4th and 5th centuries, and thus has continued
ever since: the Lamb, the Hand of God, and the Cross (see
below), found in connexion with the Dove in these mosaics, also
continued as common symbols in the Middle Ages, when inter-
laced triangles and circles further represented the Trinity.
Two emblems of immortality, the Peacock (from
Pheenix, rising from its ashes, were early used as
types of Christ. The Star (Rey 2918) and the Sun
(Mal 47) were also used ; the Rose and Lily (Ca 2!)
were very favourite subjects of decorative art after
the 13th cent., but they came to be used rather as
emblems of Christ’s Mother than of our Lord Him-
self, and often as badges of the royal houses in
England and France: the Pomegranate, split open,
originally a type of Divine grace, became similarly
common as a ‘l'udor badge. In the Middle Ages,
when great emphasis was laid upon the Eucharistic
sacrifice, symbols of the Passion were much in
vogue, in addition to the Vine and Corn, the
Chalice and the Host. Hence the use of the
Pelican, the great prevalence of the Agnus Dei and
the Crucifix, and the constant use of the Instru-
ments of the Passion, in addition to the almost
infinite varieties of the Cross. The Instruments of
the Passion, so common still in decorative art, are
the Crown of Thorns, the Nails, the Coat and
Dice, the Scourges, Pillar, Ladder and Sponge,
the Five Wounds, Hammer, Pincers; to which are
sometimes added the Sword and Staff, Lantern,
Thirty Pieces and Cock, the Pierced Heart, and
the Vernicle or Napkin of Veronica, and the Super-
scription INRI. The Passion-flower, a popular
emblem at the present day, was introduced by the
Jesuit missionaries from Mexico, as containing
symbols of the Twelve Apostles, the Five Wounds,
the Three Nails, and the Crown of Thorns.
3. Sacred Monograms.—The Alpha and Omega
naturally appear early (though not in monogram-
matie or interwoven form) because of Rev 18; the
first instance in the Catacomb of St. Priscilla, 2nd
cent.—‘ Modestina AQ,’ which means ‘ Modestina
live in Christ.’ Some of the sacred monograms are
really contractions ; for instance, the familiar IHC
and XPC are the first two and the Jast letters of
IHCOYC and XPICTOC, just as MR stands for
MARTYR, or DO for DOMINO; contractions of
this sort were extremely common in sepulchral in-
scriptions (e.g. ‘ Lucretia pax tecum in DO’), but
there was no fixed method ; the abbreviations IH
and XP alone are sometimes found, and also the
initials IX, which, combined, formed the earliest
or pre-Constantinian monogram » 4 (the first in-
stance being in a 3rd cent. fresco in the Catacomb
of SS. Peter and Marcellinus). None of these,
however, are found by themselves, but only as
abbreviations in the course of an inscription. The
(for XP) is the first to
stand alone, though it does also occur in inscrip-
tions (e.g. ‘Roges pro nobis quia scimus te in
p< Ἢ; this monogram was considered a form of the
Constantinian monogram
Cross (see below); it is characteristic of the con-
version of the Empire, and is rarely found sub-
sequent to the Sack of Rome by Alaric in 410. It
is often surrounded by a wreath, and often has the
A and Q on either side to mark the divinity of our
Lord; in a 4th cent. lead coffin from Saida in
Pheenicia, the letters of the old symbol IXOTC
lie between the arms of the monogram. ‘Three
main variations of it appear in which the Cross is
made more apparent 3, I=, and SK, but these
are later and less common.
The contraction IHC, as subsequently Latinized into IHS, is
now called the Sacred Monogram par eacellence, and is as
popular as it was in the Middle Ages and in the 17th and 18th
centuries, when it was almost the only symbol of the kind ; this
was owing mainly to its being misunderstood as the initials of
‘Jesus Hominum Salvator’ (or even of ‘In Hoe Signo’); in
medizval times the confusion may not have arisen, in spite of
the ambiguity of the Greek H in Gothic character, for the letter
J was often replaced by IH or HI, and ‘Thesus’ was a common
way of spelling the holy name. Meanwhile the contraction of
310 CHRIST IN ART
the title XPS has been almost forgotten; its use in such an
inscription as IHS XPS NIKA would seem strange to our eyes ;
but IHS XPS occur on a portrait of Christ in the Codex Egberti
(c. 1000), and are not unknown in late medieval art, ¢.g. both
are found among the tiles of Malvern Abbey.
The initials of the Superscription INRI (‘Tesus
Nazarenus Rex Judzorum’), which now rank next
to the IHS in popular estimation, do not seem to
have appeared till the 13th cent., after which they
became the favourite abbreviation of painters (cf.
below under ‘ Crucifixion’). ᾿
4, The symbol of the Cross eventually sup-
planted altogether that of the Fish. But in early
Christian art representations of it are very rare,
and at first only given in a disguised form, al-
though the sign of the Cross was already so greatly
reverenced towards the end of the 2nd cent. as to
be used by Christians before almost every act of
daily life, —dressing, eating, bathing, going to bed,
etc., —‘queecumque nos conversatio exercet, frontem
erucis signaculo terimus,’ ete. (Tert. de Coron.
Mil. iii.). This great reserve was due partly to the
natural shrinking from the portrayal of an instru-
ment which was still in use for the most degraded
form of execution, partly also to the fact that ad/
Christian symbolism was necessarily of a hidden
nature in the ages previous to the Peace of the
Church. Thus the first representations of the Cross
are very indirect; the cross-marks on the round
Eucharistic loaves, which are found as early as the
2nd cent. (on a sarcophagus in the Catacomb of
Priscilla), merely represent the folding up of the
corners of the bread to make it round. The Anchor
(a symbol which is rare after the 3rd cent.) often
has a crossbar so marked as to be clearly sym-
bolic ; it was, in fact, according to Maruechi, a
hidden form of the Cross, a symbolized hope in
the Cross.
The earliest representation of the Cross by itself
—the swastica or ‘fylfot’ ΓΗ which is found in
the Catacombs in the 3rd cent., and is not un-
common in the earliest Christian textiles—was a
form so ‘dissimulated’ as to pass unnoticed among
pagans who were accustomed to its use as a con-
ventional ornament. Only one undisguised Cross
occurs in the Catacombs during the ages of sepul-
ture (7.e. before the Sack of Rome in 410), and
this is the so-called Greek or equilateral Cross +,
which has no special connexion with the Eastern
Church; a small 4th cent. example of this Cross
has been found in the nameless hypogewm near St.
Callistus. Thereyis a Cross, still dissimulated, in
a 4th cent. fresco in the Catacomb of Callistus, a
green tree with two branches, under which are two
doves; for the rest, in the Catacombs the earliest
‘true and proper Cross,’ as Wilpert calls it, the
earliest, that is, which is not a bare symbol, is in
the Catacomb of Ponziano—a gemmed Latin Cross
of the end of the 5th cent.; another similar ex-
ample in the same place is attributed to the 6th or
ith. Ina late 4th cent. mosaic in the church of
St. Pudenziana, Rome, is one of the few undis-
guised Crosses that have been discovered of an
earlier date than the 5th cent. ; it stands in the
midst of the half dome of the apse, and is of the
so-called Latin shape (erwa immissa), and gemmed ;
but the use of the Latin Cross did not become |
common till the 6th century.
_ The crux commissa, or Tau Cross, appears earlier ;
for, though a more exact representation of the
actual instrument of death, it would pass unnoticed
as the letter T. Of this form Tertullian says (adv.
Mare. iii. 22), ‘Tpsa est enim littera Greecorum Tau
nostra autem T’, species crucis.’: The Cross was prob-
ably recognized as hidden in the pre-Constantinian
form of the Monogram Ks and though it is still
CHRIST IN ART
disguised in the ‘Constantinian Monogram,’ yet
this symbol << was considered as a Cross in the
4th cent., and it must have been the ‘ Cross’ which
Constantine saw in the sky, since the Cross is
always represented by this Monogram in contem-
porary art. In the later varieties of the Mono-
gram, as we have seen, the Cross was more plainly
introduced, e.g. a
Later ages increased the number of forms till there were about
fifty, not counting subdivisions, which are duly named by the
medieval heralds, e.g. the Cross Potent, Fleurie, Fleurettée,
Patonce, Moline, Botonnée, Pommée, Uraée, Fourchée, Pater-
noster, Triparted, Crescented, Interlaced, etc., in addition to
the familiar Maltese Cross worn by the Knights Templars and
the Knights of St. John, the Cross of St. James borne by the
Knights of St. Iago, the Saltire of Scotland and Ireland, etc.
It may be added that the use of small Crosses carried about
the person dates from the 5th cent., when also processional
Crosses came into use(e.g. a Cross is carried, and candles, in a
5th cent. ivory, at Tréves); it was not till later that the pro-
cessional Cross came to be taken from its staff and placed on
the altar during service time ; indeed, the use of an altar-Cross
continued to be far from universal throughout the Middle Ages.
5. The Crucifix, which became the principal fea-
ture of medieval churches, is naturally of still
later date than the Cross, for the motives which
caused the early Church to shrink from an open
representation of the latter would apply still more
to the realism of the Crucifix. In addition to this,
the blithe spirit of Christian art in the first four
centuries was certainly against the portrayal of
scenes of suffering and sorrow ; representations of
scenes from the Passion are very rare (see below),
and pictures of death or martyrdom do not occur.
That the death upon the Cross was ‘ foolishness’ to pagans as
well as a stumbling-block to the Jews (1 Co 118. 23), is curiously
illustrated by the caricature of the Crucifixion which was
scratched on the wall of the pages’ quarter at the Palatine in
the latter part of the 2nd cent., and was discovered in 1856 ; the
figure on the Cross has an ass’s head, and by it stands a wor-
shipper with the scrawled inscription AAEZAMENO® SEBETE
@EON (‘ Alexamenos adores his god’). This caricature is, as a
matter of fact, the only picture of a crucifixion that has been
found within the first four centuries.
The earliest Christian example of any kind is on
a panel of the 5th cent. doors of St. Sabina at
Rome, about a century anda half after Constantine
had abolished the penalty of crucifixion. The next
is in a 5th cent. ivory in the British Museum.
The third is ina Syrian MS of the year 586, and
is the earliest dated example. But all these three
belong to the category of ‘Scenes from the Gospels.’
The earliest actual Crucifix that is extant is a small
amulet at Monza, which was given by Gregory
the Great to Adaluwald the son of Queen Theo-
dolind, and belongs therefore to the end of the 6th
century. Early Christian literature (the reliability
of which is illustrated by every fresh discovery in
the realm of archeology) is markedly silent on
the subject, the first mention of a picture of the
Crucifixion being in the middle of the 6th century.
At the close of that century Gregory of Tours sup-
plies the earliest mention of an actual Crucifix,
when he tells us that there was one in a church
at Narbonne, and that Christ appeared in a vision
to rebuke this representation because of its naked-
ness. About the time of Charlemagne (800) the
use of Crucifixes became very general, and they
gradually ceased to be of the ideal type; but as
this development belongs rather to the representa-
tion of Christ in ‘Scenes from the Gospels,’ the
details are given below under that head.
ii. TyPES.—1. Pagan.— Early Christian art is
classical not only in its reserve about the Cross,
not only in its use of the ordinary classical decora-
tive subjects, but also in its use of certain pagan
myths as symbolizing aspects of the Christian
faith. It is remarkable that the moral value of
the better elements of mythology should have
been thus recognized at the very tombs of martyrs
;
Ἢ
ἢ
’
a
CHRIST IN ART
who had suffered at the hands of paganism. The
figure of Orpheus was familiar as a funereal symbol
among the ancients because of his fabled rescue of
Eurydice from Hades: in the Catacombs it was
adopted by the Christians as a symbol of the
attractive power of the Master. ‘here are five
instances of Orpheus with his lyre in the Cata-
combs, the earliest being of the 2nd century.
Sometimes Orpheus is represented in his conventional Phry-
gian costume playing upon the lyre, while various beasts,
birds, and reptiles listen to him; sometimes it is sheep that
gather round, for Orpheus was a shepherd, and thus his story
was interwoven with the Good Shepherd theme; sometimes
the figure of Orpheus is even painted in the centre of a vault—
in the place usually reserved for the Good Shepherd.
The story of Psyche was similarly used, typify-
ing here the love of God for the soul. Ulysses and
the Sirens occurs several times on Chiristian sar-
cophagi, and Hercules feeding the dragon with
poppy-seed is also found. ‘The peacock and the
phaniz, symbols of immortality, and thus of Christ
triumphing over death, as well as the dolphin,
carrier of souls to the Isles of the Blessed, were
other pagan types that continued in use among
the Christians. In this connexion may also be
mentioned the ancient Egyptian symbol of the so-
called Nile key Sap which was used in textiles by
the Christians in Egypt for several centuries after
the conversion of that country.
2. OT types.—OT subjects are common in the
Catacombs, and in some the principal figure is
identified with Christ. This is the case with
Moses striking the Rock, where Moses becomes the
type of Christ and the water a type of Baptism,
the point being sometimes emphasized by the con-
junction of Christ drawing a fish out of the water,
or in the sarcophagi by the raising of Lazarus. The
Sacrifice of Isaac was also a favourite subject as
typical of the Sacrifice of Christ. The story of
Jonah was the most popular of all (there are 57
examples), as a type of the Resurrection which had
been established by Christ Himself (Mt 12). In
the story of The Three Children the tigure of the
Son of Man is sometimes introduced. Although
such OT subjects as Adam and Eve do not readily
admit of the same typieal treatment, yet in
some 4th cent. sarcophagi Christ is introduced as
the Logos standing between them. Representa-
tions of Noah appear as early as the end of the Ist
cent., but the ark is a symbol both of deliverance
and of Baptism (1 P 351), so that Noah represents
the saved rather than the Saviour. From the 4th
cent., when mosaics came into use, OT subjects
were largely employed in the great apsidal decora-
tions of the succeeding centuries; but all that
need here be mentioned are the 6th cent. mosaic
of St. Vitale at Ravenna, where Abel with a lamb
and Melchizedek with a loaf stand as types of
Christ on either side of the Christian altar, —which
is draped and has on it a two-handled chalice and
two loaves,—and the 7th cent. mosaic at St. Apol-
linare in Classe, where Abel, Melchizedek, and
Abraham leading Isaae stand round a similar
altar.
3. NT types.—The earliest manner of represent-
ing our Lord as a solitary figure was under the
type which He Himself had given—that of the
Good Shepherd. Yn its reserve, its tenderness, its
gracious beauty, the figure of the Good Shepherd
was characteristic of the first Christian art, and
its subsequent disappearance was also character-
istic of much.
This figure, which appears first in the Catacomb of Lucina in
the early part of the 2nd cent. and became thereafter exceed-
ingly common, was in no sense an attempt at portraiture. The
Shepherd is always a typical shepherd of the Campagna, a
* See art. ‘Cross’ by Count Goblet d’Alviella in Hastings’
fortheoming Dict. of Religion and Ethics.
CHRIST IN ART 311
beardless youth, bareheaded, clad in the tunic of the peasant ;
the tunic is generally sleeveless, with sometimes a small cape
over the shoulders, while leggings complete the realism of the
attire. There are two distinct classes of Good Shepherd pic-
tures in the Catacombs :—(a) 21 represent him feeding his
flock (in one case he protects it against a pig and an ass); these
belong to the 8rd and 4th cents. ; (0) 88 pictures represent him
carrying a sheep (very rarely a kid—there is probably no
foundation for the beautiful idea in M. Arnold’s famous son-
net); in these the sheep, according to Wilpert, represents the
soul of the departed person. Class ὃ begins very early, 3 ex-
amples of the end of the 1st cent. occurring in the Catacomb cf
St. Domitilla. In spite of the realism of the Good Shepherd
pictures, there is a certain hieratic grace and dignity about the
figure that marks it at once as a Christian subject, though the
figure of a shepherd was common enough in pagan art (e.g. the
Hermes Kriophoros bearing a ram, or the Apollo Nomios) to
make it both a safe and an accessible model for Christians.
The theme is varied in many ways: occasionally the Good
Shepherd carries a kid, sometimes other sheep or goats stand
near him ; ina fresco in the Catacomb of St. Callistus he is sur-
rounded by the Four Seasons ; sometimes he sits and plays upon
a syrinx ; sometimes he carries a crook, and sometimes a milk-
pail, asymbol of the gift of life,—indeed, the sheep and the milk-
pail are occasionally represented by themselves, e.g. in the
crypt of St. Lucina two sheep stand by an altar on which lie
a milk-pail and a crook. Tertullian (6. 200) mentions the paint-
ing of the Good Shepherd on chalices as a common custom (de
Pudic. vii.). Statues were probably not introduced before the
time of Constantine, but an exception was made in the case of
the Good Shepherd ; and the most lovely example of all is the
statue of the 3rd cent. which was found in the Catacomb of St.
Callistus, and now stands in the Lateran Museum. Pictures of
the Good Shepherd have become popular again in our own
time, but they are attempts at portraiture and very far from
the idealistic type—it may almost be called a symbol—of the
early ages, which represents a shepherd as Christ, and does not
attempt to portray Christ as a shepherd.
The symbolism of the Good Shepherd, which
had held so prominent a place in the affections of
the Church, disappeared rapidly after the 4th
cent., and was replaced by another NT type, very
different in its meaning, the Agnus Det, the mystic
Lamb of St. John the Baptist and of St. John the
Divine. Apparently it was not possible for men’s
minds to keep in view the two ideas at once of
Christ the Shepherd and Christ the Lamb, though
this is attempted in the Catacomb of St. Domitilla
(2nd cent.), where the Lamb bears the crook and
milk-pail of the pastor. The earliest known in-
stance of the identification of Christ with the
Lamb is on the spandrels of the sarcophagus of
Junius Bassus, who died in 350: Christ is represented
among the Three Children, striking water from
the Rock, raising Lazarus, multiplying the Loaves,
baptized by Jolin, while another spandrel repre-
sents the giving of the Law ; and in each case all
the characters (with the exception of Lazarus) are
represented as lambs. In the Catacomb of SS.
Peter and Marcellinus there is a fresco (c. 400) of
the Lamb, haloed but with no Cross, standing on
a hillock from which four streams issue. Apoca-
lyptic scenes were the favourite subject of the
great apsidal mosaics of the 5th and 6th cents.,
and naturally the ‘Lamb, standing as though
it had been slain,’ became more and more the
favourite type of Christ. Often the Lamb
was accompanied by twelve other lambs issuing
from Bethlehem and Jerusalem, to represent the
Apostles, as in the apse of SS. Cosmas and Damianus
at Rome, A.D. 530.
There is something significant in this identification of the
Lord with humanity, paralleled as it is by the earlier tendency
to represent under the Fish symbol not only Christ Himself, but
also the Christian convert. Established as the type was before
the end of the 4th cent., it was not till the 5th that the Lamb
was pictured with the nimbus and the cross. By 692 this
method of representing Christ had so superseded all others,
that the Council in Trullo (Quinisext) decreed ‘that henceforth
Christ shall be publicly exhibited in the figure of a Man and not
of a Lamb,’ in order that ‘we may be led to remember Christ’s
conversation in the flesh, and His passion, and saving death,
and the redemption which He wrought for the world.’ None
the less, although the positive object of the decree was at-
tained, the representation of the Agnus Det was one of the
most common symbols of the Middle Ages, in sculpture, in
glass, in metal work and embroidery, and sometimes in paint-
ing, as in the culminating example of the Van Eycks’ great
picture at Ghent (c. 1430), where the Lamb stands wounded
ae
312 CHRIST IN ART
CHRIST IN ART
upon an altar, the blood flowing into a chalice, surrounded by
w great company of angels and saints. Thus, this type has
proved a most enduring one, in spite of the growing use of
actual representations of our Lord after the Quinisext Council.
iii, PORTRAITS OF CHRIST.—1. Scenes from the
Gospels.—The earliest pictures of Christ are not
attempts at portraiture, but represent His figure
only as occurring in scenes from the Gospels: the
figure is needed to explain the subject, but it is
the figure of a man of varying type, and, as in all
early Christian art, without attributes ; the char-
acter is determined only by its position and by the
fact that Christ, like the Apostles and generally
other Scripture characters, is always represented
as wearing the pallium of the philosopher (not the
toga), a convention which has survived down to
our own time, though realists like Tissot have
begun its destruction. It was not till after the
Peace of the Church that the head of Christ was
distinguished by a nimbus: this custom began in
the Catacombs ec. 340, and the nimbus was reserved
for the figure of Christ till the end of the 5th cent.,
when it was given to the Saints as well, and the
nimbus of Christ began to be distinguished by a
cross within the circle. Among the earliest in-
stances in which the figure of Christ appears are
those which represent Him in the same guise as
that which was so common in later ages, viz. as
an infant in His Mother's arms; but it was for
a different reason, since the Mother and Child are
but parts of a complete scene, such as that of the
Visit of the Magi.
The earliest of all is in the Capella Greca in the Catacomb of
Sc. Priscilla, and belongs to the beginning of the 2nd cent.,
where three Magi approach the Mother and Child with their
offerings : this subject was a very common one, fifteen instances
being mentioned by Wilpert in the Catacombs, and it continued
so in the succeeding ages of sculpture and mosaic. In the Cata-
comb of St. Priscilla there is another fresco (of the first half of
the 2nd cent.), representing the Virgin and Child sitting, whilea
figure (the prophet Isaiah) points to a star. The picture of the
Virgin and Child in this well-known fresco is very beautiful,
recalling in stateliness and grace as well as in design Raphael’s
treatment of the subject : nothing could be more unlike the
liieratic stiffness of the intervening Byzantine and Gothic
types. The figure of the Child is naked in this instance, though
in some it is draped ; but in all, the treatment is that which we
are accustomed to associate with the Renaissance. A fine 3rd
cent. fresco in the same catacomb has the figure of a female
orais (representing a consecrated virgin) in the midst, while a
bishop on one side sit- in his cathedra, accompanied by his
deacon, and in the act cf dedicating a virgin; he points to the
figure on the other side of the picture, which is that of the
Virgin Mary holding the Child Christ in her lap. There is also
one instance of the Child lying alone in a manger (now much
decayed) given by de Rossi. To carry the subject a step further,
the important 6th cent. mosaics of St. Apollinare Nuove at
Ravenna must be mentioned: along one wall of the nave a pro-
cession of male martyrs approaches Christ enthroned bet:veen
angels, and along the other a procession of female martyrs
approach the Virgin and Child similarly enthroned between
angels; the Virgin has a plain nimbus and that of the Child
contains the cross, while both figures are of the lofty hieratic
type that endured for so many subsequent centuries ; but it is
remarkable that (while the figure of the enthroned Christ on
the other wall is approached directly) the procession of female
martyrs is led by the Magi, and thus the common tradition is
still preserved by which the Mother and Child appear as part
of this Gospel scene. This may be taken as a transitional in-
stance, leading on to the later manner of representing the
Vi gin and Child, which has been the chief theme of Christian
art since that age, and the occasion of so many masterpieces,
from Cimabue, Giotto, Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, Della Robbia,
and the great company of Christian sculptors, Raphael, Michael
Angelo, Murillo, and countless others down to our own time.
In the 2nd and 8rd cent. frescoes of the Cata-
combs the adult figure of Christ appears in many
pictures of Gospel events; and it is remarkable
that there is in the Catacomb of St. Pretestato a
scene Irom the Passion which is almost as early as
the first Virgin and Child,—viz. of the first half of
the 2nd cent., — and yet occurs once only: the
Crowning with Thorns is the subject represented
and other scenes from the Passion may have oceu-
pied the now vacant spaces which form part ‘of
the scheme; yet no other picture of any Holy
Week event occurs in the Catacombs. It is re-
markable also that the subject most referred to by
indirect type—the Resurrection of our Lord—is
never once illustrated until the 4th cent. ; while
the figure of Christ raising Lazarus appears as
early as the beginning of the 2nd cent., and occurs
in no less than 53 extant examples. It must
always be borne in mind that the Catacombs
were not, as is popularly supposed, the ordinary
churches or hiding-places of the Christians, but were
designed and used for burials and services in con-
nexion with the departed, and their art is entirely
contined to subjects within this purpose. ‘Thus,
the Gospel events are all chosen with reference to
two themes—the deliverance and blessedness of
the departed, and the sacraments of Baptism and
Holy Communion, which were closely bound up
with the thought of the faithful departed, as is
shown by the reference to baptism in 1 Co 15”,
and by the many chapels for and pictures of the
Eucharist in the Catacombs. Thus, the Raising
of Lazarus, the scenes of Healing, the Conversa-
tion about the Living Water with the Samaritan
woman (as well as the pictures in which our Lord
does not appear, such as Jonah and Daniel), all
refer to deliverance from the powers of death ;
while the Baptism of Christ, the Multiplication
of the Loaves and Fishes, and the Miracle at Cana,
are chosen for their reference to the Sacraments.
There is a good deal of convention in the treat-
ment of these subjects—e.g. Lazarus is represented
as a mummy erect in a classical doorway, while
Christ—youthful and beardless—touches him with
a rod. ‘The same scenes are carried on in the
sculptures of the sarcophagi—Lazarus, the Mir-
acles of Healing, of the Loaves, of Cana, the
Epiphany, as well as the Good Shepherd ; while
in the 4th cent. sarcophagi are found the Entry
into Jerusalem, and Christ before Pilate; the
limited funereal cycle of subjects is widened out,
and in the 5th cent. ivories and the carved doors
of St. Sabina there are added Christ Preaching,
the Agony in the Garden, the Betrayal, Christ
bearing His Cross, Christ and St. Thomas, the
Resurrection, and the Ascension.
But the number of events illustrated did not
increase rapidly ; even in modern times it has con-
tinued to be limited, as we are reminded by a com-
parison with Tissot’s illustrated Life of our Lord.
The following list of the subjects from the life of
Christ which are illustrated in ancient and medi-
veval art 15 given by Detzel; those which occur in
the Catacombs we have italicized :—
Nativity, Virgin and Child, Circumcision, Presentation, Visit
of Magi and Shepherds, Flight into Egypt, Christ among the
Doctors ;—Baptism, Temptation, Miracle at Cana, Samaritan
Woman, Healing of the Palsied, of the Woman with the Issue,
of the Blind, of the Man with Dropsy, Lepers, Raising of
Lazarus, of the Man at Nain, of Jairus’ Daughter, heeding of
the Multitude, Casting out Devils, Stilling of the Storm, the
Transfiguration ;—Entry into Jerusalem, [Jesus taking leave of
His Mother, by Diirer], Washing the Disciples’ Feet, Last
Supper, Agony in the Garden, Betrayal, Trial, Scourging,
Crowning with Thorns, Carrying the Cross, Crucifixion, De-
scent from Cross [‘ Piet&a’ pictures}, Burial, [Idealizations of the
Passion. or ‘ Misericordienbilder,’ as, ¢.g., in the legend of the
Mass of St. Gregory], Christ in Hades ; Resurrection, and the
subsequent events—Christ greeting the Women, ‘ Noli me tan-
gere ’—Journey to Emmaus, Christ appearing to the Apostles,
Christ and St. Thomas, Draught of Fishes at the Sea of Tiberias,
Ascension, [Last Judgment].
The set of fourteen pictures found in Roman
Catholic churches and called the ‘Stations of the
Cross,’ some of which are legendary, are of post-
Reformation origin. One scene from the Gospels,
the Crucifixion, must be taken separately.
The Crucifixion as a scene from the Gospels (not
in isolation) first appears in the 5th cent. on the
wooden doors of St. Sabina at Rome. In this
earliest example the primitive feeling is shown
by the fact that no actual cross appears; Christ
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CHRIST IN ART
and the two thieves stand, almost completely
naked, with the elbows near the body and the
hands stretched out and nailed to little blocks of
wood ; the Christ is bearded and with lone hair,
and his eyes are open; the sculptor has filled up
the background with a suggestion of the walls of
Jerusalem.—The second example is also of the 5th
century. It occurs on an ivory box in the British
Museum: the cross is shown, and the Christ is
nailed to it with arms stretched out horizontally ;
His face is youthful and beardless, His eyes open,
and His body naked but for the loin-cloth ; on one
side stands a reviling Jew, on the other Mary and
John, while near them Judas hangs from a tree:
in this sculpture the title appears REX IVD. It
is on another panel of the same box that the
earliest representation of Christ bearing the cross
appears.-—The third Crucifixion is a miniature in
a Syrian book of the Gospels, now at Florence, by
Rabulas, a monk of Mesopotamia, and is dated
586: the Christ is bearded, and wears a long
tunic; as in the former example, the feet are
separate and the arms horizontal ; the two thieves,
St. John and the women, and the two soldiers with
the spear and sponge, are included in the picture.
The history of the development of the Crucifix
may be thus summarized. Appearing first as a
scene of Gospel history in the 5th cent., it con-
tinued infrequent for another century, after
which, in the 6th cent., the Crucifix in isolation
begins also to appear. During the 5th, 6th, and
7th centuries it has the following characteristics :
the Christ wears either a loin-cloth or a long tunic
reaching to the ankles, there are nails in the
hands and generally in the feet also, the feet are
always separate, either with or without the block
or ‘suppedaneum,’ the Christ is always living, He
wears neither the royal crown nor the crown of
thorns, the title, when there is one, consists gener-
ally of the letters IC XC, the cross is either com-
missa (J) or tmmissa (fF); certain adjuncts also
appear, the sun and moon generally, the thieves
often, Mary and Jcln generally, the two soldiers
sometimes, sometimes also the soldiers dicing, and
sometimes Adam and Eve.
About the time of Charlemagne (800) there was
a great increase in the use of the Crucifix ; and in
addition to the early or Ideal type, a second type,
the Realistic, began to appear. The Ideal type
continued till the end of the 13th cent. (e.g. in the
Codex Egberti at Tréves, ¢.1000, where the Christ
is represented with a youthful, almost girlish face,
and living, though without the royal crown, which
is often added at this period to emphasize the
triumphant aspect of the Crucifixion). The Real-
istic type, in which the Christ is represented
dying, as in modern crucifixes, had become in the
llth cent. a distinctive mark of the Eastern
Church, and figures in the disputes which ended
in the great schism of 1054: Cardinal Humbert
accused the Greeks of putting a dying Christ upon
their crosses, and thus setting up a kind of Anti-
christ ; the Patriarch Michael Cerularius retorted,
in the discussion at Constantinople, that the
Western custom was against nature, while the
East was according to nature. None the less,
the Eastern type had already found its way into
Italy itself through the influence of the Byzantine
craftsmen who worked there, and it spread steadily
throughout the West, till by the 13th cent. it was
the dominant type all over Christendom. There
was sometimes in the transitional period a ming-
ling of the types, as, e.g., in the Crucifix over the
gate of St. John’s Church at Gmiind, where the
figure is youthful, with open eyes and in a tranquil
posture, without the crown of thorns, but the
wounds and blood are shown, and the arms are
bent and the head drooping.
The complete Real-
CHRIST IN ART 313
istic type is well illustrated in the altar-cross at
the Klosternenburg, Vienna, A.D. 1181, where the
body is collapsed, the knees bent, the arms wrung,
and the head sunk. In the 13th cent. the Crown
of Thorns appears, and the feet are laid one over
the other, so that the figure is held by three nails
instead of four. The Realistic tendency of the
Middle Ages entirely ousted the earlier trium-
phant type, and in the 14th cent. only the dead
Christ is found upon the Cross in art. The revival
of painting at this period led to a further increase
of Realism, and the artists who pioneered the
Renaissance delighted in the display of their ana-
tomical knowledge: none the less there 15. much
majesty of quiet reserve in such Crucifixions as
those of Angelico in the 15th or that of Luini at
Lugano in the 16th century. Among the famous
examples may be mentioned those of Giotto (at
Padua), Mantegna, Perugino (at Florence), Anto-
nello da Messina, Martin Schongauer, Hans Mem-
ling, Raphael, Tintoret, Veronese, Rubens, and
Vandyke,—the later being the more painful. The
great Crucifixion by Velasquez, in the 17th cent.
at Madrid, illustrates the furthest point which was
reached. Westcott truly says that it ‘presents
the thought of hopeless defeat. No early Chris-
tian would have dared to look upon it.’ The same
type—a tortured figure hanging low from the
hands—continued in the Crucifixes of the 18th
cent., though the medizyval type was revived in
the 19th, and at the present day there is a ten-
dency to revert to the earliest Ideal type which
showed Christ ‘reigning from the tree.’ There
can be little dispute as to the fact that the
medieval Crucifix did tend to over emphasize one
aspect of our Lord’s life, though its constant use
in Lutheran churches forbids us to connect it
specially with one set of opinions. There would
perhaps have been less feeling on the subject
among English people if the Ideal type had been
used—the benedictory figure, draped and crowned,
which embodies the idea but does not attempt to
represent the appearance of our Lord’s death.
2. Symbolicai Scenes.—As we have seen, the
earliest of any representations of Christ is under
the form of the Good Shepherd, and occurs before
the end of the Ist cent., while close upon this
come pictures of Him in-His Mother’s arms, and
a picture of His Baptism and of the Crowning
with Thorns in the first half of the 2nd century.
Before the close of the 2nd cent. there appear
representations of Him in scenes that are sym-
bolical of Christian doctrine ; and the earliest of
these are in connexion with the Sacraments, while
in the 3rd and 4th centuries the pictures of Him
surrounded by Saints in glory begin to appear.
(a) Sacrament Pictures.—In addition to the
Gospel scenes of the Feeding of the Multitude,
the Miracle of Cana, and the Baptism of Christ, in
the Catacombs, there are Sacrament pictures that
are purely symbolical.
In the Sacrament Chapels of St. Callistus, whose decorations
belong to the second half of the 2nd cent., there is a figure of
our Lord, beardless and wearing the pallium as usual, stretch-
ing out His hands in the gesture of consecration over a tripod
on which lie loaves and the mystic fish, while an ovans, typical
figure of the soul of the person buried in the tomb, stands by.
Among other pictures in the same place is one supposed to re-
present the Seven Disciples at the Sea of Tiberias after the
Resurrection ; Christ is giving them bread and fish, while
further along in the same picture a fisherman is represented
drawing a fish out of the water, to symbolize union with Christ
in baptism, and further still is Moses striking the rock : thus
Baptism and the Eucharist are symbolized together. This con-
nexion of the two Sacraments is very common, and often it is
done by the juxtaposition of the Feeding of the Multitude, of
which there are in the Catacombs 28 examples in all, and Moses
Striking the Rock, of which there are no less than 68 examples.
In the same chamber is a picture of the baptism of a catechu-
men, and near it the Baptism of Christin the river, out of which
a fisherman is drawing a fish. In other places the idea is ab-
breviated into a mere hieroglyph of loaves or loaves and fishes,
314 CHRIST IN ART
CHRIST IN ART
In the Middle Ages there was a very popular
form of Sacrament picture, which had reference,
however, to the sacrifice and not to Communion,
viz. the ‘Mass of St. Gregory,’ referred to above,
where Christ appears upon the altar with the at-
tributes of His Passion, wounded, and crowned
with thorns. The modern Eucharistic pictures of
our Lord, which are common among both Catholics
and Protestants, need only the bare mention here.
(b) Pictures of Christ in Majesty.—There are no
pictures of our Lord alone, or of Him as the central
dominating figure of a formal group, till the 3rd
century. Up till then—from as early a period as
the end of the Ist cent.—the artists, when they
wished to represent Him alone (as often in the
centre of a decorated vault), were content to do so
under the type of the Good Shepherd. At the
beginning of the 3rd cent. there appears in the
Catacomb of St. Pretestato the earliest picture of
Christ as a solitary figure; He sits reading the
Law ; the face is young and beardless, and the hair
is so ample as to give almost a feminine aspect.
In the same century pictures occur of our Lord
sitting in judgment, surrounded by saints, as, e.g.,
in the Nunziatella cemetery, where the Christ,
beardless as usual, but with hair falling over the
forehead, holds a scroll of the Law, and in the
panels round the vault are four saints alternating
with four orantes. There are seven examples in
the Catacombs of Christ seated in the midst of the
Twelve Apostles, and one of Him with the Four
Evangelists, and also nine busts, all painted in the
4th cent., z.e. the Constantinian era; besides one of
Christ giving crowns to saints, which is not earlier
than the beginning of the 4th century. There isa
sculpture of Christ enthroned on the sarcophagus
of Junius Bassus (+ 350); and the same subject is
often beautifully carved on the ivories of the 4th,
5th, and 6th centuries. By the end of the 4th
cent. the great mosaic pictures of Christ in glory
begin, the earliest being in the church of St.
Pudenziana in Rome, 6. 390. These became
thenceforward the leading feature of the apsidal
decoration of the, basilicas in the 5th and. 6th
centuries ; and they are by far the greatest and
the most imposing of the early pictures of our
Lord. He is represented in these mosaics as en-
throned in the glory of the Apocalypse, among the
angels, the Apostles, and other saints and martyrs.
The last great mosaic of our Lord occurs over the
central door within the nave of St. Sofia, Con-
stantinople: in this famous picture Christ. sits
upon a throne, while an emperor prostrates him-
self at His feet, and on either side are medallions
of the Virgin and St. Michael.
Pictures and statues of our Lord in Majesty are
common in the Middle Ages, when other symboli-
cal representations oceur. A favourite one (which
is often found in the uppermost light of stained
glass windows, and in other forms of art) is the
Coronation of the Virgin by our Lord, which, like
the Mass of St. Gregory, is characteristic of the
change that had come over Christendom at that
time. There should be mentioned also, as illus-
trating the lowest depths of materialism in re-
ligious art, the anthropomorphic representations
Pe er nits Which appear as early as the
Jt : 5. In some the Son bears a cross, while the
er ee by a tiara, and the Holy
are Peeainninicd eases a pee: ΤΥ heesathete
in others the Father told: ἤ ΣΕ Vl them ;
a dove Se ee ΔΕ Pra παν NCH apes which
fie hee ae Sk even examples of a
leure with three faces.
πολυ ων type of symbolical Portrait—the " Sacred Heart’—has
popular among Roman Catholics since Marearet Mary
Alacoque started that Itus in 167 ὶ Ϊ
act ξ at cultus τά. AS a symbol by itself the
Heart is already to be found in the 16th cent.—often with
the Crown of Thorns, or the Nails, and the monogram IHS.
In the Sacred Heart pictures and statues which appeared after
the new cultus had been started, the heart of the Saviour is, by
a violent symbolism, disclosed within His breast; it is marked
with a wound, surmounted by a Cross, and often surrounded
by flames and the Crown of Thorns.
3. Types of Portraiture.—In the first five cen-
turies three distinct types appear in the portraiture
of Christ. They are hs classified by Detzel: |
First type.—A youthful beardless figure of purely
ideal character, such as is found in the usual
classical subjects, thus representing the perfect
and eternal humanity of our Lord. Kraus ecalcu-
lates that there are 104 examples of this type in
the Catacombs, 97 in the sarcophagi, 14 in the
mosaics, 45 in gold glasses, 50 in other arts, and
3 in MSS. Although the earliest representations
are of this kind (indeed the 3rd and 4th cent.
pictures of Christ in Majesty are as purely ideal
as are the Ist and 2nd cent. pictures of the Good
Shepherd), there are instances also of the beardless
Christ in the mosaics (e.g. in the Raising of Lazarus
at St. Apollinare Nuova, and the Throned Christ at
St. Vitale, both of the 6th cent.), in the time of
Charlemagne, and as late as the 13th cent., e.g. in
the golden altar at Aix-la-Chapelle, where the
Christ is of youthful aspect and enthroned.
Second type.—Christ is represented bearded, in
the fulness of manly strength; thus there is still
the conception of an ideal humanity, immortal
and unmortified, without harshness and without
sorrow. Examples occur frequently in the mosaics
of the 4th to 6th cents., as at St. Pudenziana,
St. Maria Maggiore at Rome, St. Apollinare in
Classe, and St. Vitale at Ravenna ; and also in the
late 7th or 8th cent. fresco of the Catacombs of
St. Generosa.
Third type.—The Byzantine type, which appears
thrice in the Roman mosaics of the 5th and 6th
cents. (¢.g. at St. Paolo fuori le Mure), and em-
bodies the growing monastic asceticism of the
time. Christ in this type appears older and
more severe, with longer hair and beard, deep-set
eyes and hard features. This developed into the
still harder and stiffer ‘debased Byzantine’ type.
To these may be added the Modern type, in
which artists innumerable have striven to embody
their highest conceptions of human perfection and
Divine goodness. After the long sleep of pictorial
art, the revival of sculpture and painting gave us
such statues as the Beau Dieu of Amiens, and all
the famous pictures of such artists as Orcagna, Fra
Angelico, Masaccic, Perugino, Raphael, Leonardo,
Luini, Michael Angelo, Titian, Diirer, Guido,
Murillo, Rubens,—to mention only some typical
instanees,—and the many works of our own times.
All have followed in the main the type which the
medieval and Renaissance artists obtained from
the legendary descriptions which are mentioned
below.
iv. THE QUESTION OF THE LIKENESS OF CHRIST.
- ΤῸ is obvious from what has been already stated,
that no true portraits of Christ have come down to
us, and that no attempt was made at reproducing
His likeness in the first centuries. The earliest
portraits varied much in type, and had only this
in common—that they were all idealistic, repre-
senting the countenance of a man unmarred by
faults or peculiarities ; while, in particular, the
art of the Catacombs and of the earliest sculpture,
with entire disregard of historic actuality, repre-
sented the Lord under the type of a beautiful
youth. The early controversy as to the appearance
of Christ shows how entirely all tradition of His
actual appearance was lost.
Influenced by certain OT passages (e.g. Is 53), Justin Martyr
had already said, in the earliest extant references to the aspect
of Jesus, that He appeared * without beauty’ (7T'ryph. 14, 36, 85,
88); later, Clement of Alexandria had also argued in favour 0
CHRIST IN ART
Christ being ‘unlovely in the flesh’ (Stvom. iii. 17); Tertullian
went so far as to say, He was ‘not even in His aspect comely’
(c. Jud. 14). So we find that Celsus taunted the Christians for
worshipping one of mean appearance, to which Origen replied
(c. Cels. vi. 75, 76) that Christ’s person must have had about it
something noble and Divine, and quoted the Transfiguration
to show that His aspect depended upon the capacity of the
spectator. St. Jerome, on the other hand, appealed to Ps 44 as
a proof of Christ’s beauty ; and thus there arose two schools—
those who held that He was ‘fairer than the children of men,’
among whom were St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and St. Chrysos-
tom, aud those who, in their ascetic reaction against the vices
of pagan beauty-worship, declared that He had ‘no form nor
comeliness’ and ‘no beauty that we should desire him,’ among
whom were St. Basil and St. Cyril of Alexandria.
If we turn from these disputations to the Gospels,
we find, indeed, no descriptions of our Lord, but we
discover on every page One whose personality had
a wonderfully attractive power, and whose dignity
impressed friends and foes alike. And we may
conclude that the instinet of the Church as a whole
was right in attributing beauty to the Son of Man,
since the Incarnation was the taking on of the
perfection and fulness of humanity. At the time
of the controversy, those on the extreme ascetic
side went so far as to make hideous pictures of the
Redeemer ; but the idealism of early art had an
easy triumph in the end, because Christ is indeed
the Ideal of humanity, and the outward form of
man is ultimately the expression of the soul
within.
The fact that the carly portraits of Christ are
purely ideal is the more remarkable, because there
are strongly characterized portraits of St. Peter
and St. Paul of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The
representations of Christ in the Gospel scenes of
the 2nd and 3rd cents. are, as has been stated
above, merely figures of the classical type neces-
sary for the determination of the incident depicted,
and only to be distinguished by the situation in
which He is represented, and partly by the pallium
in which He and the Apostles are always por-
trayed.
It is hardly necessary to dwell on the portrait of Himself
which Christ was fabled to have sent to Abgar, king of Edessa,
by the hand of Thaddwus; or on the various legends of
Veronica and her napkin. St. Peter’s at Rome claims to possess
the true handkerchief of Veronica ; but of this relic Bartier de
Montault, who saw it in 1854, says that ‘the place of the im-
pression exhibits only a blackish surface, not giving any evi-
dence of human features,’ and he adds that the supposed copies
cox have no iconographic value whatever (Ann. Archéol. xxiii.
Tie emperor Alexander Severus (acc. 222) placed
in his darariuin the image of Christ, as well as
those of Abraham and Orpheus; a sect of Gnosties
also venerated images of Christ, Pythagoras, Plato,
and Aristotle; but in neither case is it claimed
that actual portraits were used. Eusebius (6. 325)
tells us that a bronze statue of Christ stretching
out His hands to a kneeling woman had stood till
the time of the emperor Maximin Daia (ace. 308)
at Ceesarea Philippi, and that he himself had seen
it at Paneas (H# vii. 18): in his time it was re-
garded as a representation of Christ, erected in
gratitude by the woman whom He had healed of
the issue (also called Veronica). Most historians
hold with Gibbon, that it was really the statue of
an emperor receiving the submission of a province,
and that this accounts for the inscription, ‘To the
Saviour the Benefactor’; but, on the otfer hand,
it is urged as improbable that Eusebius should
have mistaken so familiar a subject, or that it
should have been removed by Maximin from its
public position and ultimately destroyed by Julian
the sa ostet (ace. 361) if a pagan character could
have been proved for it. There is thus a chance
that one supposed actual portrait of Christ did
exist before the 4th century.
Eusebius himself, however, in his well-known
letter to Constantia (Migne, Patr. Gr. xx. 1515),
says plainly that images of Christ are ‘nowhere
CHRIST IN ART 315
to be found in cliurches, and it is notorious that
with us alone they are forbidden,’ and mentions
that he took away from a woman two painted
figures like philosophers which the owner took for
representations of Paul and the Saviour, ‘not
thinking it right in any case that she should
exhibit them further, that we may not seem like
idolaters to carry our God about in an image.’
Here both the dislike of anything like portraits
of Christ and the reason for that dislike are plainly
stated. However, the establishment of Christi-
anity in the Empire rapidly caused a change of
feeling, and images were soon common. With the
half-pagan people this led to idolatry, and the
Iconoclastic Controversy in the East (716-842) was
the result: one of the earliest incidents in that
long struggle was the removal by Leo the Isaurian
of the statue of Christ which stood over the bronze
gateway of his palace at Constantinople; in its
place he set up a plain cross. The second Council
of Nicaea (787) vindicated the use of images; but
they were not finally restored till 842. The West
was untouched by the controversy, and the use of
all kinds of images went on unchecked ; but in the
East statues are not allowed within the churches—
but only pictures—to this day. The pictures of
the East have retained their rigidly conservative
character; but in the West the greatest artists
have striven from age to age to represent our Lord
in the utmost majesty and beauty.
The type which they ultimately settled upon was
doubtless influenced by the supposed descriptions
of Christ’s appearance, though none of these have
any historical value.
The most famous is the letter of ‘ Lentulus, president of the
people of Jerusalem,’ to the Roman Senate, a torgery of about
the 12th century. ‘There has appeared in our times,’ writes
the supposed Lentulus, ‘a man of tall stature, beautiful, with a
venerable countenance, which they who look on it can both
love and fear. His hair is waving and crisp, somewhat wine-
coloured, and glittering as it flows down over his shoulders,
with a parting in the middle, after the manner of the Nazarenes.
His brow is smooth and most serene; his face is without any
spot or wrinkle, and glows with a delicate flush. His nose and
mouth are of faultless contour; the beard is abundant, and
hazel coloured like his hair, not long but forked. His eyes are
prominent, brilliant, and change their colour. In denunciation
he is terrible; in admonition, calm and loving, cheerful, but
with unimpaired dignity. He has never been seen to laugh,
but oftentimes to weep. His hands and his limbs are beautiful
to look upon. In speech he is grave, reserved, modest ; and he
is fair among the children of men.’ This beautiful description
was doubtless influenced by earlier works of art and embodied
earlier traditions, as that, for instance, of St. John Damascene,
the champion of images against Leo the Isaurian (c. 730) and
the last of the Greek Fathers; he described our Lord as beauti-
ful and tall, with fair and slightly curling locks, dark eyebrows
which met in the middle, an oval countenance, a pale com-
plexion, olive-tinted, and of the colour of wheat, with eyes
bright like His Mother’s, a slightly stooping attitude, with a
sweet and sonorous voice and a look expressive of patience
nobleness, and wisdom (J. Dam. Opp. i. 840). In another place
(ib. 630) he indignantly reproaches the Manichees with the view
once held by earlier Fathers, that the Lord was lacking in
beauty.
Thus we may safely conclude that there is no
authentic portrait or description of Christ, while
admitting that the type accepted for more than a
thousand vears is all that a Christian can desire,
since it is that of a perfect humanity in which, so
far as men could portray it, the fulness of God
dwells bodily.
LITERATURE.—Wilpert’s Roma Sotterranea (1903) gives for
the first time accurate reproductions of the frescoes in the
Catacombs, with an exhaustive study carrying on the work
of de Rossi (Roma Sotterranea, 1864-1867, tr. by Northcote and
Brownlow). Garrucci's,Storia dell’ Arte cristiana (1873-1881) is
being supplanted by the accuracy of mechanical reproductions.
Also by Wilpert.are Principienfragen der christlichen Archdo-
logie (1889), Ein Cyclus christologischer Gemdlde (1891), Die
Gottgeweihten Jung frauen in den ersten Jahrhunderten (1892),
Fractio Panis (1896), Die Malereien der Sacraments-Kapellen
(1897). The Catacombs are also described by O. Marucchi,
Le Catacombe Romane (1903). See also A. Venturi, Storia
dell’ Arte Italiana (1901), an exhaustive illustrated history,
in progress; H. Detzel, Christliche Ikonographie (1896) ;
VY. Schultze, Archdologie der altchristlichen Kunst (1895);
316 CHRISTIAN
ΕἸ X. Kraus, Geschichte der christlichen Kunst (1896); O.
Marucchi, Hléments d’Archéologie Chrétienne (1900). Among
earlier works are Rohault de Fleury, L’EBvanyile (1874), La
Messe (1883-1889) ; Grimouard de Saint-Laurent, ‘ Iconographie
de la Croix’ in Didron’s Annales (1869), W. Lowrie’s admirable
illustrated handbook on Christian Art and Archeology gives a
bibliography of special works on early painting, sculpture, ivories,
mosaics, etc. Westcott, in his Ypistles of St. John, Appendix iii.,
cites the Patristic authorities. The dictionaries by Smith-
Cheetham (DCA, 1875-1893), Kraus (RE, 1886), and Martigny
(Dict. des antiquités chrétiennes, 1877 and 1889) are all some-
what out of date, but the first is the best. Slighter books are
A. Pératé, L’Archéologie chrétienne (1892); Ε΄. W. Farrar, The
Life of Christ in Art (1894), which is useful but not always
accurate ; E. L. Cutts’ handbook on Early Christian Art (1893).
Wyke Bayliss’ Rea Regwm (1898) is a quite uncritical attempt
to prove the existence of authentic portraits, based partly on
Heaphy, Likeness of Christ (1880). Mrs. Jameson’s History of
Our Lord (1864), Legends of the Madonna (1857), Poetry of Sacred
and Legendary Art (1848), are naturally in need of some revision.
Later works are J. Hoppenot, Le Crucifix dans 0 Histoire
(1899); M. Engels, Die Kreuzigungq Christi (1899); J. Cartwright,
Christ and His Mother in Italian Art (1897); J. L. French,
Christ in Sacred Art (1900); A. Venturi, La Madonna (1900),
and many general books on art and artists.
PERCY DEARMER.
CHRISTIAN (The Name).—The word ‘ Christian’
occurs in the NT only in Ac 11°6 26% (about 20
years later), and 1P 415, The author of Acts
alludes to it once in his earlier treatise (Lk 67%),
however, putting into the mouth of Jesus a senti-
ment whose linguistic form, at least, is coloured by
the experiences and terminology of the Apostolic
age. In some other passages where it is apparently
mentioned (e.g. Ac δ11, Ja 2”), the ‘name’ is not
‘Christian’ but ‘Christ,’ while the references in
Josephus (Ané. XVI. iii. 3) and the Pompeii in-
scription (CTL iv. 679), it may be noted in passing,
are too uncertain to be used as evidence for the
title. Other and later inscriptions, however, are
accessible.
For the origin and primitive usage of the term
we are thus thrown back upon the three first-
named passages. Of these, the fontal reference in
Ac 11° explains that the name by which the re-
ligion of Jesus has been known for nineteen cen-
turies was coined by the pagan slane of Antioch
on the Orontes, a city which, like Alexandria, was
noted for its nicknames. Yet the title is not a
rough sobriquet. It expresses a certain contempt,
but not derision, though St. Luke does not inform
us whether it was coined by the mob or by govern-
ment. officials. ‘ Christian’ (Χριστιανός) simply
means ‘a follower of Christ,’ just as Pompeianus
or Herodianus denotes ‘a follower or partisan of
Pompey’ or ‘of Herod.’ ‘ Christ’ was thus taken
as a proper name. It meant no more to these
Syrian pagans than some leader of revolt or ob-
scure religious fanatic in Palestine. His name
was ever on the lips of a certain set of people, and
it was but natural that these should, for the sake
of convenience, be distinguished as ‘ Christ’s ad-
herents’ or ‘Christians.’ Unconsciously, in giving
the title—which there is no evidence to show
was applied previously to Jews—these citizens of
Antioch were emphasizing one deep truth of the
new religion, viz. that it rested not on a dogma
or upon an institution, but on a person; and that
its simple and ultimate definition was to be found
in a relationship to Jesus Christ, whether ‘Christos’
to these Syrian Antiochenes was some strange god
(Ac 17°) ora Jewish agitator. An outstanding trait
in the Christians whom Pliny found in Bithynia
was that they ‘sang a hymn to Christ as to a god’
(Plin. Ep. x. 96, ad Trajan.) at worship. From
the Impression made by facts and features like this,
it was but a step to designate the new sect as
*Christ’s folk or party.’
At Was neither the original nor the chosen name
of believers in Jesus Christ. Their inner titles
(see W elZsacKer's A post. Age, i, p. 43 f.) were
brethren,’ ‘disciples,’ and ‘saints,’ all of which
preceded, and for some time survived alongside of,
CHRISTIAN
-
‘Christians.’ Nor could the title have been coined
by the Jews, who would never have admitted that
Jesus of Nazareth was the ‘Christ.’ To them
believers in Jesus were ‘ Nazarenes’ or “ Gali-
leans.’ It was the pagan community of Antioch
alone that would invent and apply this title. Now
a name implies life. ‘Titles are not required unless
and until a definite, energetic fact emerges. And
the need evidently felt for some such designation
as ‘Christian’ arose from two causes: (a) from
the conspicuous extension of the new movement
throughout the country and the city, and (6) more
particularly from the predominance of Gentile
Christians, who could not be provisionally grouped,
like most of their Jewish fellow-believers, with
the community and worship of Judaism. There
was a Jewish ghetto at Antioch. But the local,
heterogeneous paganism yielded an incomparably
richer harvest to the efforts of the Christian
agents, so that the general success of the move-
ment produced, for the first time, a noticeable
alteration in the proportions of Jewish and Gentile
Christians—so noticeable, indeed, that, as the his-
torian points out, it necessitated an attempt on
the part of the outside public to verbally classify
the adherents of the new faith. The significance
of this step is patent to the historian. He signal-
izes the crisis. The Christianity he knew was
overwhelmingly a Gentile Christianity, and in Ae
1159 he is keen to mark its début, as well as to
suggest that the name ‘Christian’ was primarily
and principally applied to Gentile Christians.
‘Truly,’ as Renan observes, ‘it is remarkable to
think that, ten years after Jesus died, His religion
already possessed, in the capital of Syria, a name
in the Greek and Latin languages. Christianity
speaks Greek, and is now finally launched into that
great vortex of the Greek and Roman world which
it will never leave.’ Its weaning from the breast
of Judaism had commenced. And this was due to
that increasing sense of Christ’s personal authority
which has been already noted (cf. Amiel’s Journal
Intime, Eng. tr. p. 3f.). The more the significance
of this came to be grasped, as the new faith ex-
panded beyond the precincts of Judaism, the more
did the distinctive universalism of the Gospel
assume its true place.
For, while the basal conception of ‘ Christian’
is Semitic (‘Christ’), the linguistic termination
(-tanv) is either Latin or (more probably) Greek.
Even were it Latin, it would be hasty to attribute
(with Baur) the origin of the term to Rome, where
Tacitus is our first pagan witness for its currency
about A.D. 110. Early designations in -ιανός (cf.
Mk 3°, Justin’s Dial. 35) were not infrequent
among the Greeks of Asia Minor, and it is arbi-
trary scepticism to hold that St. Luke in Ac 11°
must have antedated and misplaced the origin of
the name, or that Tacitus has done the same.
The latter (Annal. xy. 44) describes Nero’s victims
as ‘men whom the common people loathed for
their secret crimes, calling them Chrestians. The
name was derived from Christ, who had been put
to death by Pontius Pilate, the procurator, during
the reign of Tiberius.’ Long before that period it
must have been the interest of the Jews and Chris-
tians alike to differentiate themselves to some
degree, one from the other. And the cireum-
stances of the Neronie émeute, which was probably
instigated by the Jews, must have made the dis-
tinction plain, once and for all, to the local
authorities. The inherent probabilities of the
2
vase, therefore, seem to preclude any reasonable
suspicion of a hystcron-proteron upon the part of
the Roman historian ; nor is it unnatural, even for
rigid historical criticism, to admit that the dis-
tinetive name of ‘ Christian’ may have been coined
and current nearly twenty years earlier upon the
CHRISTIAN
CHRISTIAN 317
banks of the Orontes. In short, both passages in
Acts give one the impression of being historically
authentic reminiscences; had the author been
more anxious to emphasize the new name, he
would not have employed it so sparely and inci-
dentally. It is curious to notice that, outside the
Church, Epictetus, slightly later than Paul, used
‘Galileans,’ while Marcus Aurelius employed
‘ Christians.’
In 1P 4° (cf. Lk 6%, Jn 16), together with
Pliny’s letters (pp. x. 96, 97) less than fifty years
later, we catch one glimpse of the connexion be-
tween the name ‘Christian’ and the civil or
social penalties in which it involved believers (cf.
Mommsen and Ramsay in Hapositor, 4th series
[1893], vol. vili.). To ‘suffer as a Christian’ 1.6.
(for being a Christian) covers a wide range of
experience, from molestation to official and even
capital punishment. The latter extreme, how-
ever, is not prominent in this passage, although
the term ἀπολογία certainly suggests it. But the
vague outline of 1 P 44*!7 is filled out and vividly
coloured by the later evidence of Pliny and of the
2nd cent. martyrs’ literature, which shows how
Christianity was treated as a forbidden or illicit
religion, hostile to the national cult, and therefore
exposing any of its adherents, without further
question, to the punishment of death.
How soon and how far the mere name of ‘Christian’ was
thus a capital offence, it is not easy to determine, but by the
2nd cent. the ordinary formula of confession before a magistrate
was, ‘Iam aChristian.’ This was put forward as the natural
and sufficient reason for refusing to swear by the genius of the
Emperor, and it was usually aecepted by the authorities as
final. Polycarp’s martyrdom at Smyrna is our earliest case in
point. But the story of the martyr Sanctus in Gaul, not long
afterwards, shows how widespread was this habit. When
tortured by the authorities, ‘he steeled himself so firmly
against them, that he would not so much as tell his name or
nation or city. All his answer to their inquiries was, ‘‘ I am a
Christian” ’ (Eus. ZH y. 1). Pliny’s account of his own judicial
proceedings is equally blunt and plain. When people were
accused of Christianity, he writes, ‘I asked them personally
whether they were Christians; if they confessed it, I asked
them a second and a third time, threatening them with punish-
ment. Then, if they adhered to their confession, I ordered
them off to execution.’ The test applied to doubtful cases was
that of offering worship to the Emperor’s statue. ‘No real
Christian,’ says the governor, ‘can be made to do that.’ Nor
could the name of Christian be legally borne by any one who
added sacrilege to high treason, in refusing to worship the
ancestral gods of the State. Christianity, tpso facto, was a
challenge to these deities. Hence to avow the name of ‘Chris-
tian’ was to expose oneself to pains and penalties, either volun-
tavily or involuntarily incurred.
Both 1 P 416 and Ac 268 denote the use of the
title by outsiders (Ja 2’ referring probably to
‘Christ,’ not ‘ Christian’), and this is corroborated
by the evidence of Christian writings in the 2nd
cent., where we find that its comparatively rare
occurrence is confined mainly to the Christian
apologists, 7.e. to writers who were principally
concerned with the outward relations ot the faith
to society and to the State. Traces of its use
among Christians themselves are to be found,
however, in Asia Minor during the first quarter
of the 2nd cent. (Ignatius—himself a native of
Antioch —and the Diduche, cf. Mart. Polyc. 3,
‘the God-beloved and God-fearing people of the
Christians’), in Gaul by the middle of the 2nd
cent. (Eus. HE v. 1), and elsewhere (cf. Ep. ad
Diogn. ‘ Christians are in the world as the soul is
in the body,’ ete. ete.).
on, the title came to assume the position of
authority which it has occupied for centuries,
though it does not seem to occur on a tomb till
the close of the 3rd cent. (Asia Minor). And this
process was marked, if not accelerated, by a double
play upon the word. (i.) [t was often pronounced
or mispronounced Chrestiani, as if derived from
the familar proper name Chrestus (cf. Suet.
Claud. 25), the vernacular adjective χρηστός being
equivalent to ‘kindly,’ ‘excellent,’ ‘worthy’ (cf.
|
Gradually, as time went |
1 P 23, perhaps a slight play on the word). Such
is the reading of δὲ in the NT passages, of most
of the inscriptions, of Tacitus (apparently), and
of Suetonius (Claud. 25, ‘Chresto’) certainly.
Writers like Justin, Tertullian, and Clement of
Alexandria catch at this idea. On the principle of
nomen et omen, they retort upon their critics and
opponents, ‘If our name has this meaning, why
hold it up to opprobrium? Does it not suit our
characters?’ Perhaps, too, as Harnack conjec-
tures, the very choice of the imperfect appellabat,
instead of the present appellat, indicates that
Tacitus seeks to draw a distinction between the
popular mistake in A.D, 64 and the more correct
usage of his own day (6. 110). ‘The common
people used to call them Chrestians (while nowa-
days, of course, we know that their proper name
is Christians).’ (ii.) The other play upon the word
was nore private, though it also may have origin-
ated in some popular etymology. It was con-
nected with Christos as ‘the anointed.’ ‘We are
called Christians,’ says Theophilus (ad Aufol. 1.
12), ‘ because we are anointed with the oil of God’
(χριόμεθα ἔλαιον Θεοῦ, cf. Tert. Apol. 3, and Justin’s
Dial.).—These and other motives contributed to
render the term so popular, that there are traces,
as early as Tertullian (dec. cit.) and Eusebius (ΠΗ Κ᾿
II. ili. 3), of a disposition to ignore or deny its
pagan origin and to represent it as a creation of
the Apostolic or early Christian consciousness. ‘So
holy and catholic a title, it was felt, must have
arisen inside the Church. Ignatius twice em-
ploys it in order to plead for Christians who are
Christians in deed as well as insname (Magn. 4,
Rom. 3)—a significant allusion. And he usually
employs ‘Christianity’ (which first occurs in his
Epistles, cf. Magn. 10, Phil. 6) as the antithesis
to Judaism.
Two and a half centuries later came Julian’s
reaction against the title. It was dictated, as
Gibbon admits, partly from a superstitious fear of
the sacred name, and partly from contempt for it
and for its bearers. ‘As he was sensible that the
Christians gloried in the name of their Redeemer,
he countenanced, and perhaps enjoined, the use
of the less honourable appellation of Galileans’
(Decline and Fall, ii. 540, Bells ed.). Naturally
this restriction had but a limited and transient
effect. ‘Christian’ became more and more the
watchword of the Church, despite the rise ot
‘eathole’ within and the use of ‘ Nazarene’ (in
the East) without.
In the modern usage of the term, three points
are of especial interest. One is the frank denial,
by Strauss and others, of any right, upon the part
of modern Christians, to the title in question (see
an uncompromising article in the Mortnightly Re-
view, March 1873, entitled ‘Are we yet Chris-
tians?’), presupposing that the Apostles’ Creed is
the norm of Christianity. The opposite view is
well put by Rathbone Greg (Creed of Christendom,
vol. i. p. xlixf.). ‘The second point is the deli-
berate repudiation of the name, as savouring of
sectarianism, by certain Unitarians (ef. the first
volume of Dr. Martineau’s Life, by Drummond
and Upton). And, thirdly, it is interesting to
notice that an American sect, dating from the
revival of 1801, called themselves by the name of
‘Christians’ (pronouncing the first ὁ long), in order
to bring out their unsectarian principles.
Bunyan made ‘Christian’ the antithesis to
‘eraceless,’ and various other definitions, practical
and philosophical, have been essayed. For Mr.
Samuel Laing’s, see his Problems of the Future
(ch. viii.), and cf. Mr. Le Gallienne’s Religion of a
Literary Man (ch. vii.), and Sir John Seeley’s
Natural Religion (pt. ii. ch. 111.).. ‘He who can
pray the Lord’s Prayer sincerely must surely be a
318
CHRISTIANITY
CHRISTIANITY
Christian,’ says Rothe; while Martineau’s defini-
tion, in reference to a church, runs thus: ‘im-
bued with Christ’s spirit, teaching His religion,
worshipping His God and Father, and accepting
His law of self-sacrifice.’ Perhaps the data of the
NT would be covered adequately by the declara-
tion that the name ‘ Christian’ belongs to any one
who can call Jesus ‘Lord in the sense of 1 Co 12°.
See, further, the following article.
LIrERATURE.—Besides the articles in Hastings’ DB i. pp. 384-
386 (Gayford), and Hneye. Bibl. i. 752-763 (Schmiedel), the
Commentaries on Ac 1120, and Histories of the Apostolic age
(s.v.), consult Lipsius, Uber d. Urspruny u. d. altesten Gebrauch
εἰ. Christennamens (1873); Keim, Aus dem Urchrist. (1878),
pp. 1-78; Carr in Expositor (June 1898), pp. 456-463 ; Harnack,
Ausbreitung des Christenthums (1902), pp. 37-88, 54, 57, 294—
297 [Eng. tr., see Index, s.v.]; also Zahn, Hinleitung ind. NT,
ii. pp. 34, 39-42; Renan, Les Apétres, p. 2841. ; Westcott’s note
in his Hpistles of St. John; Farrar, Paul (ch. xvi.); Lightfoot,
Apostolic Fathers, pt. ii. vol. i. 400 f., vol. ii. 134. On the later
use and form of the word consult Blass, [Zevmes (1895), p. 465 f. 5
Kattenbusch, Das apost. Symbolum, ii. 557f.; Watkins, Christ.
Quart. Review, i. p. 47 ἴ. ; Ramsay, Church in Roman Empire
(Index, s.v.); Sanday in Church Times (June 21), 1901; and
Leslie Stephen, An Agiostic’s Apolozy (pop. ed.), 130.
JAMES MOFFATT.
CHRISTIANITY is the name given to the religion
founded by Jesus of Nazareth, which is professed
by more than one-fourth of the human race, in-
cluding the foremost nations of the world. As an
abstract name for a fully developed religion, it
was not, and could not be, in use from the begin-
ning. Only gradually, as the Christian community
reached self-consciousness, and more especially as
need arose from without of distinguishing its ad-
hevents from those of other religions, was a dis-
tinctive name adopted.
It is not the object of this article to sketch in
outline the history of Christianity, to rehearse its
doctrines, describe its triumphs, or vindicate its
claims. But ina Dictionary of this kind it seems
desirable to inquire into (i) the history of the name
itself ; (2) the proper connotation of the name and
the best mode of ascertaining it; hence (3) the
significance of the changes which have passed over
Christianity in the process of its development ;
and (4) the essential character of the religion
named after Christ and portrayed in the Gospels.
i. HISTORY OF THE NAME.—This is fully dis-
cussed in the preceding article.
li. CONNOTATION OF THE NAME. —The diffi-
culties which arise when we attempt to mark out
the correct connotation of the word are obvious,
and the reason why some of them are insuperable
is not far to seek. A definition should be simple,
comprehensive, accurate ; whereas Christianity is
a complex multiform phenomenon, one which it is
impossible to survey from all sides at the same
time, and accuracy cannot be attained when a
word is employed in many different senses, and
when that which is to be defined is regarded from
so many subjective, diversified, and sometimes in-
compatible points of view. The essence of a great
historical religion—with a record extending over
some two thousand years, taking difierent shapes
in many diverse nationalities, itself developing
and altering its hue and character, if not its sub-
Stance, In successive generations—cannot easily be
summed up ina sentence. Whilst, if an attempt
be made to describe that element of permanent
vitality and validity in the religion which has re-
mained the same through ages of growth, un-
altered amidst the widest external and internal
modifications and changes, the character of such a
description obviously depends upon the viewpoint
of the observer.
A religion may be viewed from without or from
within, and an estimate made accordingly either
of its institutions and formularies and ceremonies,
or of its dominant ideas and prevailing principles.
To the Roman Catholie—who represents the most
widely spread and influential of the sections of
modern Christianity—its essence consists in sub-
mission to the authority of a supernaturally en-
dowed Church, to which, with the Pope at its
head, the power has been committed by Christ of
infallibly determining the Christian ereed, and of
finally directing Christian life and worship in all
its details. The Catholic Church, according to
Méhler and the modern school, is a prolongation
of the Incarnation. To the Orthodox Church of
the East, the paramount claim of the community
on the allegiance of the faithful depends on its
having preserved with purity and precision the
formal creed, fixed more than a thousand years
ago, from which, it is alleged, all other Christians
have more or less seriously departed. The Pro-
testant regards his religion from an entirely dif-
ferent standpoint. He may be of the ‘evangelical’
type, in which case he will probably define Chris-
tianity as the religion of those who have aecepted
the authority of an inspired and infallible Bible,
and who trust for salvation to the merits of the
death of Christ as their atoning Saviour. If he
claims to be a ‘liberal’ Protestant, he will de-
scribe Christianity as a life, not a creed, and
declare that all attempts to define belief concern-
ing the Person of Christ and other details of
Christian doctrine are so many mischievous re-
strictions, which only fetter the free thought and
action of the truly emancipated followers of Jesus.
Under such circumstances, can any considerable
measure of agreement as to the real essence of
Christianity be reached, or a truly scientifie deti-
nition be attained? The acceptance of the super-
natural authority of a single community would
put an end to all discussion, but those who appeal
to such authority are not agreed amongst tlem-
selves. As an alternative, it has been usual of
late to fall back on history as the sole possible
arbiter. The historian can only recount with as
much impartiality as possible the sequence of
events in a long and chequered career, and leave
the warring sects and parties to settle their differ-
ences as to what true Christianity is, without
making any attempt to judge between them.
Both these methods—the purely dogmatic and
the purely historical—virtually give up the pro-
blem. A better course than either may be adopted.
The historical method must be employed at the
outset ; a careful induction must lay the basis for
subsequent deduction and generalization. Chris-
tianity is an organism possessing a long and com-
plex history, not yet finished. That life-history
is better known and understood now than ever,
from the upspringing of the earliest germ onwards,
and the laws which have regulated its growth and
the principles operating in its development, can be
determined in broad outline by the scientific his-
torian without much fear of contradiction. But
the analogy between the growth of the Christian
religion and that of an animal or vegetable organ-
ism in physical nature, fails in certain important
respects. On the one hand, the growth of Chris-
tianity is not yet complete, the great consumma-
tion is as yet invisible. On the other, the origin
of the religion of Christ cannot be compared with
the deposit of a tiny and indeterminate and almost
invisible germ. Before the period covered by the
NT writings had passed, what may be called the
formative and normative stage of the religion was
complete. Sufficient advance had been made to
enable any critical student to arrive at a standard
by which the true character of subsequent develop-
ments may be judged. Criticism, for the purpose
of determining the facts of history, must not be
excluded from any scientific inquiry, as it virtually
is by those who invoke the infallible authority of
a Church or a Book. But, on the other hand,
CHRISTIANITY
criticism must not be merely subjective and arbi-
trary, else religious truth is simply that which
every man troweth, and Christianity nothing more
than what individual Christians choose to think
it. By a candid and careful comparison of the
religion in its simplicity and purity with the vari-
ous forms it has assumed in the course of centuries
amongst various nations and races, an answer may
be obtained to the question, What is Christianity ?
which is neither purely dogmatic on the one hand,
nor purely empirical on the other. As Dr. Hort
said of the Church, ‘ The lesson-book of the Ecclesia
is not a law-book but a history,’ so the history of
Christianity becomes a Jesson-book for all who
would understand its real essence.
The question thus opened up is emphatically
modern. As the name ‘ Christian’ was not given
till those outside the pale of the Church found it
necessary to differentiate the believer in Christ
from the adherent of other religions, so the need
of a scientific definition of Christianity was never
felt by faith, nor could one be formed, till the
standpoint was occupied from which the young
science of Comparative Religion has taken its rise.
We have therefore to ask, What was precisely the
nature of the religion founded by Christ as recorded
in the Gospels and Epistles? Has it remained in
substance the same without fundamental change?
If, as is obvious, it has marked]y altered during a
long period of growth and expansion, has its de-
velopment been legitimate or illegitimate? That
is, has the original type been steadfastly main-
tained, or has it been seriously perverted? Is a
norm fairly ascertainable and a return to type
from time to time possible ?
111. CHANGES IN CHRISTIANITY IN THE COURSE
OF ITS DEVELOPMENT. — During the lifetime of
Jesus, discipleship was largely of the nature of
personal attachment; it implied confidence created
by the teaching, the character, and the works of
the Master. Even during this period, however,
not only was there room for reflexion and inquiry
to arise, but eager inquiry was inevitable. The
appearance of a unique personality who spoke
as no other man spake and wrought works such
as none other man did, irresistibly suggested the
uestion, ‘Who art thou, what sayest thou of
thyself?’ Jesus Himself occasionally prompted
such inquiry, and was not satisfied with an un-
defined loyalty. Once, at least, He pointedly asked
His disciples, ‘Who say ye that I am?’ (Mt 16").
Again and again in the course of His ministry a
sifting took place, as the Master made more exact-
ing demands upon the allegiance of His followers,
afid showed that a cleavage must take place be-
tween those who really understood the drift of His
teaching and were prepared at all costs to obey it,
and those who did not. The tests which were
applied were for the most part practical in their
(es ‘Whosoever doth not bear his own cross
and come after me, cannot be my disciple’ (Lk 1457).
But the ‘offences’ which caused many to forsake
Him as a teacher were often occasioned by His
departure from traditional and familiar teaching,
His assertion of superiority to the highest Jewish
law (Mt 5?!-45), and His claims to a unique know-
ledge of the Father (Mt 11°7) and such a relation to
Him, that His disciples were called on to believe
not only the words that He spoke, but in Himself.
Christ’s ministry ended, however,—and, considering
its brief and tragie character, it was bound to end,
—without any clearly formulated answer to the
question as to what constituted true discipleship,
and how His followers were to be permanently dis-
tinguished from the rest of their nation and the
world.
The question now arises, whether the normative
period of the religion ends with the death of Christ.
CHRISTIANITY 319
May it be said that when His life is over, the work
of the prophet of Nazareth is complete, His words
have all been spoken, His religion propounded—it
remains that His followers obey His teaching?
This position has often been taken, and is usually
adopted by those who reject the supernatural
element in Christianity. Lessing is the father of
those who in modern times think it desirable to
return from ‘the Christian religion’ to ‘the religion
of Jesus.’ Harnack on the whole favours this
view, as when he urges that ‘the Gospel, as Jesus
proclaimed it, has to do with the Father only,
and not with the Son’; or again, that it is ‘the
Fatherhood of God applied to the whole of life—an
inner union with God’s will and God’s kingdom,
and a joyous certainty of the possession of eternal
blessings and protection from evil.’ But he else-
where rightly admits that ‘a complete answer to
the question, What is Christianity ? is impossible
so long as we are restricted to Jesus Christ’s teach-
ing alone.’ The more powerful a personality is,
‘the less can the sum-total of what he is be known
only by what he himself says and does’; we must
therefore include in our estimate the effects pro-
duced in his followers and the views taken by men
of his work. See art. BACK ΤῸ CHRIST.
Further, if the miracles of Christ, and especially
the great miracle of His Resurrection, be accepted,
the whole point of view is changed. The disciples,
during the short period of His ministry, were slow
and dull scholars ; only after the outpouring of the
Spirit were they able to understand who their
Master was and what He had done. Hence the
Church with a true instinet included the Acts and
the Epistles in the Canon, as well as the Gospels,
and to the whole of these documents we must turn
if we would understand what ‘ Christianity’ meant
to the Apostles and the first generation or two of
those who followed Christ. Without entering into
controversy such as would arise over exact detini-
tions, we may say broadly that Christ became in
thought, as He had always been in practice, the
centre of His own religion. It circled round the
Person, not so much of the Father as of the Son,
yet the Son as revealing the Father. Personal
relation to Christ continued to be—what it had
been in the days of His tlesh, but more consciously
and completely—the all-important feature in the
new religion. Significance attached not so much
to what Christ said—though the authority of His
words was supreme and absolute—as to what He
was and what He did. His death and resurrection
were seen to possess a special significance for the
religious life of the individual and.the community,
and thus from the time of St. Paul and the Apostles
onwards, but not till then, the Christian religion
was fairly complete in its outline and ready for
promulgation in the world.
But it is clear that the real significance of some
features in the new religion could be brought out
only in the course of history. The first great crisis
which tested the infant Church arose over the
question whether Christianity was to be a reformed
and spiritualized Judaism or a universal religion,
for the whole world and for all time. The con-
troversy recorded in Ac 15, aspects of which
emerge so frequently in St. Paul’s letters, was
fundamental and vital; the very existence of
Christianity was at stake. It was chiefly to the
Apostle Paul that the Church owed her hardly won
freedom from the bonds of Jewish ceremonial law
and the national and religious limitations identified
with it. Henceforward in Christ was to be neither
Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
free, but He Himself was all and in all.
The next two changes are not so clearly defin-
able, though they are hardly less important and
far-reaching. They were never brought to a
320 CHRISTIANITY
definite issue before a council or assembly, and
they do not come within the limits of the NT
period. None the less they were fundamental in
their character. They concern respectively creed
and practice, doctrine and organization. In the
first flush of enthusiasm which belongs to the
earliest stage of a religious movement, the emo-
tional—which means very largely the motive or
dynamical—element is both pure and powerful.
Belief, worship, spontaneous fulfilment of a high
ethical standard, religious assurance and confident
triumph over the world—all seem to flow forth
easily and naturally from the fresh springs of a
new life. But, as man is now constituted, this
happy condition cannot last very long. A stage
succeeds in which the white-hot metal cools and
must take hard and definite shape. Faith passes
into a formulated creed, the spirit of free, spon-
taneous worship shrinks within the limits of
reverently ordered forms, the general sense of
brotherhood narrows down into the ordered rela-
tionships of a constituted society, charismatic
gifts are exchanged for the privileges which
belong to certain defined ranks and orders of
clergy; and, when the whole process is over,
whilst the religion may remain the same in
appearance, and to a great extent in character, it
is nevertheless seriously changed. In Christianity
such processes of development were proceeding,
gradually but on the whole rapidly, during the
latter half of the 2nd and the opening of the 3rd
century. By the middle of the 3rd century the
transmutation was well-nigh complete.
If at this stage the question, What is Christi-
anity? were asked, a twofold answer would be
returned. So far as its intellectual aspects are
concerned, the substance of the Christian faith is
summed up in certain forms of words accepted and
accounted orthodox by the Church. So far as
external position and status are concerned, the
test of a man’s Christianity lies in his association
with a definitely constituted community known as
the Church, possessing an organization of its own,
which, with every decade, becomes more fixed and
formal, less elastic in its constitution, and more
exacting in its demands upon those who claim to
be regarded as true Christians.
Such changes as these are in themselves not to
be regarded as marking either an essential advance
or a necessary retrogression. All depends on the
way in which they are carried out. In human life,
as we know it, they are inevitable. The mollusc
must secrete its own shell if it is to live in the
midst of a given environment. At the same time,
in the history of a religion, such a process is critical
in the extreme. The loss of enthusiasm and elas-
ticity may be counterbalanced by increased con-
solidation, by the gain of a greater power of
resisting attacks and retaining adherents. If the
complaint is made that the expression of belief has
become stiff and formal, the reply is obvious that
venuine faith cannot long remain vague and inde-
terminate. The Christian must know what is
implied in worshipping Christ as Lord, must learn
the meaning of the baptismal formula, and must
belong to a specific community, which for the sake
of self-preservation must impose conditions of
membership and translate abstract principles into
definite codes and prescriptions. If a community
1s to exist in the presence of a hostile world, or to
do its own work well as its numbers multiply,
it must organize; and thus ecclesiastical orders
rules, and formule inevitably arise. :
But the mode in which such processes are carried
out varies considerably. The formulation and con-
solidation may be inefficiently done, in which case
the young community is in danger of failing to
pieces like a rope of sand. Or tie organization
CHRISTIANITY
may be excessive, in which case formalism and
fossilization set in. One of the chief dangers
arises from the influx of unworthy or half-hearted
members, those with whom religion is a tradition,
not a living personal energy. ‘When those who
have laid hold upon the faith as great spoil are
joined by crowds of others who wrap it round them
like an outer garment, a revolution always occurs.’
And especially when at such an epoch it is sought
to define the essentials of a religion, there is the
utmost danger lest secondary elements should be
confused with the primary, lest an orthodox creed
should be substituted for a living faith, and out-
ward conformity with human prescriptions take
the place of personal allegiance to a Divine and
living Lord.
Whatever be thought of the way in which {1115
all-important change was effected in the first
instance,—that is to say, the transition from
Christianity viewed as a life to Christianit
viewed as. a system of dogmatic belief and ecclesi-
astical organization, —few will deny that before
long the alteration was so great that it may be
said the religion itself was transformed. By the
orthodox Roman Catholic this transformation is
considered to be Divinely ordered ; the process is
regarded as one of steady advance and improve-
ment—as a perfect child might pass into an equally
admirable youth and man. According to Newman’s
theory, the original germs of doctrine and worship
were developed normally and legitimately as
determined by the criteria he specities—Preserva-
tion of type, Continuity of Principle, Power of
assimilation, Logical sequence, and the rest.
Loisy, who is severely critical of the documents
of the NT, holds the same view of the development
of an infallible Church. To the eyes of others the
change effected between the 2nd and the 6th
centuries appears to be one of gradual but steady
degeneration. In their view a living religion has
hardened into a technical theology, vital union
with Christ has passed into submission to the
ordinances of a fast deteriorating Church, and
the happy fellowship of believers in a common
salvation and the enjoyment of a new life has
almost disappeared under the heavy bondage of
ceremonial observances and ecclesiastical absolut-
ism.
The substitution of the worship of the Virgin
Mary as an intercessor with her Divine Son for
reverent intercourse with Christ Himself; the
offering of the sacrifice of the Mass by an offici-
ating priest for the benefit of the living and the
dead, instead of a simple observance of communion
with Christ and fellow-disciples at the Lord’s
Table; the obtaining of absolution only after
private confession to a priest Divinely appointed
to dispense it, in place of free and direct forgive-
ness granted to the penitent believer in Christ,—
changes like these made in a religion are not slight
and superficial. To some they represent a transi-
tion from crude infancy to vigorous maturity ; to
others they indicate deep-seated degeneration and
the utter perversion of a pure and spiritual re-
ligious faith. An organism in process of growth
depends upon its environment without, as well as
its own living energies within. The history of the
Christian Church does not present a complete
parallel to this. No true Christian can believe
either that it was left to a chance current of
events, or that it was simply determined from
without by natural causes. But the external
factors which largely influenced the development
of Christianity —Jewish beliefs and precedents,
Greek philosophy and _ intellectual habitudes,
Roman polity and law, the superstitious ideas and
observances of paganism—must be taken into
account by those who are studying the nature of
?
4
t
CHRISTIANITY
CHRISTIANITY 321
the change which came over Christianity in the
first thousand years of its history.
The point at issue in the 16th cent. between
Roman Catholics and Protestants, one which still
divides Christendom, concerned the real nature of
this development. Had the growth of fifteen
hundred years in doctrine, worship, and organiza-
tion simply made explicit what was implicit in
the New Testament ; or were the accretions to the
original faith excrescences, exaggerations, or more
serious corruptions; and how was a line to be
drawn between false and true? The Reformation
was a protest against abuses which had become
ingrained in Catholicism. The need of ‘ reform in
head and members’ had been felt and acknow-
ledged long before, and only when repeated ettorts
to secure it peaceably had proved tutile was it
seen that a violent cataclysm like that brought
about by Luther was necessary before effectual
improvement could be attained. The Reformers
claimed to be returning to original principles—to
the New Testament instead of the Church; to
justification by faith instead of salvation by
baptism, absolution, and the Mass; and to direct
acknowledgment of the Headship of Christ instead
of blind submission to the edicts of His vicar upon
earth. Luther, who had intended only to remove
some obvious abuses which disfigured the creed
and practice of the Church he loved, found himself
cutting at the very roots of ecclesiastical authority
and institutional religion. But, consciously or un-
consciously, the movement of which he was partly
the originator, partly the organ and servant, meant
a resolute effort to return to the faith and spirit of
primitive Christianity.
This effort was not final, of course. It is easy
now to condemn Luther's procedure as illogical
and indefensible, to say that he should either have
gone further or not so far. Doubtless the result
of the conflict between Romanism and Protestant-
ism in the 16th cent. was not ultimate: the issues
raised by Luther went deeper than he intended,
but they were not deep and far-reaching enough.
To every generation and to every century its
own task. But the whole Reformation movement
showed that Christianity as a religion possessed
remarkable recuperative power ; that the organism
could throw off a considerable portion of what
seemed its very substance, not only without injury
to its life, but with marvellous increase to its
vigour ; and that the essence of the religion did
not lie where the Roman Catholie Chureh had
sought to place it. Subsequent history has con-
firmed this. ‘Evangelical revivals,’ great mis-
sionary enterprises, remarkable extensions of the
old religion in new lands and under new con-
ditions, unexpected manifestations of new features
and resuscitation of pristine energies, have during
the last two or three centuries illustrated afresh
the saine power of recovery and spiritual reinforce-
ment, and raised afresh the question as to what
constitutes the essence of a religion which is so
full of vitality and so capable of developing from
within unanticipated and apparently inexhaustible
energies. The Christianity of to-day embraces
a multitude of systems and organizations, it in-
cludes most varied creeds and cults, it influences
societies and civilizations that are worlds apart,
and the question is perpetually recurring whether
there be indeed one spirit and aim pervading the
whole, and if so, where it lies and what it is.
This question becomes the more pressing when
the future is contemplated. Many are prepared
for still more striking developments in the 20th
century. The spectacle of two or three great
historical Churches on the one hand_ preserving
the kind of stability which is gained by outward
conformity to one doctrinal creed and ecclesiastical
VOL. I.—2I
system, and, on the other, an almost endless diver-
sity of sects and denominations, with a- tendency
to fissiparous multiplication—cannot represent the
τέλος, the ideal, the goal of the Christian religion.
Christianity cannot be identified with one Church,
or with all the Churches. Whilst many of these
are enfeebled by age, the religion itself is young
with a perpetually renewed vigour, and not for
centuries has it shown more certain signs of
freshly budding energy. Each new age brings
new problems. As they arise, the power and
permanence of a religion are tested by its ability
to grapple with and to solve them, and by its
success or failure is it judged. The problems of
the present and the near future are mainly social,
and the complaint is freely made that Christianity
has proved itself unable to cope with them. But
the principles and capabilities of a religion cannot
be gauged by those of its representatives and ex-
ponents at a particular epoch. The assailants of
Christianity as it is are often the allies of Chris-
tianity as it should be and will be. History has
too frequently suggested the question which the
poet asks of the suffering Christ—‘ Say, was not
this Thy passion, to foreknow | In death’s worst
hour the works of Christian men?’ What new
regenerative influences, swaying the whole of
society with wider and freer quickening power,
will be developed in the 20th cent. none can tell.
But the present state of Christendom, no less than
a survey of two thousand years of history, is anew
compelling men to inquire, What, then, is the
essence of Christianity ?
iv. ESSENTIAL CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY.—
The interpretation of the «facts thus hastily
sketched appears to be this. Christianity in the
concrete has been far from perfect, that is ob-
vious; its serious and widespread corruptions
have often proved a scandal and a stumbling-
block. But neither has its history manifested a
mere perversion of a great and noble ideal. Again
and again in the darkest hour light has shone
forth, and at the lowest ebb a new flood-tide of
energy has arisen, making it possible to distin-
guish the real religion in its purity and power
from its actual embodiment in decadent and un-
worthy representatives. — ,
What we see in Christian history, as in the
personal history of Christ upon earth, is the pro-
vressive development of a Divine Thought unfold-
ing itself in spite of virulent opposition, under
pressure of extreme difficulties, struggling against
the misrepresentations of false friends and imprint-
ing its likeness upon most unpromising and un-
satisfactory material. When it first appeared on
the earth, embodied in the Person and the Work,
as well as the teaching, of Jesus Christ, the Divine
Idea shone with the brightness of a new sun in
the spiritual firmament. It was not developed out
of Judaism, the Jews vere its bitterest opponents :
it was not indebted to Greek philosophic thought
or to Roman political science, though afterwards
it made use of and powerfully influenced both ;
it had nothing in common with the current super-
stitions of Oriental religions ; it did not owe its
origin to some cunningly devised religious syncret-
ism, such as was not uncommon at the time when
Christianity began to infuse life into the declining
Roman Empire. A new idea of God, of man, and
of the true reconciliation of man to God, formed
the core and nucleus of the new faith. In the
earliest records this idea appears as the germ of a
nascent religion, a sketch in outline which remains
to be filled up. In the history of nineteen cen-
turies its likeness is to be discerned only as an
image reflected in a dimly burnished mirror, in
a troubled and turbid pool. None the less the
dominant idea remains ; as St. Paul expresses it,
22 CHRISTIANITY
ὃ Ἶ 5
the licht of the knowledge of the glory of God is
. 5. A ¢ ~ 6
seen in a face—the face of Jesus Christ (2 Co 4°).
Lecky, writing simply as a historian of European
morals, describes it thus (Hist. Hur. Mor." (1894)
ii. 8 f.)—
‘It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an
ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen cen-
turies has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love ;
has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, tempera-
ments, and conditions ; has been not only the highest pattern of
virtue but the strongest incentive to its practice ; and has exer-
cised so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the
simple record of three short years of active life has done more
to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of
philosophers, and all the exhortations of moralists.’
Whether the spectacle of an ideal human char-
acter alone has done this remains to be seen, but
it is possible with care to distinguish between the
glory of the Divine Thought and the imperfect
medium through which its light has filtered. We
see truth manifested amidst crudities and insin-
cerities, amidst falsehoods which are bad and
half-truths which are often worse; a pure and
lofty character struggling, mostly in vain, for
adequate expression; a kingdom not come but
coming, of which we cannot say ‘Lo here’ or ‘ Lo
there,’ for it floats only in the midst of men as
they move, in their hearts as they ponder and feel
and hope—not as an achievement, not as a posses-
sion, but asa magnilicent conception, an carnest
longing, and a never fully attained, but ever to be
attained, ideal.
In what, then, lies the perennial and imperish-
able essence of the ever changing phenomenon
ealled Christianity? The unknown writer of the
Epistle to Diognetus wrote in the 2nd century—
‘What the soul is in the body, this the Christians are in the
world. The 5011] 15 spread through all the members of the body,
and Christians through the divers cities of the world. The
soul hath its abode in the body, and yet it is not of the body.
So Christians have their abode in the world, and yet they are
not of the world.’
If for ‘ Christians’ we read ‘ Christianity,’ where
is the soul, or vital spark, of the religion to be
found? Nearly all are agreed that the centre of
the Christian religion is, in some sense, the Person
of its Founder. De Pressensé closes an article
on the subject by saying, ‘Christianity is Jesus
Christ.” But it is the sense in which such words
are to be interpreted that is all-important. The
relation of Christ to the religion called by His
name is certainly not that of Moses to Judaism,
or that of Confucius to Confucianism. But
neither does He stand related to Christianity as
do Buddha and Mohammed to the religions named
after them. Not as a prophet of Nazareth, a re-
ligious and ethical teacher, however lofty and
inspiring, does Christ stand at the centre of
history. As Dr. Fairbairn has said, ‘It is not
Jesus of Nazareth who has so powerfully entered
into history ; it is the deified Christ who has been
believed, loved, and obeyed as the Saviour of the
vorld. . If the doctrine of the Person of Christ
were explicable as the mere mythical apotheosis of
Jesus of Nazareth, it would become the most in-
solent and fateful anomaly in history.’ And as
the secret 1s not to be found in the ethies, neither
does it lie in the ‘religion of Jesus.’ Harnack is
the modern representative of those who take this
view when he says :
‘The Christian religion is something simple and sublime ; it
means one thing and one thing only : eternal life in the midst
of time, by the strength and under the eyes of God.’
That is a fine definition of Theism, not of the
historical Christianity which has done so much to
revenerate the world.
religion be said to lie
temper and conduct.
healthiness and abund
Nor can the essence of any
in its life, if by that be meant
hese are fruits, and by their
ance we judge of the sound-
CHRISTIANITY
ness and vigour of the tree. But the life of a re-
ligion in the proper sense of the word lies far deeper.
The chief modern definitions of Christianity
have been ably summarized and reviewed by
Professor Adams Brown, who, in his Essence of
Christianity, has produced an illuminating study
in the history of definition which goes far to solve
the problem beforeus. Schleiermacher, Hevel, and
Ritschl are epoch-marking names in the history of
Christianity during the last century, and their
attempts at definition probably meet better than
most others the conditions demanded by modern
inquirers. Schleiermacher’s view is thus summed
up by Professor Adams Brown—
‘Christianity is that historic religion, founded by Jesus of
Nazareth and having its bond of union in the redemption medi-
ated by Him, in which the true relation between God and man
has for the tirst time found complete and adequate expression,
and which, throughout all the changes of intellectual and ‘social
environment which the centuries have brought, still continues
to maintain itself as the religion best worthy of the allegiance
of thoughtful and earnest men.’
Hegel represents Christianity as the absolute
religion, because in it is to be seen worked out in
history the eternal dialectic immanent in the Being
of God Himself, the ultimate principle of the God-
head, the Father, being revealed in the Son, the
principle of difference, returning again in the syn-
thesis of redemption. Finally, in the Holy Spirit
Father and Son recognize their unity, and God as
Spirit comes to full consciousness of Himself in
history. Christianity, he says, is essentially the
religion of the Spirit. Ritschl lays more stress on
the idea of the Kingdom of God, but he follows in
the steps of Schleiermacher when he defines Chris-
tianity as—
‘the monotheistic, completely spiritual, and ethical religion,
which, based on the life of its author as Redeemer and as
founder of the kingdom of God, consists in the freedom of the
children of God, involves the impulse to conduct from the
motive of love, aims at the moral organization of mankind, and
grounds blessedness on the relation of sonship to God, as well
as on the kingdom of God’ (Justif. and Recone., Eng. tr. p. 13).
Dorner is one of the best representatives of the
many who lay chief stress upon the Incarnation
as the ‘central idea and fundamental fact’ of
Christianity, and who find in mediation through
incarnation its archetypal thought. Professor
Adams Brown himself considers the chief diff-
culty in framing a definition of Christianity to lie
in the attempt to reconcile its historical and its
absolute character, its natural and its supernatural
elements—the two contrasted tendencies which
mark respectively (1) its resemblance to other
faiths, and its realization of their imperfect
ideals ; and (2) its difference from all other re-
ligions as the one direct and supreme revelation
from God Himself. His own solution may be
indicated in the following sentences :
‘Christianity, as modern Christian thought understands it, is
the religion of Divine sonship and human brotherhood revealed
and realized through Jesus Christ. As such it is the fulfilment
and completion of all earlier forms of religion, and the appointed
means for the redemption of mankind through the realization
of the kingdom of God. Its central figure is Jesus Christ, who
is not only the revelation of the divine ideal for man, but also,
through the transforming influence which He exerts over His
followers, the most powerful means of realizing that ideal
among men. The possession in Christ of thesupreme revelation
of God’s love and power constitutes the distinctive mark of
Christianity, and justifies its claim to be the final religion’
(Essence of Christianity, 309).
These definitions are cumbrous, and no one of
them is fully satisfactory. It is, however, clear
that Christianity can never be properly defined if
it is regarded merely as a philosophy, a system of
ideas ; or as a code of ethics, providing a standard
of conduct; or as an ecclesiastical system, em-
bodying rites and ceremonies of worship and
institutions which are understood to be channels
It is a religion, that
of salvation for mankind.
An
CHRISTIANITY
is, its root or spring lies in the relations which it
reveals and establishes between God and men. It
was the interpretation of the Person of Christ, the
significance. found in Him and His work, . that
changed the whole view of God and of human
history, first for the Apostles and afterwards for
all who followed them. Christ was to them
doubtless a Lawgiver, His command was final.
He was also an Example, perfect and flawless, the
imitation of whom formed the highest conceivable
standard of life. But unless He had been much
more than this, the Christianity of history would
never have come into being; and if it had had no
other gospel for men than the most sublime human
prophet could bring, it would not have regenerated
mankind as it has done.
A religion may be described objectively or sub-
jectively, from without or from within, As an
objective religion in the world, Christianity is an
ethical and spiritual monotheism of a high type,
the highest that has been known in history, when
its character and effects are fully estimated. So
far there is general agreement. But the logical
differentia has yet to be specified, and here opinions
vary. If the characteristic and distinguishing
doctrinal teaching of Christianity be considered,
it may be said that the Incarnation is its central
idea. But this must never be interpreted apart
from Christ’s whole work, including His death
and resurrection, and the main purpose of that
work, the Redemption of mankind, that Salvation
and Reconciliation which He has made possible
and open to all. Opinions may differ as to the
exact mode in which this has been effected, but
the Cross of Christ is its central feature. Chris-
tianity without a Saviour is a face without an eye,
a body without.a soul.
If the Christian religion be regarded from
within, as a subjective, personal experience, its
essence lies in a new life, conceived in a new
spirit and animated by a new power. This power
is directly imparted by the Spirit of God, but on
the human side it arises from the new conceptions
of God given by Christ and the new relation to
Him established through the redemption and
mediation of His Son. If the religion be viewed
on its racial and social side, it may be described as
having for its object the establishment of a
brotherhood of mankind based on the Fatherhood
of God and the Elder Brotherhood of Christ; a
view of man which implies the inestimable indivi-
dual worth of each, and the ultimate union of all
in a renewed Order of which Christ has laid the
foundation, given the foretaste, and promised the
complete consummation and fruition.
The secret of the power of Christianity lies in the
conviction which it engenders that—granted the
fundamental principles of Theism—God has Him-
self undertaken the cause of man; that He enters
into man’s weakness, feels with his sorrows, and,
chiefly, that He bears the terrible burden of man’s
sins ; all this being assured by the gift of His Son
and the work which the Son Himself has accom-
plished and is still earrying on by His Spirit. The
metaphysical nature of Christ’s Person may not be
capable of being adequately expressed in words ;
the full scope of His redeeming work may _ be
variously understood and may be incapable of being
condensed into a formula ; while Christians may
widely differ as to the way in which the benefits
of that work are best appropriated and realized
and distributed by His Church in the world. But
the essence of the religion lies in its conception of
the spiritual needs of man, the ends for which he
exists, his sin and failure to realize those ends ; in
its proclamation of Christ, the once dying and now
ever living Lord as Himself the Way, through
whom sin may be forgiven and failure remedied ;
CHRISTIANITY
323
and above all, in the moral and spiritual dynamic
which is supplied by faith in the great Central
Person of the whole religion, and the life in Him
which is:rendered possible for every believer by
the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
As to the claims of Christianity to be the only
permanent, universal, and final religion for man-
kind, no vindication of them can amount to actual
demonstration. But the argument would take
the direction of inquiring whether history thus far
confirms the high claim of Christianity to suflice
for the needs of man as man. Is 'lertullian’s
phrase anima naturaliter Christiana lorne out
by facts? Has Christianity, not in its miserably
imperfect and often utterly misleading concrete
forms, but in the idea of its Founder and the best
attempts made to realize it, shown the ‘ promise
and potency’ of a universal religion for the race?
Such an argument would have to take full account
of criticisms like those of Nietzsche and his school,
who complain that Christianity in its tenderness
towards the weak and erring, in its hallowing of
sorrow and its preoccupation with the evil of sin,
profoundly misunderstands human nature and
man’s position in the Universe ; that it amounts,
in fact, to a worship of failure and decay. These
criticisms have not been widely accepted as valid,
and they can easily be met—they were, indeed,
substantially anticipated by Celsus and refuted
by Origen. But such objections are sure to recur,
together with kindred difficulties arising from a
naturalistic view of man which claims to be sup-
ported by physical science. They ean be eftectu-
ally repelled only by practical proof that the
teaching of Christianity accords with the facts of
human nature and meets the needs of human
life more completely than any other system of
philosophy or religion.
On the other hand, the triumphs which Chris-
tianity has already achieved; the power it has
manifested of being able to satisfy new and unex-
pected claims; the excellence of its ideal of char-
acter, one which cannot be transcended so long as
human nature continues to be what it is; the sue-
cess with which it has brought the very highest
type of character within reach of the lowest, as
attested by the experience of millions; the power
of recovery which it has exhibited, when its
teaching has been traduced and its spirit and aims
degraded by prominent professors and representa-
tives ;—these, with other similar characteristics,
go far towards proving the Divine origin of Chiis-
tianity, and its claim to be the perfect religion of
humanity, sufficing for all men and for all time.
It is certain, however, that if the true spirit of
the Christian religion is to be rightly displayed
generation after generation, and its work rightly
done in the world, there must be a constant
‘return to Christ’ on the part of His Church.
The phrase, of course, must be adequately inter-
preted. Much has been said concerning the
‘recovery of the historical Christ’ as characteristic
of our time, and the expression represents an
important truth. Christ is seen more and more
clearly to be ‘the end of eritical and historical
inquiry’ and ‘the starting-place of constructive
thought.’ But it is the whole Christ of the NT
who is the norm in Christian theology, the object
of Christian worship, the guide of Christian
practice. The Christ of the Epistles cannot be
separated from the Christ of the Gospels. The
modern attempt, fashionable in some quarters, to
distinguish between the Synoptic Gospels on the
one hand as historic, and the Fourth Gospel and
the Epistles on the other as dogmatic, cannot be
consistently maintained, and does not adequately
cover the facts of the case. The Sermon on the
Mount does not reveal to us the entire Christ, nor
324 CHRISTMAS
CHURCH
the first chapter of St. John, nor the Epistle to the
Romans ; but there is no inconsistency between
these representations of the Christians’ Lord.
There is no contradiction between the Christ of
the Synoptic Gospels and the Christ of Apostolic
experience and the Christ of historical Christianity,
except for those who reject the element of the
supernatural, which, as a matter of fact, pervades
the whole. The Christ of the NT is the object of
Christian faith, as well as the Founder of the
Christian religion in its historical continuity. To
Him it is necessary for His Church—compassed
with ignorance and infirmity and not yet fully
purged from its sins—continually to ‘return,
generation aftec generation, if His religion is to
be preserved in its purity and transmitted in its
power. The vitality of Christianity in the indi-
vidual heart and in the life of the community
depends upon the closeness of personal communion
with Christ maintained through His indwelling
Spirit. ‘To steep ourselves in Him is still the
chief matter,’ says Harnack in one place. ‘ Abide
in me and I in you,’ was His own word to His first
disciples, and it must ever be obeyed, if the char-
acteristic fruit of that Vine is to be seen in abund-
ance on its dependent branches.
What the Christianity of the future might he
and would be, if this command were adequately
fulfilled, none can say; the capacities of the
religion have been as yet only partially tested.
In Christ, as St. Paul tanght, are ‘all the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge’—the treasures of all-
subduing love, of assimilating and transmuting
power, of uplifting and purifying grace for the
nations—‘ hidden’ (Col 2°). And the treasure is
still hidden, because His followers, its custodians
and stewards, do not adequately make it known
—have not, indeed, adequately discovered it for
themselves. But if in every generation there be,
as there should be, a renewal of the very springs
of Christian life by fresh recourse to the Fountain-
head, then new claims, new needs, new problems,
will only afford occasion for new triumphs of
Christ and His Cross—the message of Divine self-
sacrilice to the uttermost in redemption, as the one
means of salvation for a sinning and suffering world.
LITERATURE.—F rom amongst the vast number of books which
bear on the subject of this article, a very few recent volumes
and articles may be mentioned here :—R. 8. Storrs, The Divine
Origin of Christianity, 1885; A. Harnack, Das Wesen des
Christentums, 1900 [tr. by T. B. Saunders, What is Christianity ?
1901], and Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in
den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, 1902 (tr. by J. Moffatt, The Exz-
pansion of Christianity, 1905]; A. M. Fairbairn, The Place of
Christ in Modern Theology, 1893, and Philosophy of the
Christian Religion, 1902; W. Adams Brown, The Essence of
Christianity, 1903 ; see also the article on ‘Christian, The Name
of,’ by P. W. Schmiedel in the Eneye. Bibl. i. 752 ff., and that
on ‘Christianity’ by T. M. Lindsay in the Eneye. Brit.9
W. T. DAVISON.
CHRISTMAS.—See CALENDAR, and DATES, § 1.
CHRISTOLOGY.—See Person or Curist.
CHRONOLOGY.—See DatTrEs.
CHURCH.—It is proposed in this article to deal
with the references to the Church in the Gospels,
particularly as they bear upon Christ’s relation to
the Church. The other books of the NT, and the
beliefs and practices of the early ages of Christi-
anity, will be referred to only as far as they appear
to throw light upon the teaching and actions of
Christ as recorded in the Gospels. It will be
assuined that the accounts of the life and teaching
of Christ contained in the four Gospels as well as the
narrative of the Acts are substantially historical,
and that the thirteen Epistles usually ascribed to
St. Paul are genuine. Without this limitation the
inquiry would be of quite a different character,
The historical society known as the Church has
never claimed to have come into complete exist-
ence until the day of Pentecost, and its growth and
organization were a gradual process. We shall
not, therefore, on any theory, expect to find in the
Gospels a complete and explicit account of the
foundation and characteristics of the Church, and
it will be a convenient method of procedure to take
the chief elements of the conception of the Church
which was generally accepted at a later date, when
the community was fully constituted, and to in-
quire how far these can be traced back to the
teaching of Christ Himself, and how far they may
be regarded as later accretions, or the natural but
not necessary development of ideas which existed
before, if at all, only in germ. Now our know-
ledge of the first days of Christianity derived from
the NT is but fragmentary, and the period immedi-
ately following is one of great obscurity ; but from
the middle of the 2nd cent. there is no doubt about
the prevalent and almost universal belief of
Christians with regard to the Chureh. It was
believed that the Church, as it then existed, was
a society founded by Christ as an integral part of
His work for mankind. It was further believed
that the Church possessed characteristies which
were summed up under the words, One, Holy,
Catholic, and Apostolic. And while it was believed
that the Church stood in the most intimate spiritual
relation to Christ, it was also held that its outward
unity and continuity were secured by a definite
organization and form of government, the essential
features of which had been imposed upon the
Church by the Apostles, acting under a commission
given them by Christ Himself. The Church was
further regarded as the instrument appointed by
Christ for the completion of His work for mankind.
The fact that these beliefs were generally held, at
all events from the middle of the 2nd cent. on-
wards, suggests the following division of the subject.
First, it will be asked whether the belief that it
was Christ’s intention to found a visible society is
borne out (1) by what we know of His own actions
and teaching, and (2) by the records of the earliest
days of Christian life. Secondly, the character-
istics ascribed to the Church in the Christian creeds
will be examined in the light of the NT writings.
i. Indications of a visible Church.
1. In the teaching and actions of Christ : (a) the Messi-
anic claim and the Kingdom of God ; (ὁ) the body
of disciples ; (c) the institution of sacraments.
2. In the earliest period of Christian history.
ii. Characteristics of the Church.
1. Unity : (4) essential and transcendental ; (Ὁ) taking
outward expression ; (6) imperfect.
2. Holiness.
3. Catholicity.
4. Apostolicity: (a) doctrine; (Ὁ) worship; (6) discip-
line.
Note.—The words ‘Church’ and ‘ Ecclesia.’
Literature.
1. INDICATIONS OF A VISIBLE CHURCH. —1. In
the Teaching and Actions of Christ.—(a) Relation
of Christ to the Messianic Hope and the Kingdom
of God.—The idea of a covenant relation between
God and man is found in the earliest records of the
Hebrew race. Covenants were at first made with
individuals and families; but with the beginning
of Jewish nationality there is a consciousness of a
peculiar relation between the nation and Jehovah.
The idea of a national God was, of course, shared
by the Jews with all the nations with which they
came into contact ; but as their conception of the
Deity advanced, and their religion developed
through monolatry into a pure monotheism, the
idea of Jehovah as a national God passed into the
idea of the selection of Israel by the one God of all
the earth for a special destiny and special privi-
leges. Thus the Jewish religion was a religion of
hope, and its Golden Age was in the future. This
=. δὴ
CHURCH
national hope became closely associated in thought
with the kingdom,—at first the actual kingdom,
and then the kingdom to be restored in the future.
After the fall of the actual kingdom, the idea of
the future kingdom became, to a great extent,
idealized, and in close connexion with it there grew
up the expectation of a personal Messiah. Tt is
not necessary for the present purpose to inquire
when this expectation first becomes apparent,
or to trace the growth of the Messianic hope in
detail. The important fact is that at the time of
Christ’s birth Israel as a nation was looking for a
kingdom of God and a Messianic King. With
many, perhaps with most, the expectation may
have been mainly that of an independent and
powerful earthly kingdom; but the remains of
Jewish literature in the last century before Christ
show that the more spiritually minded Jews un-
doubtedly looked for a kingdom which would in-
deed have Jerusalem for its centre, and of which
the faithful Jews would be the nucleus, but which
would also be world-wide and spiritual in character.
It must also be noticed that the doctrine of a Rem-
nant, which had taken strong hold of the Jewish
mind since the time of Isaiah, had accustomed them
to think of a community of the faithful, within and
growing out of the existing nation, who should in
a special sense be the heirs of the promises.
The most conspicuons feature in the teaching of
Christ, as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, is un-
doubtedly His claim to be the Messiah, and His
announcement of the coming of the Kingdom of
God. In using these terms, He must have intended
to appeal to, and to a great extent to sanction,
the ideas and hopes of those whom He addressed.
And yet it very soon became plain that the king-
dom which He preached was something very differ-
ent from anything that the most spiritual of the
Jews had conceived. The old Jewish kings had
led the people in war, they had judged them in
peace, they had levied tribute ; but these functions
Christ expressly disclaimed. He would not allow
His followers to think of appealing to force (Mt
26°), He repudiated the idea of being a ruler or
a judge of ordinary contentions (Lk 12"), He ac-
cepted the payment of tribute to an alien potentate
as a thing indifferent (Mk 1917, But, on the other
hand, the great acts which Jehovah Himself had
performed for the Jewish nation, in virtue of which
He Himself had been regarded as their King,
Christ performed for a new nation. Jehovah had
called Abraham and the patriarchs, and had at-
tached them to Himself by intimate ties and
covenants, and out of their seed had formed a
nation which He ruled; and, in the second place,
He had given this nation His own law. So Christ
‘alled from among the Jews His own disciples,
from whom He required an absolute personal de-
votion, and to them He delivered a new law to
fulfil or supersede the old (Mt 51:7). See, further,
art. KINGDOM OF GOD.
What is the relation of the Kingdom of God to
the Church ?—The two things are not simply iden-
tical, and the predominant sense of the Kingdom
in the NT appears to be rather that of a reign than
of a realm. But these two ideas are complement-
ary, and the one impiies the other. Sometimes it
is hardly possible to distinguish between them. It
may be true that ‘by the words the Kingdom of
God our Lord denotes not so much His disciples,
whether individually or even as forming a collec-
tive body, as something which they receive—a
state upon which they enter’ (Robertson, Regnum
Dei); but at the same time the whole history of the
growth of the idea of the Kingdom led, naturally,
to the belief that the Kingdom of God about which
Christ taught would be expressed and realized in a
society. The teaching of Christ about the King-
CHURCH 325
dom of Heaven does not perhaps, taken by itself,
prove that He was the Founder of the Church ;
but if this is established by other evidence, it may
at least be said that His Kingdom is visibly repre-
sented in His Church, and that ‘the Church is the
Kingdom of Heaven in so far as it has already
come, and it prepares for the Kingdom as it is to
come in glory.’
(6) How far the line of action adcpted by Christ
during His ministry tended to the formation of a
society.—Christ began from the first to attach
to Himself a number of disciples. Their numbers
varied, and they did not all stand in equally close
relations to Him; they were indeed still a vague
and indeterminate body at the time of His death,
but they tended to define themselves more and
more. ‘There was a process of sifting (Jn 6"), and
immediately after the Ascension an expression is
used which suggests some sort of list (Ac 1%). As
much as this, indeed, might be said of most re-
ligious and philosophical leaders, but Christ did
more than create an unorganized mass of disciples.
From an early period He formed an inner circle
‘that they might be with him, and that he might
send them forth’ (Mk 34). The name ‘ Apostles’
may have been given to the Twelve in the first
instance with reference to a temporary mission,
but subsequent events showed that this temporary
mission was itself only part of a system of training
to which Christ devoted more and more of His
time. The Twelve became in a special sense ‘ the
disciples,’ and this is what they are usually called
in the Fourth Gospel. The larger body are also
disciples, but the Twelve are their leaders and
representatives. Their representative character
culminates at the Last Supper, where the Eucharist
is given to them alone, but, as the event showed,
in trust for the whole body.
Certain sayings recorded of Christ in connexion
with the Apostles and their functions will be
noticed later. For the present it is enough to call
attention to the fact that, apart from any special
saying or commission, the general course ΟἹ Christ’s
actions not only tended to produce a society, but
provided what is a necessary condition of the
effectiveness and permanence of a society — the
nucleus of an organization ; and that the greater
part of His labours was directed towards the
training of this inner circle for carrying on a work
which He would not complete Himself.
(c) The significance of the institution of the
sacraments.—A society, to be plainly visible and
unmistakable, requires some outward act or sign
of distinction by which all its members can be
recognized. Circumcision had been such to the
Jews. And in order to be both effective and per-
manent, a society further requires some cefinite
corporate action, binding upon all its members,
and relating to the object for which the society
exists. The observance of the Law has been the
corporate action of the Jews. No society has, as
a matter of fact, succeeded in maintaining itself in
existence for an indefinite period without such
siens of distinction and corporate actions. Both
requirements were supplied by Christ, if the Gospel
narrative may be trusted, in the sacraments which
He instituted. In Baptism He provided a definite
means of incorporation, and in the Eucharist a
corporate act and a visible bond of union. ‘This is
indeed only part of the significance of the sacra-
ments, but when they are regarded from another
point of view it becomes all the more striking that
the means appointed to convey the grace of God to
the individual should be necessarily social in their
character. The general tendency of the teaching
of Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount and else-
where, with regard to the Jewish Law and to the
relation of the inward and outward, gives great
326 CHURCH
significance to the fact that He should have ordered
any external acts of the nature of sacraments, and
makes it still more remarkable that He should
have laid emphasis on their necessity as a condition
of entrance into the Kingdom and into the posses-
sion of life (Jn 3° 674). And the fact that these are
necessarily social ordinances is of primary import-
ance in considering the relation of the Church to
Christ.
It thus appears from a general view of Christ’s
ministry as recorded in the Gospels, without taking
into consideration particular sayings ascribed to
Him, that before the Ascension He had provided
everything that was necessary for the existence of
a society, for the development of an organization,
and for its permanence and corporate action. The
only thing wanting to the complete constitution of
the Church was the fulfilment of the promise of
the gift of the indwelling Spirit, for which the dis-
ciples were bidden to wait (Lk 24%, Ac 14).
2. In the earliest period of Church history.
The conclusions to which the Gospels appear to
point will be corroborated if there is evidence that
a society actually did exist immediately after the
events recorded: in the Gospels.. Of this early
period the only existing record is that which is
contained in the Acts. There is also contemporary
evidence of the ideas of a somewhat later period in
St. Paul’s Epistles. If the evidence of the Acts is
accepted, there is no doubt of its general tendency.
Immediately after the Ascension there appears a
well defined body of disciples, led by the Apostles
(Ac 1). At the day of Pentecost this body is
fully constituted for its mission, and receives a
large accession of numbers. ‘The mention of de-
finite numbers (Ac 1% 2# 44) shows that there was
no doubt who the persons were who belonged to
the society. Nor 1s there any doubt, from the
constant mention of baptism throughout the book,
that this was the invariable means of acquiring
membership. It is expressly mentioned even in
the exceptional case recorded in 10%. Through-
out the whole narrative the Apostles appear as the
leaders and teachers of the whole community.
Membership implies adherence to their teaching
and fellowship, with ‘the breaking of bread’
and common prayer as a bond of union (2”). The
practice of community of goods is an evidence of
the closeness of the bond, while the fact that
this was voluntary shows that ‘neither the com-
munity was lost in the individuals, nor the in-
dividuals in the community’ (Hort, Christian
Ecclesia, Ὁ. 48). The meetings of the Church
must have been in houses, and none in Jeru-
salem can possibly have contained all the dis-
ciples ; but no importance is attached to the place
of meeting, nor are house congregations ever
spoken of or alluded to as separate units of Church
life. A theory has been formed that the Chureh
as a society arose out of a federation of house
assemblies, but there is absolutely no trace what-
ever of such a possibility in the Acts: the whole
body of disciples is the only unit. The word ecclesia
occurs for the first time in Ac 5", and there it is
the whole body which is spoken of. In the course
of time the increase in the number of adherents
led to an advance in Sreanization, the Apostles
delegating some of their functions to a lower order
of ministers, and soon afterwards persecution caused
an extension of the Church to other parts of Pales-
tine. But there is as yet no subdivision ; ques-
tions which arise in Samaria and Joppa are dealt
with at Jerusalem (Ae 81.111), This state of
things, however, could not last. When the pro-
cess of extension had gone further, it became
impossible to administer all the affairs of the com-
munity from a single centre. Andso when a body
of Christians established themselves in Antioch. ἃ
3
CHURCH
new use of the word ecclesia appears (1276). Hitherto
it has meant the whole body of the brethren ; now
it is applied also to parts of the whole. Each centre
is capable of separate action, and deals with local
affairs, while remaining in close union with the
whole. And so the step which was perhaps the
most momentous of any that have been taken in
Church history—the mission of Paul and Bar-
nabas—was apparently the work of the Chureh in
Antioch alone, without any reference to Jeru-
salem (1316). This mission Jed to the foundation
of a large number of local ecclesia, each of which
was provided by the Apostle with a local ministry
(1459), while he exercised a continual supervision
over them, and visited them as often as cireum-
stances would allow. The difficult questions which
arise out of this great extension of the Church are
referred to the ‘ Apostles and presbyters’ at Jeru-
salem. The precise relations between the authority
of the whole body and the legitimate independence
of the local communities are undefined, but the
recognition of the unity of the whole Church and of
the Apostolic authority is unmistakable. In the
Epistles of St. Paul the term ecclesia is constantly
used of the local communities, of which he had
frequent occasion to speak ; the church in a city
(1 Co 1") or even in a house (Ro 16°, Col 4%) is a
familiar expression, and the churehes of a region
are spoken of (1 Co 10" 13) in a way that possibly
sugvests the beginnings of a provincial organiza-
tion. But ‘the Church’ is the one undivided Chureh
of which these several churches are only local divi-
sions. It is in the Epistle to the Ephesians that
his doctrine of ‘the Church’ culminates. It is
particularly with reference to this teaching that a
distinction has been drawn between the actual and
the ideal Church. This distinetion is a real one, if
it means that the ideal of the Church has never
yet been realized in fact. But neither St. Paul nor
any other NT writer draws any distinction, or ap-
pears to be conscious of the need of any. The
Chureh, like the individual Christian, is regarded
as being that which it is becoming. As the indi-
vidual Christian, in spite of his imperfections, is a
saint, so the existing body of Christians whom he
is addressing is the Body of Christ, which is to
be presented a glorious Church, holy and without
blemish (1 Co 1277, Eph 537. See ORGANIZATION.
ii. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CHURCH.—
Assuming now that the Chureh is a society founded
by Christ to carry on His work for the redemption
ot mankind, the characteristic notes of the Church,
as they have been embodied in the Creeds, may be
considered with reference to the teaching contained
in the Gospels. It is convenient to state at the
outset what the principal passages in the Gospels
are which bear upon the subject. In the first place,
all the teaching relative to the Kingdom of God
bears more or less directly on the Church. Some
points with regard to this have already been
noticed. Then there are the two passages in which
the word ecclesia is used, Mt 16!-*° and 1815-9 In
connexion with the former, the other two ‘ Petrine’
texts, Lk 22°? and Jn 21", may be considered.
There are also the charges given to the Apostles
in general, Mt 10, Mk 3'3-© 67-338, Mt 281620. Jn
2071-23. and the accounts of the institution of the
Eucharist. And there is the long passage Jn
14-17, which specially bears upon the relations of
Christ to the Church. The authenticity or credi-
bility of some of these passages has been disputed
on various grounds, but it will be assumed for the
present purpose that they contain a credible record
of the teaching of Christ. It will be convenient to
consider this teaching under the heads of those
notes of the Church which have been commonly
ascribed to it from early times, and have been em-
bodied in the Creeds.
CHURCH
CHURCH 327
1. Unity. —If the conclusion already reached
about the origin of the Church is true, it is clear
that it must be one society. The teachine of
Christ on this point, as recorded in the Fourth
Gospel, is very emphatic (Jn 177-*8), and He bases
the unity of the Church on the unity of God (ef.
Eph 4"). It is also to be a visible unity, for it is
to be a sign to the world: ‘that the world may
believe.’ It is, however, implied that it will be a
progressive unity, not at once perfectly realized
(Jn 17% 10"). This is illustrated by St. Paul, who
speaks of unity as a thing to be gradually attained
to (Eph 415). These three points may be taken in
order.
(a) If the unity of the Church is based upon the
unity of God, it follows that it is an essential and
transcendental, and not an accidental unity ; 1.6. it
is not a merely political or voluntary association
of men combining together with a view to effect
certain ends, nor is it merely occasioned by the
social instincts of human nature. These lower
kinds of unity are not, indeed, excluded by the
higher, but they are by themselves an insufticient
explanation. It has been maintained that the idea
of the unity of the Church is an afterthought, caused
by the strong tendency to religious associations
which prevailed in the Empire in the early ages
of Christianity. Abundant evidence already exists,
and more is being accumulated, of the existence of
this tendency ; but even if it should be shown that
non-Christian associations influenced the manner
in which the Christian community framed its ex-
ternal life and that they assisted its growth, this
would not in the least disprove the essential unity
of the Church. As far, however, as investigation
has gone at present, it seems that the Church
owed remarkably little to heathen precedents.
The fact that from the earliest times there were
some who more or less separated themselves and
stood aloof, has been alleged as a proof that unity
was not regarded as essential. But imperfection,
as has already been noted, is a condition of the
earthly state of the Church; and the strong con-
demnation with which separation is invariably
spoken of in the NT and by all early writers, is
very strong evidence of the belief of the Church
that unity is one of its essential marks. The ex-
istence from the first of the power of excommuni-
cation (1 Co 5, ete.), is further evidence to the
same effect.
The unity of the Church is, then, a theological
unity, arising from the unity of God, from the fact
that all members of the Church are members of
Christ and abide in Him as the branches abide in
the vine, and from the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit. From this flows a moral unity of thought
and action among the members of the Church, who
are bound together by the invisible bonds of faith,
hope, and love.
(6) But this invisible unity will express itself, as
far as regards that part of the Ghareh which is on
earth, in an outward form. There has not un-
naturally been a good deal of conflict of opinion
throughout the greater part of Church history as
to the precise nature of the outward form which is
necessary. Confining ourselves to the teaching of
Christ upon the subject, the first thing to be
noticed is that institution of the visible actions
called sacraments which has been already spoken
of. The necessity for performing certain outward
actions at once distinguishes those persons who
perform them, and these particular actions are
social in their nature, and cannot be performed
except in connexion with a visible society. In the
next place, the administration of sacraments im-
plies discipline, for a certain amount of organiza-
tion is necessary in order to enable a society to
act, and social actions cannot be performed in
isolation. For this Christ provided by the insti-
tution of a ministry in the persons of the Apostles,
to whom He expressly committed the sacraments.
It follows that among the things which are neces-
sary to their valid administration, the preservation
of the order instituted by the Church under the
direction of the Apostles must be reckoned. And
while the Church has recognized all its members as
valid ministers of Baptism in case of necessity, the
administration of the Eucharist has been confined
amongst most Christians to those who have received
special Apostolic authority for the purpose.
_ It is further held by a very large number of Christians, that
in addition to the external bonds of union formed by the sacra-
ments and the Apostolic ministry, the Church on earth, being
visible, must have a visible head, and that this headship was
given by Christ to St. Peter, and by implication to his sue-
cessors. Union with the earthly head of the Church is there-
fore necessary to avoid the guilt of schism. It is alleged that
this is the natural sense of the passages which record the
special charges given by Christ to St. Peter (Mt 1613-20, Lk
2223-32, and Jn 2071-23), and that this interpretation of His words
is borne out by the claims made from the earliest times by the
bishops of Rome, and allowed or acquiesced in by the Church at
large. It is argued, on the other side, that the passages in ques-
tion were not interpreted in this sense by early Church writers,
and that the testimony of the Acts and Epistles and of early
Church history shows that such a position was not actually held
by St. Peter. The controversy is of such enormous proportions
that it can only be alluded to here, but a few of the innumerable
books that deal with the subject are mentioned in the list of
Literature at the end.
(c) These inward and outward bonds of union
give a real numerical unity to the Church, so that
it will be one in any one place, one throughout the
world, and one in all time. Nothing less than this
can satisfy the conception of unity put before us in
the NT. But it must be noted, in the third place,
that unity may be real while it is still dmperfect.
The perfection of the Church, in respect of unity
as well as of all other characteristics, is possible
only when all its members are perfect, and there-
fore it cannot be fully realized in this life. Any
loosening of those bonds which have been men-
tioned, whether inward or outward, must neces-
sarily impair unity. It is not necessary that there
should be an outward breach. A lack of charity,
leading to party spirit, such as existed at Corinth,
was regarded by St. Paul as impairing the unity of
the Chureh although no visible severance had taken
place. A want of faith, or errors concerning the
faith, must have the same effect. A departure
from the faith of the Church on fundamental
matters is called ‘heresy,’ and any great want of
either charity or faith on the part of a section of
the Church commonly leads to a breach of the ex-
ternal conditions of union, which is called ‘ schism.’
This again admits of different degrees, and is of
two principal kinds. A suspension or refusal of
communion between two parts of the Church un-
doubtedly amounts to a schism, even though both
parts retain the due administration of the sacra-
ments and the Apostolic ministry. Such a schism
has arisen between the Churches of the East and
the West, and it was the work of centuries of
gradual estrangement, so that it is impossible to
say at what precise moment the want of inter-
communion became such as to amount to a formal
schism. There is a breach of a very similar char-
acter between the Anelican Churehes and those
which adhere to the Roman obedience. There is
also another kind of schism, which is caused when
bodies of baptized persons form new associations
which do not claim to be connected with the Apos-
tolie Church, or which reject the sacraments.
There is no other cause for such breaches of out-
ward communion than the imperfection of the
faith and charity of the members of the Church.
dut if such imperfection does not in itself destroy
the unity of the Church, the external consequences
which naturally result from it do not necessarily do
328 CHURCH
CHURCH
so. Heresy and schism impair unity, but do not
altogether destroy it, just as the spiritual life of
the individual is not altogether destroyed even by
grievous sins. ἢ
The Invisible Church.—So far only the unity of
that part of the Church which is on earth has been
spoken of. But members of the Body of Christ do
not cease to be united to Him, and therefore to each
other after death. That part of the Church which
has passed away from earth is called the Invisible
Church, in contrast to: the Visible Church upon
earth, but they are essentially one. With regard
to the state of the departed, very little direct teach-
ing is recorded to have been given by Christ Him-
self, and we must not presume to speculate too
much where knowledge has been withheld. Per-
haps little more can be said than that in the
parable of Dives and Lazarus (Lk 16°!) Christ
gave a general sanction to current Jewish beliefs
as to the state of the departed, and that His words
to the penitent thief (Lk 23") assure us that union
with Himself is not impaired by death. If this is
so, it is sufficient justification for the universal
belief of early Christians, that the Invisible Churcli
is united to the Visible by common worship.
2. Holiness.—The Church may be called holy
because it is a Divine institution, of which Christ
is the head, and the special sphere of the working
of the Holy Spirit, or because its members, being
united to Christ as the branches are to a vine or
the limbs to a body, are called to a life of holi-
ness, and have a real though imperfect holiness
infused into them. Something has already been
said on these first points, and it is hardly necessary
to show at length that Christ required holiness
from His followers (Jn 170-19. Mt 548). It is no less
evident that the holiness spoken of here and else-
where is a progressive holiness.
One difficulty which has arisen with regard to
this characteristic of the Church is that the want
of holiness in many of those who have fulfilled the
outward conditions of Church membership has
often in Church history led to attempts to secure
greater purity by a sacrifice of external unity.
The Novatians, the Donatists, and many later
bodies of separatists, have made such attempts.
The persistency of this tendency in the face of
such teaching of Christ as is contained in the
parables of the Tares and the Draw-net is some-
what surprising, but at all events it testifies to a
deep underlying conviction of the necessity of
holiness. St. Paul emphasizes the holiness of any
body of Christians which he addresses, by giving
them the title of ‘saints,’ however imperfect many
of the individuals might be (Ro 17, 1 Co 1", 2 Co 1},
Eph 17, Ph 11. Col 1?; cf. ΑΘ 092): -They are both
individually and collectively a holy temple, and
the habitation of the Holy Spirit (1 Co 3! 1-16 619,
Eph 22). And, as has already been pointed out,
he does not draw any sharp line of division be-
tween the imperfect society on earth and that
which shall be perfected hereafter (Eph 525-27) - he
regards both the individual and the society as
being already that which they are becoming.
‘As a whole the Church is holy in that it retains faithfully
those means of sanctification which Christ gave ‘her, holy Sacra-
ments, holy laws, holy teaching, so that, amid whatever imper-
fections, her whole aim is that the tendency of her acts and her
teaching shall be to promote holiness and the inward spiritual
life. - - . An university is learned, or a city rich, which abounds
in learning or riches, although there may be many unlearned or
poor, and although the learned or rich may yet be short of the
ideal of learning or wealth.’—Forbes, Nic. Creed, p. 278.
3. Catholicity.—The earliest extant use of the
word ‘Catholic’ as applied to the Church is in
Ignatius (ad Smyrn. viii. 2): “Wherever the bishop
appears, there must the multitude be; just as
wherever Christ Jesus is,
Church.’
= there is the Catholic
The natural sense of the word would
appear to be that of the Church throughout all the
world as opposed to that in one place; but this is
not the sense in which the term has been commonly
used. The Church has been called ‘Catholic’ not
because it has actually extended throughout the
world, for this it has never yet done, nor even
simply because it is destined to be so extended,
but rather as possessing characteristics which make
it capable of being a universal religion, adapted to
all classes of men in all parts of the world, and
throughout all time. Even apart from particular
words of Christ, such as those recorded in Mt 98",
nothing is more apparent in His teaching than that
the religion which He taught was intended to be a
universal religion, in special contrast to Judaism,
which, like the religions of the ancient world gener-
ally, was a strictly national religion, and appealed
only toa part of mankind. In spite of the many
anticipations of universalism which are to be found
in Jewish prophecy, the controversy which took
place in the early Church about the observance of
the Jewish law shows with what difficulty the idea
was accepted by those who had been Jews. This
quality, again, of universal applicability to all
men at all times can belong only to a Divine reve-
lation sufficient for the needs of all mankind.
Such a revelation Christ professed to give, and the
Catholicity of the Church must depend upon its
faithfulness to the fulness of the truth revealed in
Christ. And so, in addition to the idea of universal
extension, the word Catholic has been used to con-
vey the idea of orthodoxy in the communion of the
Church. The well-known definition of Cyril of Jern-
salem (Cat. xvill. 23) co-ordinates these two ideas.
‘The Church is called Catholic because it extends
throughout the whole world . . . because it teaches
completely all doctrines which men ought to know
. . because it brings into subjection to godliness
the whole race of men . . . and because it treats
and heals every sort of sins... and has in it
every form of virtue.’ In this sense the Church
was called Catholic when it was very far from
being extended even over a considerable part of
the world, and the term can be applied even to the
Church in a particular place, as being in communion
with and possessing the characteristics of the whole.
So in the Martyrdom of Polycarp he is spoken of
as ‘Bishop of the Catholic Church that is in
Smyrna.’ The Church or any part of it approaches
the ideal of Catholicity in proportion as it possesses
all the qualities which are necessary to make it
literally universal; and, on the other hand, ‘every-
thing which hinders or lessens the capacity of the
Church to be universal, everything which deprives
it of part of the full truth or inserts in its teaching
anything which does not belong to the truth, every-
thing which cramps its power of getting rid of sin
and increasing godliness, has a tendency to draw
the Church away from the ideal of its Catholic life.
To become such that it could not appeal to the
whole world or to all classes of men, to deny essen-
tial parts of the revealed faith, to become in its
accepted principles a necessary instrument of some
sins or a necessary opponent of some virtues, would
be, in proportion as this was wilful and deliberate
and fully carried out, a sinking below the mini-
mum which the note of Catholicity requires’ (Stone,
The Church, p. 59).
4. Apostolicity.—It has already been pointed out
that Christ selected twelve of His followers to
stand in a specially close relation to Himself, and
to be charged with a special mission. In what
is probably the earliest account of their appoint-
ment (Mk 314), it is said they were to ‘be with
him,’ and that He would ‘send them forth.’ Hence
they were called Apostles (Lk 613). The nature of
this relation and this mission must now be ex-
amined in order to ascertain the sense in which the
CHURCH
CHURCH 329
Church may be called Apostolic. It may first be
noticed that a sharp distinction has sometimes
been drawn between the position of the Twelve as
representative disciples, that is, as standing in a
specially close relationship to Christ, of the same
kind, however, as that of other disciples, and their
position as Apostles, that is, as men sent forth on
a special mission. No such sharp distinction is
drawn in the NT, nor does it appear to be neces-
sary. The two things are spoken of in the passage
of St. Mark just referred to as two sides of the
same fact, not as two separable things. The close
discipleship was necessary to fit the Apostles for
their mission, and it therefore formed part of it.
The nature of this Apostolic mission is stated in
the most comprehensive terms in Jn 207! ‘As the
Father hath sent me, even so send 1 you’; that is
to say, it was the task of carrying on upon earth
the work of Christ Himself. It seems to be of
little or no consequence to our estimate of the
nature of the Apostolic functions whether others
besides the Twelve were present upon the occasion
when these particular words were spoken. The
Twelve are frequently called ‘the disciples,’ especi-
ally in the Fourth Gospel. And the mission of the
Apostles is not a separate thing from the mission
of the Church. If, as St. Paul so constantly
teaches, the Church is one body with many
members, the acts of the organs of the body are
the acts of the body itself. St. Paul insists equally
strongly upon the unity of the whole and the
differentiation of function within the whole. And
so the point to be considered is not whether a
separate mission was given to the Apostles apart
from that of the whole Church, but rather what
special functions of the Church were committed to
the Apostles to be performed, by themselves or
under their direction, on the Church’s behalf.
(a) One principal object with which the Apostles
were sent out in the first instance was undoubtedly
that they might teach (Mk 315). And it is equally
clear that this was not merely a temporary, but a
permanent function. Even the special directions
given to them on their first sending out (Mt 10)
are not intelligible unless a continuance of the
work of teaching be understood. And the Twelve
were specially trained by close and continual inter-
course with Christ for the work of being witnesses to
Him (Ac 18), and it is clear that they considered this
as one of their special functions (1% 2% 315 4° ete.).
And although this personal witness to the actions
and words of Christ was necessarily confined to
those who had been with Him, the transmission of
the witness and the function of teaching in general
are permanent. The commission given by Christ to
the Twelve to make disciples of all the nations (Mt
2819-20) is one which was not, and could not be,
accomplished by themselves in person, and it
implies the continuance of the teaching office of
the Church until this end is accomplished. So it
is recognized as one of the special duties of those
who were appointed by the Apostles to take part in
their work (1 Ti 318 5! 67; 2 Ti 114 22, Tit 2) ete:).
It is this teaching work of the Chureh which corre-
sponds to the prophetical office of Christ Himself.
(b) The worship of the Church.—The Sacraments,
which were especially committed to the Apostles,
have been spoken of as social acts necessary to
the existence and cohesion of the Church as a
visible society. They are also means by which the
relation of the Church to God is expressed, and
channels by which the individual receives Divine
grace. The worship of the Church centres and
culminates in the Eucharist, the specially appointed
action by which the Church takes part in the sacri-
fice offered by Christ. It makes a memorial of
that part of His sacrificial work which has been
accomplished in time (Lk 22!, 1 Co 11°), and it
unites itself with Him in His present mediatorial
work of pleading that sacrifice in heaven (He 77”).
So the whole Church, as the Body of Christ, takes
part in His priestly work (1 P 2°, Rev 5* 10), and
this has always been emphasized by the language
of all the liturgies. See artt. LORD’s SUPPER,
SACRAMENTS.
(c) Discipline.—A visible society could hardly
exist, or at least continue to exist, without some
form of discipline. Christ sanctioned for His
followers (Mt 1815), not only individual remon-
stranece, which may be considered as the gentlest
form in which discipline can be administered (cf.
1 Th 5), but also, in the case of the failure of this,
the collective censure of the community (οἷ. 1 Ti
2”, Gal 2"), and in the last resort the exercise of
the natural right of a society to expel one of its
members (cf. 1 Co 5°, 2 Co 2”?°). These last pas-
sages alone would suffice to show, what is certain
enough, that the power of excommunication was
recognized and practised in the Church from the
earliest times.
A still more emphatic commission was given by
Christ to St. Peter (Mt 1019), and to ‘the disciples’
(1818), Whatever may be the exact meaning of
these words, it is difficult to give them any inter-
pretation which does not include the idea of juris-
diction. At all events the words in Jn 20”: * relate
directly to discipline, and are of the most unquali-
fied character. If the historical character of these
passages is admitted, there can be no doubt that a
disciplinary commission was given. There have
been, however, differences of opinion as to the
persons to whom it was given. The chief views
held on this point may be roughly classed under
four heads.
(«) It has been held that the position of St. Peter was different
in kind from that of the other Apostles, and that jurisdiction
was given directly to him alone, and to the other Apostles
through him, and that the same holds good of his successors.
(8) That jurisdiction was given directly to all the Apostles, and
is inherent in their office and in that of their successors, but
that it can be legitimately exercised only by those who preserve
the unity of the Church by being in union with St. Peter and
his successors. (7) That jurisdiction was given equally to all the
Apostles and their successors as the Divinely appointed organs
of the Church, and that only a primacy of honour belonged to
St. Peter or is due to his successors. ‘All the Apostles were
equal in mission, equal in commission, equal in power, equal in
honour, equal in all things, except priority of order, without
which no society can well subsist’ (Bramhall). (ὃ) That the
Apostles received no gift of jurisdiction from Christ Himself,
and that any powers which they or their successors exercised
were gradually conferred upon them by the act of the Church or
of parts of it.
Closely connected with directly disciplinary
functions are those general powers of direction
and administration which must be exercised in a
society by some persons appointed for the purpose.
That they were used by the Apostles, even with
regard to secular matters, is plain from the Acts
and Epistles. The Apostolic background is every-
where present in the former book, and St. Paul
assumes such powers throughout (e.g. 1 Co 11%).
It is by the exercise of such powers of discipline
and government that the Church participates in
the kingly office of Christ.
We may therefore conclude that the Church
may be called Apostolic in so far as it has held fast
to the teaching, worship, and discipline of the
Church as intrusted by Christ to the Apostles, and
according to the order established by them.
Nore.—The words ‘church’ and tzzancix.—The word ‘church’
is found in a great variety of forms in the Teutonic and Slavonic
languages as the exact equivalent of ἐκκλυσία, which has passed
into Latin and all the Romanic and Celtic Janguages. There
has been much dispute about its ultimate derivation. Suggested
derivations from the Latin cireus and from the Gothic are now
set aside by philologists as impossible. The only derivation
that will bear examination is from the Greek κυριακόν. This 15
used in the Apost. Const. (6. A.D. 300?) and in the canons of
several councils early in the 4th cent., and was afterwards fairly
It means ‘of the Lord, and is used of
common in the East.
330 CHURCH
CIRCUMCISION
‘the house of the Lord,’ 64uz being understood. The deriva-
tion of ‘church’ from zvgizzcv is not free from philological
difficulties, and there is no sufficient historical explanation of
the curious fact that a less common Greek word should have
been adopted by the Teutonic languages in place of the usual
ἐκκλησία. But there is no other even plausible explanation of
the derivation of the word ‘ church.’
The word ?zzAzeie is common in classical Greek in the sense
of an assembly of the people—literally, the calling them out
(ἐτακλέω) by the voice of a herald or otherwise. It is used in
the LXX as the translation of the Hebrew word kdhal, which
has a similar derivation and meaning. Another word, édhah, is
commonly transiated by συναγωγή, and means properly the con-
gregation itself, whereas k@hal means rather the assembly of
the congregation; but there is no sharp distinction between the
words, and in the later books of the OT édhah almost disap-
pears, and kahdl or ἐκκλησία combines both shades of meaning.
There is little or no evidence as to the precise contemporary
ideas which would have been conveyed toa Jew of our Lord’s
time by the use of these words, but they could not fail to recall
the thought of Israel as the congregation of God, and to suggest
the idea of a Divine society.
It has often been supposed that the word ἐκκλησία was in-
tended to convey the idea of a people or a number of persons
called out of the world for the special service of God. The
idea of Israel as a chosen people and the idea of the special
election and vocation of Christians occur constantly in the Scrip-
tures, but they never appear to be connected with the words
ἐκκλησία ΟΥ̓ ἢ αἰ. In both these words the idea of the summons
to the assembly, which is their original significance, practically
disappears, and the words megan simply the assembly itself, or
the people who meetin assembly. See artt. ‘Congregation’ and
‘Church’ in Hastings’ DB.
The fact that the word ἐκκλησία is found in the Gospels only in
the two passages of St. Matthew already liscussed, has led some
to suppose that these passages are later insertions into the
originak narrative, made at a time when the idea of the Christian
society had been developed, and‘ when it was desired to add
authority to the idea by a reference to the teaching of Christ.
If, however, the view taken above of the general tendency of
Christ’s work and teaching is correct, His connexion with the
Church does not depend upon these two passages only, and
there would be much difficulty in explaining the fact that this
term and no other was universally applied to the Christian
society from the time of the Apostles onwards, unless it were
the natural equivalent of Aramaic terms used by Christ Himself.
Literature.—The number of books which deal with the sub-
ject of the Church from exactly the point of view taken in this
article may not be very large, but the literature which bears
more or less upon the original constitution and characteristics
of the Church is of stupendous extent; and the most that can
be done here is to mention avery few specimens of different
classes of books which relate to different parts of the subject.
In the first place, most commentaries on the NT deal with the
exegesis of the passages which bear upon the Church, but it is
not worth while to attempt a selection here. The writings of
most of the early Fathers contain either contributions to the
history of the growth of the Church, or information as to the
opinions of the writers on the subject. A few specially im-
portant works are mentioned below. During the Middle Ages
there was a great mass of literature dealing with the Papal
authority and the relations of the Church to the State. From
the time of Hildebrand onwards this aspect of the question
was especially prominent. The Reformation period naturally
produced abundant discussions in which the presuppositions of
the Middle Ages were to a great extent laid aside. In modern
times, and especially during the last fifty years, the carly insti-
tutions of the Church have been investigated with great
minuteness, especially by German writers, and there has been
a great abundance of general Church Histories, which often
contain discussions on the doctrine of the Church. This is also
dealt with in all treatises on Christian doctrine to a greater or
less extent, and from all points of view. The books mentioned
below must be regarded merely as examples of the different
kinds of works in which the subject may be studied.
EARLY W&kITERS: Patres Apostolici(e ἃ. Lightfoot); Ireneus,
e. Heres. iii. 1-9; Tertullian, de Prescr.. Heret.; Cyprian, de
Unitate Eccles., de Lapsis; Augustine, de Baptismo, and 6.
Donatistas.
GENERAL CHUrcH H/srorres : Neander, History of the
Planting and Training of the Christian Church (Eng. tr.
(1851); Gieseler, Compendium of Eceles. Hist. (Eng. tr. 1846);
Renan, Origin s di Christianisin? (1883); Schatf, History of the
A postolic Age (1886); Weizsiicker, .A postolic Age (Eng. tr. 1895) ;
Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire (1893); Cheetham,
History of the Christian Chiureh (1894).
CHURCH ORGANIZATION: Ritschl, Die Entstehung der Alt-
kath. Kirche (1857); Lightfoot, The Christian Ministry (1868) ;
Hatch, Organization of the Early Christian Churckes (1880) ;
5 ohm, Kirchenrecht (1892) : Gore, The Ministry of the Christian
Church (1888); Lindsay, The Charch and the Ministry (1902).
DocTRriInaAL, BooKs (GENERAL): (Roman Catholic) Scheeben,
Handbuch der Kath. Doqmatik (1878): Schouppe, Elementa
Theoloqice Doqmatiew (1861): Hunter, Outlines of Doqmatic
Theolovy (1895) ; (Lutheran) Dorner, System of Christian Doc-
trin2 (Eng. tr. 1880); Martensen, Chistian Doamaties (Eng. tr.
1886); (non-Catholic) Harnack, History of Dogma (Ene. tr.
1894); Seeberg, Doqmengesch. (1886): (Anglican) Forbes, Ex-
planation of the Thirty-nine Articles (1867), and Explanation
of tae Nicene Creed (1865); Mason, The Faith of the Gospel
(1888) ; Gibson, The Thirty-nine Articles (1896); Stone, Outlines
of Christian Dogma (1900).
BOOKS BEARING MORE EXCLUSIVELY ON THE, SUBJECT OF
THIS ARTICLE: Lacordaire, Conférences de UEglise (1849);
Seeley, Eece Homo (1366); Gore, Roinan Catholic Claims (1898);
Hort, The Christian Ecclesia (1893); Moberly, Ministerial
Priesthood (1897); Robertson, Itegnum Dei (1902); Tyrrell
Green, The Church of Christ (1902). J. H. MAUDE.
CHUZA (Xov¢as).—The ἐπίτροπος or house-steward
of Herod the tetrarch, and husband of Joanna
one of the women who, having been healed either
of a sickness or of an evil spirit, attached them-
selves to Jesus and ‘ministered unto him of their
substance’ (Lk 858).
seems more than doubtful. Chuza may have been
of a Nabatzean family, married to a Jewish wife.
Joanna is also mentioned (Lk 9410) as one of the
women who came early to the sepulchre to anoint
the Lord’s body (see JOANNA).
Chuzas is preferred by the American Committee of Revisers
as the more proper,spelling of Chuza.
LITERATURE.—EXPosITor, Y. ix. [1899] 118 ff. ; Edersheim, Life
and Times, i. 429, 572. R. MACPHERSON.
CIRCUMCISION (ποι, περιτομή). — With the
origin * of this rite we are not here concerned ; as
revards the three main theories—that it was a
tribal mark, that it was of the nature of a sacri-
fice to the deity, and that it was practised from
hygienic motives—see the Literature at the end of
this article.
Cireuncision was very far from being confined
to the Hebrews; it was practised by the ancient
Arabs (Eusebius, Prep. Evangelica, vi. 11; W. RR.
Smith, Led. of the Semites*, p. 328 ; Wellhausen,
—este Arab. Heident.? pp. 174-176; H. H. Ploss,
Das Kind in Brauch und Sitte der Volker, τ. 295-
300 ; Bertherand, A/édecine et Hygiene des Arabzs,
pp. 306-314) as well as by the Mohammedans (N6l-
deke, Sketches from Eastern Hist. p. 68), by the
Ethiopians (Philostorgius, Hist. Hecles. 111. 4), by
the Kaflirs (J. G. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 327)
and other African races (Hartmann, Die Volker
Afrikas, i. 178; Ploss, op. cit. i. 295f.), by many
central Australian tribes (J. G. Frazer, Totemisin,
p. 47; Lagrange, Etudes sur les religions sémitiques,
p. 239 ff.; Ploss, op. cit. ii. 250, 255, who says it is
practised by the central, northern, and north-
western tribes, but not by those in the east and
south-west), by the Egyptians (Ebers, <qypten
und die Bucher Mose’s, i. 278; Lagrange, op. cit.
p-. 241 ff.), and by the Aztecs and other Central
American races (Jewish Encyc. iv. 97), ete.
The great difference between the national ob-
servance of the rite by the Hebrews (however one
may seek to account for the somewhat conflicting
statements in Gn 17!, Ex 4535. 25, and Jos 5°; εἴ. Jn
7) + and that of other peoples was, firstly, that
its significance was wholly religiows,—the outward
symbol of a covenant with God,—it was a religious
act, whereas, amone other nations, whatever the
reason may have been for practising circumcision, it
did not occupy a position like this : and secondly,
* Tts very early origin is shown by the fact that the rite was
originally performed with a stone implement, see Riehm, H WB,
art. ‘ Beschneidung’ ; cf. Jos 5.
+ It is noteworthy that as a physical act circumcision is not
considered in the hook of Deuteronomy, though it is used in a
figurative sense, 1016 3016,
t A certain religious element, though in quite a subordinate
CIRCUMCISION
that the Hebrews performed circumcision on the
eighth day after birth,* 1.6. in infancy, whereas
among other races it almost invariably took place
at the age of puberty.t It is possible that this
difference between the Mosaic Code and the usage
of others was due to the more humane character
of the former, which enjoined the rite at a time
when least painful.t
It was the custom among the Hebrews at all
times, -as it is among modern Jews,§ to give a
boy || a name at his circumcision Ἵ (see Lk 2°),
The rite had to be performed on the eighth day
after birth, even though that day happened to be a
Sabbath ; technically this was a breaking of the
Sabbath, but the law concerning circumcision took
precedence here (see Christ’s words in Jn 7:51).
If, however, from one cause or another, e.g. sick-
ness, a child’s circumcision had to be postponed,
the rite could under no circumstances be performed
on the Sabbath.** In the time of Christ the cere-
mony was performed in the house; by the 7th
cent. it had become customary to perform it in the
synagogue ; the modern Jews, however, have gone
back to the earlier custom, and have their children
circumcised at home.++ How fully the Law was ful-
filled:in the case of Christ is seen. from Lk 1° ‘On
the eighth day they came to circumcise the child
[John]? (ef. Ac 78, Ph 3°), and Lk 27!* And when eight
days were fulfilled for circumcising him, his name
was called Jesus’ (cf. Gal 44).
Whatever may have been the original object
and signification of cireumcision,tt it had lost its
primary meaning long before the time of our Lord.
By the time of the Babylonian exile it had become
one of the distinguishing marks of Judaism ; yet
in spite of this, it is remarkable to find that in
later days there arose a divergence of opinion
among the Jews as to the need of circumcision
for proselytes. Hellenistic Jews did not enforce
circumcision in the case of proselytes, affirming
that baptism was sufficient (see the Jewish Encye.
iv. 94, 95, where further details are given); the
Palestinian Jews, on the other hand, would not
admit proselytes without circumcision. The view
of the latter ultimately won the day, but the epi-
sode testifies to the fact that, in the opinion of a
very influential and important class of Jews, cir-
cumcision and baptism were analogous rites. Now
there was one element in circumcision which may
possibly have been of greater significance than 15
often supposed. It was an essential part of the
rite that blood should be shed (cf. the ‘ Mezizah’-
cup, an illustration of which can be seen in the
Jewish Encyc. iv. 99); but blood represented life,
was even identified with life (Lv 17!'-4, see art.
Boop) ; it is therefore difficult to get away from
the conviction that when a child was circumcised
he was consecrated to God by the fact that his
life (i.e. under the symbol of blood) was offered to
sense, has been observed in the performance of the rite in some
races, e.g. among the Polynesians (see Ploss, op. cif. 1. 299 f.).
In later Judaism, when sacrifices had ceased, circumcision and
the keeping of the Sabbath were regarded as substitutes for
sacrifices.
* This applies also to the Samaritans. A
+ An exception to this is found among the Persians, who
circumcise their children at any age from eight days to ten
years, though it is unusual to do so at the earliest age (see,
further, Ploss, op. cit. p. 248 ff.). : f
t Cf. Bertherand, Médecine des Arabes, p. 306; Driver,
Genesis, p. 190. i
ὃ The so-called Reform Jews are an exception.
|| Girls receive their name on the day of birth. ore
{| With this may be compared the custom among some priml-
tive races of changing the name at circumcision.
** Of. A. Asher, The Jewish Rite of Circumersion, p. 41 f.
++ For an account of the ceremony as performed at the
present day, see Singer, Authorized Daily Prayer-Book, pp:
304-307 ; Asher, op. cit. p. xixf. Some interesting details will
also be found in Jewish Encyc., art. ‘Circumcision.
tt See a remarkable art. by J. G. Frazer in The Independent
Review, Nov. 1904.
CIRCUMSTANTIALITY 331
God. The fact of circumcision being called ‘the
sign of the covenant’ (Gn 171! nna nix; ef. also the
modern name 7 173, and the words in the ser-
vice at a circumcision : ‘ From this eighth day and
henceforth may his blood be accepted, and may
the Lord his God be with him’)* supports this
view, for no covenant was ratified without the
shedding of blood,t ὁἡ.6. the symbolic laying down
of a life.
If circumcision, then, was in a certain sense a
death (or at least a symbol of life laid down), there
is a very striking analogy between it and bap-
tism; cf. the words of St. Paul in Ro 6°" ‘Are
ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into
Christ were baptized into his death? We were
buried therefore with him through baptism into
death: that like as Christ was raised from the
dead through the glory of the Father, so we also
might walk in newness of life...’ Both cireum-
cision and baptism were a figurative death, by
means of which a new spiritual life was reached.
In the later Jewish literature this view was held
with regard to circumcision, as the following quo-
tation, for example, will show: ‘ According to
Pirke R. El. . . . Pharaoh prevented the Hebrew
slaves from performing the rite; but when the
Passover time came and brought them deliverance,
they underwent circumcision, and mingled .the
blood of the Paschal lamb with that of the Abra-
hamic covenant, wherefore (Ezk 16°) God repeats
the words: In thy blood live.’ The same thought
is brought out in the modern ‘service at a circum-
cision,’ when the JZohel§ says, in reference to the
newly circumcised : ‘ Let thy father and thy mother
rejoice, and Jet her that bare thee be glad; and it
is said, And I passed by thee, and I saw thee wel-
tering in thy blood, and I said unto thee, ‘‘ In thy
blood live.” ’ ||
Taking these facts together, we must regard the
circumcision of Christ as of the highest. signili-
cance ; for it was not only a fulfilling of the Law,
but inasmuch as it was symbolic of a life laid
down, it must also be regarded as a ‘parable’ of
the Crucifixion (ef. Milton, Poetical Works, ‘Upon
the Cireumcision’; Keble, Christian Year, ‘'The
Cireumcision of Christ’).
LITERATURE.—H. H. Ploss, Das Kind in Brauch und Sitte
der Volker, i. 295-300, ii. 250ff., Stuttgart, 1876, Geschicht-
liches und Ethnologisches tiber Knaben-Beschneidung, Leipzig,
1885; A. Asher, V'he Jewish Rite of Circumeision, with the
Prayers and Laws appertaining thereto (Eng. tr.), 1873, very
useful, but must be used with caution ; Stade in ZAT'W, 1886,
a most interesting and instructive article on the origin of the
rite in the Hebrew nation; an article in ZDPV xvii. 89 ff. is
also useful; Harper, Priestly Element in OT'2, Chicago, 1905,
149 f., and the lit. there ; Driver, Genesis, London, 1904, pp. 189-
191; Bertherand, Médecine et Hygiene des Arabes, Paris, 1855,
gives many interesting details concerning the modern rite
among Arabs generally, though the work deals mainly with
Algeria. There is also much information to be gathered here
and there in J. H. Petermann’s Re/sen im Orient, 2 vols., Leip-
zig, 1860. The articles in the works on Hebraische Archaologie
by Nowack and Benzinger, as well as that on ‘ Beschneidung’
in Hamburger’s RE, should be consulted ; cf. also art. ‘Circum-
cision’ in Hastings’ DB and in the Hneye. Bibl. and the Jewish
Encyclopedia. W. O. Ἢ OESTERLEY.
CIRCUMSTANTIALITY IN THE PARABLES.—.
A parable consists of two members, viz. an illus-
tration and a didactic part, which, according to the
view we hold, may be called either the interpreta-
tion or the application. Both members are neces-
sary to make the parable complete, though the
didactic part need not be expressly stated, the
circumstances in which the illustration is given
making its purpose plain. Unfortunately the
* Singer, op. cit. p. 307.
+See Trumbull, The Blood Covenant, passim; W. R. Smith,
op. cit. p. 314f., Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia,
ἢ: 57 ff.
: t Jewish Eneye. iv. 980,
§ An official specially qualified to perform the rite.
|| Singer, op. cit. p. 305.
332 CIRCUMSTANTIALITY
CIRCUMSTANTIALITY
parables of Christ are mostly preserved only in
tragmentary form. We have the illustrations, but
not the lessons they were designed to enforce ; and
as we are uncertain as to the connexion in which
those illustrations were given, it is sometimes difh-
cult to make sure what Christ intended to teach
by them. But if the Evangelists give little, some-
times even a misleading, light as to the context in
which the parables were spoken, they record the
illustrative portions of them with much fulness of
detail. Particularly is this the case with those
parables in which the illustration is in the form
of a narrative. The story is told with much cir-
cumstantiality. Many little touches are intro-
duced to heighten the effect. We are almost
inclined to forget, at times, that the story is told
with a purpose, so fully and circumstantially are
its details narrated. Among the Evangelists, St.
Luke is the most pronounced in the cireumstan-
tiality with which he reproduces the stories which
Christ introduced in His parables. He likes to
linger over them. He elaborates with a fulness
of detail that brings the scene vividly before the
mind. But though St. Luke is pre-eminent in
this respect, all the Synoptists present the illus-
trative portion of the parables with more or less
circumstantiality. And this feature of the parables
suggests some questions which we may consider
under the following heads:—(1) In how far is
the circumstantiality of the narratives authentic ?
(2) If we accept the traditional principle of para-
bolical ‘interpretation,’ can we fix a limit beyond
which it is illegitimate to interpret the details?
(3) If we reject this principle of parabolical ‘ inter-
pretation,’ can we meet the objection that the
circumstantiality of the illustrations is empty
ornament ?
1. The question of the authenticity of the cir-
cumstantiality of the illustrations is in many cases
forced upon us by the fact that details which are
recorded by one Evangelist are omitted by another
For instance, in the parable of the Sower, St.
Matthew and St. Mark say of the seed that fell
by the wayside, that the fowls came and devoured
it up, but St. Luke adds that it was trodden
down (85. Again, in the parable of the Patch
on the Old Garment, St. Matthew and St. Mark
describe the patch as a piece of undressed cloth,
while St. Luke heightens the folly of the pro-
ceeding by making the patch first be cut out of
a new garment (ἀπὸ ἱματίου καινοῦ σχίσας, 5*).
In many cases we find the explanation of such
variations in the details of the parables in the
desire of the Evangelists to emphasize the point
and heighten the effect of the illustration. Such
is possibly the case with the examples just given,
and many other instances of the same tendency
might be cited. To give a few more,—in the
parable of the Supper (Mt 224, Lk 1415-34), Se.
Matthew merely says that the guests made light
of the invitation and went their ways, one to his
farm, another to his merchandise (v.5) ; while St.
Luke puts various excuses into the mouth: of the
guests (vv.1*"), In the parable of the Lost Sheep
(Mt 18", Lk 15*7), St. Luke represents the
owner as taking the lost sheep, when he has
found it, upon his shoulders. In the parable of
the Houses built upon the Rock and upon the
Sand (Mt 7°**7, Lk 647), St. Matthew says merely
that the wise man built upon the rock and the
foolish upon the sand ; but St. Luke represents the
one as having to dig and go deep to find a founda-
tion, while the other builds without a foundation,
upon the earth. But in other cases we must
assign a ditferent motive for the variation in the
details of the parables. Many seem due to an
allegorizing tendency on the part of the Evan-
getists. They regarded the characters and events
of the narratives as the counterparts of like char-
acters and events in the religious sphere, and
introduced details from this latter sphere into the
illustration. Thus, for instance, when we com-
pare St. Matthew’s version of the parable of the
Supper with St. Luke’s (Mt 22! Lk 1415-24),
many of the new features in St. Matthew appear
to be due to this tendency. The Supper of St.
Luke has become the marriage-feast of the king’s
son, t.¢e. the Messiah; the king, in spite of the
refusal of the guests, sends them a second invita-
tion (vv.* 4) ; they ill-treat and slay the servants
who bring the invitation, and the king sends
forth his armies to destroy them and to burn their
city (νν." 1). Evidently these details are suggested
by the thought of Israel’s behaviour towards her
God, and the fate that overtook her. Again, in
the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, St. Mark
relates that they took the son and slew him and
‘ast him out of the vineyard ; while St. Matthew
and St. Luke reverse the order, and make them
first cast him out and then slay him, with evident
reference to the fate of Jesus (Mt 9701 ef. He
1915. Again, in the parable of the Watchful
Servants (Mk 137, Lk 12%), St. Luke repre-
sents the master as girding himself and making
them sit down to meat and serving them, though
he has himself borne witness (177":) to the unlike-
lihood of such conduct on the part of any ordinary
master. Such extraordinary condescension is prob-
ably an allegorical feature introduced with refer-
ence to the Parousia.
2. If we accept the traditional principle of para-
bolical ‘interpretation,’ in how far are we justified
in seeking to interpret the circumstantial details
so largely present in the parables? There are
some who insist that every little detail is sig-
nificant, and who regard that as the true method
of interpretation which seeks to find some spiritual
truth to correspond to every item of the illustration.
‘Quanto enim plus solidi veritatis,’ says Vitringa
(quoted by Trench, ch. ili.) ‘ex Verbo Dei erueri-
mus, si nihil obstet, tanto magis divinam commend-
abimus sapientiam.’ Teelman (quoted by Jiilicher,
Die Glewhnisreden Jesu, i. p. 270) insists that in
every parable every word must be significant. And
Petersen. (εὖ. p. 271) maintains that Christ never
introduces the slightest detail into any parable
which is not designed to correspond to something
in the interpretation. On the other hand, it has
been generally recognized that there are limits
beyond which the details of the illustration must
not be pressed. ‘Sunt autem que et simpliciter
posita sunt,’ says Tert. (de Pudic. 9), ‘ad struendam
et disponendam et texendam parabolam.’ Chry-
sostom (in Mt. Hom. |xiv. 3) lays down the rule:
οὐδὲ χρὴ πάντα Ta ἐν Tals παραβολαῖς κατὰ λέξιν
περιεργάζεσθαι, ἀλλὰ τὸν σκοπὸν μαθόντας, δι᾿ ὃν
συνετέθη, τοῦτον δρέπεσθαι καὶ μηδὲν πολυπραγμονεῖν
περαιτέρω. But great difference of opinion exists,
even among those who profess to observe Chry-
sostom’s canon, as to where the πολυπραγμονεῖν
begins. Indeed, if the principle of ‘interpretation’
be admitted at all, if the parables, as such treat-
ment of them involves, in spite of all protest to
the contrary, are really allegories, it is difficult to
see on What ground a line can be drawn beyond
which it is illegitimate to interpret the details.
The more perfect the allegory, the more will it
admit of interpretation down to the minutest
circumstance. And so long as the significance
attached to these details is relevant to the tenor
of the whole, the interpreter may well demand on
what ground it may be objected that the details
in question are not to be regarded as symbolical.
The artificiality of the method and the unsatis-
factoriness of the conclusions may be urged as an
objection to the general principle of parabolical
CIDY:
CHLY, 333
‘interpretation’ underlying such method, but on
that principle the method itself appears thoroughly
defensible. :
3. If we reject the principle of parabolical
‘interpretation,’ does not the circumstantiality of
the illustrations become mere useless ornament ?
This is an objection raised against those who
contend that the parables are not to be regarded
as allegories of which we have to seek the interpre-
tation, but as comparisons between the principle
involved in some case taken from everyday life
and a similar principle which it is desired to
establish in the spiritual sphere. Those who
maintain this view insist that it is only the
principles or relations involved in the two different
spheres that are compared, not the details on
either side. There is only the one point of com-
parison between the two cases, only the one lesson
enforced by the parable. In answer to the objec-
tion that this seems to reduce the fulness of detail
with which the illustrations are elaborated to
mere useless ornament, it is replied that though
the details are not regarded as significant in the
symbolical sense, they are yet full of significance
as serving to bring out with force and clearness
the thought which it is the purpose of the parable
to enforce. Were the illustrations not presented
with such circumstantiality, they would not be
so convincing as they are. The scene is brought
vividly before our eyes; our interest is awakened,
our sympathy enlisted. Many of the details
which cause such trouble to the allegorical in-
terpreters, as, ¢.g., the injustice of the Judge (Lk
188) and the fraudulence of the Steward (Lk
161”), may easily be explained from this point of
view. The injustice of the Judge serves to bring
out more forcibly that it was the importunity of
the widow that overcame him; the fraud of the
Steward emphasizes the fact that it was for his
wisdom alone that he was commended. And so
with all the details with which the parables are
supplied. There is no useless ornament. Every
little touch serves to bring out more clearly the
central thought enforced by the illustration, and
so contributes to the effect of the parable.
LITERATURE.—See the list at the end of article PARABLE.
G. WAUCHOPE STEWART.
CITY.—In the East the city developed from the
necessity of protection from hostile invasion, and
its characteristic was the wall or rampart. It was
the wall that originally constituted the πόλις,
though in later times its position amongst the
Jews was determined by its ability to produce ten
men qualified for office in the Synagogue (see Hast-
ings’ DB, art. ‘City’). The κώμη was the village
or hamlet, without walls, and was generally a de-
pendency of some neighbouring city. In Mk 155 the
word κωμόπολις is used, apparently as a designation
of a large unwalled village or town. Bethlehem and
Bethsaida, though generally classed as cities, are
spoken of as κῶμαι in Jn 7”, Mk 829: 56. the natural
inference from which is that the words ‘city,’
‘town,’ and ‘village,’ though having, as with us,
a technical signification, were occasionally used in
a leoser and less precise manner.
The government of the πόλις was modelled on
that of Jerusalem, where the Sanhedrin (wh. see)
was the supreme authority on all matters which,
after the Roman domination, did not fall within
the province of the Roman governor. According
to the Talmud (Mish. Sanh. i. 6), in every Jewish
city there was a Council of twenty-three which
was responsible to the Sanhedrin (Mt 5”). Jose-
phus knows nothing of such a Council. The Court
which he mentions (Ané. Iv. viii. 14) consisted of
seven judges, who had each two Levites as assessors.
The College of Elders who presided over the Syna-
gogue had also judicial functions, but what was
its relation to the Council is not easy to determine.
The gates of the city were places of public resort ;
the money -changers facilitated trade; and the
various guilds of artisans had special districts
allotted to them.
In the time of our Lord, Palestine was a land of
cities. Galilee, measuring fifty miles north and
south, and from twenty-five to thirty-five east and
west—about the average size of an English shire—
is said by Josephus (BJ Il. iii. 2) to have had a
population of 3,000,000. Allowing for patriotic
exaggeration, the fact that the soil was so fertile
as to make it a veritable garden, and that it was
traversed by the three main trade routes of the East,
would account for an exceptional density of popu-
lation. Round the Lake of Galilee there were nine
cities with not less than 15,000 inhabitants, some
of them with considerably more, so that there must
have been along its margin an almost unbroken
chain of buildings. The blending of the Jewish
with the Greek civilization must have given to these
cities a striking picturesqueness alike in manners,
customs, attire, and architecture. Tiberias, built
by Herod Antipas, was a stately city, whose
ruins still indicate a wall three miles long. Its
palace, citadel, and public buildings were of the
most imposing description, but it was almost
wholly Gentile, no Jew who had the pride of
his race setting foot within the walls of a city
polluted alike by the monuments of idolatry and
by its site on an ancient burial-place. Cities like
Bethsaida and Capernaum, again, were preponder-
antly Jewish. ‘Taricheze, not mentioned in the
Gospels, is described by Pliny (HN v. xv. 11) as one
of the chief centres of industry and commerce, and
by Josephus (Ané. XIV. vil. 3) as a stronghold of
Jewish patriotism. Everywhere in Galilee there
was an intense civic vitality. The problems of a
complex civilization were presented with peculiar
force. The Gospel narrative stands out from a
background of a richer and more varied life than
probably ever existed elsewhere in an organized
community, and it reflects ina wonderfully accurate
manner all its various phases. This is, indeed,
one reason of its universal applicability. It is the
application of absolute principles of conduct to
typical situations of the most complex character.
This density of population passed over the Lake
of Galilee to the region eastward. The Decapolis
(Mt 4°?) consisted of a group of ten or more cities
east of the Jordan, united in a league for purposes
of defence. These were Greek cities in the province
of Syria, but possessing certain civil rights, such as
coinage, ete., granted them by Rome. The cities
constituting the Decapolis are variously named.
Pliny (HN ν. xviii. 74) enumerates them as follows :
Seythopolis, Hippos, Gadara, Dion, Pella, Gerasa,
‘Philadelphia, Canatha, and, with less probability,
Damascus and Raphana. To the north of Galilee
again lay the Pheenician cities of Tyre and Sidon
(Mt 15"). Tyre, even in its decline, was a noble city,
with a teeming population. The circumference of
its walls is given by Pliny as nineteen Roman
miles. Inland, Cresarea Philippi nestled at the
base of Mt. Hermon, in a situation of remarkable
beauty and fertility. This city received its name
from Herod the Great, who built there a temple to
Augustus. It was in its neighbourhood that Peter
made his striking confession (Mt 16"). The cities
of Samaria to the south occupy no large place in
our Lord’s mission. Though Jesus passed through
Samaria (Jn 44), it is not recorded that He visited
its capital, and the disciples were specially enjoined
to refrain from preaching the gospel in any city of
the Samaritans (Mt 10°). Samaria was itself a
beautiful city—one of the cities rebuilt on a mag-
nificent scale by Herod the Great owing to its
strategic situation—the population being mixed,
334
CH
CLAIM
half-Greek, half-Samaritan, wholly alien, there-
fore, in sympathy from the Jews, alike through the
Samaritan hostility and the Greek culture. The
city of Sychar (Jn 4°), the scene of our Lord’s con-
versation with the Samaritan woman, is generally
identified with the modern ‘Ain ‘Askar, at the foot
of Mt. Ebal, about a mile from Nablus (Shechem),.
Judea, with its desolate mountain ranges, was never
rich in cities. Jericho lay on its borders, situated
in an oasis of remarkable fertility, a city of palms,
in striking contrast to the stony and barren region
of which it was the gateway. Jericho was rich in
the natural wealth of the East, but singularly poor
in heroic memories.
3ut to the Jew the city of cities—the city that
symbolized all that was highest alike in his poli-
tical and religious aspirations — was Jerusalem.
Twice in St. Matthew’s Gospel is Jerusalem called
‘the holy city’ (Mt 4° 2759), and as such it was
enshrined in every Jewish heart through the noble
poetry of the Psalter. It was the city where God
had His chosen seat, and round which clustered
the heroie traditions of the Hebrew race—the city,
indeed, with which was intertwined the very con-
ception of Judaism as a national religion, for in
the Temple of Jerusalem alone could God be wor-
shipped with the rites He had Himself ordained.
The cities of Galilee owed their greatness and
importance to commercial or political causes.
Though some were preponderantly Jewish, and
others, such as Tiberias, almost exclusively Gen-
tile, there was yet in them all a mingling of races
and a tolerably free and humane intercourse.
Samaria was a great Roman stronghold, dominat-
ing the main trade-route from Ceesarea on the
coast to the East. But Jerusalem remained a city
of the Jews, cherishing its own ecclesiastical tradt-
tions, and holding its patriotic exclusiveness with
a narrowness all the greater from the pressure of
the Roman subjection. It had almost complete
autonomy under the Sanhedrin. Czesarea was the
seat of the Roman Procurator, except during the
erent Jewish feasts, when he found it necessary to
reside at Jerusalem to restrain the turbulence of a
fanatically patriotic people who were ready to
court martyrdom for the national cause. It is
perhaps signilicant, as showing the ecclesiastical
character of the population of Jerusalem, that it
was a priest and a Levite who first passed the man
lying wounded and bleeding on the road to Jericho
(Lik 10%),
In the time of our Lord, then, the Jews had
made the transition from a life mainly pastoral
and agricultural to the more advanced life of the
city. The Twelve and the Seventy are sent to
preach the gospel in cities, and when they are
persecuted in one city they are to flee to another
(Mt 1016. 3. Lk 101). Jesus, after He had given
instructions to the Twelve, departs to preach
and to teach in their cities (Mt 11'). The concep-
tion of the city as the flower and fruit of the
highest civilization is emereine, and the civitas
Dei is taking the place of the reqnum Dei, and
thus bringing Hebrew into line with Greek ideals.
This fact is very significant for the modern presen-
tation of the gospel. It is sometimes assumed
that Christianity 1s possible only for a primitive
community, and many modern ideals of communal
life are based on the supposition that the city is
wholly an artificial product, and that the way of
true progress lies in reverting to village com-
munities. All throueh the Christian centuries
there has been a tendency on the part of many
who have felt with sineular intensity the influence
of Jesus, to seek the enltivation of the Christian
life either in isolation or in withdrawing them-
selves from the strenuous civie activities. The
Christian ideal of saintship has been largely that
of the cloister. But it is becoming more and more
realized that Jesus lived His life in a crowd, that
He was so seldom. alone that occasions when He
sought solitude are specially noted, and that it
was the sight of great masses of people that most
powerfully touched His emotions (Mt 144, Lk 19+).
The gospel of Jesus is essentially a social gospel.
Its ideal is a civie ideal. Its precepts have no
meaning and no applicability except to those who
are living ina community. Its ultimate goal is the
‘holy city, new Jerusalem, descending from God
out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband’ (Rev 21°). The fact is noteworthy as
showing the place and influence of Christianity
in the natural evolution of humanity. For the
history of civilization is the history of cities.
Babylon, Nineveh, Jerusalem, Athens, Rome,
Alexandria, Venice, Florence, and the medieval
cities all mark stages in the development of the
higher culture of the race. The modern: city,
indeed, still lacks its raison @étre. It is as yet a
huge amorphous entity, presenting problems which,
so far from finding solution, are only now begin-
ning to be fully faced. And the supreme test of the
Divine power of the religion of Jesus in our day will
lie in its capability of giving to the city rational
meaning, of transmuting the blind force of econo-
mic pressure to the law of reciprocal harmony, of
so applying the principles of the gospel to the
marvellous complexities of our civie life as to
educe the noblest faculties of the individual while
securing the unity of communal existence.
LitErRaTURE.—Schtirer, HJ P πὶ. i. 154 ff., 160f. ; G. A. Smith,
HGHL pp. 420-435; Fairbairn, City of God, pp. 349-370;
Westcott, Hebrews, pp. 386-389. A. MILLER.
CLAIM.—The term expresses a twofold relation-
ship, either to a claim as advanced and enforced
or as accepted and complied with. The assump-
tion or imposition of a claim upon another is an
act of authority, a relationship of established
right and superior power; while the recognition
and discharge of the same claim represent the
corresponding social duty.
The narrative of the Gospels describes how Christ
moved amid the social and religious relationships
of the world into which He came. It tells how
He knew all things in the heart of man (Jn 959-35).
and occasionally drew the attention of His disciples
to the real importance of certain personalities and
actions (Mt 16° 114, Lk 21*4), where a wrong im-
pression might have been produced ; but, as a rule,
He does not take the initiative in criticising and
condemning in detail the standards, methods, and
institutions then prevailing in society. His king-
dom is declared to be entirely distinct from that
of the world, and it is only when challenged on a
question of right conduct that He lays down the
principle that whatever Cresar has an undisputed
claim upon ought to be regarded as his, and what-
ever belongs to God should be rendered to Him
only. On the ground of previous and_ higher
claims, He expels those who had obtained the
privilege of traftic within the temple area, inas-
much as the place had been dedicated to its Owner
as a house of prayer (Mt 2118). The victims of
masterful temptation and difficult surroundings
(Mt 1119. Lk 757 1818 228! Jn 8") are regarded with
pity and hopefulness. His direct and indignant
exposure is reserved for the attempt to give
religious sanction to evaded duty (Mk 71). or where
the name of religion is made unlovely by the proud
and harsh claims of those who profess it (Mt 6?
984-7. 23)
Otherwise Christ moves amid the relationships
of common life and the claims of organized society,
using them as the field of parable and the vehicle
of His teaching concerning the kingdom that was
CLAIM
Se aS vl 8 293, an 0 8 δ ἡ
athand. Thus He refers to purchasers of property,
money-lenders and interest, employers of labour |
and the rights of the labourer. Similarly, we have
allusions to war, judicial punishment, parental
authority, marriage and divorce, fasting and
sumptuous living. With regard to all such rela-
tionships and connected claims Christ uses the
vocabulary and valuation current in the world.
The prodigal son declares that he has forfeited the |
right to which he had been born (Lk 15"); Zacchzeus
(19°) and the woman bowed down with infirmity
(1315) have, as children of Abraham, a family
claim that should shut out more distant considera-
tions. This fact gives emphasis to the exceptional
instances of Naaman and the widow of Sarepta (Lk
4°), The Syro-Phcenician woman quite under-
stands that local opinion as to race privilege does
not allow her to share on equal terms with Israel
(Mt 1551: 38. The lineage of natural descent im-
plies that of ethical resemblance (Mt 231, Jn 8).
Parental affection is the basis of the assurance
that our Heavenly Father will act still more wisely
and lovingly towards His children (Mt 7! || Lk 11:8).
It is after the fullest recognition of the beauty
and power of family claims that Christ calls His
disciples to an even more intense and constrain-
ing relationship (Mt 10°7, Lk 1456),
The claims of neighbourhood and hospitality are
frequently alluded to. Lazarus, even in Abraham’s
bosom, must be willing to serve one who had been |
an earthly neighbour (Lk 105). A neighbour can
be put to any inconvenience on behalf of a stranger |
guest in their midst (1158). The action of the
woman who anointed Christ and bathed His feet
with tears is shown to be right, inasmuch as the
claim of a passing guest was greater than that of
those who were always present (Mk 143, Lk 7°7-38,
cla 19} 8]:
By the same use of current language and thought,
religion is a codification of things bound and free, |
prohibited and permitted (Mt 161818). Its duties,
as imposed by the scribes and Pharisees, are like
the load on the submissive baggage animal (23%). |
John forbids those who taught in Christ’s name
without having the qualifying claim of discipleship
(Mk 958). With the formal appeal of a litigant,
‘Legion’ demands a proof of Christ’s right to |
interfere (57). Satan is another taskmaster with
claims to be satisfied, and disease is the mark |
of his property and power (Lk 13!). © Rabbinical
rules so far supersede the commandments of God
that Christ can be condemned as an enemy to
ΤΟΙ τατον (Mit 2318-99) Mic 8:0 75:9 1705 11} Lk 1314)s |
Afterwards, to one who understood it all, it was |
evident that attention to their own claims had
blinded the religious leaders of Israel to the pres-
ence of the Lord of Glory (1 Co 2%), just as the
worship of nature, degraded and degrading, had
darkened and alienated from God the heart of the
Gentile world (Ro 1°).
It is thus evident from the Gospel narratives that
the Hebrew-Roman world, into which Christ came
as the Son of Man, had reached a high stage of de-
velopment with regard to social authority and obedi-
ence. The areas of privilege and exemption were
carefully marked off from those of servility and |
compulsion. Legislated right and wrong, like
guarding cherubim, faced each other at all the
gates of public life. The rich and noble confronted
the poor and unclassed, the strong and conquering
had their counterpart in the subject and enslaved,
the wise and enlightened stood out in relief from
the ignorant and barbarous, the male had defined
authority and predominance over the female, and
free-born citizens exercised a jealous censorship
over the admission of strangers and foreigners.
The universal pressure of such claims and obliga-
tions gave sedimentary stratification to all that
CLAIMS OF CHRIST 335
was highest and lowest in social order, and only
the infusion and uplift of a new volcanic force
could invert its masses and confuse such estab-
lished lines of cleavage.
It was largely due to this prevalence of legal relationship that
the first presentation of the gospel to the world took the
familiar form of forensic process and judicial pronouncement.
A similar desire to present afresh to the present age the mind
of Christ and the spirit of His kingdom would in the West draw
upon the discoveries of physical science, the principles of com-
mercial expansion, and the incentives of politicalempire. In the
East it would measure the following of Christ with the self-
denial of the devotee, likeness to Him with the claims of caste,
and turn towards our Heavenly Father the venerated claims of
ancestor-worship.
There were, however, two great relationships in
the Hebrew-Roman world that were strangely
marked by aloofness and disruption, namely,
spiritual fellowship between God and man, and
the racial status of Jew and Greek. Among the
Jews the voice of prophecy and of direct communi-
cation with God had ceased. The word of Ezekiel
(37") had been fulfilled, ‘Our bones are dried, and
our hope is lost.” The message of religious teach-
ing had dropt its preface, ‘thus saith the Lord,’
and had come to express the contention of a sect,
the presentation of a view, the quotation of hearer
from hearer. On this account the teaching of
Christ arrested the ear as sounding a note that
had become unfamiliar, the voice of original
authority. In the Roman world, the most sincere
and eloquent teacher of the age (Lucretius) had
shown that there was no Divine care for man as
had been once supposed, for in his vision of the
opened heavens he had seen the gods in a happy
seclusion of their own, undisturbed by the sound
of human pain and sorrow (de 706)". Nat. iii. 18 th ;
οἵ. Homer, J/. vi. 41 11.). In that jaded and dis-
enchanted day the most popular and reasoned
religion could only unite gods and men in the
creed of avoided care.
With regard to the mutual recognition of Jew
and Gentile, the antagonism was regarded on both
sides as radical and permanent. The Jew despised
the Gentile as ‘flesh and blood,’ humanity without
religion ; the Gentile saw in the Jew the negation
of all social instinct, the genius of unnatural hate,
religion without humanity. It must have been
indescribably wonderful in such an age to learn
that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world
unto himself’ (2 Co 5). It was a great task that
was soon to confront the gospel, for the Jew had
to be convinced that the alien had been divinely
provided for in the promises (Eph 9215), and the
Gentile had to learn that there was no place for
pride where a wild branch had been graited con-
trary to custom into a cultivated stem, and owed
not only its sustenance but the higher quality of
its new fruit to that incorporation (Ro 11'-*4),
And yet in a quarter of a century after Christ’s
death it could be stated as something that had
passed beyond comment and controversy,—‘ There
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond
nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye
are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal 3°; see POWER).
The Christian was thus a ‘new creature,’ and for
him all things had become new (2 Co 5"); but this
did not mean that he had any resident authority
enabling him henceforth to please himself. Every-
thing was in Christ Jesus. To come to Christ was
to accept His yoke, and the spirit of bondage (Ro
815) had only been exchanged for a nobler con-
straint (2 Co δ᾽. Wherever there was freedom
from the law of sin and death, there was the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Ro 83).
GEORGE M. MACKIE.
CLAIMS (OF CHRIST).—In any attempt to
arrive at the truth with regard to the person of
Christ, it is with the self-consciousness of Jesus
its slaves (Mt 915}, Lk 75° 192-10), And-this holi-
336 CLAIMS OF CHRIST
and His witness regarding Himself that we must
begin. To answer the question, ‘What think ye
of Christ?’ we need above all to know what Christ
thought of Himself. It was the men who knew
Jesus only in an external fashion that took Him
to be John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or
one of the prophets (Mt 16"). It was one who had
come into the closest contact with the mind of the
Master, and had learned to judge Him, not by
outward signs merely, but by His implicit and
explicit claims, that broke into the great con-
fession, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God’ (v.2°). Hence it becomes a matter of the
highest importance to consider the testimony of
the Gospels as to our Lord’s personal claims. |
4. The fundamental claim of Jesus was a claim
to moral authority. And this authority was
asserted in two ways. (a) He claimed the authority
of a master, an authority over the will and the life,
to which obedience was the only natural response.
It was by this most probably that the earliest dis-
ciples were first impressed. ‘ Follow me,’ Jesus said
to men (Mt 4!% 2! |j 822 99 || 192! ||, Jn 14); and they
either rose up straightway and followed Him (Mt
430. 22 || 99 ||), or, if they failed to do so, ‘ went away
sorrowful,’ feeling in their inmost hearts that they
had made ‘the grand refusal’ (Mt 19” ||). (ὁ) But,
further, He claimed authority as a teacher. If His
immediate followers were first impressed by His
claim to be obeyed, it was the authority of
His teaching that first struck the multitude and
filled them with astonishment (Mt 7**-?9 ||). It was
not only that He constantly placed Himself in
opposition to their acknowledged instructors, those
scribes who sat in Moses’ seat, and set His simple
‘Verily I say unto you’ against all the traditional
learning of the synagogue. He did much more
than this. He claimed the right either to abrcgate
altogether or to reinterpret in His own way laws
which were regarded as clothed with Divine sane-
tions—the law of retaliation (Mt 5°8*-), the law of
divorce (v.*!), and even the thrice-holy law of the
Sabbath (Mt 12-10%) Lik 1314, Jn’ 72). See art.
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST.
2. But moral authority, like all other forms of
authority, must rest upon a power that lies behind.
What right has Jesus to speak thus? men would
ask; What right to call upon us to leave our
homes, our friends, our all, to follow Him? What
right to bid us accept His teaching as a perfect
revelation of the will of God, and His interpreta-
tion of the Law as its true fulfilling? Moral autho-
rity quickly disappears when there is no moral
power at the back of it. But our Lord’s claim to
authority rested upon an underlying claim to holi-
noss—a claim which His hearers and disciples were
in a position to verify for themselves. There is
nothing which gives a man such sway over the
consciences of other men as the possession of true
holiness ; while there is nothing more certain to be
found out than the lack of this quality in one who
professes to have it. It was the holiness of Christ’s
character that made His words fall with such
convincing weight upon the hearts of men and
women. It was His holiness that gave Him the
right to command, and made them willing to obey.
According to the Fourth ( rospel, it was the Baptist’s
testimony, ‘ Behold the Lamb of God!’ (Jn 136), that
brought the first pair of disciples to Jesus. They
came to see if this testimony was true (ef. v.37-),
and what they saw bound them to Jesus for ever.
Publicans and sinners drew near to Him (Mt 9),
Lk 15'), not, as His enemies insinuated (Mt 119 |\),
because He was a sinner like themselves, but
because they saw in Him One who, with all His
human sympathy, was so hich above sin that He
could stretch out a savine hand to those who were
CLAIMS OF CHRIST
ness, which others saw and felt in Him, Jesus
claimed, and that in the most absolute fashion.
He claimed to be without sin. He claimed this
not only when He said to His foes, ‘ Which of you
convicteth me of sin?’ (Jn 8%), but by the attitude
of His whole life to the facts of moral evil. He
claimed it by calling Himself the Physician of
the sinful (Mt 9!*||), by assuming the power to
forgive sins (Mt 9° ||, Lk 74), by never making con-
fession of sin in His own prayers, though enjoining
it upon His disciples (Mt 6" ||), by never even join-
ing with His disciples in common prayers, of which
confession would necessarily form an element (on
this point see Forrest, Christ of History and of
Experience, p. 22 ft.; Lxupos. Times, xi. [1900] 352 fi.).
See, further, artt. HOLINESS, SINLESSNESS.
3. A very important aspect of Christ’s claims is
their point of connexion with the national hope
regarding the Messiah (which see). There can
hardly be any doubt that from the very beginning
of His public ministry the Messianic consciousness
was fully awake in the heart of Jesus. We see
the presence of this consciousness in the Tempta-
tion narratives (Mt 41:11}, in the sermon in the
synagogue of Nazareth (Lk 4!"-), in the claim of
the preacher on the Mount that He came to fulfil
the Law and the Prophets (Mt 5”). At a later
stage He welcomes and blesses Peter’s express de-
claration, ‘Thou art the Christ’ (Mt 1010), and,
finally, He accepts the homage of the multitude as
the Son of David (wh. see), who came in the name
of the Lord (Mt 21||), and dies upon the eross for
claiming to be the King of the Jews (Mt 9711, ef.
v.*7). And if until the end of His ministry He did
not call Himself or aliow Himself to be called the
Messiah (Mt 16?°), this was clearly because the false
ideals of the Jews regarding the Messianic king-
dom made it impossible for Him to do so without
creating all kinds of misunderstandings, and so
precipitating the inevitable crisis before His work
on earth was accomplished. But by His constant
use of the title ‘Son of Man’ (wh. see), Jesus was
giving all along, as Beyschlag says (NZ Theology,
1. 63), ‘a veiled indication of His Messianic eall-
ing’; for hardly any one now doubts that He used
this title with precise reference to the well-known
passage in the 7th chapter of Daniel (v.!°*-), and
that by so describing Himself He was claiming to
bring in personally and establish upon earth that
very kingdom of God which formed the constant
theme of His preaching (see Mt 26%),
4. But if Christ’s use of the title ‘Son of Man’
shows how He claimed to fulfil the Messianic idea,
His further claim to be the Son of God (wh. see)
shows that He filled this idea with an altogether
new content, which formed no part of the Messianic
expectation of the Jews. No doubt in popular
usage the title ‘Son of God,’ through the influence
especially of Ps 2’, had become an official name for
the Messiah (Mt 8%, Mk 14%, Jn 14°). But Christ’s
claim to be the Son of God evidently meant much
more than this. In asserting His Divine Sonship
He was not merely affirming His right to an ex-
ternal title of honour, but was giving expression
to a consciousness-of relationship to God the Father
which was absolutely unique, and in which the
very essence of His Messiahship consisted. It is
true that in the Synoptics He does not expressly
designate Himself the Son of God, as He does in
the Fourth Gospel (57 955 [var. Zect.] 10° 114) ; but
at all events He repeatedly calls God His Father,
and refers to Himself as ‘the Son’ when speaking
of God, and that in a sense manifestly distinct
from the general idea of God’s universal Father-
hood (c.g. Mt 1177 1950 1810). In the Fourth Gospel,
quite apart from those passages in which Christ
assumes the title ‘Son of God,’ the sense of this
unique relation to God as bearing upon His saving
CLAIMS OF CHRIST
Se Se πὸ πὸ
relationship to men meets us everywhere, but
especially in the farewell discourse and the inter-
cessory prayer which followed (Jn 14-17). But in
the Synopties also this Divine consciousness appears
repeatedly (e.g. Lk 2%, Mt 7?! 10%? 1617 222%, Mk 125),
and it finds full expression in that great saying,
‘All things have been delivered unto me of my
Father; and no one knoweth the Son save the
Father; neither doth any know the Father save
the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to
revéal him’ (Mt 1157, Lk 102), which serves in St.
Matthew’s account as the ground of the Saviour’s
universal invitation and of His promise of rest for
the soul (v.**#), See PREACHING CHRIST, 5 (c).
5. In connexion with His eschatological teach-
ing, and forming its central and most essential
feature, is the claim made by Christ to be the final
and universal Judge of men. Not only did He
declare the fact of His own Return, an astonishing
declaration in itself, but He affirmed as the pur-
pose of His Second Coming the Judgement of the
world. This claim to be the arbiter of human
destinies is distinctly announced again and again
(Mt 77° °3 1677, Mk 8%). It is further implied -in
the parables of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (Mt
25'-15) and the Talents (νν. 1:30). and is set forth in
detail in that solemn picture of the Last Judement
by which these parables are immediately followed
(vv.21-46), The testimony of the Synopties with
regard to this claim of our Lord is supported by
the testimony of the Fourth Gospel to the same
effect (Jn 5°", cf. v.™), and is confirmed by the
fact that throughout the rest of the NT the office
of the final Judge is constantly assigned to Jesus
(Ac 1013 174, Ro 916 14, 2 Co 5”, 9 ΤΙ 41:8. 1 Ρὶ 45,
Ja 5°), an office, be it noted, which was never
ascribed to the Messiah either in the OT revelation
or in the popular Jewish belief (see Salmond,
Christian Doct. of Immortality, p. 318). This is
in some respects the most stupendous of Christ’s
claims. It was a great thing for Jesus of Nazareth
to assume the titles and functions of the Hope of
Israel, to declare Himself to be the Fulfiller of the
Law and the Expected of the Prophets. But it
was something greater still to claim that with His
Return there would arrive the grand consummation
of the world’s history (Mt 25*'), that before Him
all nations should be gathered (v.**) and all hearts
laid bare (νν. ὅ5- 86. 4-48), that the principle of the
Judgment should be the attitude of men to Himself
as He is spiritually present in the world (vv.*: 5),
and that of this attitude Christ Himself should be
the Supreme Judge (νν. 3 3). See art. JUDGMENT.
6. That the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence is
specifically taught in the Prologue to the Fourth
Gospel, is apparent to every reader (Jn 1! 10. 4 18),
But it is not less plain that, according to the
author, this doctrine was not simply a solution
forced upon the Christian mind by a consideration
of Christ’s other claims and of His whole history,
but was the unfolding of an affirmation made by
Christ’s own lips (6? 8° 17>-*4). Τὴ spite of all that
has been said by writers like Beyschlag (op. cit. 1.
254) and Wendt (Teaching of Jesus, ii. 169), the
theory of an ideal pre-existence is quite inadequate
as an explanation of such language. Only by
maintaining that John’s picture of Jesus and pre-
sentation of His words is no record of historical
fact, but a theologically determined constructien of
his own, can we escape from the conclusion that, as
Jesus claimed to be in an absolutely unique sense
the Son of the Father, so also He claimed to be
the personal object of the Father’s love and the |
sharer of His glory before the world was. See art.
PRE-EXISTENCE.
LITERATURE.—Hastings’ DB, artt. ‘Son of Man,’ ‘Son of God’;
Denney, Studies in Theology, ch. ii.; Forrest, Christ of History
and of Experience, Lect. ii.; Beyschlag, NZ’ Theol. i. 56-79,
VOL. I.—22
CLEOPAS 337
236-266; Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, ii. 122-183; Weiss, Bib.
Theol. of NT, i. 73-92 ; Stalker, Christology of Jesus; Ullmann,
Surlessness of Jesus, 69-81; Salmond, Christian Doct. of
Immortality, 313-325 ; Robbins, A Uhristian Apologetic (1902),
59-87 ; Forrest, Authority of Christ (1906).
J. C. LAMBERT.
CLEANNESS.—See LAw, PURIFICATION.
CLEANSING.—See TEMPLE.
CLEOPAS (Κλεύόπας, Lk 24!8).—One of the two
disciples to whom the Lord appeared on the after-
noon of the Resurrection day as they went to
Emmaus, distant about two hours from Jerusalem
(see EMMAUS). The omission of all reference to
the story in 1 Co 15 is not a sutfticient ground for
questioning its truth. We have no guarantee that
St. Paul’s knowledge extended to all the actual
events of the Passion and Resurrection period (cf.
Chase, Credibility of the Acts, p. 184). The story
may have been received by the Evangelist from
Cleopas himself : it bears marks of its early origin
in the primitive Messianic ideas it preserves, and
in the use of the name Simon for St. Peter. By
some (Theophylact, Lange, Carr) the unnamed
companion of Cleopas is identified with St. Luke
himself; but this is unlikely, as both appear to
have been Jews (oi ἄρχοντες. ἡμῶν, v.”’), though
they do not speak in a tone of such personal near-
ness to Jesus that we can accept the conjecture
that they were of the Eleven. The two were in
high dispute about late events, Cleopas apparently
taking the more optimistic view, as, in spite of all,
he clings to the few facts which make for belief.
The inability of both to recognize Jesus is ex-
plained in St. Luke to be due to spiritual dulness
(οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτῶν ἐκρατοῦντο, v.!°). The pseudo-Mark
(whose allusion does not depend on St. Luke, for
he gives a diflerent sequel in Jerusalem) says that
the Lord appeared ‘in another form’ (ἐν ἑτέρᾳ μορφῇ,
Mk 10:3) ; an interpretation favoured by Augustine,
who compares the effect of the Transfiguration
(μετεμορφώθη, Mk 97). Whatever the cause, the
Lord treated them with tenderness (v.2° ἀνόητοι,
“Ὁ foolish men,’ RV, not ‘fools,’ as AV; cf. Ramsay
on Gal 3}).
The discourse in which they were enlightened
furnishes from Christ’s own lips what in fact became
the kernel of the preaching of the Apostles, as seen
in the sermons recorded in the Acts (e.g. Ac 255-36
175) and in the Gospels. The two disciples had
already given the summary of the earthly life of
Jesus (Lk 2414), He now shows that it was re-
quired by OT prophecy that all this should be the
means by which He was to enter into His glory
(24°7 should be read in the light of vv.4""). It is
this teaching that invests the narrative with its
peculiar value for the Church, and was doubtless
a prime cause of its preservation.
Many of the speculations about the phrase, ‘He
made as though He would go further’ (Lk 24°),
would have been avoided if the real spiritual
meaning of the incident had been discerned.
Knowledge of the Lord’s presence is vouchsafed
only in answer to prayer, it is not forced on any-
one. This is the NT Penuel (cf. Gn 32° with Lk
24°"), It is a too rigid interpretation which regards
the breaking of the bread here as a celebration of
the Eucharist; rather it was an ordinary meal at
which the Stranger, who had so impressed them
on the road, was put in the place of honour.
Something in His manner suddenly confirmed the
suspicion of His identity which was forming itself
in their minds. The result which the Lord desired,
the corroboration of their faith, having been
reached, He vanished from sight. To carry the
tidings to Jerusalem, ‘they who had dissuaded
their unknown Companion from making a night
journey now have no fear of it themselves’ (Bengel).
338 CLEOPHAS
LireRATURE.—Aug. Hp. 149; Stier, Words of the Lord Jesus,
Eng. tr., vol. viii. ; Trench, Studies in the Gospels, p. 324 ff. ;
Latham, The Risen Master; Swete on Mk 1012; A. Carr in
Hapositor, Feb. 1904; Deissmann, Bible Studies, p. 315; Ker,
Sermons, 2nd ser. p. 264 ff.; Hapos. Times, xvii. [1906] 333 ff.
C. T. DIMoNT.
CLEOPHAS.—This form appears in some Latin
MSS, and is retained in the Vulgate (though
against the evidence of Codex Amiatinus) in both
Lk 2418 and Jn 19”. It was adopted by the early
English versions (Wyclifite, Tindale), and passed
into the AV of 1611. It still stands there in
Jn 19% for Clopas (wh. see), but in Lk 2478 it was
replaced in 1629 by Cleopas (wh. see).
C. T. DIMonr.
CLOKE (the spelling in both AV and RV of the
modern ‘cloak’).—There was originally a marked
distinction between Classical and Oriental costume,
a distinction which was lessened under the cosmo-
politanism of the Roman Empire ; thus the Greek
words used in the NT bear different meanings.
The two normal Classical garments, the χιτών and
ἱμάτιον of Mt 5% and Lk 6”, translated ‘coat’? and
“cloke,’ were usually of extreme simplicity.
The χιτών, tunica, tunic, or shirt (see art. COAT),
was the under-garment worn indoors by men and
women alike, an oblong strip of material doubled
round the body and fastened at the shoulders,
without any shaping or sewing, sometimes girt and
sometimes ungirt. The sddin of the Jews differed
from this in being longer and furnished with
sleeves; over it was worn the kéthéneth, a long
sleeved tunic, open in front, but folded across
and girt ; this latter formed a second tunica, which
is the χιτών, apparently, of Mt 5” and Lk 6”.
Oriental influences led to the adoption of the long
tunic in Rome under the name of tunica talaris, a
garment which, in Cicero’s time, was regarded asa
mark of effeminacy ; in later years it was known in
its white formas the tunica alba or alb. The ἱμάτιον,
over-garment or ‘cloke,’ was, with the Greeks and
Romans, originally an oblong strip, thrown over the
tunic (χιτών) when the wearer went out of doors ;
initssimplest form it was the padlium; more elabor-
ately folded, it was the toga. Thus the χιτών and the
ἱμάτιον are the under- and the over-garment, though
what we call underclothing was often worn also.
But the use of sleeves among the Orientals made a
still greater distinction in their over-garment ; the
mé-il and simlah of the Jews were sleeved garments
rather like a modern overcoat, open in front, and
reaching to the feet. The ‘long robe’ of the
seribes and Pharisees (Lk 204) was the mé-él, ren-
dered by St. Luke as στολή, which merely means a
long sleeved garment, a tunica talaris, in fact ; for
which reason the ‘great multitude’ of the Apoca-
lypse (7°78) are also deseribed as wearing στολὰς
λευκάς, that is, lone white tunics, or tunice albe,
though in Rey 3° the more general word is used—
ἐν ἱματίοις λευκοῖς, ‘in white garments’ (RV).
The classical over-garment appeared in many varieties besides
the changing fashions of the toga. The padliwn, Greek in its
origin, had become international in its character at the time of
the Roman Empire, and was regarded as the mark of a philo-
Sopher or teacher; so Justin Martyr preached in the ‘philo-
sopher’s robe,’ and was thus recognized by Trypho as a teacher
(T'ryph. 1). It was for this reason that the palliwm was chosen
by the artists of the Catacombs as the distinguishing dress of
Christ, the Apostles, and the Prophets, and has continued so by
an artistic convention that has lasted from the 2nd cent. to the
present day. The chlaniys, yAwuus, saguin or paludamentinn,
was made of a smaller oblong strip, fastened by a buckle on the
right shoulder (as in the Apollo Belvidere); it was a light
military cloak, and was the ‘scarlet robe,’ xAawuvda χοχπίνην
Which the soldiers put upon our Lord in mockery (Mt 2728), The
Seamless ‘coat,’ for which the soldiers cast lots at the Cruci-
fixion, is distinguished by St. John (1923) by the word used for a
tunic or under-garment, χιτῶν, and not by any of the terms used
for the various forms of outer garment, such as we should
expect if the ‘coat’ were the Jewish simlah.
Another common form of outer garment is the
φαιλόνης, the ‘cloke’ which St. Paul left at Troas
(9 4 A 3) Thi ;
2 ΤΊ 413). This was the penula (φαινόλης, φενόλης,
CLOSET
φαινόλιον), a heavy woollen garment, generally red
or dark-yellow in colour, worn as a_ protection
against cold and rain, at first especially by tra-
vellers and by artisans and slaves; hence on the
one hand its use by St. Paul, and on the other its
frequent occurrence in the Catacombs of Rome
(where the tunica, the tunica talaris, dalmatic,
chlamys, padliwm, and the lacerna, a ecope-shaped
garment, are also found, while the toga occurs
only once). The penula was the original of the
Eucharistic chasuble, and resembles it exactly in
shape (a circle or ellipse, with a hole in the centre),
though not in material. As time went on, it was
used by all classes, and after the Peace of the
Church it became in course of time restricted to
bishops and presbyters. It is worn by the ecclesi-
astics in the famous 6th cent. frescoes at Ravenna,
where appear also the ¢unica talaris, still adorned
with the orphrey-like strips of the clavus, the
dalmatie, lacerna, and the palliwm, which, by the
process of contabulatio or folding, has come to
resemble a long stole, and is distinctive of bishops.
Thus, while the toga, chlamys, and the original
tunica disappeared, and are to us typical of classical
antiquity, the penula, pallium, lacerna, dalmatie, :
and tunica talaris were handed on as ecclesiastical
vestments (chasuble, pall, cope, dalmatice, and alb),
the last named forming a link not only with im-
perial Rome, but also with the East. See, further,
art. DRESS.
LITERATURE.—A. Conze, Die antike Gewdndung; Keil, Ben-
zinger, and Nowack, Heb. Arch.; Hastings’ DB, art. ‘ Dress’ ;
Sechurer, HJ P, Index, s.v. ‘Clothing’; Wilpert, Die Gewandung
der Christen tn den ersten Jahrhunderten, and Un capitolo
di storia del vestiaro; Braun, Die priesterlichen Gewdnder des
Abendlandes, and Die pontijicalen Gewdnder des Abendlandes ;
Duchesne, Origines du culte chrétien.
PERCY DEARMER.
CLOPAS (K\w7ds).— Mentioned in Jn 19” as
a relative, probably the husband, of one of the
women who stood by the cross (Mapia ἡ τοῦ
Κλωπᾶ). By Chrysostom he was identified with
Alphzeus; but this is improbable (see ALPHZUS).
For his connexion with Joseph and the family of
Jesus, see art. BRETHREN OF THE LORD and Has-
tings’ DB, vol. i. p. 322. According to certain
apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, he is the same as
the Cleopas of Lk 9418 In that case the devotion
which kept Mary of Clopas near the cross till the
end finds a counterpart in her husband’s sorrow at
the Crucifixion. But the identification rests on
the derivation of both names from a common
Greek original, Cleopatros, and is denied by those
who regard Clopas as a Semitic name (see Deiss-
mann, ible Studies, Eng. tr. p. 315, n. 2).
C. T. DIMonT.
CLOSET (raetov).—Mt 6°, Lk 12° AV.
The older form of the Gr. word was ταμίειον (found in some
NT MSS), but the later language frequently shows the coalescence
of two following 7 sounds.* The etymology (cf. resesms, ‘ dis-
tributor,’ ‘treasurer,’ ‘steward,’ etc., akin to τέμνω) shows that
‘store-chamber’ is the primitive meaning of the Gr. word (7.e.
not small sitting-room or bedroom). In this sense it occurs in
Lk 1224, and even the RV, following Vulg. and Luther, have
been compelled to break their rule of uniformity of rendering in
this case. The four occurrences of the Gr. word are dealt with
as follows in the versions :—
AV RV Vulgate Luther
Mt 66 ~— closet inner chamber cubiculum Kammerlein
Mt 3426 secret inner chambers penetralibus Kammer
chambers
Lk 123 closets inner chambers cubiculis Kammern
Lk 1224 store- store-chamber cellarium Keller
house
00%
The Peshitta has LioZ (ta-wand) in all four passages, and
it seems a pity that ‘store-closet’ or ‘store-chamber’ was not
used by RV in the same way throughout.
*Cf. J. H. Moulton in Eapositor, 6th ser. ix. [1904] 361:
“seemsiov, rev and vysce are overwhelmingly attested by the
papyri, Where there are only are examples of a curious rever-
sion, like that in Mt 2022’ (where WH read si:sv, elsewhere πεὶν,
CLOSET
CLOUD 339
ee πε δι i ΟΝ
Every Jewish house, except the very smallest
huts, would have a small room opening out from
the ‘living-room,’ as our workmen’s cottages have
small pantries, larders, ete., in many cases; but
few houses would have a small room specially for
private prayer. Yet, curiously, many writers have
assumed that Jewish houses did have ‘prayer
closets’; usually, they say, in the upper part of
the house,* and many identify it with the ὑπερῷον
(a:9y,‘aliyyah). Is there any ground for this? he
‘upper rooms’ mentioned in NT were usable as
guest-chambers (Mk 14, etc.), large enough to
accommodate thirteen persons reclining round
tables, and (perhaps) even 120 persons (Ac 1),
Would the individual worshipper be able to enter
such an important room in a house, and ‘shut
the door’ (Mt 6°) against the rest of his family ?
Others (¢.9., Keil, Biblical Archeology, § 95) think
of the frail sumimer-house on the flat roof.
According to modern European ideas, the Vul-
gate cubiculum, ‘bedroom,’ would suit the context
and circumstances well in Mt 6%, perhaps in Mt
2450 and Lk 12%, but not at all in Lk 1253, Moreover,
(a) this rendering loses the connexion with the
etymology ; (4) the use of separate bedrooms is not
common in the East; (¢) there are other Gr. and
Syr. words to express the idea,
It must be noticed that Mt 6° is founded on
Is 26", εἴσελθε εἰς τὰ ταμεῖά σου, ἀπόκλεισον τὴν θύραν
σου. But the motive in Isaiah is fear, in Matthew
desire of loving communion. ταμεῖον occurs 40
times in LXX. In most cases it retains the mean-
ing ‘store -closet’ (Dt 283, Sir 2013, ete.). In
other cases it is a private chamber of some sort
as in Mt 6°: ¢.g., Gn 43°, Dt 32%, Jg 3%. The last
case is noticeable. ταμεῖον is defined by τῷ θερινῷ,
and represents 177 (heder), while ὑπερῷον in the con-
text is ‘diyyah, rather implying a distinction. The
summer ‘upper room’ (EY ‘ parlour’) had a summer
‘closet’ (EV ‘chamber ἢ attached toit. In the one
Eglon was with his attendants till Ehud eame, but
they afterwards supposed that Eglon had retired
into the other, and would not disturb him.
We now get a group of passages which explain
Tapecov. In Ex 8? (775), Jo 151, 2(4) K 6 117, 2Ch
22" ete., it is the special ‘store-closet’ (leading or
opening out, from the larger room) in which the
bedding required by night was stored during the
day (τὰ ταμεῖα τῶν κοιτῶν or ταμεῖον κλινῶν). In
such a ‘closet’ the Philistines were hiding while
Delilah practised her wiles on Samson (Jg 105-15,
LXX, also Ee 1030), In such a ‘closet’ for holding
the bedding, the baby prince Joash was concealed
when Athaliah murdered the rest of the royal
family. Samson was possibly in the ‘living-room ’
when his wife’s father prevented him from entering
the ταμεῖον (Je 15' LXX, note the variant of A εἰς
τὸν κοιτῶνα). Such small rooms or closets could be
used as more private sleeping-rooms if required,
and would also be available for private conference,
concealment, or any similar purpose, as well as for
the normal use of storing the bedding and other
things which were not immediately required. Our
Lord advised their use for private prayer. Thus
storage was the primary purpose of the apartment.
The other uses were secondary ones, or adaptations.
The AV ‘closet’ is therefore quite as correct as
the RV ‘inner chamber.’ Of course we do not
think of an European cupboard with shelves, in
xararev); οἵ. Liddell and Scott swb voce, WH, Notes on Ortho-
graphy, ii. 146-170. The Teatus Receptus, according to Scri-
vener, has the older form in Mt 66, but the later one in the three
other places.
* Carr, Cambridge Bible for Schools; Tholuck, Sermon on the
Mount; Lange, St. Matthew ; after Kuinoel, and Vitringa, de
Syn. 1. i. 6.
" Lane, Modern Egyptians, ch. v.; Purdoe, City of the Sultan,
i. 22; Kitto, Pictorial Bible on Pr 616 and 2 K 112; Hastings’ DB
li. 4344,
which a person could hardly stand. But Dryden
(Fables) possibly uses ‘closet’ in the sense of a
‘store-closet,’ as ταμεῖον in Lk 1253, though he may
have meant ‘ private chamber’ :
* He furnishes her closet first, and fills
The crowded shelves with rarities of shells.’
Shakespeare has the other use :
‘The taper burneth in your closet’ (Jul. Cees. ii. 1).*
On the curious Latin renderings of d (promptalibus)
6 (promptuaris) in Lk 128, and d (promptuarium)
in Lk 12%, ef. Rénsch, [tala und Vulgata, pp. 32
and 48, and Plummer, ‘St. Luke,’ in Jnternational
Critical Commentary. GEORGE FARMER.
CLOTHES.—See DREss.
CLOUD.—The cloud appears in the Gospels at
our Lord’s Transfiguration (Mt 17° || Mk 97, Lk 9%4)
and (if we may treat tho first verses of the Book
of Acts as practically part of St. Luke’s Gospel)
at His Ascension (Ac 1”). Twice also it has a
place in His own prediction of His coming again
(Mt 24° || Mk 1376 || Lk 21°7, Mt 26% || Mk 1483).
The most interesting occurrence of this cloud is
that in connexion with the Ascension; but it is
its appearance above the Mount of Transfiguration
that rules the interpretation of its significance. For
there a voice comes out of it which is that of-the
Heavenly Father: it is seen to be the veil of the
Divine Presence. Veiling the glory which no
mortal might see and live, veiling yet revealing
the Presence of God, the cloud has two aspects, of
which the greater and more characteristic is not
the negative one of veiling, but that positive aspect
in which it attests and manifests the Divine Pre-
sence. ΤῸ come under its shadow (a ‘shadow,’ it
would seem, of light, since it was νεφέλη φωτεινὴ)
awoke in the disciples the dread felt by Jacob at
Bethel. And for the same reason—that this cloud
is a ‘ gate of heaven,’ at which a man may stand to
hear the voice of God. Here, in this bright cloud,
the two spheres, earthly and heavenly, open upon
each other. The cloud 1s less a veil than a lifting
of the veil. Here the invisible barrier becomes
a portal of heaven, through which may come the
voice of the Almighty, and entering by which
Christ is passed into heaven. It is a ‘cloud of
heaven’: with earth and human life upon this
side of it, and on the other side (not sky and stars,
but) the invisible things of God, the heavenly
sphere, the other world.
Thus in our Lord’s Ascension we do not conceive
of Him as ‘ going up’ farther than would symbolize
and declare His departure from this world: ‘He
was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of
their sight ’—they saw Him go and they saw what
door opened to receive Him. As identifying this
cloud with ‘heaven,’ compare Ac 1°, ‘a cloud re-
ceived him,’ with 1" ‘received up from you into
heaven’: with which agrees 2 P 117-18, «there came
a voice to him out of the excellent glory . .. and
this voice we (ourselves) heard brought out of
heaven.’ The voice out of the cloud was ‘ out of
heaven ’—the disciples in beholding Christ enter
the cloud ‘ beheld him going into heaven.’
If for us the cloud is as a door which closes, a
veil that hides (as God verily is a God that hideth
Himself), this is of grace: ‘thou canst not follow
* A late member of the Abp. of Canterbury’s ‘ Assyrian
Mission’ informs the writer of this article that the Peshitta
word in the form ta-wand ‘is still retained in certain parts of
the mountain districts, where many old (classical) Syriac words
are still in use, but it is not used colloquially in the plains.
Ta-wana is always the little room leading from the large living
room; it is that in which the spare bedding is stored. Its
primary meaning is therefore ‘‘store-room.” Bp. Maclean (Die-
tionary of Vernacular Syriac) gives the meanings “closet,”
“‘store-room,” but if he had reversed these two words, i.e.
putting ‘‘store-room” first, I think it would have been better.’
COAL
me now’ (Jn 13%")—‘ ye cannot bear it now’ (16!).
And the cloud is, for Christ’s disciples, itself an
excellent glory, since He is now passed within it
(not behind as our earthly sun), filling it with
brightness of light. He, our Redeemer and Advo-
cate, the Lord who is our Brother, is now within
the cloud that covers Sinai, that leads through the
wilderness, that shines above the Mercy-seat ; that
is to say—in all that by which God draws near to
man (in His law as in Sinai, in His providences as
in the shepherding of Israel. in religious life and
worship as in the Holiest of all), Christ is present,
and the love which He has made known, bestowed
and sealed. To His disciples the Law is no more
a threat and fear, but is written upon the heart
for honour and obedience ; and God’s providence is
trusted—the sheep follow, for they know His voice ;
and for tie deep things of the soul there is a great
Hich priest passed into the heavens, and they that
know His name come boldly to the throne of grace.
LITERATURE —The Comm. i loc., esp. Swete on Mk 97;
Ruskin, Frondes Agrestes, p. 178; Huntingdon, Christian
Believing and Living, p. 158; Westcott, Revelat. of the Risen
Lord, p. 180; Milligan, Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of
our Lord, p. 21ff.; Paget, Studies in the Christian Character,
p. 246 ff. ARTHUR ΝΥ. WOTHERSPOON.
COAL.—This word occurs in the Gospels only in
Jn 18 and 21° (Gr. in both ἀνθρακιά, meaning
properly ‘a brazier filled with lighted charcoal’).
As a mineral, coal does not exist in Palestine
except in the Wddy Hummand in the Lebanon,
and was mined there only during the rule of
Muhammad Ali about 1834 (Thomson, The Land
and the Book, 1886, iil. 193). The rendering
‘coal’ must be taken as=‘eharcoal.’ Both in
ancient and in modern times, the latter substance,
prepared from native timber, has been the common
fuel of the East. The destruction of the forests
of Palestine and Syria may be assigned as the
main reason for the absence of timbered gables,
and the universal prevalence, instead, of brickwork
cupola roofs, and also for the wretched substitutes
for fuel now employed by the natives, such as sun-
dried cakes of chatf and dung, ete. The charred
roots of the desert broom (rothem, see Ps 120+) make
an excellent fuel, and are much in demand in Cairo
(Tristram, Nat. Hist. of Bible, 1889, p. 360).
The geological survey of Palestine reveals its
uniformly cretaceous formation, extending from the
Lebanon ranges to the plateau of Hebron. The
earlier rocks of the carboniferous period, if they do
exist there at all under the subsequent strata, are
buried at quite inaccessible depths. Traces of ear-
boniferous outcrop, but destitute of carbonaceous
deposits, have been found in the sandstone of the
upon desert and the limestone of the Wéddy
Nasb.
᾿ς LITERATURE.~-W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, 1886,
il. 193; Tristram, Nat. Hist. of Bible, 1889, p. 360; Conder,
Tent Work in Pal. ii. 826; Hull, Mount Seir, etc., 1889, p. 194 ;
Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 280; Hastings’ DB, article ‘Coal.’
P. HENDERSON AITKEN.
COAT.—This word in the Gospels usually repre-
sents the Gr. χιτών, ὁ 6. the tunic or long close-
litting under garment worn in Palestine, as opposed
to the ἱμάτιον or full and flowing outer garment (see
Hastings’ DB, art. “ Dress’).
Our Lord’s instructions to the Twelve included
one which forbade their wearing or having in their
possession more than one such garment (Mt 10”,
Mk 6°, Lk 9°; cf. Lk 34). And in the Sermon on
the Mount (Mt 5%; cf. Lk 629) we are bidden to
cultivate such a spirit of meekness as would be
illustrated by a readiness to part even with one’s
cloak (ἱμάτιον) to him who took away one’s coat.*
*In Luke the order is trans
the coat, this being
would be torn off. ὁ
posed, the cloak coming before
the order in which these two garments
COCK-CROWING
The soldiers at the Crucifixion (Jn 197-4) took
possession of the Saviour’s garments, according, we
suppose, to the usual practice. The outer robes
they divided into four parts, one for each of the
quaternion, but for the coat (τὸν χιτῶνα), in close
fulfilment of Ps 22!8, they cast lots, not wishing to
tear it up, because it was ‘without seam, woven
from the top throughout.’ Josephus (πὲ. 1Π|.
vii. 4), quoted by Bp. Westcott, tells us that the
long robe (χιτὼν ποδήρηΞς) of the high priest was of
this character: ‘This vesture was not composed of
two pieces, nor was it sewed together upon the
shoulders and the sides, but it was one long vest-
ment, so woven as to have an aperture for the
neck’ (Whiston’str.). Bp. Westcott further quotes
Chrysostom, who perhaps wrote from personal
knowledge, as thinking ‘that the detail is added
to show ‘‘the poorness of the Lord’s garments, and
that in dress as in all other things He followed a
simple fashion.”’ Others incline to the view that
there is a parallel suggested between the Eternal
High Priest’s garment and that of the Aaronic
high priest. In any case the seamless robe of
Christ has often been taken as a type of the One
(ideally) Undivided Church, e.g. by Cyprian in a
famous passave (de Unit. Eccl. § 7), where he con-
trasts ΤΡ ‘incorrupta atque individua tunica’ of
Christ with the prophet Ahijah’s robe, which he
tore gn duodecim scissuras in token of the disrup-
tion of the kingdom (1 Καὶ 11*"-), and coneludes:
‘sacramento vestis et signo declaravit ecclesie
unitatem.’ For the part which the Holy Coat has
played in legend at Treves and elsewhere, those who
are curious in such matters may consult Gilden-
meister and v. Sybel, Der Heilige Rock zu Trier und
die 20 anderen heiligen ungenahten Rocke®, 1845.
We may note finally: (1) that the word ‘coat’
(so RV; AV ‘fisher’s coat’) in Jn 217 stands for
the large loose garment (ἐπενδύτης) which St. Peter
threw as a covering over his almost naked body
when he left his fishing and came into the Master's
presence; (2) that it was the under-garments
(χιτῶνες) that the high priest rent when he ‘heard
the blasphemy’ at our Lord’s trial (Mk 14; see
Swete’s notes, 22 doc.). See also CLOKE, DREss.
C. L. FELTOE,
COCK.—See ANIMALS, p. 64", and following
article.
COCK-CROWING (ἀλεκτοροφωνία). --- The word
occurs only in Mk 13%, where it is evidently used
to designate the third of four parts into which the
night was divided—‘at even, or at midnight, or
at the cock-crowing, or in the morning.’ In OT
times there were only three watches in the night—
the first, the middle, and the last; but by the
time of Christ the Roman division into four
watches had become common, though it had not
altogether superseded the threefold division of the
Jews. The night was reckoned, roughly speak-
ing, from our 6 P.M. to 6 A.M., and these twelve
hours were divided into four watches of three
hours each. Jerome says: ‘ Nox in quatuor vigilias
dividitur, quee singulz trium horarum spatio sup-
putantur’ (Zp. exl. 8). The cock-crowing in Mk
13® thus refers to the third watch of the night,
between the hours of 12 and 38.
Although the noun ‘cock-crowing’ occurs only
once in the NT, each of the four Evangelists
records the fact that on the night of the betrayal
Jesus forewarned Peter that before the cock crew
he should thrice deny his Lord, and each of them
also records a crowing of the cock immediately
after the denial (Mt 965: and ™: τὸ ΤῊ Κ 22°4 and %: 61,
Jn 13%8 187). In St. Mark we have ‘the variations
—all the more significant because of the writer’s
commonly acknowledged dependence. upon the
Petrine tradition—that Jesus said to Peter, ‘ Before
COINS
ΕΞ ---- -- ----- 6 τ Ὁ δ΄ Ὁ τσ ΡΥ Ee ee ee
the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice’;
and in correspondence with this a record of two
distinct cock-crowings (Mk 14 68, 72),
Attempts have been made to distinguish between
these two cock-crowings in St. Mark as occurring
at definite seasons of the night, the one about
midnight and the other at the first approach of
dawn, just before the commencement of the fourth
or morning watch, and to define the second of the
two as the gallicinium proper, and consequently
the only one of which the other three Evangelists
take notice. No doubt it is true that in the most
distinctive sense of the word ‘ the cock-crowing,’
as an indication of time, refers to the breaking of
the dawn; thus in the Talmud it is prescribed
that at cock-crow the benediction shall be used :
‘Praised be Thou, O God, the Lord of the world,
that givest understanding to the cock to dis-
tinguish between day and night.’ But as a matter
of fact cocks crow during the night, in the East as
elsewhere, at irregular times from midnight on-
ward; and the narrative of Mk 146-72 does not
suggest that there was an interval of anything
like three hours between the first cock-crowing
and the second. The probability is that Jesus
meant no more than this, that before Peter him-
self had twice heard the coek crow he should
thrice have been guilty of his great denial. And
if we accept St. Mark’s narrative as embodying
Peter’s own account of the incident, it will seem
natural that the disciple to whom the warning
was directly addressed, and on whom it would
make the deepest impression, should distinguish
hetween two separate cock-crowings where others
thought only of the last.
There is no mention of the cock in the Mosaic
law, and the supposed allusion to the breed in 1 Καὶ
425 (07273, ΕΝ ‘fatted fowls’ both in AV
and RV) is very doubtful. It may be that Solomon
had imported these birds from the East ; but, on
the other hand, the fact that in the Talmudical
literature the cock is always called by the name
tarnégdl (Samm), suggests rather that it was intro-
duced into Palestine from Babylonia.* But while
the domestic fowl was quite familiar to the Jews
of our Lord’s time, both the Mishna and the
Midrash state that, so long as the Temple stood,
the breeding or keeping of cocks in Jerusalem was
forbidden, on the ground that by scratching in the
earth they dug up unclean things, thus spreading
the contagion of Levitical uncleanness, and even
contaminating the sacrifices of the altar. On
this ground exception has sometimes been taken,
especially from Jewish sources, to the statements
of the Evangelists as to the crowing of the cock in
Jerusalem on the night before the crucifixion. But
if such an ordinance existed, it is very unlikely
that it could be strictly enforced in a city like
Jerusalem, with a large and mixed population.
In particular, we must remember that cock-fighting
was one of the favourite sports of the Romans ;
and the Roman soldiers of the garrison would con-
cern themselves very little about any Jewish pro-
hibition of this kind.
LITERATURE. — Grimm-Thayer, Lexicon, s.v. ἀλεκτοροφωνία 5
Smith’s Lat.-Eng. Dict. s.v. ‘ Vigilia’; Meyer’s Commentary on
Matthew; Lange’s Life of Christ; Andrews, Life of our Lord
upon the Earth, p. 521; Encye. Bibl. and Jewish Enenclo-
pedia, articles ‘Cock’ and ‘Day’; Hastings’ Db, articles
‘Cock’ and ‘Time,’ cf. Extra Vol. p. 477 f.
J. C. LAMBERT.
COINS.—See Money.
COLT.—See ANIMALS, p. 63, and ENTRY INTO
JERUSALEM.
* A reference to the cock is found by some scholars in Pr 8051
(EV ‘greyhound’), where the 7°71 (zerzir) of MT is rendered
by the LXX ἀλέντωρ; similarly Aquila and Theodotion, the
Peshitta (dbhakhé) and the Vulgate (gallus).
COMFORT 341
COMFORT.—The English word ‘ comfort’ means
being made strong together. The idea seems to be
that sorrow weakens or shatters the whole system
of the afHicted man, and that the dispelling of his
grief braces him up anew. The sore is not merely
plastered over or covered with a surface skin, but
healed, so that the sufferer becomes as vigorous as
before. Such is, indeed, the comfort imparted by
Christ. In connexion therewith the words zapa-
καλέω and θαρσέω, or Oappéw, are both employed.
In NT ‘beseech,’ ‘entreat,’ ‘exhort’ are all used
as equivalents for παρακαλέω, while παράκλησις is
most frequently rendered ‘consolation’ in AV, and
θαρσέω or θαρρέω (the former in iimperat. only) is
commonly translated ‘to be of good cheer.’ But
both παρακαλέω and παράκλησις are occasionally
rendered ‘comfort’ in AV (e.g. Mt 54, 2 Cor 15),
while in RV ‘comfort’ has usually been substituted
for ‘consolation’ of AV in the rendering of the
noun. In three places (Mt $7, Mk 10%, Lk 8:8)
AV renders θάρσει ‘Be of good comfort.’ In the
first two RV substitutes ‘Be of good cheer,’ and
in the last drops θάρσει from the text. In Jn,
παράκλητος, Which occurs four times (1415 28 1526 167),
always appears in EV as ‘the Comforter.’
While the mission of Christ was mainly to save
men from their sins, it was also His purpose to
bring them true relief from their troubles. In His
sermon at Nazareth (Lk 410-57) He applied to Him-
self the prophecy of Isaiah (611), which tells that
the Messiah was ‘to comfort all that mourn.’ He
would indeed have failed to fulfil the Messianic
expectation if He had not set Himself, alike by
His person, His gospel, and His work, to heal the
broken in heart and to comfort the people of God's
choice (cf. Is 40!). Among pious Jews the phrase
had become a holy oath, /ta videam consolationem,
ete. (Alford on Lk 275). Thus Simeon is said to
have been ‘looking for the consolation of Israel’
(loc. cit.), Where παράκλησιν has almost a personal
import as though equivalent to τὸν Χριστὸν Κυρίον.
The whole gospel ot Jesus Christ is therefore one
of good tidings to the afflicted, the destitute, the
oppressed. The removal of the cause of woe in-
volves the furtherance of the cure of woe. In
answer to the Baptist’s question, Jesus named, as
one of the signs that He was ὁ ᾿Ερχόμενος, ‘the
poor have good tidings preached to them’ (εὐαγγελέ-
fovra). Accordingly, in the very forefront of His
programme as announced in the Sermon on the
Mount, Christ gave the beatitude of comfort to
the mourners (Mt δὴ. As the Revealer of the
Father, moreover, He was bound to make comfort
one of the most prominent features of His ministry,
not less in action than in word. The Fatherly
pity (Ps 103'%) and the Motherly tenderness (Is
0015) of the All-merciful must be set forth by the
Son of God, if, looking on Him and listening to
Him, men were to be able to see the image and to
hearken to the voice of God.
Christ is well fitted to aflord comfort not only
by His Divine knowledge of our deepest needs and
of what best meets these needs, but by His own
human experience of afiliction and woe. The
Man of Sorrows, the One acquainted with grief,
as well as the God of all comfort, He can appre-
ciate the necessity of consolation as well as apply
the consolation that is availing. Having sutlered
in temptation, He is able to sucecour them that
are tempted (He 918), The pangs of Him who
‘himself bare our sicknesses’ fitted Him for being
the true Physician for the wounded in heart.
Through His own weariness He has won multi-
tudes of the heavy-laden to come to Him for
rest.* The exceeding sorrow even unto death of
His own soul as He took the cup from His
*In Expos. Times, viii. 239 and x. 48, Nestle shows that rest
and comfort are ‘almost identical for Semitic feeling.’
COMFORTER
342
COMING AGAIN
Father’s hand that He might taste death for
every man, has made Him able to give ease
and peace to His people in the valley of the
shadow. One of the occasions when comfort is
most needed is bereavement: and perhaps the
tears of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus (Jn 1155)
have been as potent to solace the stricken as His
word to the widow of Nain, ‘Weep not’ (Lk 7:5).
When upon the cross He commended to one
another’s care and sympathy the Virgin Mother
and the beloved disciple: ‘ Woman, behold thy son !’
‘Behold thy mother "ἢ (Jn 19° 51), we see how truly
Christ entered into the heart of the afflicted
children of men.
Christ’s dealing with His own chosen followers
was one of special tenderness in their hour of
sorrow. He knew that while on the whole His
departure was expedient for them, yet it would
be a terrible wrench, and expose them to bitter
persecution. He therefore consoled them when
sorrow filled their heart by telling them that He
would not leave them orphans (ὀρφανούς, AV ‘com-
fortless,’ RV ‘desolate’). After His ascension He
would be nearer to them in spiritual presence than
when with them in the flesh (Jn 14'8-*", ef. Mt 28°).
3y rising from the dead He would be Victor over
the world in its direst and fiercest assault, and
if they shared with Him the world’s hate they
would also share His triumph. The discourse
(Jn 14-16) which began, ‘Let not your heart be
troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in me,’
fitly ended, ‘In the werld ye shall have tribulation :
but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’
The idea of future compensation for present
sufferings is not wanting in the ‘consolation in
Christ.’ In His Father’s House are many man-
sions, on entering which He goes to prepare a place
for His disciples, where they shall both behold, and
be partakers of, His glory (Jn 14? 174). The
same idea of a compensating ‘weight of glory’ for
‘light affliction which is but for a moment’ (2 Co
4") is involved in the parable where Abraham says
of Lazarus, ‘Now he is comforted’ (Lk 16”). On
the other hand, those who are now satisfied with
their riches and have no hunger for righteous-
ness, the men of the world who have their portion
in this life, ‘have received their consolation’
{ΠἸῸ 6 5.
See also following article.
ARTHUR POLLOK Sym.
COMFORTER (rapdk\nros).—A term applied to
Christ in RVm of 1 Jn 2!, and four times (Jn 1416 26
15:5 107) to the Holy Spirit. For the meaning of
the original and the probable source from which
St. John derived it, see art. ‘Paraclete’ in Hast-
ings’ DB iii. 665-668. The active sense is con-
fined to ecclesiastical usage, and may have been
emphasized by translators, from its appropriate-
ness to the circumstances amidst which the word
first occurs in Jn 14'°; but the passive sense may
still be traced in relation to the Father and the
Son, the Spirit being called and sent by Them to
the help of men, as well as for the purpose of
Witnessing for God at the tribunal of the human
reason (Jn 155. The English term is, however,
quite inadequate. Whilst there is a suggestion
of actual consolation in Jn 141, the principal
points of St. John’s teaching are that the mission
of the Spirit is contingent upon the departure of
Christ (Jn 167), is theneeforward continuous and
permanent (Jn 14'°), and includes functions in re-
gard to both classes of men, thie disciples and ‘the
world. The latter He will convict (Jn 16332) han
respect of the three decisive matters of sin, rieht-
eousness, and judgment. With still a significant
preference for of an intellectual bearing,
He will neh and complete the instruction
begun by Christ (Jn 1456), and guide the disciples
word
continue
‘into all the truth’ (Jn 16"). See art. Hoty
Spirit. The predominant cast of these phrases,
almost all pointing to mental processes, is in itself
a sufficient evidence of the unfitness of the term
‘Comforter,’ for which ‘ Paraclete’ (wh. see) might
with advantage be substituted.
Kt. W. Moss.
COMING AGAIN.—Though He had appeared in
the world to found the kingdom of God and fulfil
the Messianic hope in its true spiritual meaning
[see ADVENT], Jesus repeatedly gave it to be
understood that the object of His mission would
not be perfectly attained in that first coming
among men. ‘There was to be a break in His
visible connexion with earthly affairs (Mt 16%);
He would depart for a time (Jn 141" 167); but He
promised that He would come again to continue
His work and carry it on to complete fulfilment.
As the clouds of danger gathered, and a violent
death loomed in view, He began to speak with
growing frequency of a marvellous and triumphant
return, in which His living presence and power
would be gloriously revealed. His sayings on this
subject, however, are not always easy to inter-
pret ; they do not all refer to the same event; we
find in them traces of His having in His mind
more than one coming, and, in several cases, it is
only by a careful study of the context that we can
discover to which coming His words were meant to
point.
The comings of which Jesus spoke from time to
time may be distinguished as follows :
4. His coming after His death to make patent
to the disciples His continued and exalted life,
and thereby to establish their faith in Him as their
ever-living Lord. He predicted a meeting with
them in Galilee (Mt 26°, Mk 1438), and indicated
that though for a little while they should not see
Him, yet after a little while again they should see
Him (Jn 14)" 16"),
2. His coming to enter into fellowship with the
disciples in a closer spiritual reunion. As the
Risen One, He was to return to them and abide
with them continually (Jn 145-33), manifesting His
presence through the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth,
and guiding, teaching, sustaining them by His
gracious working in their hearts (14117 1576 1012).
It would appear that in this sense Jesus regarded
His coming again as a vital experience, to be
shared by all believers in all after generations,
thus foreshadowing His abiding presence through
the Spirit in the Christian Church.
3. His coming to remove the disciples from their
toils and struezles on earth, and take them to the
place He would prepare for them in His Father’s
house (Jn 145-95), that where He was they might be
also.
4. His coming at the great crises of history to
bring to their disastrous issues the sins of societies,
nations, and religious institutions, and to vindi-
cate His power over all the corrupt agencies in the
world that oppose His truth. In the solemn dis-
course on the tuture recorded in Mt 24 and Mk 13,
there are certain passages which, as usually inter-
preted, convey the impression that the destruction
of Jerusalem and the fall of the Jewish State was
one such momentous crisis that Jesus had par-
ΠΟ ΤΙΝ πα τ δλν (Mit, 415-55: S252 NTs νοοῦν
ΟἿ. Τῆς 11941544 0750-29..95. 96 9378-90) a lthouch Has words
may be recognized as covering also all other
marked epochs in history, in which His triumphant
glory and the impotence of all the world-powers
that come into conflict with Him are made clear.
The course of events which was to culminate in
the ruin of Jerusalem was to be the first startling
revelation of His victorious energy in asserting
His supremacy in the affairs of men and nations ;
and this is apparently suggested, in vivid figura-
COMING AGAIN
COMING TO CHRIST
343
tive language, by the statement to the high priest,
‘Henceforth’—from this time onward—‘ye shall
see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of
power, and coming in the clouds of heaven’ (Mt
26%), as if a process of judicial and retributive
manifestations of His power in human history
would then begin.
5. His final coming at the end of the dispensa-
tion He had inaugurated, to sit in judgment over
all classes and nations of men, to apportion their
merit and demerit, decide their destinies, over-
throw all evil, and bring the kingdom of God to
its supreme triumph and glory. This final and
most decisive coming—which will be more fully
discussed under PAROUSIA—is described in terms
that betoken the appearance of Jesus in august
splendour and irresistible authority. He is to
come in the glory of His Father with His angels,
and reward every man according to his works (Mt
167) ; seated on the throne of His glory, He is to
gather before Him all nations, and separate them
one from another as a shepherd divides His sheep
from the goats (Mt 9551. **), That is to be the Last
Day, the termination of the existing order of
things, when all pretences will be exposed, obsti-
nate unbelief and ungodliness punished, and faith-
fulness crowned with its eternal reward.
That these several comings were present to the
mind of Jesus, seems sufficiently evident when His
recorded utterances are duly weighed. We may
assume that they were regarded by Him as the
forms of manifestation by which, in the future, He
would give proof of His living presence and conquer-
ing power. They were the varying stages in the
development, after His death, of His victorious
work for the establishment of righteousness and
the destruction of evil. Hence they could all be
conceived and predicted under one name ; but, as
Beyschlag remarks, under the conditions of pro-
phecy, each stage was not seen as something apart ;
they were felt and described as so many phases
of the whole, according to the suggestion of the
moment (NT Theol. i. 202). On that account there
is discernible in the predictions of Jesus an occa-
sional blending of one coming with another ; at
least in the reports furnished by the Evangelists
it does not always distinctly appear to what pre-
cise form of His future manifestation His words
apply. Probably in the consciousness of Jesus all
His future comings were wrapped up, as in a seed,
in the thought of His spiritual coming, His coming
in the fulness of His spiritual life and power, as
an effective and abiding force on the side of God,
to act on the hearts and lives of His faithful fol-
lowers, and also on the general life of the world.
This view makes His several comings fall into
line as phases or stages of a continuous process, In
which, sometimes through the quickened vitality
of His Church, sometimes through the catastrophic
action of the moral laws and forces which lie
behind the movements of human society, His in-
vincible operation should be revealed, until the
final consummation is reached in the sovereign
manifestation of His authority and glory at the
end of the age.
It has been suggestively shown by Wendt
(Teaching of Jesus, vol. ii. 297, 305) that 1Ὁ is on
the utterances of Jesus regarding His spiritual
coming in the hearts of believers that the Fourth
Gospel lays the principal and almost exclusive
stress; and probably it is in the light of Jesus
predictions of this spiritual or dynamical coming
that we are to find the clue to what He meant in
His sayings respecting the historical coming or
comings, and the great apocalyptic coming, which
the Synoptics report with special fulness and
detail. The coming again of Jesus may thus be
conceived as a series of manifestations of His
living presence and activity in the world, cul-
minating ina glorious triumph at the Last Day,
when He shall sit as Judge ot all.
G. M‘Harpy.
COMING To CHRIST.—Under this heading we
bring together a number of passages, all sayings
of Jesus, most of them in the Fourth Gospel, which
express at once His widest invitation to men and
His strongest claims upon them. Outside these
there is a much larger group of passages, occurring
in all the Gospels, many of which are intimately
connected with the inner group. The expression
thus frequently occurring, and used in the few
passages first mentioned to convey the deepest
truths of the gospel, is based on the everyday
events of our Lord’s ministry and of ordinary life.
In its literal meaning it occurs constantly through-
out the Gospel narrative. We may here disrevard
this widest class of passages, which speak of the
multitudes who, from very various motives, ‘came
to Christ’ to see and to hear Him, and fix our
attention on those which have a moral and spiritual
significance. The latter, bearing directly on the
proclamation of the Kingdom of God and on the
conditions of membership in it, are of supreme
importance.
The constructions used in these groups of passages may here
be noticed. In nearly all of them we have the simple verb
ἔρχομαι followed by zpos with the accusative. In Mt 1128 we
have the interjectional adverb δεῦτε with zpos and the accusa-
tive. In the kindred passage, He 725, the compound προσέρ-
χομαι occurs with the dative. In a closely allied group of
passages, which we shall have occasion to notice later, ἔρχομαι
is followed by ὀτίσω and the genitive. The call to the earliest
disciples is δεῦτε ὀτίσω μου (Mt 419, Mk 117). In some passages
(Mt 1624 1914, Jn 540 644; ef. 754. 36°821f 1333) the aorist of écxoucs
is used, the ‘coming’ being regarded as complete, while in
others the use of the present indicates that the ‘coming’ is
thought of as in progress (cf. Westcott on Jn 644). In Jn 687
ἥξει with zpos and the accusative signifies arrival, attainment.
In many passages of the second group, some of which will be
used in illustration of the subject, we have the fact of the
coming without the use of any of the phrases here men-
tioned.
Among the crowds who flocked to Jesus were
many who came, or who were brought by their
friends, because of some special need. Blind and
deaf and dumb came to have their lost senses
restored (Mt 9338. 2029, M) 722%, Jn 918. οὐ al.).
Lepers cried to Him for cleansing (Mt 858: |) Lk
17'+#-). The lame and the palsied came, or were
brought, to Him for renewal of their powers (Mt
9° || Jn 5°). More than once the friends of the
dying or the dead came beseeching Him to give
them back their loved ones from the grasp of
death (Mt 918% || Jn 1118), Obviously this ‘com-
ins’ was in most cases much more than a mere
physical fact. The whole motive does not in all
cases lie open to us, but in many we know, and in
others there is no room for doubt, that there was
behind the coming an attraction of His person, a
perception of and faith in His power to bless, a
confidence in His merey and grace, apart from
which even the most needy would not have been
moved to come to Him. This is in some instances
conspicuously clear, and is recognized by Jesus
with joy. Thus the ‘faith’ of the centurion (Mt
855.) is declared to be greater than any He had
found in Israel. For her ‘great faith’ the prayer
of the Syro-Pheenician woman is granted (Mt
1533.) The latter is one of many cases in which
the faith of those who came to Him was tested by
Jesus before He complied with their request (ct.
Mt 938, Jn 448, and many others). This testing of
faith shows the spiritual significance of the inci-
dents, even where the blessing craved and granted,
looked at merely from the ontside, is purely
physical. This is stiil more the case where the
need which brought men to Christ was not physical,
but moral or spiritual, e.g. Nicodemus to some
extent (Jn 3), Zacchzeus the chief publican (Lk
344 COMING TO CHRIST
192f-) the woman who was a sinner (Lk 7°°*-), and
many others. :
Irom these cases we pass by an easy transi-
tion to the higher level of meaning of the phrase
‘coming to Christ.’ The passages in which this
occurs are entirely words of Jesus. He calls men
to come to Him. For the most part His call is
that of gracious, loving invitation. But the con-
demnation of the Jews because they would not
come to Him (Jn 5”; cf. Mt 223, Jn 16°) shows
that under the graciousness of the invitation there
lies the assertion of a paramount claim. These
are two aspects of Christ’s call which it may be
well to consider to some extent apart. Experi-
mentally they must always go together.
In Mt 11% we have the great call of Jesus to
those who ‘labour and are heavy laden,’ with its
promise of ‘rest.’ These verses bear a likeness to
several passages of the OT, especially to Jer 6%
‘Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways and
see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good
way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for
your souls.’ But the Heb. word y'39> ‘rest,’ is
rendered in the LXX not by ἀνάπαυσιν, the word
used in Mt 11°? (cf. ἀναπαύσω, v.*3), but by ἁγνισμόν
(or ἁγιασμόν). Some have thought that there is
here an echo of the words of Jesus ben Sira (Sir
Gt 28f. 51°27), with which our Lord was probably
familiar (see Hxpositor’s Greek Testament, in loco).
But the words of Christ, in the greatness of the
call and of the promise, and in the connexion of
both with His own person, go far beyond those of
3en Sira or anything which we find in the canoni-
cal books of the OT. The call is probably ad-
dressed in the first instance to those who, groaning
under ‘the yoke of the law,’ which generations of
Rabbinic teaching and Pharisaie formalism had
made intolerable, had no hope of rest for their
souls. But it goes beyond that, as the whole
ministry of Christ shows, to all those on whom
the burdens of life press heavily, and especially to
those who are being borne down by the weight of
sin. To all Christ offers ‘rest,’ a ceasing from the
crushing weight and from the hopeless toil, an
inward, satisfying peace.
The words of Jesus in Jn 7*7 (οἵ. 68) are even
greater than those just considered. Under the
natural figure of ‘ thirst’ and the companion figure
of ‘hunger,’ He speaks of the deepest needs and
longings of the soul of man—not those which are
passing and accidental, but those which are essen-
tial and permanent, above all, the need of God—
and promises to all who come to Him a perfect
and abiding satisfaction. They should not only
themselves be satistied, but by the ‘receiving’ of
the Holy Spirit should become sources of blessing
to others.
To these two great promises we may add the
words of Jesus in Jn 5*, which imply, under the
condemnation of those who would not come to
Him, a promise of ‘life’ to those who do come.
This evidently means a life other than that which
they already had, a life in union with God as con-
trasted with their life apart from Him, a life in
whose abundance man finds perfect satisfaction
and the purpose of God is realized, a life which is
eternal. Into the enjoyment of this life he who
‘cometh to Christ’ enters at once, but its full
realization belones to the future.
rhe supreme promise of Christ, embracing and
transcending all others, is implied in Jn 14° ‘No
man cometh to the Father but by me.’ Aecess to
God, fellowship with Him, are dependent on com-
ing to Christ, and are promised to all who come to
Him (cf. Jn 6%7>),
We infer from our study of the passages cited
that, on one side, ‘coming’ to Christ? is practically
synonymous with faith in Him. It is the active
COMING TO CHRIST
movement of the soul towards Christ. More than
once ‘cometh’ and ‘believeth’ occur as parallel, if
not virtually synonymous, expressions (cf. Jn 6°
7°). ©The first word presents faith in dod as
active and outward, the second presents faith in
thought as resting and inward’ (Westcott on Jn
6%). The ‘coming’ is the response of the soul in
its natural cravings, in its need, in its sin, to the
eall of Christ. It is its recognition in act, the act
of trust, of His readiness to receive and His
power to bless.
This, however, is only one side of the meaning
of the phrase. There is another which is largely
overlooked, perhaps because it does not immedi-
ately appeal to man’s sense of need.
Christ’s condemnation of the unbelieving Jews
(Jn δ᾽) has already been mentioned. This implies
that man’s destiny depends on his attitude to
Christ. In Lk 6% this is still more clearly
stated. ‘Coming,’ the first movement of the soul
to Christ, is associated with, and derives spiritual
and permanent value from, hearing and doing the
words of Christ. The mere lip acknowledginent
of Him is nothing, or worse than nothing, for it
brings disaster; the heart acknowledgment, issu-
ing in obedience, is everything. This is stated
even more stronely in Lk 1450 ‘If any man cometh
unto me, and hateth not his own father, and
mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and
sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my
disciple.” The next verse carries us a step further,
from the ‘coming to’ to the ‘coming after,’ from
the negative ‘hating’ or renunciation to the posi-
tive ‘ bearing’ or ‘taking up’ of the cross (cf. Mt
164, Mk 893, Lk 975). These are Christ’s conditions
of discipleship, stringent, at first sight even re-
pulsive. Mt 10 may be compared with Lk 1450,
not as toning down the demands of Christ, but as
helping us to understand them. He claims to be
the first, and in a profound sense the only object
of man’s affection and devotion. None other shall
stand before Him, none other beside Him. There
is here no condemnation, no abrogation of the
claims of human aflection, which are Divine in
their origin, and have been strengthened and
beautified under the influence of Christ. But
there is a demand that these shall stand aside,
shall be put aside ruthlessly and with the heart's
whole passion, so far as they come into conflict or
rivalry with the claims of Christ. The ‘great
possessions’ of the rich young ruler stood between
him and Christ. Father and mother, wife and
child, do the same with others. If so, ‘he cannot
be my disciple.’ Further, Christ demands the
taking up of the cross; that is, not the acceptance
of trials, often trifling trials, as they come to us,
to which in common use this great word has been
reduced, but the readiness, for His sake, to follow
Him to shame and to death.
While, then, ‘coming to Christ’ means, on the
one hand, faith in Him, a movement of the soul
to Him for the acceptance of the blessings He
offers, it means, on the other hand, no less clearly
an absolute surrender of the soul, of the whole
man to Him. This aspect of the truth already
emerges in Mt 11°8% “Take my yoke upon you, and
learn of me. . . . For my yoke is easy, and my
burden is light.’ This involves the recognition of
Him as ‘Lord,’ a whole-hearted obedience, an
absolute surrender in which nothing, not even the
dearest object of earthly affection, shall. weigh
with us against Him, a readiness to suffer shame
and death for His sake. This is to ‘come to him’
in the fullest sense, to come-‘to’ in order to coming
‘after’; this is to become His disciple. It seems
harsh and repellent: it is not really so. It is the
detachment from the lower in order to attachment
It is the weaning, it may be the
to the higher.
COMING TO CHRIST
wrenching, of the soul from all else, that it may
be united to God. There is no other way to the
highest good.
The call of Christ, whether it be regarded as an
invitation or as a claim, raises in an acute form the
question of His Person. Its bearing on this ean
only be indicated, not fully discussed, in this
article. Christ’s call is, on the one hand, a uni-
versal call. The ‘all ye’ of Mt 11°83 has no limits
of space or time within the limits of human per-
sonality and need. It is the gospel for all men of
all times and of all lands. It is the keynote of
the whole NT and of all evangelical thought and
preaching. On the other hand, Christ’s call is an
exclusive call. It is ‘Come unto me,’ shutting out
all other teachers or saviours. He professes to be
able to satisfy all human need, even the deepest—
that of the consciousness of sin. He claims to be
the only object of affection and obedience. He
declares Himself the only way to God. Either
His professions and claims are talse and absurd, or
He is more than a man, more than the greatest
among the great, than the best among the good.
If we admit His claims—and they find the fullest
justification in the history of faith—we must
make our confession with St. Peter: ‘Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God’ (Mt
ΓΘ 15):
Another question, the full discussion of which
lies beyond the scope of this article, must be
mentioned. The movement of the soul to Christ
does not originate with itself. Jesus traces it to
the ‘drawing’ of the Father (Jn 64% ; ef. Jn 12°).
In this we have a suggestion of the doctrine of the
Holy Spirit. But it is obvious that this involves
neither compulsion on the one hand nor lessening
of human responsibility on the other. A man’s
coming to Christ, under the Divine influence, is a
voluntary surrender. A man’s refusal to come is
and will be just ground of condemnation.
It remains only to point out the harmony of the
rest of the NT with the teaching of Christ in the
Gospels in respect of our subject. The phrase
‘coming to Christ’ belongs, it is true, almost ex-
clusively to the Gospels, and is found in its highest
meaning mainly in that of St. John (but see 1 P 23,
tev 22), and οἵ. He7™). But all the NT is Christo-
centric, and implics a call to nen to come to
Christ. ‘In none other is there salvation: for
neither is there any other name under heaven that
is given among men wherein we must be saved’
(Ac 4'*), sums up the whole teaching of NT history
and letters. But there is a difference between the
Gospels and the other books which it is important
to notice, not a difference in essential truth, but in
the point of view from which it is presented. In
the Gospels, ‘Come unto me’ is the personal call of
Christ as teacher and Lord. In the rest of the
NT the call is to the crucified and ascended Christ.
This is indeed anticipated in the Gospels (e.g. Mt
20°75, Jn 1253 οὐ al.), but its full development before
the death of Christ would have been premature, if
not impossible. Immediately after the Crucifixion
and Ascension, however, these two great historical
facts are placed in the foreground of Apostolic
preaching, ¢.g. in St. Peter’s sermon on the day of
Pentecost (Ac 2), in his remonstrance with the
people after the healing of the lame man (ch. 3), in
the declaration before the Council (57). They
are the central truths of the Pauline and other
letters: ‘We preach Christ crucified’ (1 Co 1°),
‘Far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of
our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Gal 64), ‘He is able to
save to the uttermost them that draw near to God
through him, seeing he ever liveth to make inter-
cession for them’ (He 7”, οἵ. Rev 59 ete.). We
must interpret the invitation and the claim in the
light of the Cross and of the Throne.
COMMANDMENTS 345
LITERATURE.—Westcott’s and Godet’s Commentaries on John’s
Gospel; Lapositor’s Greek Testament; Commentaries on the
Gospels; Edersheim’s Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah ;
Hastings’ DB, artt. ‘Jesus Christ’ (Sanday) and ‘Kingdom of
God’ (Orr); Denney’s Studies in Theology ; Drummond’s Rela-
tion of Apostolic Teaching to the Teaching of Christ; Hort’s
The Way, The Truth, and The Life ; Stevens’ Theol. of the NT’;
Wendt’s Teaching of Jesus; Beyschlag’s N7' Theology.
CHARLES 8. MACALPINE.
COMMANDMENTS.— As commandments (ἐντολαί)
Jesus recognizes (1) the injunctions of the Deca-
logue, (2) certain other requirements of similar
ethical character Jaid down in the Law. In one
instance (Mk 10°) the Mosaic regulation for divorce
is quoted as a ‘commandment,’ but its temporary
provisional nature is clearly indicated. ‘This com-
mandment,’ given for a time in view of special
circumstances, is implicitly contrasted with the
true and abiding ἐντολαί. In the case of a purel
ritual ordinance the term προσέταξεν is used (Mt 83,
Mike ΣΕ δ.
The main passages in which our Lord defines His attitude to
the commandments are: (1) the exposition in the Serinon’on
the Mount (Mt 517-48); (2) the criticism of Pharisaic tradition
(Mt 15129, Mk 71-23; cf. also Mt 23); (3) the reply to the rich
young ruler (Mt 1917-21, Mix 10!9-21, Lk 1520-22); (4) the dialogue
with the lawyer (Mt 22%5-40, Mk 122834, Lk 1025-37), The treat-
ment of the Sabbath commandment (Mk 22427, Lk 61-10 1310-16)
will have to be considered under Law and ΒΆΒΒΑΤΗ.
It is assumed by Jesus that the commandments
were given directly by God, and as such they are
contrasted with the ‘traditions of men’ (Mt 158,
Mk 7**). This assumption of their Divine origin
determines His whole attitude towards them. As
ordained by God they are valid for all time and
authoritative; the keeping of them is the neces-
sary condition-of eternal life (Mt 19!7, Mk 101);
men will take rank in the Kingdom of Heaven
according to their obedience to the commandments
(Mt 5"). It is objected to the Pharisees as their
chief offence that they have perverted and overlaid
with tradition the commandments of God (Mt 15°,
Mk 7%).
In view, then, of the Divine origin of the com-
mandments, Jesus accepts them as the eternal
basis of morality. His own ethic is presented not
as something new, but as a truer and more inward
interpretation of the existing Law. It has been
maintained (most notably in recent times by
Tolstoi) that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount
enacts an entirely new moral code,—tive new laws
in contrast to those ordained ‘in old time.’ This,
however, is opposed to His own declaration, ‘I
came not to destroy but to fulfil? The authority
which He claims for Himself is not an authority to
originate laws, but to explain more fully in their
Divine intention those already laid down by God.
“It was said to them of old time,—I say unto you,’
implies an opposition not of the Decalogue and the
new Christian code, but of the ancient interpreta-
tion of the Decalogne and the Christian interpreta-
tion. Where the men of old time stopped short
with the letter, Jesus unfolds the inward principle
which must henceforth be accepted as the true aim
of the commandment. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ pro-
hibits anger, scorn, contention. ‘Thou shalt not
commit adultery ’ demands chastity of heart as well
as of outward act. The law that forbids false
swearing requires in the last resort abstinence
from all oaths, and perfect simplicity and truthful-
ness. The case is somewhat different with the two
remaining rules which are subjected to criticism
(‘an eye for an eye,’ ‘ thou shalt love thy neighbour
and hate thine enemy’). Here our Lord indeed
appears to set new laws of His own over against
the imperfect maxims of the ancient morality.
3ut He is still emphasizing what He conceives to
be the real drift of the Divine legislation, in con-
trast to the false and limited constructions which
men had placed upon it.
The ethical teaching of Jesus is thus based on the
COMMANDMENTS
346
Divinely - given commandments. It claims to be
nothing more than a ‘fulfilment,’ a reinterpreta-
tion of them in the light of their inward spirit and
purpose. At the same time, they are so trans-
formed by this unfolding of their ultimate intention,
as to result in a code of morality which is radically
new. This is recognized in the Fourth Gospel,
where the originality of the Christian law is
brought into clear prominence (see art. NEw Com-
MANDMENT). It remains to consider how Jesus,
while accepting the commandments, replaced them
in effect by a new ethic, different in character as
well as wider in range. The process by which
He thus transformed them can be traced, with
sufficient distinctness, in the Synoptic teaching.
(1) The Moral Law is freed from its association
with outward ritual. Jesus does not definitely
abrogate the ritual ordinances (‘ye ought not to
leave the other undone,’ Mt 23%), bur He makes
the distinction plain between these and the higher
obligations, justice, mercy, and faith. He sub-
ordinates the law of the Sabbath to the require-
ments of duty and humanity (Mk 2°, Lk 6° 13": 16);
He confronts the formal piety of His time with the
Divine demand as stated by Hosea: ‘I will have
mercy and not sacrifice’ (Mt 9" 12’) ; He challenges
the whole system of rules concerning meat and
drink by His great principle, ‘that which cometh
out, not that which goeth in, defileth a man’ (Mt
15", Mk 7). This principle, applied to its full
extent, meant the abolition of the Levitical law.
(2) In a similar manner the ‘traditions’ which
had gathered around the Law and obscured its
genuine meaning are swept away. The ethical
teaching of Jesus is directed, in the first place,
to restoring the commandments to their original
simplicity and purity. In the glosses and corol-
laries with which Pharisaic ingenuity had overlaid
them, He sees an attempt to narrow the scope and
weaken the full stringency of the Divine law. He
instances the casuistry which made it possible to
evade a strict obedience to the command, ‘ Honour
thy father and mother’ (Mt 15-6, Mk 78), As
against such trifling with the law of God, He
insists on an honest acceptance of it in its plain
and literal meaning. The ten thousand command-
ments into which the Decalogue had been divided
and subdivided are to give place again to the
simple ten.
(3) Not only is the Moral Law restored to its
original purity, but it is simplified still further.
While accepting the commandments as all given
by God, Jesus recognizes that they are of different
grades of importance. When the young ruler asked
Him which of them were life-giving, He singles
out the more distinctively ethical: ‘Do not commit
adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear
false witness, defraud not, honour thy father and
mother’ (Mk ‘108 19, Mt 1918 19 Lk 18). So the
question of the lawyer, ‘ Which is the great com-
mandment?’ is admitted by Jesus to be a just one.
[t is significant that in His answer to it He does
not quote from the Decaloeue itself, but from Dt
6° and Ly 1918, He thus indicates that it is not the
formal enactments which are sacred and binding,
but the grand principles that lie behind them.
Those sayings extraneous to the Decalogue, which
yet lay bare its essential meaning, are ‘ greater’
than any of the set commandments.
(4) The two requirements thus singled out are
declared to be not only the greatest, but the sum
and substance of all the others. The Law in its
multiplicity runs back to the two root-demands of
love to God and love to men. Of these two, Jesus
insists on the former as ‘the first and great com-
mandment.’ The duty of love to God is at once
the highest duty required of man, and that which
decermines the right performance of all the rest.
COMMANDMENTS
In this sense we must explain the words that fol-
low: ‘The second is like to it’ (Mt 22378 Mk
12-31), Its ‘likeness’ does not consist merely in
its similar largeness of scope or in its similar
emphasis on love, but in its essential identity with
the other commandment. The love to man which
it demands is the outward expression, the evidence
and effect of love to God (ef. Gal 5° ‘ Faith that
worketh by love’; 1Jn 43) ‘He that loveth not his
brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God
whom he hath not seen?’). Thus in our Lord’s
summary of the Law we have more than a resolu-
tion of the Ten Commandments into two, corre-
sponding broadly to the two divisions of the Deca-
logue. We have a clear indication that even those
two are ultimately reducible to one.
(5) In this ‘summary’ the Moral Law, however
simplified and purified, is still presented under the
form of outward enactment. The early Catholic
Church so accepted it, and set the nova lex imposed
by Jesus on a similar footing with the Law of
Moses. Jesus Himself, however, passed wholly
beyond the idea of an outward statutory law. His
demand is for an inward disposition so attempered
to the will of God that it yields a spontaneous
obedience. This demand is implicit in the ‘sum-
mary,’ couched though it is in the terms of formal
enactment. It says nothing of particular moral
actions, and insists solely on love, the inward frame
of mind in which all right conduct has its source
and motive: ‘A good man out of the good treasure
of his heart bringeth forth that which is good’
(Lk 6”); ‘ Either make the tree good and his fruit
good, or else make the tree corrupt and his fruit
corrupt’ (Mt 12), The ultimate aim of our Lord’s
ethical teaching is to produce a morality which
will be independent of outward ordinance, and arise
spontaneously out of the pure heart.
Thus the Decalogue, which in appearance is only
revised and expounded, is virtually superseded by
Christ. He bases morality on a new principle of
inward harmony with God’s will, and discards the
whole idea involved in the term ‘commandment.’
It follows that in three essential respects His ethic
differs from that which found its highest expression
in the Decalogue. (α) Its demands are positive as
distinguished from the old system of prohibitory
rule. The Rabbinical precept, ‘Do not to another
what would be painful to yourself,’ is adopted with
a simple change that alters its whole character
(Mt 17:3). Where there is an inward impulse to
goodness, it will manifest itself in active love
towards men, in positive obedience to the will of
God. (6) The ethie of Jesus makes an absolute
demand in contrast to the limited requirements of
the ancient Law. The chief purpose of the exposi-
tion in the Sermon on the Mount is to illustrate
and enforce this difference. ‘I say unto you, Re-
frain not only from the forbidden act, but from
evil looks and thoughts. Obey the Moral Law
without condition or reservation. Be perfect as
your Father in heaven is perfect’ (ef. the ‘seventy
times seven’ of Mt 1833. This absolute demand is
likewise involved in the substitution of an inward
spirit for a statutory law. The moral task is no
longer outwardly prescribed for us, and makes an
infinite claim on our willing obedience. (ὁ) As
opposed to the Decalogue with its hard and fast
requirements, the teaching of Jesus imposes a ‘law
of liberty... The moral life, springing from the
inward disposition, is self-determined. It possesses
in itself a power of right judgement which makes it
independent of any outward direction. It origin-
ates its own rules of action, and adapts them with
an endless flexibility to all changing circumstances
and times.
Our Lord’s ‘fulfilment’ of the ancient Law has
thus its outcome in a new morality which cannot
COMMERCE
SS SSS ae ee ee ΘΟ ον.
be separated from His gospel as a whole. What
He demands in the last resort is a change of nature
such as can be effected only by faith in Him and
possession of His spirit. The ultimate bearing of
His criticism of the commandments is well indi-
cated in the words of Luther: ‘Habito Christo
facile condemus leges et omnia recte judicabimus.
Immo novos decalogos faciemus, qui clariores erunt
quam Mosis decalogus, sicut facies Christi clarior
est quam facies Mosis.’ See also ETHICS.
LiTeRATURE.—The various Commentaries (in their section on
the Sermon on the Mount), e.g. Holtzmann (1901), J. Weiss in
Meyer’s Com. (1901); Loisy, Le discours sur la montagne
(1903); also articles on same subject in Hastings’ DB, Extra Vol.
(1904) [ef. art. ‘Decalogue’ in vol. 1.1, and Eneye. Bibl. (1903) ;
Weizsicker, Das Apost. Zeitalter (Eng. tr. 1897), i. 35ff.;
Pfleiderer, Das Urchristenthwin (1887), 489-501; Wernle, Die
Anfange unserer Religion (1901), 23-69 ; Herrmann, Ethik (1901),
124-140; Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums, 45 ff. ; Bruce,
Apologetics (1895), 346 ff. ; Holtzmann, Neutest. Theologie (1897),
130-160. To these may be added Tolstoi’s My Religion, and The
Spirit of Christ's Teaching ; also books of popular or homiletical
character, such as Horton, Commandments of Jesus; Gore,
Sermon on the Mount: Dykes, Manifesto of the King.
EK. F. Scort,
COMMERCE.—See TRADE AND COMMERCE.
COMMISSION.—Christ’s last recorded words to
His disciples, as contained in Matthew's Gospel,
are weighted with the impressiveness befitting
such an occasion. They contain a commission,
which focusses the duty of professed followers
with regard to His own Person and Work. ΑἹ]
four Evangelists give this Commission in one form
or another (Mt 28!5-, Mk 164", Lk 2446-49, Jn 202!-23),
Without discussing the critical questions raised by
these passages, what follows is based on their his-
toricity, as that has been held by the Christian
Chureh.*
On two other occasions our Lord formally com-
missioned His Apostles. First, the Twelve were
‘sent forth on a trial mission (Mt 106, Lk 91"),
That mission was limited, both as to area—the
towns and villages of Galilee—and to objects—the
lost sheep of the house of Israel. It aimed (1) at
preparing the way of the kingdom of heaven,
which our Lord came to found; and (2) at train-
ing the Apostles themselves in faith and fortitude
for the more responsible work afterwards to de-
volve upon them. Later, seventy disciples were
chosen (Lk 10), and sent—also, apparently—to
itinerate in Galilee. Their instructions were
similar to those of the Twelve. But, as opposition
had now become more pronounced, greater em-
phasis is laid on it; and the brethren, like cara-
biniert patrols in modern Italy, travelled two and
two. ‘The instructions given to both the Twelve
and the Seventy may be called lesser commissions
in comparison with the great Commission of Mt 28.
As these commissions were local, temporary, and
provisional, it is unnecessary to do more than
mention them, except for purposes of comparison
and contrast. At one point, however, there is an
interesting link between them and the great Com-
mission. After giving His instructions to the
‘Twelve, Christ fell into an audible soliloquy, and
went on (vv.!%#) to speak of the trials, the duties,
and the supports of those who in subsequent ages
were to carry on His missionary work.
That Christ should speak frequently te the
disciples about their future work during the forty
days between His resurrection and ascension, 1s
what might be expected. This accounts for the
various forms under whieh all four Evangelists
record His Commission. Conditions of time, place,
and circumstances call for fuller, or more con-
* Tt should be noted, however, that as Mk 169-29 is lacking in
the best MSS, modern scholars are practically unanimous in
holding that these verses did not form a part of the original
Gospel, so that it is doubtful whether they possess any in-
dependent value,
COMMISSION 347
densed, general, or particular statements. Pro-
cesses of repetition, condensation, expansion, or
omission in recording the subject of conversations
which extended over nearly six weeks, were present
to each writer’s consciousness as he penned his
narrative. Grotius, as quoted in Poli, SYN., SAYS :
‘Uno compendio Matthieus complectitur prae-
cipua capita sermonum quos Christus eum Apos-
tolis non in monte tantum, sed et Hierosolymis,
antea et post, in _ca@lum jamjam_ ascensurus,
Bethanize habuit.’ Notwithstanding these condi-
tions, certain essential features of the Commission
correspond in the Gospels, as the following table
shows :
CONTENTS OF COMMISSION COMMON TO EVANGELISTS.
ΞΞΞΞΙΞΞ Ee To ee a ellen das eed
Mt 2818: Mk 16165f., Lk 2446-49, Jn 2021-23,
Mission of
| Universal Universal Universal 5
Mission Mission Mission undefined
range
Baptism Baptism and | Repentance Message
Faith and whose
Remission of | substance is
sins Forgiveness
Promise of
Comforter
Promise of
spiritual)
Presence
Gift of Holy
Ghost.
‘ All power is given unto me in heaven and on
earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of
(μαθητεύσατε) all nations, baptizing them into (eis)
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost : teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am
with you alway, even unto the end of the world’
(Mt 28!8-2°), These words constitute the charter
of the Christian Church. They define in a solemn,
authoritative, formal manner, the Commission
under which the Apostles and that Church of
which they were representatives were to prosecute
to its consummation the work begun at Christ’s
Incarnation. If our Lord gave this Commission
in presence of the five hundred witnesses referred
to by St. Paul in 1 Co 15°, we can understand the
remark of Mt 2816 that. ‘some doubted,’ for these
doubters could scarcely at this stage be any of the
Eleven. Should this be so, ‘it follows that the
Lord Himself here committed His formal institu-
tions and commissions to the whole assembled
Church, with the Apostles at her head, just as at
a later day He poured out His Spirit upon the
whole assembled Church. And from this, then,
we argue that, according to the law of Christ, the
Apostolic office and the Church are not two divided
sections. In the commission to teach and to
baptize, the Apostolical community is one, a united
Apostolate involving the Church, or a united
Church including the Apostles’ (Lange, Com. on
Matt., Edinburgh ed. p. 560).
Peculiarities in two of the Synoptists’ accounts
are noticeable. St. Luke tells how Christ opened
the understanding of His disciples that they might
understand the Scripture testimony to His sufler-
ing and resurrection on the third day. This is the
line which we should expect Christ to take, if, on
any of the occasions when He discussed their
future work with the Eleven, He referred to His
own part. The Divine necessity for His death
would most readily impress itself on their minds
when associated with intimations thereof in the
| Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.
Mk 16" [a passage that is very early, even if
348 COMMISSION
COMMISSION
not from the pen of St. Mark],* where the promise
of miraculous gifts (σημεῖα) is made, has occasioned
ditficulty, because it seems strange that any of the
Evangelists should have omitted to mention so
ereat an endowment. On the other hand, the
historicity of these verses is strongly urged by
Calvin on @ priori grounds. He argues that the
power of working miracles was essential to the
establishment of the disciples themselves, as well
as necessary for proving the doctrine of the gospel
at its commencement, that the power was possessed
by only a very few persons [but cf. v.1", where the
power is to belong to them that believe] for the
confirmation of all, and (though not expressly
stated by Christ) granted only for a time.
Turning now to St. Matthew’s narrative, as fullest
and most formal, the first noticeable thing is that
the Commission proper is prefaced by our Lord’s
claim of universal power; and concluded with a
promise of His abiding presence. The risen and
evlorified Christ speaks as Lord and King of heaven
and earth, in ‘the majesty of His exalted humanity
and brightness of His divinity’ (Lange). His dis-
ciples, having to undertake a superhuman task,
required to be assured that they were backed by
superhuman authority. Nothing but the assur-
ance of such power at their disposal could nerve
men to attack those strongholds of sin and Satan
which must be overthrown before the kingdom of
heaven can be established in human_ hearts.
Meyer defines the power here claimed by Christ as
the ‘munus regi Christi without limitation.’
By the promise ‘ And, lo, 1 am with you alway,
even unto the end of the world,’ Christ assures His
followers that the universal power possessed . by
Himself will be at their disposal when engaged in
doing His work. The mystery of Christ’s name
᾿Βμμανουήλ-- (ἀοά with us, is here fulfilled—J in the
fullest sense, as if He, the risen, exalted, all.
powerful head of the Church, ‘stretched out His
hand from heaven’ (Calvin). He is present in the
Person of the Holy Spirit (Jn 146-38) through His
Word (14°) and Sacrament (Mt 26%). This pro-
mise is made to the whole Church in the widest
sense, as well as to the Apostles and all who should
take up their official work in propagating and
preserving the Christian Church as missionaries
and pastors. Alford says: ‘To understand μεθ᾽
ὑμῶν only of the Apostles and their (?) successors, is
to destroy the whole force of these most weighty
words. . The command is to the Universal
Church, to be performed in the nature of things
by her ministers and teachers, the manner of
appointing whom is not here prescribed, but to be
learnt in the unfoldings of Providence recorded in
the Acts of the Apostles, who by His special ordi-
nance were the founders and first builders of that
Church, but whose oftice, on that very account,
precluded the idea of succession or renewal.’
The Mediatorial Presence is to last unto the end
of the world—whether that refer to the end of the
material order here, or the end of the present
moral and spiritual order, for Christ’s return will
make all things new. Schaff points out that
“unto” (ἕως) ‘does not set a term to Christ’s pre-
sence, but to His invisible and temporal presence,
Which will be exchanged for His visible and eternal
presence at His last coming.’ An important link
between the power and promised presence—one
Which connects them also with the intervening
Commission is this: The power is placed at the
disposal of, the presence granted to, those alone
who obey the command, Go and disciple the
nations.
The Commission itself is evangelistic, or mis-
*The critical questions connected with Mk 14920 will
found thoroughly discussed in Swete’s
MarF, Macmillan, 1898, pp. xevi-cy.
be
Gospel according to St.
sionary, and pastoral—the one merging into the
other, with Baptism as the link connecting these
two departments. Its order is threefold—Disci-
pling, Baptizing, Instructing. All nations are to
be brought to the obedience of the faith. Their
standing is to be sealed and ratified by the sign of
the gospel. Then their instruction is to go on,
that so these baptized scholars in the school of
Christ may reach up to the measure of the stature
of the fulness of Christ.
(1) ‘Go ye therefore and make disciples of (μαθη-
revoare) all nations.’ ‘Demonstrably, this was not
understood as spoken to the Apostles only, but to
all the brethren’ (Alford). Go forth—out of the
bounds of Israel—and disciple the nations,—con-
vert them, enrol them as scholars in the school
of Christ. St. Mark specifies the means by which
this discipling is to be accomplished—‘ Preach the
gospel’ (κηρύξατε τὸ εὐαγγέλιον); herald the good
news of a crucified, risen, and exalted Saviour.
By the mention of ‘all nations’ the restriction of
105: is now removed: for the middle wall of
partition, that divided Jew from Gentile, was
broken down by Christ’s death. Christ's words
give no hint of an answer to that question, soon
to disturb the early Church, about the method
of Gentile admission; but the principle of their
admission is emphatically laid down. The corre-
sponding words in Mk 16 ‘Go ye into all the
world, and preach the gospel to every creature’
(πάσῃ τῇ κτίσει), emphasize the universality of the
gospel message even more strongly than those
of Matthew. All the world is the sphere, every
creature the object, of evangelistic effort.
(2) ‘Baptizing them.’ The Church of Christ
being a visible community, to be gathered out of
the world until it become itself universal, has its
peculiar rites, by which that visibility is mani-
fested. Besides being channels of Divine grace,
they are seals of Divine favour, and pledges, on
the part of disciples, of obedience to Divine com-
mands. Baptism is the initiatory rite. It signifies
both the bestowal and the reception of that grace
of God in Christ which brings salvation. It
testifies to the adoption of believers by grafting
into the body of Christ, the washing of regenera-
tion, and the imputation of a new righteousness
on God’s part. The person baptized, on the other
hand, ratifies by his signature the faith in Christ
through which these blessings are appropriated.
A profession of that faith has been required in
all ages of the Church from those of mature years
when seeking admission to her pale. This pro-
fession was manifestly intended by our Lord when
He instituted the rite of Baptism. A minority of
the Christian Chureh confine the rite to those who
are capable of cherishing and professing such a
personal faith. See art. BAPTISM.
Baptism is ‘into’ (eis) the name of the triune
God—by the authority and unto the authority
of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The unity in
Trinity of the Godhead is distinctly marked by
| the use of the singular τὸ ὄνομα instead of τὰ ὀνό-
ματα. These words, ‘into the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,’ have been
used for ages as our formula of Baptism when
admitting candidates into the covenant of Re-
demption — ‘into the name,’ ‘as the expression,
according to the common Scripture use, of the
| whole character of God, the sum of the whole
Christian revelation. The knowledge of God as
Father, the spiritual birthright of sonship, the
power and advocacy of the Spirit—all these
privileges belong to those who, in the divinely
appointed rite, are incorporated into the Divine
name’ (G. Milligan in Expository Times, vol. viii.
| [1897] p. 172).
(3) ‘Teaching them to observe all things whatso-
ae
COMMON LIFE
ever I have commanded you.’ The process begun
before, must be continued after Baptism. Admis-
sion into the Church—whether visible or invisible
—is only the beginning of Christian discipleship.
Eternity cannot complete the process of learning
what has to be known of an infinite God, and the
relation of His creatures to Him. It is part of the
pastoral duty of the Christian ministry to inculeate
the truth as it is in Jesus, that every member may
be built up into the full manhood of the Author
and Finisher of our faith. ‘The subject-matter of
teaching is the doctrines and precepts of Christ,
which lie at the root of Christian faith and
Christian practice. On all the members of His
Church it is incumbent to be diligent scholars in
the school of Christ, learning obedience to His
commandments from those appointed as teachers.
On some of these learners the additional duty rests
of being official expounders of His law—teachers in
their turn—devoting their lives, as the Apostles
did, to edify the body of Christ.
The place assigned to Word and Sacrament in
the spiritual perspective of this Commission is
well worthy of notice. It portrays the minister
of the gospel in the character of a teaching prophet
rather than in that of a sacrificing priest. The
ministry is first a ministry of the Word, and then
of the Sacraments. Thus Baptism—the Sacra-
ment of regeneration—is closely associated with
preaching and teaching ; while the Lord’s Supper—
the Sacrament of sanctification—is not directly
mentioned, although included among the ‘all
things whatsoever I have commanded you.’ The
Word must not be exalted at the expense of the
Sacraments, nor the Sacraments at the expense of
the Word. When each is assigned its true place
as a means of grace, the work of evangelizing and
edifying, committed to His Church by Christ, will
most surely prosper.
LITERATURE.—Besides the Comm. in loc., see Latham, Risen
Master, 273ff.; Denney, Death of Christ, 69ff.; Expos. 6th
Ser. v. 43, vi. 241; Hapos. Times iv. 557, vi. 419. For a clear
statement of the views of those who question the authenticity
of the Commission, see Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, i. 79, Expan-
sion of Christianity, i. 40ff. For the Baptismal Formula see
Resch and Marshall in Expos. Times vi. 395 ff. ; and the discussion
by Chase and Armitage Robinson, in JThASt, July 1905, Jan. 1906.
D. A. MACKINNON.
COMMON LIFE.—The teaching of our Lord upon
this subject is no more restricted and definite than
it is upon any other of life’s relations. It was
never His purpose to draw up anything like a
code of laws for the regulation ot human life.
Indeed, it is just this indefiniteness, this liberty,
this leaving all detail to the spiritual guidance
which He promised, that has made the religion of
Jesus so tar transcend every other religion that
has been given to men. Christ left His teaching
unrestricted, that by its inner and spiritual power
it might be able to adapt itself to the ever-changing
needs and thoughts of men.’ That doctrine which
makes itself particular, which binds itself up with
the peculiar circumstances of a definite people, a
definite clime, a definite era, must of necessity
pass away with those circumstances to which it
specially applied. Our Lord, in that He laid down
principles, not rules, has given us that which
will apply to all peoples and climes and eras.
Christianity is the universal faith, because it 15
founded upon the universal needs of the human
heart (Jn 8#1- 32 1412-13),
It is, of course, true that Christianity is particular
to this extent, that its Founder faces and combats
those particular evils which chanced to be most
prevalent at the time when He lived on earth.
Had renunciation of the world in the monastic
sense been as widespread as it became two centurles
after His death, we should certainly have had
more definite teaching upon our subject. But
COMMON LIFE 349
it was Pharisaism that He had to oppose, not
asceticism. There were, indeed, the Essenes at the
time of Christ, but that community was never a
large one, nor were their tenets so opposed to
the truths He taught as to demand His special
attention. The Baptist, it is true, was an ascetic
(Mt 3*|| Mk 1°, Mt 1118} Lk 7933), but we never find
him commanding others to lead his life. John
preached repentance, but a repentance that did
not entail renunciation of the world. Even the
publicans and the rough soldiery of Herod, when
they came seeking his advice, were not required
to give up professions so fraught with temptation.
All that he asked of them was that they should
perform the duties of their callings honestly and
honourably (Lk 34). It was therefore in opposi-
tion to the ritualism of the Pharisees alone that
Christ had to develop His teaching as to common
life. Purity and holiness in the eyes of the
Pharisees were matters of ceremonial observance
far more than of heart and life; and to such an
extent had they elaborated the Mosaic ritual, that
it was no longer possible for the poor man and
the toiler to attain to holiness in the sense which
they had rendered popular. Only the wealthy
and the leisured could win their esoteric righteous-
ness. It is for this reason that we so continually
find our Lord in strenuous opposition to all ex-
ternalism. It is ever the religion of heart and
life, not that of ceremonial, that He demands of
His followers. Consider, for example, His fulfilling
of the Law in the Sermon on the Mount. Through-
out it is the Law’s moral requirements that He
treats οἵ; and the discourse is prefaced by the
assertion that the righteousness of the new king-
dom must start by exceeding that of the scribes
and Pharisees (Mt 5”). He speaks of least com-
mandments, the breaking of which does not exclude
from the kingdom (v.!¥); and which He accounts
the greater and which the less is manifested by
His saying—‘ First be reconciled to thy brother,
and then come and offer thy gift’ (v.74). From a
similar standpoint He treats the observance of the
Sabbath, subordinating all external and ceremonial
requirements to those spiritual commands of love
to God and to our neighbour which He made all-
important (Mk 27-8, Lk 6! 13117). In regard
to the question of washing the hands before eating,
He comes into open conflict with the Pharisees,
upbraiding their hypocrisy, and contending that
defilement comes not from external things, but
from within the heart (Mt 151-29. Mlk 71:29),
All this tends towards the placing of a higher
value upon common life. He is thus clearing the
way for the reception of the thought that God
may be as truly served in the round of daily life
and toil as in those observances distinctively called
religious. We have the boldest assertion of this
truth in the parable of the Pharisee and the
Publican (Lk 18°), wherein. He points out that
the strictest—nay, the supererogatory—perform-
ance of ritual cannot win justification in the sight
of God, while simple repentance, utterly without
these things, is assured of pardon and peace. We
are not told whether the repentance of this publi-
can entailed the giving up of his profession ; but
in the case of Zacchzeus there is evidence that it
did not (Lk 19"). Apparently, then, in the eyes
of our Lord, even this, the most despised of callings,
could be followed by a member of the kingdom.
Levi, it is true, was called to leave all and follow
(Lk 555); but his case we must regard as an
exception. He showed a special aptitude, and was
called to a special office.
But it is rather the whole tendency of the teach-
ing and example of Jesus, than any explicit state-
ment, that in Christianity assigns to common life
a dignity which it receives in no other religion.
350 COMMON LIFE
That Christianity so early developed monkish
asceticism cannot be adduced as an argument
against Christ’s teaching. The life of Jesus is
throughout a clear admission of the value of that
probation which God the Father and Creator has
allotted to mankind. Jesus as the universal Man,
the Example for all the world, assumed for Him-
self the most universal experience. For thirty
years He lived the common life of a labouring
man, working like any one of His brethren in the
carpenter's shop at Nazareth. We have Him
described as a carpenter, as one well known to His
fellow-townsmen, as one but little distinguished
from His brothers and sisters (Mt 13°, Mk 65).
Commonplace daily toil and family intercourse,
and that throughout a period of thirty years, were
thus the training which the Heavenly Father ac-
counted the best for His Son who was to be the
Saviour of the world. In this lowly sphere the Son
of God grew ‘in wisdom and stature, and in favour
with God and man’ (Lk 2°"). Than this there
could be no stronger argument for the value and
the nobleness of common life in the eyes of the
Father and the Son. It is impossible to conceive
that He who thus honoured the common lot could
desire any renunciation of it on the part of those
who wished to be His followers. Those who were
called to be His missionaries must of necessity
give up all to do a higher work, but not to attain
a higher life. It is to be noted that when for a
time that work is in abeyance, His chief disciples
return to their old calling (Jn 21°).
The whole attitude of Jesus towards the world
of nature and of man is in accordance with His
claim to be the Son of the Creator. He clearly
recognized the wisdom and the beauty and the
love that shine forth in Creation and Providence.
The lilias of the field and the fowls of the air, the
sunshine and the rain, are used by Him as evi-
dences of the goodness of the father. His teach-
ing is bound up in closest harmony with the
things of earth and time. For Him the family
ties are types of Heaven. His kingdom is far more
a family than a nation. The names of father,
mother, brother, sister, wife, are ennobled by His
use of them. From all the callings of men He
draws images of Divine things. The physician,
the sower, the reaper, the fisherman, the vine-
dresser, the shepherd, the king at war, the house-
wife at her baking, the commonest incidents of
daily life, the simplest phenomena of nature,—all
have a place in His doctrine; all are used to
illustrate the character and development of His
kingdom. He did not, it is true, enlarge upon
the relations of life. That was not His mission.
His reformation was to proceed from within, not
from without. But everywhere there is the mani-
fest acceptance of the order, alike social and
natural, which God has ordained. Even the civil
order, with which He came into contact in no ideal
form in the Roman domination, receives His
sanction. ‘Render unto Cesar,’ He says, ‘the,
things which are Crsar’s; and unto God the
things that are God’s’ (Mt 2215-22) Mk 121-17, Lk
20°"), There is duty to God and duty to civil
order, and these must not conflict in religion’s
name: the former should include the latter.
Marriage is recognized by Him as a holy tie, an
indissoluble Divine institution, and thus obtains a
position more honourable than it had ever held
before (Mt 19**, Mk 1022). His presence and
first miracle at the wedding at Cana of Galilee
(Jn 2'")—a, miracle which shows His deep sym-
pathy with even trivial human needs—is in itself
a consecration of marriage. That episode strikes
the keynote of His life,—a life lived amid His
fellows, sharing their joys and sorrows, their trials
and temptations, their feastings and their mourn-
COMMON LIFE
ings. The Son of man came eating and drinking,
with no ascetic gloom; came to live in, and thus
to sanctify, the whole round of conmon life.
Yet in the view of our Lord all these things had
but a transitory value. They were but means to
something higher. They were the temporal and
seen, from which the unseen and eternal was to
be extracted. In so far, then, as they conflicted
with that higher good, that eternal treasure,
Christ demanded renunciation in regard to them.
His treatment of the young ruler (Mt 19!*22, Mk
1017-27, Lk 1818-*7) illustrates, well this attitude.
Wealth is not in itself an evil, but it is a great
danger, and in certain cases it may destroy the
life of the soul. For some, therefore, it is wiser
and safer to discard it. It has an engrossing power
that deprives the soul of its proper nourishment
(ef. the parable of the Rich Fool, Lk 12!*!), It
tends to harden the heart against compassion and
charity, to make the man self-sufficient, to give a
physical delight so great as to close the eyes to
that which is spiritual (cf. the parable of the Rich
Man and Lazarus, Lk 16'%*!). But there are other
blessings far more innocent that possess a like
danger. Things as precious and as natural as the
hand and eye and foot may yet lead to sin and
obstruct the passage to the higher life (Mt 5%,
Mk 9-48), In such cases, too, these must be
renounced. Even the family ties, if they become
so binding as to come between the soul and its
true weal—the service of God in Christ—must be
broken ; for the kingdom of God is the one aim
and purpose of the spiritual man, and nought
must be permitted to interfere therewith (Mt 1097
|| Lk 142°, Mt 6%). Even life itself must be laid
down for the sake of Christ (Mt 10, Lk 17%, Jn
122)
Christ’s teaching as to worldly good 15. par-
ticularly revealed in the parable of the Unjust
Steward (Lk 101-12. There He calls the command
of wealth and natural advantage by the name of
‘the unrighteous mammon,’ thus pointing to its
seductive power and contrasting it with the true
spiritual good. He ealls it also ‘that which is
another man’s’ in distinction to ‘that which is
yourown.’ Of earthly good we are but the stewards.
Wealth is never really our own. We may use it
or abuse it, but sooner or later we must resign its
control. The spiritual gifts of God are of a nature
totally different. They become truly ours, a part
of our true self. Yet the unrighteous mammon
can be so employed as to win us spiritual ad-
vantage. By its means we can make us friends
who will receive us into everlasting habitations.
As the unjust steward employed his power to
his own worldly advantage, so must we with the
wisdom of light use to our highest advantage
the worldly power which is ours which is always
one with the service of God.
There is a remarkable passage in Mk 10° (ef.
Mt 19” and Lk 1859), which promises that earthly
loss suffered for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s
shall receive an hundredfold reward ‘now in this
time’ in the same kind in which the loss was
suflered. That the Christian in his profession and
practice of love to all men must have the family
ties strengthened and extended an hundredfold, 15
readily to be understood ; but the promise of Jands
is not so simple. To the mind of the present
writer it suggests the great truth, which Christ’s
own life exemplified, that only the child of God is
capable of the pure and perfect enjoyment of all
that God has made. Only to the eyes of him
whose heart is filled with the Father’s love, is all
the beauty of the Creator's work displayed. As
one with the Father through Christ, as sharing the
purposes of God, as beholding the Divine plan and
submitting to and working for it, the Christian
γον
Βα. ἕῳ
ἜΣ
2
COMMUNION
possesses the world in a sense in which no other
can. It is his to rejoice in and to use for God’s
glory. (Cf. Expositor 1st ser. iv. [1876] 256 ff.).
To sum up the whole, we may say that there are
two great ideas which underlie all Christ’s teach-
ing :—(1) The inestimable value of the human
soul (Mt 16°65, Mk 8%, Lk 975), to the salvation of
which all must be subordinated, for the sake of
which all things, if necessary, must. be renounced :
the Gospel, therefore, which gives this salvation
is all-important, and its service must have no
rival ; and (2) the recognition of common life and
daily toil, with all that these terms include, as the
ordinances of a loving Father by whose Providence
they are designed to be the chiefest elements in
fitting men for citizenship in the Kingdom of
Heaven. He who uses well the talents which
God gives, in the sphere in which his lot is east,
who is faithful in a little, shall have his reward
hereafter in the obtaining of a larger sphere
wherein to exercise for God’s glory those very
ualities, purified and ennobled, which his earthly
ΝΑ has made his own (Mt 951::-80. Lk 191-27),
Work that is the expression of love to God and
man is always noble; and there is no work on
earth that may not be performed to God’s glory.
LITERATURE.—Beyschlag, New Testament Theology, ii. 250 ff. ;
Weiss, New Testament Theology, ii. 347 ff.; the standard Com-
mentaries on the Gospels, and works on the Parables ; Stop-
ford Brooke, Christ in Modern Life, p. 1ff.; R. W. Dale, Laws
of Christ for Common Life, esp. chs. i. xi. xii. xiv. ; J. T. Jacob,
Christ the Indweller, ch. ix. ; R. Glaister, ‘Christ’s Sympathy
in Life’s Commonplace,’ Exp. Times, x. 360ff.; J. W. Diggle,
Short Studies in Holiness, 197. ΜΠ ΒΕ
COMMUNION.—It is surprising that neither the
substantive (κοινωνία) nor the verb (κοινωνεῖν), which
represent the concept of ‘communion’ in NT, is to
be found in any i our four Gospels. It would,
however, be unsafe, and indeed untrue to fact, to
assume on this account that the idea of communion
is wanting. While there is an absence of the words
concerned, there is no absence of the conception
itself. A careful study of the Gospels, on the con-
trary, not only reveals a plain recognition of this
vital aspect of the religious life, but also (and
especially in the records of our Lord’s teaching
preserved by St. John) presents the conception
to us with a certain clear, if unobtrusive, pro-
minence.
The subject contains three distinct parts, which
will naturally be considered separately: (1) The
communion of Christ with the Father; (2) our
communion with God ; (3) our communion one with
another.
1. The communion of Christ with the Father.—
The more conspicuous aspect of our Lord’s com-
munion with the Father as reflected in the Gospels,
is that which characterized His earthly ministry.
But it is not the only aspect presented. Christ
Himself clearly claimed to have enjoyed pre-
existent communion with His Father (Jn 175: 5),
and the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel in three or
four weighty clauses confirms the claim. This pre-
existent communion included both unity of essence
and life, and fellowship in work. (a) The Word
was πρὸς τὸν θεόν (Jn 11), realizing His very person-
ality ‘in active intercourse with and in perfect
communion with God’ (Westcott, in Joc.). His
nature was the nature of Deity (καὶ θεὸς ἣν ὁ λόγος,
ib.). His Sonship is unique (v.4; and for the
uniqueness of the relationship ef. the important
Synoptic passage, Mt 117=Lk 10”). His is the
πλήρωμα. {Π| sum of the Divine attributes (Jn 1'°,
ef. Col 19 29; Eph 133), and He is μονογενὴς θεός (Jn
118)‘ One Who is God only-begotten’ (Westcott).
(2) The pre-existent communion not merely con-
sisted in identity of essence, but was also expressed
by fellowship in work. The Word was the Agent
COMMUNION 351
in the work of Creation (Jn 1: 19, cf. also 1 Co 88,
Col 1°; His work in sustaining the Universe so
created is taught in Col 1”, He 1353. See art.
CREATOR.
Our Lord’s realization of His Father’s presence
during His life upon earth was constant. That He
Himself laid claim to such fellowship is beyond
contention. He did so directly in His words (Mt
11 =D 10 πὶ ΠΡ τοῦ γ46: 20-11 | 1G 25-82) empha-
sizing especially His unity with the Father (Jn
10%0-88 J24 14"), and accepting with approval the
title of ‘God’ (Jn 2078 °°). He did so even more
impressively, if less directly, by assuming His
Father’s functions in the world (Mk 2>7=Mt 92: 3=
Lk δ30. 53: 74) and representing Himself as con-
trolling Divine forces and originating Divine
missions (Mt 11°, Jn 15° 20-5), Moreover, any
attempt to explain away that intimate knowledge
of God which the Gospels consistently ascribe to
Him, is compelled to disregard not merely the
passages in which His own words and actions dis-
tinctly assume it, but also not a few in which,
whether with approval or with disapproval, others
recognize that He claimed to possess it (Jn 618 1098
133 197, cf. also 177-8). See CLAIMS OF CHRIST.
But apart altogether from His specific claim to
the enjoyment of this Divine fellowship, we have
abundant evidence of its existence in His earthly
life itself. The sense of communion was an integral
part of that life. It is one of those elements in His
personality that could not be eliminated from it.
A Christ unconscious of intercourse with God would
not be the Christ of the Gospels. It was this sense
of communion that moulded His first recorded con-
ception of duty (Lk 2”, AV or RV). The thirty
years of quiet preparation for a three years’ minis-
try (the proportions are suggestive; for other
examples of equipment in seclusion see Ex 3!, Lk
1%, Gal 1°") may without doubt be summed up as
one long experience of fellowship with His Father.
And the recognition of this union, which marks His
first thoughts of His mission, and which must so
largely have constituted His earthly preparation
for it, is found to be His constant support amid the
stress of the work itself. It is present in a special
manner in the Baptism which signalized the begin-
ning of His ministry among men (Mk 1?-4=Mt
316. W—=Lk 951: 25): It is His stay alike before the
labours of the day begin (Mk 155), at the very
moment of service (Mk 64 ἀναβλέψας εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν ;
ef. also 793 874, Jn 61! 1141), and when refreshment of
soul is needed at the close of the long hours of toil
(Mk 6% = Mt 14°8, Lk5'°). The Gospels, indeed, make
it plain that He regarded such communion as a con-
dition on which the accomplishment of certain work
depended (Mk 959, ef. Jn 5*°), and we cannot fail to
observe the frequency with which both He and His
biographers insist that the Divine Presence is with
Him in all His words and works (Lk 413-18. Jn 3%4
519-21. 36 816. 26. 29)/ So constant is the communion,
that even the most familiar objects of Nature con-
vey to Him suggestions of the Father in heaven
(Mt 6° °5). It is noteworthy that retirement for
intimate converse with unseen realities is especially
recorded as preceding Christ’s action or speech at
certain great crises in the development of His life-
mission (Luke is particularly careful to draw atten-
tion to this ; see 371 6015. 13 18. 28f. 9941 9346 - ef also
Mk 9", Jn 1938 17!*), and that intercession for indi-
vidual men had its place in this sacred experience
(Lk 2231-82, ef, 2354 Jn 17825),
Thus constantly, alike at critical junctures and
in more normal moments, did the sense of His
Father’s presence uphold Him. In one mysterious
moment, the full meaning of which baffles human
explanation, His consciousness of it appears to have
wavered (Mk 15%) ; yet even this cry of desolation
must not be considered apart from the certain
352 COMMUNION
restoration of the communion revealed in the calm
confidence of the last word of all (Lk 23%). See
art. DERELICTION.
One further point may be briefly suggested. Our
Lord’s communion with the Father was not incon-
sistent with His endurance of temptation. Nay,
it was under the strong impulse of that Spirit
whose presence with Him was at once the sign and
the expression of His union with God (see Mk 1"),
that He submitted to the assaults of evil (Mk 1”: ®,
note ἐκβάλλει, = Mt 41 -- Lk 4'). The protracted
testing (ἣν πειραζόμενος, analytical tense, cf. the
suggestion of other occasions of temptation in the
plur. ἐν τοῖς πειρασμοῖς μου, Lk 2255, and Jn 1257), suc-
cessfully endured, itself became to our Lord the
means of a fresh assurance and (perhaps we may
add) a fuller realization of fellowship with the
spiritual world (Mk 115 6i«évovv—impf.). In this
respect, as in others also, His life of communion,
while in one sense unique (Lk 10”), is seen to be
the exemplar of our own.
2. Our communion with God.—The reality of the
believer’s communion with God is plainly revealed
in the teaching of the Gospels. This communion
is presented sometimes in terms of a relationship
with the Father, sometimes in terms of a relation-
ship with the Son, sometimes in terms of a rela-
tionship with the Spirit; but all three presentations
alike are relevant to our study (1 Jn 2», cf. 1°, Jn
14*-17).* Tf our outline-is to be at once clear and
comprehensive, we must treat the passages con-
cerned under two headings. The first (@) will in-
clude those that deal with the state of communion
with God into which a man is brought when he
becomes the servant of God; the second (ὦ) those
that relate to the life of conscious communion
with God which it is his privilege to live from that
time forward. The distinction, as will shortly
appear, is by no means an unnecessary one, the
second experience being at once more vivid and
more profound than the first need necessarily be.
(a) It is clear that in the case of every believer
the barrier raised between himself and God by his
sin has been broken down. In other words, he
has been restored to a state of communion with
God. The means by which this state is brought
about have both a Divine and a human signifi-
cance. It is in considering their Divine aspect that
we reach the point of closest connexion between
the communion of believers with God and the com-
munion of Christ with His Father. For these in a
true sense stand to one another in the relation of
effect and cause (cf. what is implied in such pas-
sages as Jn 11} 146 12 171-23), Tt is in virtue of our
Lord’s perfect fellowship with God that through
His life and death we too can gain unrestricted
admission to the Divine Presence. This truth is
all-important. It needs no detailed proof. The
whole story of the Incarnation and of the Cross is one
long exposition of it. Perhaps it is symbolicaily
represented in Mk 15%. The conditions required
on the human side for restoration to the state of
communion with God appear plainly in our Lord’s
teaching. This state is described in varied language
and under different metaphors. Sometimes it is
presented as citizenship in God’s kingdom (Mk
104, Jn 3%); sometimes as discipleship (Lk 142%,
Jn 851), friendship (Jn 15%), and even kinship (Mk
3) with Christ Himself. In other places it is
spoken of as a personal knowledge of Him (1 Jn 2°) ;
in others, again, as a following in His footsteps (Mk
8", Jn 8"); and in yet others as the possession of
a new type of life (Jn 3: for the definition of
eternal life as ‘knowing God’ see Jn 173, 1 Jn 52).
As one condition of finding this experience, which,
in whatever terms it be described, places men in a
* It is scarcely necessary to point out that for purposes of
doctrine, 1 Jn. ranks as practically a part of the Mourth Gospel.
COMMUNION
new relationship with God, Christ mentions child-
likeness of disposition (Mk 1015. As other condi-
tions He emphasizes poverty of spirit (Mt δ", Lk
18°"-), and the performance of the Divine will in a
life of righteousness and love (Mk 3%, Lk 695: #6 821)
Jn 82°14, “et. 1 In’ 1923-535) none very. πὶ"
portant passage, addressed both to the multitude
and to His own band of disciples, He may perhaps
be said to include all individual conditions. ‘If
any man willeth to come after me, let him re-
nounce himself’ (Mk 8* and |j). This saying has
a meaning far more profound than that suggested
by our English versions. Taken with the explana-
tion contained in the verse that follows, it really
leads us to the basis of communion. ΑἸ] com-
munion between two persons, whether human and
human or human and Divine, is possible only in
virtue of some element common to the natures of
both (see Jn 45: 8%; ef. the same principle differ-
ently applied in 5%”). Man’s sole possibility of
communion with God lies in his possession, poten-
tial or actual, of the Divine life (cf. Jn 15. But
joined to the ‘self’ (the second ψυχή of Mk 895)
which is capable of union with God, he is conscious
also of another ‘self’ (the first ψυχή of Mk 8°)
which is incongruous with that close relationship
to Deity. The condition of realizing the one ‘self,’
and with it, in natural sequence, communion with
God, is the renunciation of the other and lower
“self?
So both vv.34 and 35: the ἑαυτὸν of Mk 891 is thus equivalent
to the first ψυχη of 88°, The ‘taking up his cross ’—.e. for his
own crucifixion thereon—defines the * renouncing himself’ more
closely. The teaching of the whole passage is the Evangelic
representation of the Pauline doctrine of self-crucifixion, cf.
Gal 22 6A,
To change the figure somewhat, the unity of life
involved in the idea of communion between man
and God can be attained only through man’s rising
to God’s life. This, it is true, would have been
outside his power had not God first stooped to his
level. But in the Incarnation this step of infinite
condescension has been taken, and by it the possi-
bility of mankind’s rising to the lite of God—in
other words, the possibility of its entering into a
state of communion with God—has been once for
all secured. In order to make this state of com-
munion his own, Christ teaches, each individual
man must now leave his lower life, with all that
pertains to it, behind; must be content to ‘re-
nounce himself’; must be willing to ‘lose’ that
‘life’ which cannot consist with the Divine life.
So complete, indeed, is to be the severance from
the past, that the experience in which it is brought
about is called a ‘new birth’ (Jn 3%), as real as,
though of a type essentially different from, the
physical birth (v.°). When with this self-renounce-
ment is combined that faith in Christ which leads
to union with Him and reliance upon Him (πιστεύειν
eis—Jn_ 316 96 6 1156), we have the experience which
sums up into one great whole the various indi-
vidual conditions required on the human side for
entering into the state of communion with God.
(6) Quite distinct in thought from the state of
communion into which all believers are brought, is
the dife of communion which it is their privilege
to enjoy. The one is always a fact, the other
is also a consciously realized experience. Like
so many of the blessings revealed in NT, such a
life of communion is too rich an experience to be
described in any one phrase or under a single meta-
phor. In different contexts it is presented in dif-
ferent ways. Sometimes, for example, it is set
forth as an abiding in Christ who also abides in
the believer (Jn 15+"). In other places it is repre-
sented as an indwelling of the Spirit (Jn 141-0
1678-15, 1 Jn 250. 27 374 415), whose presence, to be-
lievers (as in a deeper sense to their Lord) the sign
and expression of union with God, is to be with
COMMUNION
them from the moment of their initiation into the
new life (Mk 18 and |||, 1 Jn 3% 418). Yet another
statement, emphasizing in a remarkable metaphor
the inwardness and intimacy of the union that
results, sets the experience before us as a mystical
feeding upon Christ (Jn 6, esp. vv.53-58, ef. also v.35),
But while there is variation in the language in
which this sense of the Divine Presence is set forth,
there is no question as to the reality of the experi-
ence itself. It is the inspiration of this Unseen
Presence that shall give to believers definite guid-
ance in moments of crisis and perplexity (Mk 13!
and ||, ik 12-32). It is in this communion with
God that they will find their surest refuge against
fears and dangers (Mk 13'°=Mt 945) and against
the assaults of temptation (Mk 1438 and ||). Such
fellowship, too, is their ground of certainty, alike
in their teaching (Jn 3"—note the plurals; 1 Jn
11-Ὁ) and in πα belict (cf. Jn 4”). It is, moreover,
the source of all their fitness for service (ef. Gabriel’s
suggestive speech, Lk 113) and the means of all their
fruit-bearing (Jn 151°), As would have been ex-
pected, the full significance of this converse with
(cod is not understood, nor is its closest intimacy
appropriated, in the earliest days of initiation.
τι ἀν ρα κὸ of God, like knowledge of men, has to
be realized progressively (cf. χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος, Jn
116). There are degrees of intimacy (cf. Jn 15” and
the suggestive interchange of ἀγαπᾶν and φιλεῖν in
91] 156.) and the extent to which the believer is ad-
mitted into fellowship is proportionate to the pro-
gress he has made in the lessons previously taught
(cf. the significant connexion between Mk 85} and
87-9, which is clearly brought out in the emphatic
καὶ ἤρξατο διδάσκειν of v.*!: ef. also Mk 4533, Jn 1012).
The reason for this basis of progress is plain. An
important element in communion being self-adjust-
ment to God’s will (ef. our Lord’s own illustration
of this, Mk 145 and ||), the degree of intimacy that
ensues will naturally be conditioned by the extent
to which this element is rendered prominent.
Thus, while its neglect will open up the possibility
of lapsing even to one who has been on intimate
terms with Christ (Mk 14!8, Jn 13!8), its constant
and progressive practice may bring a man to a
union with God so close as to constitute his com-
plete possession by Divine influence (cf. the Bap-
tist’s magnificent description of himself asa ‘ Voice,’
Jn 1°, taken from Is 409). And the fellowship so
enjoyed and ever more intimately realized under
the restricted conditions of earth, is to find its
perfect consummation only in the hereafter. (Jn
1956 142-3 1724, cf. 1 Jn 339). See art. ABIDING.
The means by which, according to the Gospel
teaching, the believer will practise this life of
communion with God, may be briefly indicated.
Prominent among them is seclusion from the world
for the purpose of definite prayer. The import-
ance of this our Lord emphasized by His own ex-
ample. He also enjoined it upon His followers by
oft-repeated precepts (Mt 6° 77 8 26" and ||, Lk 6°
181). At the same time the Evangelic teaching does
not aim at making recluses. There are active as
well as passive means of enjoying intercourse with
God, and our Lord’s whole training of the Twelve
indicates, even more clearly than any individual
saying (cf. Jn 1715), His belief in the Divine com-
munion that is found in the service of mankind.
The sense of fellowship with God vivified in secret
devotion is to be realized afresh and tested in con-
tact with men (so 1 Jn 48: 12- 16), ;
Two more points call for separate attention.
(1) Before His death our Lord ordained a rite
which not only symbolizes the union of His fol-
lowers with Himself, but is also a means of its
progressive realization. Jf an intimate connexion
ΠῚ εν the Lord’s Supper (Mk 147?" and ||) and
the Jewish Passover may, as seems reasonable, be
VOL. I.—23
COMMUNION 353
assumed, that conception of the Christian rite
which represents it as a means of communion
between the individual soul and its Saviour would
appear to have a basis in the foundation principle
on which all ancient worship, whether Jewish or
heathen, rests—the belief that to partake of a
sacrifice is to enter into some kind of fellowship
with the Deity. This aspect of the Lord’s Supper
does not, of course, exhaust its meaning (see art.
LOoRD’s SUPPER), but it is certainly prominent,
and it is emphasized both by St. Paul (1 Co 1016)
and by Christ Himself (Jn 6°, where the eating
would certainly include that of the Lord’s Supper,
even though, as is most probable, it does not refer
to it exclusively).
(2) One more suggestion may be put forward.
Our Lord seems to hint at a special means of com-
munion with Himself which is really a particular
extension of the self-renouncement considered
above. This is a mysterious fellowship with Him
in His own sufferings for mankind (Mk 10*8:39= Mt
20°. 28 > for a symbolical illustration see Mk 1531).
It is only a hint, but the words are significant ;
and, taken in conjunction with St. Paul’s ἀντανα-
πληρῶ τὰ ὑστερήματα τῶν θλίψεων τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐν τῇ
σαρκί μου (Col 153), and his purpose τοῦ γνῶναι. ..
κοινωνίαν παθημάτων αὐτοῦ (Ph 310, cf. also 2 Co 15
4”, 1 P 41:5), would certainly seem to imply that
the believer’s own sufferings for Christ’s sake may
become a medium through which he may enter
into close communion with his Lord.
Even this brief study will have revealed that
the Gospel conception of the Christian’s com-
munion with God is essentially different from that
of the Quietist. Whether we have regard to our
Lord’s example or to His teaching, whether we
are thinking of the status of fellowship or of its
conscious practice, the means by which the Divine
communion is realized are not exclusively periods
of secluded contemplation. In Christ’s own life
upon earth the two elements of active and passive
fellowship are signally combined. The sense of
union with the Unseen Father, fostered in lonely
retreat, is also intensified in moments of strenuous
activity. In His thoughts for the lives of His
followers, too, the consciousness of God’s presence
is secured not alone by solitary worship, but also
by the doing of the Divine will, by the earnest
struggle to subdue the lower self, and even by
active participation in the very sufferings of Christ.
So the servant, as his Lord, must practise the
communion of service as well as the communion
of retirement (cf., again, Jn 1715. The desire for
the permanent consciousness of the more immediate
Presence must be sunk in the mission of carrying
to others the tidings of salvation (Mk δ᾽8-:9 Ξ Τ ς
8*8- 39) Tt is but natural that in the moment. of
special revelation on the mountain the disciple
should long to make it his abiding place (Mk 9
and ||); but his Master can never forget the need
of service on the ordinary levels of life (Mk 9158:
and ||). And the experience of the one is the
source of power for the other (Mk 959, cf. Jn 154).
3. Our communion one with another.—Just as
our communion with God was seen to bear a close
relation to our Lord’s communion with the Father,
so our spiritual fellowship one with another rests
upon the fellowship of each with Christ. As we
had occasion to point out above, communion be-
tween any two persons is possible only in virtue of
some element common to the natures of both.
This common possession in the case of believers is
the life, the ‘self,’ which is called into being and
ever progressively realized in their individual
communion with Christ. The possibility of our
spiritual fellowship with one another rests ulti-
mately upon what He is and our relationship to
what He is (see 1 Jn 11°, and especially 17; cf.
354
COMMUNION
COMPLACENCY
also 1 Co 10'-17), His Presence is the bond of
union in which we are one, and in which we
realize the oneness that we possess (Mt 18”).
Indeed, the two types of communion—the com-
munion with God and the communion with our
fellow-believers—react each upon the other. On
the one hand, as we have just seen, our communion
with men rests upon our communion with Christ ;
on the other hand, our Divine fellowship may be
intensified (Mt 187° again and 25") or impeded (Mt
5.24 G15 954, Mk 11”) by our relations with our
fellow-men.
That our Lord looked for the unity of His
followers is not open to question. He both
prophesied it (Jn 1016) and prayed for it (171+ ?}).
An intimate friend, clearly one of an inner circle
of disciples and probably John himself, understood
its attainment to be part of His purpose in dying
for mankind (Jn 1153. Moreover, it is natural to
suppose that the desire to ensure it would con-
tribute to His decision to found an organized
society (Mt 1018) and to institute an important
rite (Mk 14” and ||) for those who should believe
in Him. The unity of His followers was even to be
one of the grounds on which He based His appeal
for the world’s faith (Jn 1771»). Of His wish for
this unity, therefore, there can scarcely be reason-
able doubt. But when we ask in what He meant
the unity to consist, agreement is not so easily
reached. The expression of His followers’ unit
certainly includes kind and unselfish relations with
one another—mutual honour and service (Mk
10*-4# = Mt 2079-8), mutual forgiveness (Mt 64, Lk
17° 4), mutual love (Jn 1331 1513). It is exemplified
further by participation in the common work (Jn
48-88), Another very special means of its realiza-
tion, the Lord’s Supper, we have already indicated.
Although this particular aspect of the rite is not
actually revealed in the Gospel narrative itself, it
will scarcely be questioned that one of the great
truths which it both signifies and secures, is that
of the fellowship of Christ’s followers. The sacred
service in which the believer may realize com-
munion with His Lord (see § 2 above), is also a
means by which he is to apprehend his oneness
with all other believers (see 1 Co 101).
While, however, it is plain that in Christ’s
teaching the communion of Christians is at once
attested and secured by means like these, it is
disputed whether He designed their unity to be
simply a spiritual or also an external one. Three
important passages may be very briefly considered.
(1) Jn 1016 atfords no support te the upholders of
an external unity. The true rendering is unques-
tionably, ‘They shall become one flock’ (RV; cf.
Tindale and Coverdale), and not, ‘There shall be
one fold’ (AV; cf. Vulgate). The unity mentioned
here is one that is realized in the personal relation
of each member of the flock to the Great Shepherd
Himself. —(2) There is teaching a little more
definite in Jn 17" and 2-22, In both these places
our Lord makes His own unity with the Father
the exemplar of the unity of believers. Reverence
forbids any dogmatic statement as to the point to
Which this sacred analogy can be pressed. But
Christ's own words in the immediate context con-
tain suggestions as to His meaning in using the
analogy. It is noticeable that here also, as in Jn
10. Ὁ. the underlying basis of unity is the believers’
personal relation to Christ (and the Father). ‘That
they may be one, even as we are one,’ in v.72, is at
once defined more closely in the words, ‘I in them,
and thou in me’ (v.%). The resultant unity is
gained through the medium not of an external,
but of a purely spiritual, condition (iva ὦσιν τετε-
λειωμένοι εἰς ἕν, ν.3). In the same way, in the
statement of v.", it is a spiritual relationship to
God that will yield the unity Christ craves for His
disciples. This unity will follow upon their being
‘kept ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί cov.’ It will be assured if their
relationship to the Father is a counterpart of what
had been their relationship to Christ (v.!”), i.e. a
personal relationship. Whatever, therefore, be
the exact meaning which the analogy used by our
Lord was intended to convey, His own language in
the context appears to make it plain that it must
be interpreted with a spiritual rather than with an
external significance.—(3) This conclusion derives
not a little support from the incident of Mk 955,
When a definite test case arose, He declared the
real fellowship of His followers to depend not upon
any outward bond of union between them, bri
upon each bearing such a relationship to Himself
as would be involved in His working ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματί
μου. True, the man in question may not have
been a nominal disciple of our Lord, but that in
His view he was a real disciple is distinctly stated
(v.°). This instance, therefore, may be regarded
as a practical application on the part of Christ
Himself of the teaching under consideration ; and
thus it strongly confirms the interpretation that
we have put upon it. It would be outside the
scope of the present article to consider arguments
for or against the corporate unity of Christians
drawn from other sources, some of which are very
strong and all of which must, of course, be duly
weighed before a fair judgment on the whole
question can be reached. But so far as the subject-
matter before us is concerned, we find it hard to
resist the conclusion that suchexternal unity formed
no part of the teaching of Christ and the Gospels.
One word must be added. The ‘communion of
saints’ joins the believer not merely to his fellow-
Christians upon earth, but also to those who have
passed within the veil (cf. He 12"). This aspect of
communion is not emphasized in the Gospels, but
there are indications that the fellowship of be-
lievers upon earth was linked in the thought of
Christ to the yet closer fellowship of those beyond
death. At any rate, it is worthy of notice that in
instituting the sacred rite which, as we have seen,
at once witnesses to and secures our communion
one with another, our Lord carefully pointed for-
ward to the reunion that will take place in the
world to come (Mt 26°; note μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν) ; and that
in a few suggestive words He represented the
earthly gathering as incomplete apart from its final
consummation in the heavenly kingdom (Lk 9916).
See further artt. FELLOWSHIP, UNITY.
LITERATURE.— DB, s.v.; Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, ii. 151 ff. ;
Weiss, NV’ Theol. ii. 367ff.; Beyschlag, NT’ Theol. i. 247 ff. ;
Herrmann, Com. of the Christian with God; Maclaren, Holy
of Holies, chs. xvi.-xix.; MacCulloch, Comparative Theology,
216, 254; Stearns, Hvidence of Chr. Experience, 179; Strong,
Historical Christianity, 11; Westcott, Historic Faith, 123, 247;
McGiffert, Apostles’ Creed, 32, 200; Expos. Times, iii. 197, v.
464 (R. Ε΄. Weymouth); Tasker, Spiritual Communion.
AA. BISSEKER.
COMPASSION.—See Pity.
COMPLACENCY.—
Of Scripture words expressive of the idea of complacency as
distinguished from benevolence, we find in the Heb. of the OT
V2, 789, variously rendered in the LXX by θέλειν ἐν, or by some
derivative of the verb δέχομα,. In the NT the expressions used
ATE εὐδοκίω, εὐδοκία, εὐαρεστίω, εὐάρεστο:, apioxw. The words
ἀγαπάω, ἀγάπη are also used in this sense. In the OT we find
750 ‘take pleasure in,’ in 1S 1525 tr. in the LXX by the phrase
θέλω ἐν, Where Saul’s servants say to David, ‘Behold the king
taketh pleasure in thee,’ meaning that he was willing to regard
with satisfaction a matrimonial alliance between David and
Saul’s daughter. Similarly the word ΠΥ Ἢ ‘delight,’ is rendered
by the same Gr. equivalent in 1 Ch 284, where David says of
God, ‘He liked me to make me king.’ ΠΝ Tis used of God’s
pleasure in the work of the Servant of Jehovah in Is 421, where
the LXX reads προσεδέξατο αὐτὸν ἡ Ψυχή μου, ‘my soul has
accepted him’; St. Matthew, on the other hand, translates
the whole phrase 152 ANS YOR by ὁ ἀγαπητός μου ὃν εὐδόκησεν
ἡ ψυχή μου, rightly rendered in the AV ‘my beloved, in whom
COMPLACENCY
my soul is well pleased.’ Here, apparently, the thought of the
LXX inclines more to the idea of the Divine act of will by which
the Servant of God was appointed to his mission,. while St.
Matthew emphasizes the love with which, because of His
redemptive work, the Father regards His Son, and so he prefers
‘my beloved’ to ‘mine elect’ as a rendering of 1°72 (Mt 1218),
In other passages also where the word 757 is used, as in Is 5310,
the LXX makes prominent the idea of the good pleasure of the
Father's will.
Again ΠΥ is used in Pr 167 of the favour with which God
regards the ways of the righteous, where the LXX renders the
passage, ‘The ways of righteous men are acceptable (dzr«/) with
the Lord’; andthe AV, * When a man’s ways please the Lord, he
maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.’
In the NT, where εὐδοκέω, εὐδοκία, are used, it is not always ap-
parent how far the thought of complacency and how far that of
will or choice is predominant. Εὐδοκία evidently occurs in the
latter sense in those passages which refer to election, the deter-
minate counsel and foreknowledge of God. So Eph 15-9, Ph
213 ete. According to Cremer, εὐδοπκέω ‘(1) relates to a determi-
nation when it is followed by an infinitive, Lk 1232. ..;
(2) Where the matter under consideration is the relation of the
subject to an object, the latter is expressed in profane Greek
by the dative, rarely by the addition of ἐτί cis... . In the
NT the accusative occurs only in He 106-8 (from Ps 407),’ and
here εὐδέκησας is obviously parallel to ἠθέλησας. ‘Elsewhere
gv...’ So in Mt 317 || Mk 1111 Lk 322, and again Mt 175. ‘This
mode of indicating the object is justified by the circumstance
that εὐδοκεῖν may be classed among the verbs which denote
an emotion, a mood, a sentiment cherished towards any
one=to take pleasure in something, to have an inclination
towards it.’
‘Complacency,’ as the word is commonly used,
means a state of being pleased or gratified, and is
synonymous with ‘ pleasure,’ ‘ eratification,’ ‘ satis-
faction.” The appropriateness of such a word in
the department of Biblical theology is suggested
by what we know to be its recognized use in the
sphere of ethics. Complacency, as a mental state,
arises when there is perceived in the object con-
templated some quality or qualities which call
forth a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction. The
object may be something without, upon which the
mind can rest with pleasure, or it may be in the
mind itself, when, in seasons of reflexion, thought
turned inwards upon itself is in a condition of
perfect harmony, finding in itself no jarring ele-
ment. The mind or soul is self-complacent when
it is at peace with itself, satisfied that all is as it
ought to be, no disturbing or self-accusing thoughts
arising. Again, the mind is said to regard with
complacency any outward object, animate or in-
animate, which suggests thoughts of order and
beauty, as when it is affected with pleasure or
contentment by the contemplation of the beauty
of nature, of a fair landscape, or of the harmony
of earth and sky. The word applies also to rela-
tions between intelligent beings, as between
friends, between husband and wife, parent and
child, brothers and sisters, when one is satisfied
with the character, or state of health, or conduct, or
prosperity of the object of his affection or interest.
Complacency arises in the mind when one’s efforts
in any direction are successful, and the object
aimed at is attained. The artist, or the composer
in prose, poetry, or music, regards his work with
complacency when he has succeeded in giving ade-
quate expression to his ideas, the workman when
he is successful in his workmanship, the merchant
or tradesman when his enterprise accomplishes the
end at which he aims, the philanthropist when his
efforts for the material or moral or spiritual well-
being of the objects of his interest are rewarded,
and he sees the fruits of his labours in the happi-
ness and the gratitude of his fellows.
In ethics, complacency is considered as one of the
forms of love, and as such is distinguished from
benevolence. The distinction is well put by
Edwards in his ‘Dissertation concerning the
Nature of True Virtue’ (Works, ed. London, 1834,
vol. 1. pp. 123-125) :
‘Love is commonly distinguished into love of benevolence
and love of complacence. Love of benevolence is that affection
or propensity of the heart to any being which causes it to
COMPLACENCY
incline to its wellbeing, or disposes it to desire and take pleasure
in its happiness. And if I mistake not, it is agreeable to the
common opinion that beauty in the object is not always the
ground of this propensity, but that there may be a disposition
to the welfare of those that are not considered as beautiful,
unless mere existence be accounted a beauty. And benevolence
or goodness in the Divine Being is generally supposed, not only
to be prior to the beauty of many of its objects, but to their
existence ; so as to be the ground both of their existence and of
their beauty, rather than the foundation of God’s benevolence ;
as it is supposed that it is God’s goodness which moved Him to
give them both being and beauty. So that, if all virtue primarily
consists in that affection of heart to being which is exercised in
benevolence, or an inclination to its good, then God’s virtue is
so extended as to include a propensity not only to being actu-
ally existing, and actually beautiful, but to possible being, so as
to incline Him to give a being beauty and happiness.
‘What is commonly called love of complacence, presupposes
beauty. For it is no other than delight in beauty, or com-
placence in the person or being beloved for his beauty. .. .
When any one under the influence of general benevolence sees
another being possessed of the like general benevolence, this
attaches his heart to him, and draws forth greater love to him
than merely his having existence ; because so far as the being
beloved has love to the being in general, so far his own being is,
as it were, enlarged, extends to, and in some sort comprehends,
being in general, and therefore he that is governed by love to
being in general must of necessity have complacence in him,
and the greater degree of benevolence to him, as it were out of
gratitude to him for his love to general existence, that his own
heart is extended and united to, and so looks on its interest as
its own. It is because his heart is thus united to being in
general that he looks on a benevolent propensity to being in
general, wherever he sees it, as the beauty of the being in whom
it is; an excellency that renders him worthy of esteem, com-
placence, and the greater goodwill. . . . This spiritual beauty,
which is but a secondary ground of virtuous benevolence, 15 the
ground, not only of benevolence but complacence, and is the
primary ground of the latter ; that is, when the complacence is
truly virtuous. Love to us in particular, and kindness received,
may be a secondary ground, but this is the primary objective
foundation of it. ... He that has true virtue, consisting in
benevolence to being in general and in benevolence to virtuous
being, must necessarily have a supreme love to God, both of
benevolence and complacence.’
According to this exposition, complacency as a
moral quality is the result, for the most part, of
benevolence reacting upon itself, love making the
object beloved become worthy of affection. What
one loved at first out of mere benevolence becomes
an object morally beautiful, worthy of love, and
thus an object of complacency. Scripture illustra-
tions of the Divine love as benevolence and as com-
placency naturally suggest themselves, and enable
us to understand how the latter is often the fruit
of the former. The work of Creation is a typical
instance of the benevolence of God, the Almighty
forming the world out of nothing, bringing light
out of darkness, beauty out of chaos, life out of
death. When, at the completion of His work, God
beheld the product of His benevolence, and pro-
nounced all very good, He showed complacency.
So also with regard to the work of Redemption,
God’s love to the ruined world (Jn 316) was the
love of benevolence. His love to sinners as re-
deemed, made a new creation by that love, is the
love of complacency (Mt 3").
Keeping this distinction in view, we find in the
Gospels not a few instances in which the expression
‘complacency’ may be fitly applied to describe
that particular aspect of the love of God, or of the
love of Jesus Christ, or even that feeling of grate-
ful affection and devotion which the Divine love
kindles in the hearts of true believers, to which
the Evangelists direct our attention. If com-
placency means pleasure in the contemplation of
beauty, or pleasure in the results of benevolence,
(1) the expression may with all propriety be in
these respects used to describe the love of God the
Father to God the Son, or again the love with
which the Father contemplates the fruits of the
Divine work of redemption in the hearts and lives
of the redeemed. (2) It may be applied also to
the witness of Jesus to His own character, life, and
work, and to His gracious acceptance of the faith
and devotion of His disciples. (3) Lastly, it is
appropriate as a description of the joy and peace
with which believers realize the love of God and
356 COMPLACENCY
COMPLACENCY
the grace of Christ, and of their satisfaction with
the all-sufficiency of the Redeemer’s work.
1. The love of God the Father to God the Son,
especially with regard to His life and ministry.—
The ineffable love, with which from all eternity
the Father has regarded the Son, is referred to in
those passages which speak of the glory which
Christ had with the Father before the world was
(Jn 17° *4), or which describe Christ as ‘the only-
begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father’
(118). But the Divine complacency, in the aspect
of delight in the contemplation of the beauty of
Christ’s character and work, is that upon which
special emphasis is laid in the Gospels, in which
our attention is carefully directed to the Father’s
interest in the ministry of His Son, and to His
sympathy and satisfaction with Christ’s perfect
submission to His will, in connexion with His
voluntary humiliation and suffering for the sake
of man. And, it is worthy of special note, it is
in this connexion that we find the expression ‘ be
well pleased,’ ‘take pleasure in’ (εὐδοκεῖν ἐν), where
text and context plainly indicate that the thought
of complacency is intended, as distinguished from
the other sense in which the words εὐδοκεῖν, εὐδοκία
occur in the NT, that of the Divine election, the
will or purpose of God, ‘ His mere good pleasure.’
The Gospels mention two occasions on which the
words, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased,’ were uttered by the voice of God
Himself.
At the Baptism, God spoke thus (Mt 3!7 || Mk 14
|| Lk 3%). By these words He testified the peculiar
pleasure with which He regarded His Son at the
moment of His consecration to His mission; His
satisfaction with the spirit of submission to the
Father’s will which had characterized Jesus
throughout the years of obscurity during which He
prepared Himself for His ministry, and the lowli-
ness with which He submitted to the baptism of
John—because thus it became Him ‘to fulfil all
righteousness’ ; and His gracious acceptance of the
voluntary offering which the Son now made to the
Father. It was the moment of consecration to that
ministry of humiliation to fulfil which Christ had
come into the world. Therefore, in token of His ac-
ceptance of that act of submission, which spoke
thus, ‘ Lo, I come to do thy will, O God,’ the Father
spoke thus from heaven in the audience of men and
angels, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased.’ We may not, indeed, here or in the
other case in which this voice from heaven was
heard, leave out of sight the additional thought
suggested by the tense of the last word, εὐδόκησα,
the Greek aorist—the thought, that is, of the
complacency with which from all eternity the
Father had regarded.the Son. But this is the
central thought of the passage, the peculiar plea-
sure with which the Father contemplated the Son’s
voluntary humiliation, His submission to the Law,
and His resolve to fulfil all righteousness by a life
of lowliest service.
Again, with equal appropriateness these words
were used in the parallel case of the Transfigura-
tion (Mt 17°, ef. Mk 97, Lk 939), when Jesus entered
upon the final stage of His ministry. Then, in
full view of the cross, at the close of our Lord’s
conference with Moses and Elijah concerning ‘his
decease which he was about to accomplish at
Jerusalem,’ that Divine voice spoke in the audience
of Jesus and the three disciples. Thus a second
time God set the seal of His Divine approval to
His Son’s submission, and testified to the com-
placency with which He regarded His resolve by
His death to make atonement for the sins of the
world.
In this connexion may be noted also those pas-
sages in which Jesus speaks of the glory of God in
the triumph of redeeming love. Such are: Jn
10” ‘Therefore doth my Father love me, because
I lay down my life that I might take it again’;
13%! 82 “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God
is glorified in him, and God shall glorify him in
himself, and shall straightway glorify him’; to
which may be added St. Matthew’s tr. of Is 42! in
Mt 1218 ‘My beloved, in whom my soul is well
pleased.’
The thought of God’s complacency in connexion
with His contemplation of the fruits of Christ’s
redemptive work in the regeneration and recon-
ciliation of the world is suggested by the closing
words of the Angels’ Song (Lk 24 RY), ‘on earth
peace among men in whom he is well pleased’
(ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας), where again
we find the technical word, if such it may be
called, for this aspect of the Divine love.
It is now very generally admitted that this is the sense in
which εὐδοκίας, bone voluntatis, ought to be rendered. That is
to say, here we have the assurance of another voice from heaven,
a message expressly sent at the time of our Lord’s nativity, for
the comfort of those who waited for the consolation of Israel,
of the complacent regard with which the Father, contemplating
the objects of His grace, looked upon them as identified with
His well-beloved Son. ‘The eye of God could again with com-
placeney rest upon mankind,’ regarding them as being repre-
sented by His Incarnate Son, and in view of that state of
spiritual excellence to which His work was destined to raise
them. The expression is thus used in an ideal or prophetic
sense, not of mankind as they actually were, but of the objects
of the Divine love as, through their Representative, they should
yet become.
The same thought, that of the pleasure which
God the Father takes in the spiritual welfare of
His children, is suggested by passages which speak
of God’s joy over the return of penitent sinners.
Such are: Jn 1017, Lk 167. 10. 23. 24. 32 (in the parables
of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Prodigal
Son, in which vv.** 55 are especially notable, where
Jesus mentions the joy of the father over the son’s
return, and the reason which the father gives for
that joy: ‘It was meet that we should make
merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead,
and is alive again; and was lost, and is found’) ;
our Lord’s assurance in another. place that the
prayer of the Publican was accepted of God (Lk
184); and again His testimony that prayer and
almsgiving, if prompted by the right spirit, are
rewarded by the Father who seeth in secret (Mt
0" 6),
2. (a) Christ is represented as regarding with
complacency His own character and work, and His
perfect harmony with the Father.—This appears in
many passages, especially in the discourses re-
corded by St. John. In conversation with the
Woman of Samaria, Jesus declares that He only
can bestow the gift of living water which the soul
of man requires ; and, in connexion with the same
incident, tells His disciples that it is His meat and
drink to do the Father’s will and to finish His
work (Jn 41°34), Again He says to the Jews
that He is in full accord with His Father in respect
of will and of work (517-19), that ‘the Father loveth
the Son, and showeth him all things that himself
doeth. . . . That all men should honour the Son,
even as they honour the Father’ (νν. 39.339). In His
discourse on the Bread of Life (ch. 6) we find expres-
sions indicative of His conviction that His work is
in all respects well pleasing to the Father (v.*™).
He challenges His adversaries to convict Him of
sin (8%), He enjoys perfect communion with the
Father (72% 2°). He claims that the Father glorifies
Him, and bears witness of Him (853, οἵ. vv.16&18).
He declares that He only is the Good Shepherd,
and all that came before Him were thieves and
robbers (10% 5:8, ef. vv.4-14), . He speaks of the
excellence and thoroughness of His work, and of
the satisfaction with which the Father regards it
(10!7#), He speaks of the success of His mission,
COMPLACENCY
and testifies the complacency with which He sur-
veys His ministry. On the night of the betrayal
He declares that hostility to Himself means hos-
tility to the Father (147! *4 15%), A distinct note
of triumph marks His closing utterances. So in
12° cf. 137%; and again, when He bids His
disciples be of good cheer, for that He has over-
come the world (16). Addressing the Father
Himself in His intercessory prayer, He says: ‘I
have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished
the work which thou gavest me to do’ (174); and
again, speaking of the disciples: ‘Those that thou
gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost,
but the son of perdition’ (ν.13). Lastly, one of His
last words from the cross is the exclamation of
triumph, ‘It is finished’ (19%). The force of such
passages cannot be mistaken. They show the
Christ seeing ‘of the travail of his soul,’ and ex-
pressing Himself as ‘satisfied,’ His complacency,
as He surveys the work of redemption, appearing
as a true parallel to the judgment pronounced by
God upon the work of creation, when ‘God saw
ἐλ crythine that he had made, and, behold, it was
very good’ (Gn 1*).
With the instances cited above may be compared
in this connexion such a passage as that where
Jesus, confirming the joy of the seventy disciples
in the suecess of their mission, says: ‘I beheld
Satan as lightning fall from heaven. . . . Notwith-
standing in this rejoice not, that the spirits are
subject unto you; but rather rejoice that your
names are written in heaven’ (Lk 1018: 90).
(6) Jesus further expressed complacency with
respect to the wisdom of the Divine counsels, and
as He contemplated the fruits of His work in the
hearts of believers. With regard to the first point,
we note that which St. Matthew and St. Luke
record—Christ’s ascription of praise to the Father
who ‘hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and revealed them unto babes’ (Mt 11° |) Lk
107%), With regard to the second, instances
abound in the Gospels. Thus Jesus testified the
leasure with which He regarded the faith of
eter, as when at the first He welcomed him, and
showed him what he should yet become (Jn 14",
ef. Lk 5”); and when, towards the end of His
ministry, He accepted Peter’s confession (Mt 167
18), He showed gracious appreciation of the char-
acter and devoutness of Nathanael (Jn 147%),
Again He expressed satisfaction with the loyalty
of His followers, whom He promised to reward at
the time of the final consummation (Mt 19°7-*? || Mk
emule seh. bk 2273-80) Jn 13h), As He
showed pleasure in the faith of His immediate
disciples, so also He welcomed that of others, as
when He spoke with signal approbation of the
devotion of Mary of Bethany (Lk 10”), who had
‘chosen the good part,’ and of whose offering of
gratitude at the supper in the house of Simon the
leper He said that ΠΣ had wrought a good work
upon Him which could not be forgotten (Mt 26%
|| Mk 14° || Jn 12%), He said of the simple faith
of the Roman centurion at Capernaum: ‘I have
not found so great faith, no, not in Israel’ (Mt 8:
|| Lk 7°). Similarly, He expressed delight in that
of the Woman of Canaan (Mt 1538. He testified
concerning the sinful woman in the Pharisee’s
house, that ‘she loved much,’ wherefore her sins,
which were many, were all forgiven (Lk 7**).
Again, an illustration of complacency is found
in the blessing pronounced by our Lord upon little
children (Mt 19!? || Mk 10! || Lk 1826 || cf. Mt 187% ||
Lk 947 48); while the value which He attached to
their faith and devotion is clearly shown in the
incident of the children in the Temple, when Jesus
silenced the cavils of the Pharisees and priests, and
demanded, ‘ Have ye never read, Out of the mouth
of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise ?’
CONDEMNATION 357
(Mt 2116). Again, Jesus commended the liberality
of the widow’s offering (Mk 1255. 44 || Lk 214). He
noted with pleasure the gratitude of the Samari-
tan whom He had cured of leprosy (Lk 1718: 13),
and regarded with complacency even the work of
the exorcist who cast out devils in His name yet
did not join the company of Jesus (Mk 9* || Lk 9%),
Christ’s delight in receiving sinners and acknow-
ledging their faith is a conspicuous feature in the
Gospels. The parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost
Coin, and the Prodigal Son (Lk 15* ® || Mt 18% 14,
Lk 15° ete.) are full of this lesson. Lastly, that
at the Judgment of the Great Day, Jesus will, as
Judge, not only justify, but reward with liberal
commendation and distinguished honour all faith-
ful disciples, according to the service rendered by
them to their Master or to their Master’s servants,
is the central lesson of the parables of the Pounds
and Talents (Lk 19!7-19, Mt 252! *8) and of the dis-
course on the Last Judgment (Mt 25%4-*),
3. Of complacency on the part of man, con-
sidered as a virtue, 1.6. pleasure in the contempla-
tion of moral and spiritual beauty, we find one
notable illustration in the Gospels, in the Baptist’s
testimony to Jesus in Jn 3%, where John ex-
presses his pleasure in the success of Christ’s
ministry, and compares Jesus to the bridegroom
and himself to the friend of the bridegroom, who
‘rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s
voice.’ Such complacency as that, sympathetic
interest in the Saviour and His scheme of salva-
tion, and grateful acquiescence in the will of God
for man’s salvation, is alone legitimate on the part
of fallenman. As to complacency in view of man’s
own knowledge and attainments, Jesus teaches
that it is wholly inadmissible. No man, in the
imperfect state of this present life, has a right to
be satisfied with himself. Self-complacency is a
sure sign of ignorance and spiritual blindness.
The penitent publican, not the complacent Phari-
see, is Justified of God (Lk 1811. The followers
of Jesus must, when they have done all, confess
that they are unprofitable servants (Lk 17!) ; and
Jesus, while generously acknowledging the faith-
fulness of His disciples and assuring them that
they shall in nowise lose their reward, expressly
warns them that the last may be first and the first
last (Mt 19°° || Mk 1051, cf. Mt 201°),
LiTERATURE.—Cremer, Bib.-Theol. Lex. 8.υυ. εὐδοκέω, εὐδοκία,
ete.; the Comm. of Alford, Meyer, Lange, etc.; Bengel’s
Gnomon: Herzog, PRE, artt. ‘Gott,’ v. 262 ff., ‘Liebe,’ viii.
388 ff., ‘ Versohnung,’ xvii. 92, 124, etc.; Jonathan Edwards, ed.
London, 1834, vol. i. pp. 123-125, cf. ἐδ. cclxxii. f., pp. 237, 240;
Sartorius, Doctrine of the Divine Love, p. 215; Martensen,
Christ. Dogmatics, p. 303; Schleiermacher, ‘ Der christliche
Glaube,’ ii. 199 (Theol. Werke, Bd. 4).
Hucu H. Currie.
CONCEPTION.—Sce Vircin BIRTH.
CONDEMNATION. — The disappearance of the
term ‘damnation’ in the RV of the Gospels is
suggestive of more sober and reasonable thoughts
about the Divine judgment against sin. Condem-
nation at the last may indeed fall like a thunder-
bolt upon the rejected (Mt 21)%). The fig-tree in
the parable has a time of probation and then may
be suddenly cut down (Lk 13%*). At the Day of
Judgment the universal benevolence of God ex-
perienced here (Mt 5%, Lk 6%) will give place to
His righteous wrath against the persistently re-
bellious. Condemnation is the irrevocable sen-
tence then passed upon the abusers of this life (Mt
254-4), Especially will this sentence of rejection
and punishment descend then upon the hypocrite
(Mk 12%), The state of the condemned will be a
veritable Gehenna (Mt 23), Weeping and gnash-
ing of teeth picture the dreadful condition of con-
demned souls (Mt 2915. 24°! 25%), Not only, we
must suppose, punishment by pain for rebellion,
358
CONFESSION (OF CHRIST)
but regret at past indifference, remorse at past
folly, shame at past malice, will be the terrible
feelings lacerating souls that have found not for-
giveness but condemnation. The condemned will
regret their indifference to Christ’s demands, which
they have ignored (Jn 835). They will be tortured
by the keen perception of their extreme folly in
rejecting the knowledge they might have used (Lk
1151- 82), They will feel the shame of having their
secret thoughts of evil exposed to a light broader
than that of day (Mt 2338). This will be the con-
demnation to perpetual darkness for those who
have loved darkness more than the light (Mt 8”
913 ouw)s
But in this present life there is always at work
a certain inevitable and automatic Divine con-
demnation. ‘The earth beareth fruit of herself’
(αὐτομάτη, Mk 458), and yet the fact is due to the
directing will of God. So, even in this life, the
Divine condemnation of evil is being worked out,
without that irrevocable sentence which consti-
tutes the final condemnation. The guest may
already feel the lack of a wedding-garment (Mt
22"), and so, warned by the present workings of
condemnation, escape the last dread sentence.
Nothing but what God approves can endure the
stresses and storms that are imminent (Lk 64%’).
Without the sap of God’s favour the vine must
already begin to wither (Jn 15°). ;
But this present immanent condemnation is
rather a most merciful conviction of sin and
wrongfulness (Jn 16°"), In this present age con-
demnation is not final for any ; nay, God’s purpose
is the eternal security of men in true peace and
true happiness (Jn 37 12%). So far from condem-
nation being any man’s sure fate, there is no need
for any member of the human family to have to
undergo such judgment as might result in condem-
nation (Jn 5%). The strong assertion in the pre-
sent ending to the second Gospel, ‘He that dis-
believeth shall be condemned’ (Mk 10:6), is surely
the expression of the true conviction that Christ is
the only Way to avoid condemnation (cf. Jn 350).
Condemnation is God’s prerogative, and not the
privilege or duty of the individual Christian as
such: ‘Condemn not, and ye shall not be con-
demned’ (Lk 6°”). W. B. FRANKLAND.
CONFESSION (of Christ).—The words ‘ confess’
and ‘confession’ are employed in common usage
to express not only an acknowledgment of sin, but
an acknowledgment or profession of faith. The
AY afiords many illustrations of this use, and the
examples are still more numerous in the RV,
which in several passages has quite consistently
substituted ‘confess’ and ‘confession’ for ‘ pro-
fess* and ‘profession’ of the AV in the rendering
οἵ duoroyéw, ὁμολογία (2 Co 918, 1 Ti 6, He 3! 44
105). A corresponding twofold use of terms meets
us in the original, the verbs ὁμολογέω and ἐξομο-
λογέω being used to denote both confession of sin
and confession of faith (e.g. for ὁμολογέω, Mt 10%
and 1 Jn 1°; for ἐξομολογέω, Mt 3° and Ja 516). The
noun ὁμολογία, however, in NT Greek is employed
only with reference to the confession of faith.
In the OT it is Jehovah who is the personal
object of the confessions of faith which we find
on the lips of psalmists and prophets (e.g. Ps 7!
481), Is 12761 and passim); but in the NT it is
Jesus Christ whom men are constantly challenged
to confess, and it is around His person that the
confession of faith invariably gathers. This lies
in the very nature of the case, since personal faith
in Jesus Christ constitutes the essence of Chris-
tianity, and confession is the necessarv utterance
of faith (Ro 1010. οἵ, Mt 12846) _ =
i. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE CONFESSION OF
CukIst.—In the earlier period of the ministry of
CONFESSION (OF CHRIST)
Jesus the faith of His followers did not rise above
the belief that He was the long-expected Messiah ;
and it was this conviction which was expressed in
their confessions. ‘Typical at this stage are the
words of Andrew, ‘We have found the Messiah’
(Jn 15). It is true that even in this earlier period
Jesus is sometimes addressed or spoken of as the
‘Son of God (Jn 19-5, Mt 8?9|| 14°); but it is not
probable that in these cases we are to understand
the expression otherwise than as a recognized
Messianic term (cf. Ps 27), so that it does not
amount to more than a recognition that Jesus is
the Christ. And yet even this was a great thing—
to see in the man of Nazareth the Messiah of
prophecy and hope. It marked the dividing line
between those who believed in Jesus and those
who believed Him not. St. John tells us that the
Jews had agreed that if any man should confess
Jesus to be Christ, he should be put out of the
synagogue (Jn 952) ; that they actually cast out, for
making such a confession, the blind man whom
Jesus had cured (9%); and that through fear of
excommunication many of the chief rulers who
believed in His Messiahship refrained from the
confession of their faith (12%). It was no small
thing to confess that Jesus was the Christ, crude
and unspiritual in most: cases as the notions of His
Messiahship might still be.
But in the minds of the Apostles, though ernde
ideas were far from vanishing altogether (ef. Mt
207 Mk 108, Lk 2252), there had gradually grown
up a larger and deeper conception of their Master's
person and dignity ; and St. Peter’s grand utter-
ance at Czesarea Philippi, ‘Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God’ (Mt 16'°||; cf. Jn 6%),
shows a great extension of spiritual content in the
confession of Christ, as our Lord’s language on the
occasion plainly implies. The Apostle’s language
seems to enfold, in germ at least, the doctrine of
Christ’s divinity ; and it formed the high-water
mark of Apostolie faith and profession in the pre-
Resurrection days.
After the Resurrection had taken place, faith in
that transcendent fact, and readiness to bear
witness to it, were henceforth implied in the con-
fession of Christ (Jn 20%-*%, Ro 10°). But while
any profession of faith would have as its implicate
the acceptance of the great facts of the historical
tradition, all that was actually demanded of con-
verts at first may have been the confession, ‘Jesus
is ord? (1 Οο 195. ἘΓῚ Ply ΘΙ Orie 18). acontes-
sion of which an echo perhaps meets us in their
being baptized ‘into (or in) the name of the Lord’
(els τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ κυρίου "Incod, Ac 8'° 19°; ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι
τοῦ κυρίου, 10%), At a later time the growth of
heretical opinions rendered it necessary to formu-
late the beliefs of the Church more exactly, and to
demand a fuller and more precise confession on
the part of those who professed to be Christ’s
disciples. In the Johannine Epistles a confession
on the one hand that ‘Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh’ (1 Jn 423, 2 Jn 7), and on the other that
‘Jesus is the Son of God’ (1 Jn 4:5), is represented
as essential to the evidence of a true and saving
Christian faith. With this developed Johannine
type of confession may be compared the later gloss
that has been attached to the narrative of the
baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch (Ac 857, see
RVm), which is not improbably the reproduction
of a formula of question and answer which had
come to be employed as a baptismal confession in
the early Church.
It may be noticed here that it was out of the confession of
personal faith which was demanded of the candidate for baptism
that the formulated ‘Confessions’ of the Church appear to have
sprung. There can be little doubt that the so-called Apostles’
Creed was originally a baptismal confession. And Hort, Har-
nack, and others have shown that what is known as the Nicene
Creed is in reality not the original creed of the bishops of
CONFESSION (OF CHRIST)
Nicea, but a creed which gradually grew up in the East out of
the struggles of the Church with varying shapes of heresy,
and the nucleus of which is probably to be sought in the
baptismal formula of the Jerusalem Church (Hort, Two Disser-
tations, ii.; Harnack, History of Dogma, iii. 209; Herzog-
Hauck, Itealencykl., art. ‘ Konstantinopolitanisches Symbol’).
ii. THE IMPORTANCE ATTACHED TO THE CON-
FESSION OF CHRIST.—We see this (1) in the teach-
ing of Christ Himself. He showed the value He
set upon it not only by the deep solemnity of His
affirmations upon ‘the subject, but by expressing
the truth in a double form, both positively and
negatively, declaring that the highest. conceiv-
able honour awaits every one who confesses Him
before men, and the doom of unspeakable shame
all those who are guilty of denying Him (Mt
10°? 33, Lk 129; ef. Mk 8538). We see it in the
pathos of the warning He gave St. Peter of
the approaching denial (Mt 26%4; οἵ. Mk 14%, Lk
2234 Jn 1538), in the look He cast upon him
when the crowing of the cock recalled that warn-
ing to his mind (Lk 22%), in the Apostle’s bitter
tears as he remembered and thought upon the
word of the Lord (Mt 26°, Mk 147, Lk 2251-62),
and in the thrice-repeated ‘Lovest thou me?’
(Jn 211-17) recalling the threefold transgression.
But, above all, we see it in the words addressed
at Cmsarea Philippi to this same Apostle, who,
though afterwards he fell so far in an hour of
weakness, rose nevertheless on this ozcasion to
the height of a glorious confession (Mt 1017:19),
The evident emotion of Jesus at St. Peter’s lan-
guage, the thrill of glad surprise which seems to
have shot through Him and which quivers through
the benediction into which He burst, the great
benediction itself, —these things show the supreme
worth He attached to this confession of His strong
Apostle. But especially we see the significance of
St. Peter’s utterance in the everlasting promise
which Christ then gave not to him merely, but to
all who should hereafter believe on His name and
confess Him after a like fashion: ‘Upon this
rock [ will build my Church, and the gates of
Hades shall not prevail against it’ (v.'). Whether
the ‘rock’ is St. Peter’s confession or St. Peter
himself is a matter of little moment; for if the
latter is meant, it is undoubtedly as a type of
believing confession that the Apostle receives the
splendid promise, and it is on the firm foundation
of such confession as his that Jesus declares that
His Church shall be built.
The view of a certain class of critical scholars (e.g. Holtz-
mann, Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol. xxi. p. 202; Harnack, History
of Dogma, i. p. 79 n. 2; Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, ii. p. 351 n.)
that Mt 16!Sf are not authentic utterances of Jesus, but a
subsequent addition intended to canonize the dogmatic and
constitutional situation of a later age, is not one that com-
mends itself to those who do not accept the views as to the
composition of the First Gospel which are represented by these
writers and by Holtzmann in particular. There is no textual
ground for objecting to the authenticity of the words, while
there are very strong psychological grounds for accepting such
words as true. See the admirable remarks of Prof. Bruce,
Expos. Gr. Test., in loc.
(2) If Jesus laid great stress upon the confession
of Himself, the importance of such confession is
not less prominent i the teaching of the Apostles.
Even if baptism ‘into the name of the Lord Jesus
did not imply an explicit confession of Jesus as
Lord (though this seems by no means improbable),
at all events the Christian baptism which meets
us constantly from the earliest days of the Church
(Acts, passim) clearly involved, in the relations of
Christianity whether to the Jewish or the Gentile
world, a confessing of Christ before men. St.
Paul makes very plain his conviction that, in order
to salvation, believing with the heart must be
accompanied by confession with the mouth (Ro
10% 10), though he also enlarges our conception of
the forms which confession may take when he
finds a confession of the Christian gospel not only
CONFESSION (OF CHRIST) 359
in words spoken but in liberal gifts cheerfully
bestowed for the service of the Church (2 Co 93).
In 1 Timothy he commends the young minister of
the Church in Ephesus because he had ‘ confessed
the good confession in the sight of many witnesses’
(015), and finds in this matter the perfect example
for Christian imitation in the ‘good confession’
which Christ Jesus Himself witnessed before Pon-
tius Pilate (v."°); while in 2 Timothy we have an
evident re-echo of the Lord’s own language in the
warning, ‘If we shall deny him, he also will deny
Ἐπ. (Ὁ
In the Epistle to the Hebrews Jesus is described
as ‘the Apostle and High Priest of our confession ’
(31), and that confession the author exhorts his
readers to hold fast (418 1039). In the Johannine
Epistles, as we have seen, confession begins to
assume a more theological form than heretofore,
but the writer is not less emphatic than those who
have preceded him in insisting upon its spiritual
value. In one place it is said to be the proof of
the presence of the Spirit of God (1 Jn 4°), and in
another it becomes not the proof merely, but the
very condition of the abiding of man in God and
God in man (v.?).
11. THE REASON FOR THE IMPORTANCE ATTACHED
TO CONFESSION.— When we ask why such supreme
value is set upon confession by Christ and His
Apostles and all through the NT, there are various
considerations which suggest themselves. (1) Con-
fession is nothing else than the obverse side of faith.
The two necessarily go together, for they are
really one and the same spiritual magnitude in
its inward and outward aspects. The word of
faith, as St. Paul says, is at once in the mouth
and in the heart (Ro 108), and whatever value
belongs to faith as a vital and saving power neces-
sarily belongs to confession also. (2) Jé is the
evidence of faith. Like all living things, faith
must give evidence of itself, and confession is one
of its most certain and convincing signs. Accord-
ing to St. Paul, it belongs to the very spirit of
faith to believe and therefore to speak (2 Co 4:8);
and if the readiness to confess Christ begins to
fail, we may take it as a sure evidence that faith
itself is failing. How significant here are the
words of Jesus to St. Peter just before He warned
him of the sifting trial which was near at hand,
‘Simon, Simon, behold Satan asked to have you
that he might sift you as wheat: but I made sup-
plication for thee that thy faith fail not’ (Lk
2231.52), (3) It is a test of courage and devotion.
A hard test it often is; witness St. Peter’s fall.
But itis by hard trials that the soldier of Christ
learns to endure hardness, and gains the unflinch-
ine strength which enables him to confess the
good contession in the sight of many witnesses
(1 Ti 6”), and not be ashamed of the testimony of
our Lord (2 Ti 15). (4) 7 has a wonderful power to
quicken faith. It both begets faith and quickens
faith in others, as we shall see presently ; but
what we are speaking of now is its reactive in-
fluence upon the believer himself. It is a matter
of common experience that nothing transforms
pale belief into strong full-blooded conviction like
the confession of belief in the presence of others.
Something is due to the shaping power of speech
upon thought, but even more to the definite com-
mittal of oneself before one’s fellows, and the
kindling influences which come from the contact
of soul with soul. And it is not till men have
publicly confessed their belief in Christ that faith
rises to its highest power, so that ‘belief unto
righteousness’ becomes ‘confession unto salva-
tion’ (Ro 10”). It is to the psychological ex-
periences that were naturally attendant on the
public confession of Christ that we must attribute
much of the language used in the NT with regard
360 CONFESSION (OF SIN)
to the effect of baptism upon the soul (Ac 2210, Ro
6°", Gal 377, 1 Co 12%, 1 P 3%). And it is worth
noting how the author of Hebrews connects in the
same sentence holding fast ‘the confession of our
hope’ and drawing near to God in ‘fulness’ or
‘full assurance’ of faith (He 107°: *°, ef. 414. 16).
(5) But, above all, the value attached to confes-
sion in the NT seems to lie in the fact that ἐξ as
the great Church-building powcr. The grand typi-
cal case of confession of Christ is that of St. Peter
at Cresarea Philippi (Mt 16?) ; and this was the
occasion on which Jesus for the first time spoke of
His Church, and declared that on the rock of
Christian confession that Church was to be built
(v.!8). So it proved to be in after days. It was
by St. Peter’s powerful testimony to Jesus as the
risen Lord and Christ (Ae 2%) that 3000 souls on
the day of Pentecost were led gladly to receive the
word, and in baptism to confess Christ for them-
selves (νν. ὅτ). St. Paul knew the mighty power
that inheres in confession, and both in his preach-
ing and writing made much of the story of his own
conversion (Ac 225% 961%, Gal 1/58), thereby con-
fessing Jesus afresh as his Saviour and Lord. It
was above all else by the personal confessions of
humble individuals—a testimony often sealed with
blood (Rev 215 124)—that the pagan empire of
Rome was cast down and the Church of Christ
built upon its ruins. And it is still by personal
confession, in one form or another, that the word
of the Lord grows and multiplies, and His Church
prevails against the gates of Hades. It is by
testifying to Jesus Christ as Lord that men become
the ambassadors of Christ to the souls of other
men. The secret of the influence exerted by such
confession lies not only in the appealing grace of
the Lord whom we confess, but in the subtle and
mysterious power of a believing and confessing
heart over its fellow. ‘Blessed influence of one
true loving human soul on another! Not caleul-
able by algebra, not deducible by logic, but
mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden pro-
cess by which the tiny seed is quickened, and
bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and
glowing tasselled flower’ (George Eliot, Scenes of
Clerical Life, p. 287). J.C. LAMBERT.
_ CONFESSION (of sin).—In the OT a large place
is given to the confession of sin, as being the
necessary expression of true penitence and the
condition at the same time of the Divine forgive-
ness. Witness the provisions of the Mosaie ritual
(Lv 5°"), the utterances of the penitential and other
psalms (¢.g. 32° 51), and prayers like those of
Kizra (10!), Nehemiah (1% 7), and Daniel (958: 20}
It may surprise us at first to find that in the
Gospels the confession of sin is expressly named
on only one occasion, and that in connexion with
the ministry of John the Baptist (ἐξομολογούμενοι
Tas ἁμαρτίας αὐτῶν, Mt 38, Mk 15). But apart from
the use of the actual phrase, we shall see that the
Gospel narratives take full account of the confes-
sion of sin, and that, as in the OT, confession is
recognized both as the necessary accompaniment
of repentance and as the indispensable condition
of torgiveness and restoration to favour, whether
human or Divine. There are three topics which
call for notice: (1) confession of sin to God; (2)
confession of sin to man; (3) Christ’s personal
attitude to the confession of sin.
1. ( onfession of sin to God.—It is to God that
all confession of sin is primarily due, sin being in
its essential nature a transgression of Divine law
(cf. Ps 51"). And in the tea ‘hing and ministry of
Jesus the duty of confession to God is fully recog-
᾿ F . ν᾽ . . ᾿ s
nized. Our Lord begins His ministry with a eall
t) repentance (Mt 417, Mk 1%).
t In the midst of
His public career He characterize
CONFESSION (OF SIN)
to which He appealed as an evil generation be-
cause of its unwillingness to repent (Lk 11”: *2),
Among His last words on earth was His declara-
tion that the universal gospel was to be a gospel
of repentance and remission of sins (Lk 245, And
as confession is inseparable from true penitence,
being the form which the latter instinctively and
inevitably takes in its approaches to God, we may
say that all through His public ministry, by in-
sisting upon the need of repentance, Jesus taught
the necessity of the confession of sin.
But besides this we have from His lips a good
deal of direct teaching on the subject. The prayer
which He gave His disciples as a pattern for all
prayer includes a petition for forgiveness (Mt 6”,
Lk 114); and such a petition is equivalent, of
course, to a confession of sin. In the parable of
the Prodigal Son the prodigal’s first resolution
‘when he came to himself’ was to go to his father
and acknowledge his sin (Lk 15!7-38) ; and _ his first
words on meeting him were the frank and humble
confession, ‘ Father, I have sinned’ (v.24). The
ἸΏ 38} of the Pharisee and the Publican, again,
linges upon this very matter of the acknowlede-
ment of sin and unworthiness. It was the total
absence of the element of confession from the
Pharisee’s prayer, and the presence instead of a
self-satisfied and self-exalting spirit, that made his
prayer of no effect in the sight of God; while it
was the publican’s downcast eyes, his smitten
breast, his ery, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’
that sent him down to his house ‘ justified rather
than the other’ (Lk 18!°!4; cf. the words of Zac-
cheeus, another publican, Lk 198).
Under this head may be included one or two
cases of confession of sin to Christ. When Peter
cries, ‘ Depart from me; for 1 am a sinful man, Ὁ
Lord’ (Lk 58), and when the sinful woman in the
house of the Pharisee silently makes confession to
Jesus as she washes His feet with her tears (Lk
751. 88) it is too much to say of these confessions,
in Pliny’s language (Zp. x. 96) with regard to the
hymn-singing of the early Christians, that they
were offered ‘to Christ as to God.’ But they were
certainly made to one who was felt to be raised
above the life of sinful humanity, and to be the
representative on earth of the purity and grace of
the heavenly Father. ἢ
2. Confession of sin to man.—According to the
teaching of Christ and the Gospels, confession of
sin should be made not only to God but to man,
and, in particular, to any one whom we have
wronged. In Mt 5%: * confession to a justly
offended brother is directly enjoined ; and more
than that, it is implied that the very gifts laid on
God’s altar are shorn of their value if such con-
fession has not first been made. In Lk 17+ again,
our own forgiveness of an offender is made to de-
pend on his coming and confessing, ‘I repent.’
But apart from this confession to the person
wronged, a wider and more public confession of
sin meets us in the Gospels. The necessity of
such confession is implied, for instance, in our
Lord’s denunciations of hypocrisy —in His con-
demnation of the life of false pretence (Mt 23%) ;
of the cup and platter outwardly clean, while in-
wardly full of extortion and excess (ν. 35) ; of the
whited sepulchres fair to look at, though festering
with rottenness within (v.%7). It is implied simi-
larly in His frequent commendation of simplicity
and single-mindedness, and honest truth in the
sight both of God and man (cf. Mt 67: °° 7° 85
913),
* Tt is a point worth noticing, in the comparative study of the
Gospels, that St. Luke, who is pre-eminently the Evangelist of
salvation for the sinful, supplies us with the great bulk of the
Gospel evidence that the Divine forgiveness is conditioned by
S$ the generation ! the confession of sin.
CONFESSION (OF SIN) CONSCIOUSNESS 361
It seems to be recognized in the Gospels that CONSCIOUSNESS.— We have to consider, so far
acknowledgment of sin to man as well as to God
has a cleansing power upon the soul. There may,
of course, be a confession that is spiritually fruit-
less, to which men are urged not by the godly
sorrow of true repentance, but by the goads of
sheer remorse and despair. Of this nature was
the confession of Judas to the chief priests and
elders (Mt 274, ef. v.5). On the other hand, the
confession of the penitent thief to all who heard
him (Lk 2371) was the beginning of that swift work
of grace which was accomplished in his heart
through the influence of Jesus. It illustrates
George Eliot’s words, ‘ The purifying influence of
publie confession springs from the fact that by it
the hope in lies is for ever swept away, and the
soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity’
(Romela, p. 87).
3. Christ’s personal attitude to the confession of
sin.—That our Lord never made contession to
man, and never felt the need of doing so, is suffi-
ciently shown by His challenge, ‘Which of you
convicteth me of sin?’ (Jn 84%). But did He make
confession of sin to God? The fact that Jolin’s
baptism was ‘the baptism of repentance’ (Mk
11), and that the people ‘were baptized of him
in Jordan, confessing their sins’ (Mt 3°), together
with the further fact that Jesus Himself came to
the Jordan to be baptized (Mt 319, Mk 1°, Lk 374),
might be so interpreted. But against such an
interpretation must be set the attitude of John
both when Jesus first came to him (Mt 3) and
afterwards (Jn 1°), the language of Jesus to the
Baptist (Mt 8:5), the descent of the Spirit (ν.}6),
ἘΠῚ the voice from heaven (ν.}). The baptism of
John, we must remember, had more than one
aspect: it was not only the baptism of repent-
ance, but the baptism of preparation for the ap-
proaching kingdom of heaven (Mt 3?) and of
consecration to its service (Lk 34). It is not
as an act of confession, but as one of self-consecra-
tion (including, it may be, an element of sympa-
thetic self-humiliation, ef. Ph 28), that the baptism
of Jesus is to be regarded. He had no sins to con-
fess, but He knew that John was the prophet
divinely commissioned to inaugurate the kingdom
of righteousness (cf. Mt 9139), and to inaugurate it
by the rite of baptism (Mt 212 ||). And by sub-
mitting Himself to John’s baptism He was openly
dedicating Himself to the work of that kingdom,
and taking up His task of fulfilling all righteous-
ness (Mt 31°). (See Sanday in Hastings’ DB ii.
611; Lambert, Sacraments in NT, p. 62 £. ; Expos.
Times, xi. [1900] 354).
But, above all, it is to be noted that while Jesus
taught His disciples to pray for the forgiveness of
sins, we never find Him humbling Himself before
God on account of sin, and asking to be forgiven.
And the complete silence of the Gospels upon this
point acquires a fuller significance when we ob-
serve that there is not the slightest evidence that
He ever engaged in common prayer with the
Apostles. When Jesus prayed to the Father, He
seems always to have prayed alone (Mt 14:5 26° |,
Lk 938 11!; cf. Jn 17, where He prays in the pre-
sence of the disciples, but not with them). The
reason probably was that while the attitude of a
sinful suppliant and the element of confession,
whether uttered or unexpressed, are indispensable
to the acceptableness of ordinary human prayer,
these could find no place in the prayers of Jesus.
(See Dale, Christian Doctrine, p. 105 f.; Forrest,
Christ of History and of Experience, pp. 22 tf.,
385 f., Hapos. Times, xi. [1900] 352 ff. ).
LITERATURK.—Young’s Analyt. Concord. s.v.; Hastings’ DB,
art. ‘Confession’ ; Ullmann, Sindessness of Jesus, Ὁ. 69 ff. ; and
for special points the works quoted in the article.
J. C. LAMBERT.
as the facts recorded in the Gospels permit, our
Lord’s consciousness of Himself and of His mission.
The subject is difficult. It is beset by perplexing
psychological and theological problems. It also
demands very careful treatment, for it opens up
discussions which may soon pass beyond the limits
prescribed by reverence. We shall be guided by
the following division :—
I. The data, as found in the Gospels.
i. Certain narratives that reveal the consciousness of Jesus.
ii. The implications involved in His teaching generally, and
in the impression He produced upon His disciples.
II. Psychological problems.
i. Growth.
ii. The Divine consciousness and the human.
ili. Knowledge and ignorance.
ΠΙ. Theological results.
i. Uniqueness of our Lord’s personality.
ii. His Divinity.
I. THE GospeL DATA.—i. Narratives revealing
the consciousness of Jesus.—1. Among the narra-
tives which, in a specially clear way, reveal our
Lord’s consciousness, one of the most remarkable
refers to a very early period of His life. St. Luke
tells us (211-53) of His visit to Jerusalem at the age
of twelve years. When, after long searching, He
is found in the Temple, and His mother questions
Him, ‘ Why hast thou thus dealt with us?’ His
reply shows plainly that extraordinary realization
of God which is the most outstanding characteristic
of His consciousness: ‘ How is it that ye sought
me? Wist ye not that I must be in my Father’s
house ?’ (or, ‘about my Father’s business,’ ἐν τοῖς τοῦ
πατρός μου). Here is evident the work of the child’s
imagination, in which the dominant idea controls
absolutely everything else, and the most unlikely
events appear perfectly natural: ‘ How is it that
ye sought me?’ What is extraordinary is the
nature of this dominant idea. Already, at the age
of twelve, our Lord knows God as His Father, and
that in a manner so intimate and so peculiar that
ordinary human relationships are as nothing in
comparison with the relation to God. The doing
of God’s will is already the supreme motive. It is
to be noted also how the ‘my Father’ of His reply
contrasts with the ‘thy father’ of Mary’s question.
It is perhaps more natural to regard this as the
inevitable reaction of His consciousness than as a
deliberate correction of His mother. If so, it is all
the more impressive. It shows how fundamental
was the position in His mind of the filial relation
in which He stood to God. How unlike this was
to the Jewish mind of the time is shown by St.
Luke’s statement about Joseph and Mary: ‘They
understood not the saying which he spake unto
them.’
2. The Baptism occupies an important place in
the data of our subject. It is clear that all the
Evangelists intend to point out that our Lord’s
baptism was unlike all others performed by John
the Baptist. It was not a baptism of repentance.
This is most clearly shown in St. Matthew’s ac-
count. John felt the difficulty and ‘would have
hindered him, saying, I have need to be baptized
of thee, and comest thou tome? But Jesus answer-
ing said unto him, Suffer it now; for thus it be-
cometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he
suffered him.’ John discerned the incongruity,
and our Lord acknowledged it, but gave a reason
which showed how distinctly He realized His
unique position and calling. The baptism was
part of God’s will for Him. It had a necessary
place in His life and work. It is also noteworthy
that the descent of the Spirit and the voice from
heaven are stated by St. Mark to have been mani-
fested to our Lord Himself. With this St. Matthew
and St. Luke agree. Only from St. John do we
learn that the Baptist shared the experience. In
view of what has gone before, we cannot look upon
362 CONSCIOUSNESS
this event as the beginning of our Lord’s know-
ledge of His unique Sonship. It was, rather, an
objective Divine confirmation of the truths which
He already knew from the testimony of His inner
consciousness. It was manifested to Himself and
to the Baptist when the time had come for the
public proclamation of the gospel of the Kingdom.
It was a witness to His Sonship, ‘Thou art my
beloved Son’; to His sinlessness, ‘in thee 1 am
well pleased’; and to His Messiahship, ‘ He saw
the heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove
descending upon him’ (see Is 42').
Careful study of the Gospels shows that these
three elements in our Lord’s consciousness are
those which are disclosed most frequently in His
life and teaching.
Some able students (6.5. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, i. p. 96ff.,
Eng. tr.) think that at the Baptism Jesus first attained to the
consciousness of His Messiahship, though already aware of His
Sonship. But, as has just been pointed out, the answer which
He gave to John the Baptist reveals a fully developed sense,
not merely of His sinlessness and relation to God, but of His
mission. The testimony of even one Evangelist (St. Matthew)
on a point like this is superior, as evidence, to any amount of
psychological speculation.
3. The Temptation of our Lord, following im-
mediately (Mk 113) after His Baptism, shows the
nature of the internal conflict which He had _ to
face when He set about the work of His life.
There was no struggle with doubt as regards God,
or Himself, or the end ‘which He songht. The
force of every temptation depended indeed on the
clearness with which these were realized. His
victory was an overcoming of the tendency to
escape from the limitation, the lowliness, and the
self-sacrifice which, to human thought, seem so
unbecoming the Son of God in His great work of
establishing the Kingdom.
It is impossible in the short space available here
to deal with all the definite instances of self-revela-
tion which are given in the four Gospels. It must
suffice to dwell briefly upon a few of the more
remarkable, and to mention such of the rest as
cannot be omitted. It may be added that, to those
who have really considered the question, almost
every incident:in our Lord’s life is, in some way or
other, a manifestation of His superhuman con-
sciousness.
4. One of the most noteworthy instances is that
given by St. Matthew (11%) and by St. Luke
(105 165). St. Luke introduces the passage with the
remarkable words, ‘In that same hour he rejoiced
in the Holy Spirit, and said.’ It is a proof that the
Apostles recognized our Lord’s utterance on this
occasion as the open expression of His communion
with God. The insight into the heart of God,
which was the secret of the inner life of Jesus,
finds here such utterance as human language can
give it. He addresses God as ‘Father, Lord of
heaven and earth,’ a great expression which fore-
shadows the truth which follows: ‘Al things
have been delivered unto me of my Father; and
no one knoweth the Son, save the Father ; neither
doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he
to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him?’
(Mt 1151). It is impossible to exaggerate the im-
portance of these words. They contain four great
assertions about our Lord and His work: (1) His
universal authority ; (2) the mystery of His person,
known in its fulness to the Father only; (3) the
unique relation of the Son to the Father, as in-
volved in the Son’s perfect knowledge ‘of the
Father ; (4) the knowledge of the Father, so far as
it 1s possible to man, is to be had only through
the Son. This short passage contains ‘the whole
Christology of the Fourth Gospel. It records fer
us an occasion when Lord permitted His
hear rs to gain some insight into His conscious-
ness of God, of Himself, and of His mission.
our
CONSCIOUSNESS
Among the many important passages which
agree with those which have been discussed, may
be mentioned the following: (1) The account of
our Lord’s reception of the disciples of John the
Baptist who brought their master’s doubts to Him
for solution (Mt 1127 and Lk 7193, Here our
Lord’s perfect contidence in His mission is ob-
viously based upon His consciousness. The con-
trast with the intensely human searchings of heart
displayed by John in his time of trial is very
striking. (2) The narrative which includes the
confession of St. Peter and the teaching which
followed it (Mt 162%, Mk 877%, Lk 915"). The
announcement of His approaching death and the
tremendous terms in which He claims the utmost
self-sacrifice from His disciples, give an extra-
ordinary depth to the revelation of our Lord’s
self-knowledge contained in this narrative. (9)
Every incident and every teaching belonging to
the last period of the ministry reveals the over-
powering intensity of His consciousness of the
mission which He had to fulfil and of its depend-
ence upon Himself. All the circumstances of His
public entry into Jerusalem are notable in this
respect (Mit, 211 18 Mik ΤΠ ς 109 ΠΥ lareso
see especially νν. 59: 40. 41-4 in St. Luke’s account).
(4). His answers to those who questioned His
authority (Mt 2175-e»4, Mk 1177-12", Lk 201-19) are
equally impressive. The parable of the Wicked
Husbandmen, which is given in all the Synoptic
Gospels, is very striking, as showing how our Lord
made an essential distinction between Himself and
all other messengers of God. (5) The description
of the Future Judgment (Mt 25°'*, cf. Mk 8%,
which shows the same conception, and proves that
the idea is not peculiar to St. Matthew among the
Synoptists), contains as lofty a conception of the
dignity of the Son as any passage in the Fourth
Gospel: ‘Then shall the king say’ (vv.***). What
a depth of consciousness is involved in the words,
‘ye did it unto me’ and ‘ye did it not to me’
vv. 40- 45 Ἷ
It would be possible to give many more instances
almost as impressive. The fact is important, as
showing that here we are dealing with an essential
element in the Gospel history. So far our instances
have been taken from the Synoptic Gospels, and
mainly from narratives which are common to them
all. When we turn to St. John, we find the self-
revelation of Christ on every page, almost in every
paragraph. See, as examples, Jn 15! 219 426 517%
098-22. 61. 62 914. 40. (sinlessness) δῦ 1098 1239. 50 139 14°: 10
ete. The climax is reached in ch. 17, in which we
are admitted to the sanctuary in which the Son
pours out His heart in the presence of His Father.
Here are evident all the elements already noted as
peculiar to our Lord’s thought about Himse!f and
His mission: His unique Sonship, His sinlessness,
His Messiahship, His universal authority, the
mystery of His relation to the Father.
li. Implications of His teaching and the impres-
sion He produced. — When we come to consider
how this consciousness is implied in His teaching
generally and in His effect upon mankind, we find
ourselves face to face with a mass of materials so
great that selection becomes very difficult. [Ὁ
must suffice to point out certain classes of facts—
1. His mode of thinking and speaking about
God. God is, for Him, ‘the Father.’ Sometimes,
with clear reference to His own unique relation-
ship, our Lord calls God ‘my Father’ (Mt 77
1035 9 1 570.70117.1 819: 5 ΜΠ 89 19 bie Ite ea jie
517 6 819. and throughout chs. 14-17, ete.). But it
is perhaps even more remarkable that when Christ
is teaching His disciples to think about God as their
Father in heaven, and speaking of Him as ‘the
Father’ or ‘your Father,’ He always adopts the
manner of one who knows this truth from within.
‘CONSCIOUSNESS
It is not a doctrine which He has learned from
Scripture, or proved by reason, or even gained by
vision or revelation. It is spontaneous, a truth
welling up from the depths of His being, and as
essential and natural to His thought as breathing
to His bodily life. To Him God, His Father, was
an ever-present reality, the greatest and most inti-
mate of all realities. He knew God as none else
knew Him (Mt 11°"). He abode in His Father’s
love (Jn 1519). These expressions describe in the
simplest possible way the spirit which is mani-
fested in all our Lord’s utterances. Take, as an
example, the Sermon on the Mount, the most dis-
tinetively ethical part of His teaching. Here, if
anywhere, we should expect this purely religious
apprehension of God to become dormant. In the
introduction (Mt δ5:15), the promises all reveal a
deep insight into the purposes and nature of God:
they view the world with its many kinds of people
from the Divine point of view (see also 51% 30. 4. 48
θ᾽: 4. 6. 8. 9. 14. 15. 18. 20. 24. 26ff. qi. ois All {τοι eh,
human things are viewed in the light of God’s
character. Jesus knew all these things about
human life because He first knew God. Instances
of this underlying consciousness might be multi-
plied indefinitely.
2. His self-assertion. It has often been pointed
out (especially by Liddon in his Divinity of our
Lord, Lect. 1v.) that qualities which are incom-
penile in any other character combine freely and
harmoniously in the character of Jesus. The most
remarkable instance is the union of self-assertion
with the most perfect humility. To those who
believe in the Deity of Christ, the reason, the
‘why,’ of this fact is not far to seek. But the
‘how’ remains a difficulty. How is it that all
seems natural and inevitable in the portrait as we
find it in the Gospels? The answer must surely
be that the self-assertion is the necessary expres-
sion of a real consciousness. It is well to be re-
minded how tremendous the self-assertion is. The
following passages are a selection : Mt 51+ 33- 38. 34.
39, 12. 7121. 22. 28.29 (the former verses show this ‘au-
thority’ which astonished the multitude) 89: 10. 25
1015. δι 33. 37. ὅδ. 89. 1127. 28.29 (in these passages we
have the self-assertion and the humility side by
side: “1 am meek and lowly in heart’ follows
the illimitable claim of νν. 21: 28) 125-8. 41. 45. 7ρ 246.
9949 ΡΣ ον Mk 928 Sete. 1029 126 1376, Lk 923-26 14260.
2)? and throughout St. John’s Gospel (see
especially 517-15. g12m 193 1464. ete.). In these
passages our Lord declares Himself greater than
Abraham, David, Solomon; greater than the
Temple, the Sabbath, the Law; He claims for
Himself all the homage and devotion of which the
hearts of men are capable ; He calls Himself ‘the
King,’ and describes Himself as the Judge of all
the nations ; He demands as His right that honour
which belongs to God alone (Jn 5!7-*4), Yet He is
among men ‘as he that serveth’ (Lk 2927),
3. The effect of this consciousness upon those
who were brought under His influence is very
evident. The impression which Jesus produced
upon the minds and hearts of men was quite
unique. He not only preached Himself, He re-
vealed Himself. This revelation carried conviction
with it. It is plain that He designed His ministry
to be such a revelation. It was not His usual
method to say exactly who He was, but rather to
lead His hearers on until they were able to make
that discovery for themselves (Mt 16-2’). We speak
of our Lord ‘claiming’ such and such things ; but
whenever He made an assertion about Himself, it
was because it was necessary that His hearers
should know the truth on account of its essential
lmportance for themselves. His object was to lead
them te give Him the whole faith and love of their
hearts, because in so doing they attained their
CONSCIOUSNESS 363
highest good. A notable instance of the effect of
our Lord’s self-revelation occurs in the case of St.
Peter (Lk 5), ‘Depart from me: for I am a sinful
man, O Lord.’ Here the depth of the impression
is shown by the moral effect (cf. Job 425- ὁ and
Is 6°). It is clear that St. Peter was impressed
not merely by the miracle, but by the moral glory
of Christ. The miracle was but the occasion when
there came to him a sudden insight into the char-
acter of Jesus. The intense faith which our Lord
awakened in the hearts of ‘those who responded to
Him testifies to His self-revelation. He looked for
a faith which rested in Himself as its object. Such
faith always called forth His highest approbation.
Almost every page of the Gospels witnesses to the
truth of this. The case of the Centurion (Mt 8°,
Lk7?-"), though perhaps the most striking instance,
is yet only typical. The principle involved in it
may be found everywhere ; see Mt 8 5: 53 055. 38. 1053
1280 13°8 1522-28 19:9, Mk 1:0. 41 95-11 59: 923. 24. 37 1099. 52
139 142-9; Lk 737-50 Q28-26 1019-16. 42 1334 1425-33 1717-19 18:3
19%, Jn 574 639. % 757. 38 815. ete. The extraordinary
claim involved in these passages, and in many
others, would strike us much more than it does
were it not for the fact that the experience of the
Christian centuries has amply justified it. Chris-
tianity, together with all the moral and spiritual
benefits which it has bestowed upon mankind, is
the effect produced not primarily by any doctrinal
system or method of organization, but: by a per-
sonality. It was the deliberate aim of our Lord,
with full consciousness of the method He was
adopting, to influence humanity by the revelation
of Himself.
II. PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS.—These are many
and difficult.
i. Growth.—In the ease of a merely human in-
telligence, growth is a necessary element; and a
psychological examination would aim at tracing the
course of development by showing how the mind
reacted upon the circumstances of its history and
environment. Our Lord was truly human; but He
was not merely human, and therefore it is unsafe
to reason from ordinary experience apart from the
facts of His life as given in the Gospels. Concern-
ing His early years, we are distinctly told that
there was development. ‘The child grew and
waxed strong, filled (becoming full, πληρούμενον)
with wisdom’ (Lk 2). And again (v.%"), ‘Jesus
advanced (προέκοπτεν) in wisdom and _ stature.’
The language in both places implies growth in
the true sense of the term. We are not, then,
to imagine the infant Jesus looking out upon the
world, from His mother’s arms, with eyes already
gleaming with the fulness of that superhuman
knowledge which He afterwards possessed, as cer-
tain ancient pictures would suggest. In His con-
sciousness, as in His bodily frame, He developed
from helpless infancy to maturity. But there is
unmistakable evidence that,,as His consciousness
unfolded, it attained, in ways which were to it
perfectly normal and proper, experiences which
are unique among the phenomena of human ex-
istence. It is clear from what has been already
stated, that Jesus, from His childhood, possessed
a consciousness of God as His Father which was
utterly different from the faith to which others
attain through teaching and the influence of re-
ligious surroundings. The incident of His child-
hood which reveals this fact must be viewed in the
light of the self-revelation which fills all His teach-
ing. Then its meaning is clear. We learn that
His knowledge of His Father in heaven and of the
loving harmony of will which subsisted between
them was not a revelation imparted when the
time of His public ministry drew near. It was
an essential element in His earliest spiritual ex-
periences. So far we are carried by the mere facts.
364 CONSCIOUSNESS
Every attempt at a theological, or even psycho-
logical, co-ordination of these facts will carry us
much further, and show that this inexplicable
knowledge of God and consciousness of harmony
with Him form together the ruling and guiding
principle of our Lord’s whole life.
We have already passed in review the large
classes of passages which show most distinctly our
Lord’s self-revelation of His consciousness of union
with His Father. The force of these passages is
greatly augmented when certain negative charae-
teristics most clearly manifested in the Gospels are
taken into consideration.
4. There is no trace in our Lord’s teaching or
life of any effort to arrive at truth by means of
reasoning. Jesus was never a seeker for truth:
it was not any task of His to discern God’s will
before He began to do it, or to satisfy His own
intelligence before He taught others. In dealing
with the things of God, He moves with the abso-
lute certainty of One who knew the truth from
within. His use of Holy Scripture is never an
effort to fortify His own mind: He speaks and
acts as One who knew Himself a superior authority.
Just as He was greater than the temple and Lord
of the Sabbath, so is He above the Law and able
to take the position of One who has the right to
modify it or deepen it on His sole authority (see
Win GEO ber ne. espe 7981 We BREN ΒΗ: 1Π
His teaching, He reasons from Scripture or from
nature, it is simply that He may convey to others,
in a way which corresponds to their mental equip-
ment, the truth which He Himself knows inde-
pendently. In such cases there is always some
degree of that ‘fulfilling of the Law,’ that drawing
out of a deeper meaning, of which so many in-
stances occur in the Sermon on the Mount. Per-
haps the most remarkable example is His proof of
the future life from the revelation at the Bush
(Mt 2233, Mk 1250. 27, Lk 2057. 38). Here the real proof
is the manifestation of the character of God as it is
involved in the declaration to Moses. See for other
instances of argument of this kind from Scripture,
from reason, or from nature, Mt 5% 68: 24: 268. 711. 16
1991. 11. 12. 25 fer Mk 99. 17 34 iit. 109}. Hosts Lk 1315
145. 5855... Jn 134. It is quite plain in these and all
other instances that our Lord is reasoning, not in
order to satisfy His own mind, but to carry con-
viction to the minds of His hearers. There is not
the faintest trace of the strugele for truth.
2. There is no sign that progressive revelations
were made to Him during the course of His
ministry. Many efforts have been made to show
that Jesus attained at certain turning-points to
new views of His mission, and of the means by
which His work was to be accomplished. It is
certainly true that in His teaching it is possible
to discern two stages, the first marked by a broad
and more ethical treatment of the Gospel of the
Kingdom, the second dealing with the means by
which the Kingdom is to be established, His own
Person, sufferings, and death. But it is quite
impossible to show that these two stages are not
essential parts of one organic whole. The truth is
that they are perfectly consistent, and form to-
gether one great scheme of revelation. To suppose
any change of purpose, or even fresh insight into
the meaus by which our Lord’s mission was to be
accomplished, during His ministry, is to go beyond
the evidence afforded by the Gospel history, in
obedience to some a priori psychological or theo-
logical theory. It is supposed by some that He
began with the belief that the Kinedom would be
somehow or other, introduced miraculously when
the people as a whole were ready to receive it, but
that, as time went on, and He found Himself
rejected by the leaders, He became convinced that
the Kingdom was already being realized in the
CONSCIOUSNESS
hearts of the faithful, and finally saw that it was
necessary that He Himself should die for its ad-
vancement. But how is this consistent with such
passages'as these: Mk. 1711 905 610 07..985..55 0 920,312 and
the corresponding passages in St. Luke; also the
whole Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew ?
Why should our Lord so sternly and so con-
sistently forbid the spread of popular excitement
if He thought the Kingdom would suddenly
appear, supervening miraculously upon the old
order? Here is clear proof that from the begin-
ning He understood the spiritual nature of the
Kingdom. Why again should He, from the be-
ginning, foreshadow the days of mourning ‘ when
the Bridegroom shall be taken away,’ unless He
had in view all along the great sacrifice which was
to end His ministry? (See Mt 9%, Mk 2! 29) Lk
54-3, This saying obviously belongs to the
earlier days, when the disciples of Jesus were
marked by their joyous acceptance of all the
good gifts of their Father in heaven). ‘These con-
clusions are greatly strengthened by a considera-
tion of the crisis which was brought about by the
feeding of the five thousand. That there was a
crisis is evident from Jn 6): 74-6 compared with
Mt 1453 24 and Mk 6%”. But it was not a crisis
in the consciousness of Jesus. It concerned rather
the response of the people. Now at last they are
utterly disappointed of their hopes of a worldly
Messiah, and the very manner of their disappoint-
ment shows our Lord’s perfect consistency. His
conduct throughout is that of one whose mind is
made up and whose course is absolutely clear. At
the very end, it may be thought, we have, in the
Agony in the Garden, a crisis at which He
became at last fully persuaded of the necessity of
His death. But surely it is much more in accord-
ance with the whole history to regard this as a
moral crisis, when, for the last time, He was
tempted to turn aside. There are indications that,
all along, this temptation was presented to Him
(see Mt 162223, Mk 83%, Jn 1277). Our Lord’s
utterances before the Agony show the very fullest
consciousness of His mission, and of how it was to
be accomplished.
3. Repentance had no place in the consciousness
of Jesus. As Harnack (What is Christianity ?, p.
92 1.) puts it, ‘ No stormy crisis, no breach with His
past, lies behind the period of Jesus’ life that we
know. In none of His sayings or discourses .. .
can we discover the signs of inner revolutions
overcome, or the scars of any terrible conflict.
Everything seems to pour from Him naturally, as
though it could not do otherwise, like a spring
from the depths of the earth, clear and unchecked
in its flow.’ This is the strongest proof of our
Lord’s perfect sinlessness. It is incredible that
the keenest spiritual insight ever possessed by man
should have been blind to its own condition. In
confirmation of this the following passages are
important: Mt 520% 711 1824-25-35) Mik 918, Tk 13% 5
17° ete. show our Lord’s sensitiveness to the
presence of sin in the hearts of men; how He
recognized its universality in the world, and how
high was His standard. Mk 1", Lk 6, Jn 453
88-46, give a direct insight into His conscious-
ness of His own moral condition. Lk 58, 1 P 252 318,
1 Jn 2529 3°-7, 2 Co 57!, He 4" ete. show the impres-
sion He produced, in regard to this matter, upon
the minds of His disciples. Our Lord’s conscious-
ness of union with His Father was not marred
by any sin within His own soul.
On the subject of growth, then, our data lead us
to the conclusion that there was a real develop-
ment in the consciousness of Jesus during His
youth, but that this development was completed,
certainly in all its essential elements, before He
began His ministry.
CONSCIOUSNESS
ii. The most perplexing of all the psychological
problems opened up by our subject is that which is
presented by the endeavour to distinguish the
Divine and human elements in our Lord’s con-
sciousness, and to define the mode of their union.
What in general the contents of His Divine con-
sciousness were, so far as they have been revealed
to us, we have seen above. But it is extremely
hazardous to draw negative conclusions from these
positive results, and every attempt at definition of
the two elements involves negative as well as posi-
tive statements. Psychologically, we are pre-
sented with an insoluble problem. There are no
facts, and no laws, known to the science of mind
which can help us to understand the consciousness
of Jesus. That He knew as man knows there can
be no question. All the evidence we possess points
to mental growth during the years of His youth ;
and though, as we have seen, the facts of His
history during the period of His ministry do not
warrant us in attributing to Him _ progressive
attainments in the knowledge of Divine things, it
is clear that ordinary human knowledge came to
Him as it comes to us. It is often said of Him,
that He ‘came to know’ (γνῶναι, Mt 1215 2218 2619,
Mk 2° 817, Jn 415° 6" 16; see Mason, Conditions
of our Lord’s Life on Earth, p. 130ff.). Again, we
are told that He was guided by the evidence of
His senses: ‘When Jesus saw it, he was moved
with indignation’ (Mk 104); ‘He came forth and
saw a great multitude, and he had compassion on
them’ (Mt 144); ‘When he drew nigh, he saw
the city and wept over it’ (Lk 19"). Such passages
are convincing ; and others, which tell of a super-
natural knowledge of the thoughts and motives of
men or of events (6... Jn 18 418 Mt 21°, Mk 1433,
etc.), do not weaken their force. But side by side
with this human consciousness we find unmistak-
able evidence of a consciousness which knows the
heart of God from within, and which therefore sheds
an unparalleled illumination over the whole realm
of spiritual things. Jesus could say of Himself,
“No one knoweth the Son save the Father ; neither
doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to
whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.’ Such
an assertion would be folly or worse were it not
justified by the contents of His teaching. But the
truth is that what Jesus showed mankind about
the Father and His Kingdom, His Love and His
holiness, and the revelation which Jesus gave of
human life as seen in the light of this Divine
manifestation, have ever remained the highest
heights of spiritual vision. And, more wonderful
still, this revelation has proved itself, as He fore-
told, inseparable from the Person who gave it.
The teaching, Divine though it is, has ever been
subordinate to the Teacher. It is always Jesus
Christ who reveals the Father. Here then are the
two elements, a consciousness of God and of Him-
self in relation to God different in kind from
anything known in our experience, and side by
side with it ordinary human knowledge based on
the evidence of the senses. Harnack puts the
problem thus: ‘How He came to this conscious-
ness of the unique character of His relation to God
as a Son, how He came to the consciousness of His
power, and to the consciousness of the obligation
and the mission which this power carries with it,
is His secret, and no psychology will ever fathom
it’ (What is Christianity ? p. 128).
ii. Knowledge and iqnorance.—We cannot enter
here upon a general discussion of this question. It
must suffice to note that our Lord in one instance
pointedly confessed ignorance (Mk 1395). that He
asked questions, evidently to gain information
(Mk 5° 698 9?!, Jn 11%), that He showed surprise
(Mt 8”, Mk 6°), that He sought for what He could
not find (Mt 21%, Mk 113%), and that there is no
CONSCIOUSNESS
365
trace in the Gospels of His possessing supernatural
knowledge of human and secular things beyond
what was necessary for His work. These tacts
may be connected with the following statements
made by our Lord Himself: ‘The Son can do
nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father
doing’ (Jn 5!) ; ‘I can of myself do nothing ; as I
hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous;
beeause I seek not mine own will, but the will of
him that sent me’ (v.°°); ‘My teaching is not
mine, but his that sent me’ (716); ‘He that sent
me is true; and the things which I heard from
him, these speak I unto the world’ (835); ‘I do
nothing of myself, but as the Father taught me, I
speak these things’ (v.*8); ‘I speak the things
which I have seen with my Father’ (v.*); ‘The
Father which sent me, he hath given me a com-
mandment, what I should say and what I should
speak’; ‘The things therefore which I speak,
even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak’
(1239. %°) ; «The words that 1 say unto you I speak
not from myself; but the Father abiding in me
doeth his works. Believe me that I am in the
Father and the Father in me’ (14? 1!; see also
14*4- 31 15! 177-5), From these statements it surely
follows that our Lord’s Divine knowledge was im-
parted to Him in His communion with His Father.
Apart from this means of knowing, He depended
simply upon His human faculties. ‘This being
the case, we must see that, if anything which
could not be known naturally was not made known
to Him by the Father, it would not be known by
Him’ (Bishop O’Brien of Ossory, quoted by Canon
Mason, op. cit. p. 192). The psychology of this
communion with the Father, asa means of know-
ledge, is doubtless beyond us ; but the facts given
in all the Gospels agree with the statements of
our Lord Himself as recorded by St. John. See,
further, AUTHORITY OF CHRIST.
III. THEOLOGICAL RESULTS.—i. The first result
is an extraordinary emphasis upon the wnique-
ness of our Lord’s personality. In the psycholo-
gical sphere the consciousness of Jesus Christ is as
miraculous as His resurrection is in the physical.
There is this difference, however, that His con-
sciousness is a fact which comes in all its freshness
before everyone who reads with clear eyes the
story of His life. It is the most truly living ele-
ment in the Gospels, and it is the same in them
all. It isa concrete fact, not an abstract doctrine.
To attribute its unity and concreteness to the
sudden development of a dramatic instinct among
certain religiously-minded Jews of the Ist cent., is
as impossible as to derive its amazing spiritual
elevation from an idealizing tendency among those
who believed in God and His promises, and were
looking for the Messiah and His Kingdom. Every
attempt at explanation of this kind has proved,
and must ever prove, a failure. The truth and
vividness of the Gospels flow from the reality of
the Christ whom they portray, and the conscious-
ness of Jesus is the soul of that reality.
ii. The study of the consciousness of our Lord is
the most convincing proof of His Divinity. When
such passages as Jn 517-9 81298 10 517-98 141-19 are com-
pared with such as these from the Synoptics—Mt
] 125-89 581-48 Mf fx 85.848. ] 28-30 ]9?5-27 1.47 [kc 22-27. 57-62
1071-24-42, 198-10 1999 901515 and both series’ are
discerned to be the inevitable and consistent
utterances of the mind of Him who called Him-
self the Son of God and the Son of Man, the con-
clusion is irresistible, unless, indeed, preconceived
views of the nature of the Universe forbid the
inference, that the traditional doctrine of Chris-
tianity is the only adequate interpretation of the
facts of the life of Jesus.
LITERATURE.— Weiss, Leben Jesu ; Wendt, Lehre Jesu ; Mason,
Conditions of Our Lord’s Life on Earth ; Gore, Dissertations
Sa
366 CONSECRATE, CONSECRATION
and Bampton Lectures ; Liddon, Divinity of Our Lord; Balden-
sperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu ; Beyschlag,. Leben Jesu ;
Adamson, Studies of the Mind in Christ ; Fairbairn, Place of
Christ in Modern Theology; Godet, New Testament Studies ;
Row, Jesus of the Evangelists; Keim, Jesu von Nazara;
Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentwins (Eng. tr. What is Chris-
tianity 2); Seeley, Ecce Homo; R. Mackintosh, articles on ‘The
Dawn of the Messianic Consciousness’ in Expos. Times, 1905.
In some of these, and in many other works which might be
named, will be found a great deal of rather free speculation
based upon psychological considerations, and often but loosely
connected with the statements of the Gospels. The present
writer has endeavoured to keep as closely as possible to the
historical evidence. On account of the peculiar nature of the
problem, he is convinced that psychology affords but little
assistance, and he regards even an isolated statement by one of
the Evangelists as evidence of higher quality than a@ priori
arguments of any description. Yet he has not forgotten the
views of modern critics, and has been careful to show, by an
array of references to texts, that the principal contents of our
Lord’s consciousness are witnessed to by all the original authori-
ties. CHARLES F. D’ARCY.
CONSECRATE, CONSECRATION.—In the AV of
NT ‘consecrated’ occurs twice. In both places
the reference is to the work of Christ, but to two
different aspects of that work, neither of which is
suggested by the rendering ‘consecrated.’ (1) In
He 7% the word used is τετελειωμένον -- RV ‘ per-
fected.’ Our Lord, as ‘a Son perfected for ever-
more,’ is contrasted with human high priests
‘having infirmity.’ The connexion of thought,
obscured in the AV, is with 210 5° ete. The per-
fection of Him who ‘abideth for ever,’ and whose
priesthood is inviolable, is the result of the human
experience of the Divine Son. By His life in the
flesh, His lowly obedience, and His sufferings, He
has gained that abiding sympathy with men which
fits Him to be ‘the author of eternal salvation.’
(2) In He 10” the word used is évexatnicer=RV
‘dedicated,’ lit. ‘made new.’ Jesus ‘dedicated for
us a new and living way’ into the Holy Place.
The thought is that by means of His own blood
our High Priest passed into the Divine presence,
inaugurating a way for us. Because He passed
through our human life, and out of it by the
rending of ‘the veil, that is to say, his flesh,’
He is not only our representative, but also our
forerunner ; in full assurance of faith we also may
draw near and follow Him into that heavenly
sanctuary.
In the RVm ‘consecrate’ is found three times,
viz., Jn 10° 1711.19 ἁγιάζειν, of which ‘conse-
crate’ is an alternative rendering, is usually
translated ‘sanctify.’ The exception in the EV
is the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer (Mt 6°=
alee 2) = Hialitowad be thy name.’ Here the
Rheims version has ‘sanctified be thy name’; on
the other hand, Wyclif has ‘halowe,’ ‘halowid’
in Jn 1036 1711. 19,
_ The distinetion between ‘consecrate’ and ‘sane-
tify’ turns rather upon usage than upon etymology.
Both words mean ‘to make holy.’ But ‘a person
or a thing may be made holy in two different
ways: (1) By solemn setting apart for holy uses,
as when in the LXX ἁγιάζειν designates the con-
secration of a prophet (Jer 15, ef. Sir 454 497) ;
2) by imparting fitness for holy uses, as when St.
Paul speaks (Ro 1515, ef, 1 Th 559) of his offering as
‘made acceptable’ because it has been ‘sanctified
by the Holy Spirit.’ On these lines it now seems
possible and desirable to distinguish the two
English words which mean ‘to make holy.’
Ideally, consecration implies sanctification. But
in modern English ‘consecrate’ suggests the
thought of setting apart for holy uses, whilst
‘sanctify’ has come rather to imply making fit
for holy uses. -
The rendering ‘consecrated’ better suits the
context of Jn 10% ‘Say ye of him, whom the
Father consecrated and ‘sent into the world, Thou
blasphemest ; because I said, I am Son of God ??
Jer 1° supplies a suggestive OT analogy, for the
a Ee
CONSECRATE, CONSECRATION
word of the Lord reminds the young prophet that,
in the Divine counsel, he was set apart for holy
uses before his birth. The thought would be more
appropriately presented by ‘consecrated’ than by
RV ‘sanctified’ (LXX ἡγίακα). Similarly, as our
Lord declares in His argument with the Jews
(Jn 10°°), the Father consecrated His Son to His
redemptive mission before sending Him forth to
His work. More is implied in this statement than
that the Father ‘chose’ or ‘set apart’ His Son.
All things were given into His hand (Jn 3*), and
amongst the all things were ‘life in himself’ (Jn
5°), fulness of grace and truth (114), and the Spirit
‘without measure’ (55). ‘The fact belongs to the
eternal order. The term expresses the Divine des-
tination of the Lord for Hiswork. This destination
carries with it the further thought of the perfect
endowment of the Incarnate Son’ (Westcott, Com.
in loc.). It is only in this sense of complete equip-
ment that the Divine Son was made fit for His
sacred mission; the Holy One had no need of
sanctification ‘in a way of qualification,’ as the
Puritan divines used the word, when they meant
inward cleansing from sin and the Holy Spirit’s
bestowal of.purity of heart.
Our Lord’s words, ‘I consecrate myself’ (Jn 17"),
are best understood in the light of His earlier
saying that ‘the Father consecrated’ Him (Jn 1088).
The two statements are complementary. His con-
secration of Himself was the proof of His perfect
acquiescence in the Father’s purpose concerning
Himself, His disciples, and the world. ‘The secret
of His inner life was continually revealed ‘in
loveliness of perfect deeds’ which constrained men
to acknowledge the truth of His words, ‘I seek
not mine own will, but the will of him that sent
me’ (Jn 5°); the law that ruled His every word
and work He was soon to fulfil to the uttermost ;
His readiness to drink the cup which the Father
was about to put into His hands was involved in
His calm word, ‘TI consecrate myself’; its utter-
ance in this solemn hour affords a elimpse of the
spirit of absolute devotion to His Father’s will in
which Jesus is finishing His work and consum-
mating in death the self-sacrifice of His life. And
as for the sake of His disciples Jesus consecrates
Himself, He prays for them, knowing that the
future of His kingdom depends on their having
the same spirit of complete consecration to the
Divine will.
Commentators who follow Chrysostom in regarding éyiafw as
practically equivalent to προσφέρω σοὶ θυσίαν (cf. Euth. Zig. ἐγὼ
ἐκουσίως θυσιάζω ἐμαυτόν), and as connoting the idea of expiatory
sacrifice, support. their interpretation by references .to OT
passages in which ἁγιάζειν (=8p7) is a sacred word for
sacrifices, as, e.g., Ex 132, Dt 1519", 2 § 811 (cf. Meyer, in loc.).
They are obliged to give the word ᾧἁ γιοΐζειν two different mean-
ings in the same sentence, as does the RVm: ‘And for their
sakes I consecrate myself, that they themselves also may be
sanctified in truth.’ But it is not from the word ἁ ιάζειν that
the nature of Christ’s death is to be learnt; that which
differentiates the consecration of Christ from the consecration
of His disciples is brought out rather by the other words in thit
pregnant saying. The consecration of Jesus is His own act,
but He does not pray that apart from Him the disciples may
follow His example and consecrate themselves; His consecra-
tion is the pattern of theirs, therefore the same word is used of
the Master and of His disciples; but without His consecration
‘for their sakes’ (ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν), their consecration would be
impossible, therefore it is said of the Master alone that He
consecrates Himself on behalf of others.
If ἁγιάζειν be uniformly rendered ‘consecrate’ in
our Lord’s intercessory prayer, it will be seen that
He twice expresses His yearning desire for the
consecration of the men whom His Father had
given Him out of the world: (1) Jn 17 ‘Con-
secrate them in the truth’; as Jesus sends forth
His disciples on the same mission which brought
Him into the world at His Father’s bidding, He
asks that they also may be set apart for holy
service, and may be divinely equipped for their
task, even as He was, by ihe indwelling of the
CONSIDERATENESS
Father’s love (v.*°). They possess the knowledge
and the faith that the world lacks, for they have
come to know and to believe that the Father sent
the Son (vv.® 35, cf. vv.2- 33). It is because Jesus
desires intensely that the world may know and
believe, that He so fervently prays for the con-
secration of the men whose faith and knowledge
qualify them to speak in the world the word which
He has given them. (2) V.!% ‘And for their sakes
I consecrate myself, that they also may be con-
secrated in truth.’ Reasons for departing from
the rendering of the RV and the RVm have been
given above. No doubt it is important to re-
member that men ‘having infirmity’ need by
inward sanctifying to be made fit for the holy
service to which they have been consecrated ; but
the emphatic words, ‘they also’ (kat αὐτοί), suggest
not a contrast, but a resemblance,—a consecration
common to the Master and His disciples. It is a
resemblance not in the letter, but’ in the spirit.
Between their work as witnesses and His as
Redeemer there was a contrast; but their lives
might be ruled by the ‘inward thought’ (1 P 4!
RVm) which constrained Him to suffer for their
sakes. For the disciples of Jesus real consecration
consists in having Ae mind which was in Him,
who ‘humbled himself, becoming obedient even
unto death, yea, the death of the cross’ (Ph 2).
It should also be noted that the consecration
spoken of in Jn 1719 is, alike in the case of Jesus
and of His disciples, ‘not a process but an act
completed at once,—in His case, when gathering
together in one view all His labours and sufferings,
He Pay them a living sacrifice to His Father ;
in theirs, when they are in like manner enabled to
present themselves as living sacrifices in His one
verfect sacrifice? (W. F. Moulton, Com. in loc.).
See, further, art. SANCTIFICATION.
J. G. TASKER.
CONSIDERATENESS.—It was a saying of St.
Francis, ‘Courtesy is own sister to Love’; but con-
siderateness is more than courtesy (wh. see), for it
takes account not only of our neighbour’s feel-
ings, but of all his circumstances and all his
wants. Our Lord ‘knew all men, and knew what
was in man’ (Jn 2°); and in this knowledge we
find Him acting always with the most exquisite
care for all their needs. Their bodily needs He
anticipates and provides for, as in the case of the
hungering multitudes (Mt 15°, Mk 8'8, Lk 9:5, Jn
6°),. where, moreover, He takes care also that
nothing of the store He had provided should be
lost (Jn 613), and in the case of His over-wrought
disciples (‘Come ye apart and rest awhile,’ Mk 6").
To which may be added His directions regarding
Jairus’ daughter, when He had raised her from the
dead (‘He commanded that something should be
given her to eat,’ Mk 5%). Still more beautiful is
Christ’s delicate consideration of men’s feelings.
Among the many rays of ‘his own glory’ (Jn 211)
manifested forth in His first miracle, we must not
omit His considerateness for the mortification
which the falling short of their wine would cause
to His peasant hosts, and His taking care that
none save His mother and the servants knew
whence the new and better supply was drawn (Jn
2°), As instances of His considerateness of men’s
spiritual needs, we may cite His giving scope for
the strong faith of the good centurion by not going
to Ins house (Mt 8°", Lk 72), while by going
with Jairus He supports his weak faith, and is
beside him when the stunning message reaches
him, ‘Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou
the Master any further?’ (Mk 5%); His whole
action in the case of the woman taken in adultery
(Jn 8); and His attention to the still deeper
need of the woman with the issue of blood, whose
faith, great as it was, required to be adorned with
CONSOLATION 367
gratitude to, and confession of, her healer (Mk
59-4), Extreme pain tends to make men forget
everything except their own sufiering: it only
brought out the more the all-embracing consider-
ateness of Christ. His words from the Cross to the
Virgin Mother and St. John (Jn 19° 27) teach, no
doubt, the new relationships created for believers
by the gospel (Mk 10°, ef. Ro 16 ; but they exhibit
also His considerate care not needlessly to mention
a relationship which might so easily have exposed
St. Mary to hustling by the mob, or to syllable
names which would have been repeated by irre-
verent tongues. ‘The post-resurrection sayings to
Mary Magdalene (Jn 2015-18), to St. Thomas (Jn
20°7), and to St. Peter, who, as he had thrice denied
his Lord, is thrice restored with delicate allusion
to, but not mention of, his threefold fall (Jn 9115. 27),
are examples no less shining and illustrative. (Cf.
Bishop Paget’s sermon on ‘ Courtesy’ in Studies in
the Christian Character, p. 209).
J. COOPER.
CONSOLATION. — 1. The word ‘consolation’
(παράκλησις) Occurs only twice in the Gospels (Lk
2 64, both AV and RV). παράκλησις, however, is
a word of common occurrence in the rest of the
NT, where in AV it is usually rendered ‘ consola-
tion,’ although not infrequently ‘comfort.’ In
%V ‘comfort’ has been substituted for ‘consola-
tion’ except in Ac 4 (‘exhortation,’ marg. ‘con-
solation ’) 15°! (‘ consolation,’ mare. ‘exhortation’),
He 6'§ (‘encouragement’). Besides meaning con-
solation or comfort, παράκλησις sometimes denotes
exhortation, and is so rendered both in AV and
RV. When it is said of Simeon that he was
‘looking for the consolation of Israel’ (Lk 2”),
the word is used by metonymy for the Messianic
salvation as bringing consolation to the Chosen
People. Similarly the Messiah Himself was known
to the Rabbins as o7:9, ‘the Consoler,’ or ‘Com-
forter,’ of Israel (see Schittgen, Hor. Heb. et
Talm. ii. 18). In Lk 6% the rich are said to have
received their consolation, i.e. the comfort which
comes from worldly prosperity, in contrast to those
spiritual blessings which Jesus had just promised
that His disciples should enjoy in spite of poverty,
hunger, and tears (vv.70-8, cf. 2 Co 15°).
2. Consolation in the teaching of Christ.—First of
all, there will ever stand the words : ‘Come unto me,
all ye that travail and are heavy laden’ (Mt 11°*”).
Amid outward storm and inward fear the Lord
greets His disciples: ‘ Be of good cheer: it is I; be
not afraid’ (Mk 6”). The Physician of the ailing
body and sick soul addresses the weary sufferer :
‘Son, be of good cheer ; thy sins are forgiven’ (Mt
9°). To us to-day His Holy Spirit breathes the
same blessings in the gospel of mercy and peace,
the Spirit by whom He is with us ‘all the days,
even unto the completion of the age’ (Mt 28%).
His words do not pass away (Mk 13*!), and from
His Divine lips no word is void of power (Lk 157).
‘Peace be unto you’ is the first message of the
ascended as of the risen Lord (Jn 207!-*6). Still He
loves ‘to the uttermost’ (Jn 13!) ; still He can bear
to lose not one of those whom His Father has
given Him (Jn 18°), and still no enemy shall snatch
them from His hand (Jn 10:8). Even the hairs of
the head of the children of God are objects of His
watchfulness (Lk 127 2118), to number them and to
preserve them. So, truly, His service should be
without fear (Lk 17%). Amid the storms of this
changeful life we ery: ‘Carest thou not that we
perish ?’ (Mk 4%%),—and nevertheless the very pur-
pose of His mission was and is that we should have
life, and have it more abundantly (Jn 1019). There
is no uncertainty on His part,—eternal life is the
settled purpose of God for man (Jn 6%). The grace
He bestows is in its nature prolific, and its fruit is
He gives the Kingdom of
eternal life (Jn 41" %6),
368 CORBAN
God (Lk 1933). His message is a gospel (Mt 45).
His ears are never closed to our cry (Mt 21”). All
things are possible with Him (Mk 1057).
To these higher thoughts may be added precious
truths which have a like consoling power in the
conflict with evil ever surging within and without.
Our Lord knows our human nature through and
through (Jn 2”). His purpose is to avert judg-
ment and not to condemn whilst there is time for
salvation (121. His condemnations were against
hypocrisy and hardness of heart and contempt of
His gospel. He came bearing our infirmities and
saving us from our sins (Mt 1*! 817, Lk 197°). _ What
is done to the poor, sick, bereaved, afflicted, is done
to Him; and He will remember (Mt 25%). His
blessing abides with the poor, meek, sincere soul,
faithful to the end (Mt 5*! 10%), In this life
the disciple must be content to expect little of
worldly success, and yet he shall not be unconsoled
(Mt 10%, Mk 10%, Jn 16%). To His disciple Christ
promises: ‘I will love thee’ (Jn 14”). See also
art. COMFORT.
LITERATURE.—Hastings’ DB, artt. ‘Paraclete,’ ‘ Comfort.’
Grimm-Thayer, Lex. 8.0. παράκλησις.
W. B. FRANKLAND.
CORBAN is a Hebrew word (13) which appears
in the Greek of Mk 7", transliterated kopBav or
κορβάν, and in this form passes into the English
Versions. The same word in a modified form
occurs also in Mt 27°, eis τὸν κορβανᾶν, ‘into the
treasury.’ The termination -as in κορβανᾶς is the
Greek method of indicating the Aramaic determin-
ative in x329p. Codex B reads κορβᾶν for κορβανᾶν.
The word has three meanings: (1) An offering,
both bloodless and otherwise. In this sense it
occurs about 80 times in OT, always in Leviticus
and Numbers, except twice in Ezekiel. In EV it
is rendered ‘ offering’ or ‘oblation,’ but in LXX it
is rendered by δῶρον, ‘a gift,’ and thisis the tr. given
to xopBav in Mk 711, (2) A vow-offering, something
dedicated to God. In this sense it occurs in the
Heb. and Aram. portions of the Talmud, and also
in Josephus. In his Antigwities, Iv. iv. 4, Josephus
says of the Nazirites: ‘They dedicate themselves
to God as a corban, which in the language of the
Greeks denotes “ἃ gift.”’ So also inc. Apion. i.
22, he speaks of corban as a ‘kind of oath, found
only among Jews, which denotes ‘a thing devoted
to God.”’ (3) The sacred treasury into which the
gifts for the Temple service were cast by the pious ;
or, the treasure therein deposited. Thus, in
BJ, τι. ix. 4, Josephus says that Herod ‘caused a
disturbance by spending the sacred treasure, which
is called corban, upon aqueducts.’ So in Mt 276
the high priests say to one another: ‘It is not
lawful to cast them (Judas’ silver pieces) into the
treasury (els τὸν κορβανᾶν, B* κορβᾶν), for it is the
price of blood.’
_ The passage in which corban oceurs in our Eng-
lish Bible is Mk 7". Our Lord is there replying
to the criticism of the Pharisees that the disciples
ate food with hands ceremonially unclean. Christ’s
reply is a retort. He accuses the Pharisees of
attaching too much value to the tradition of the
elders, so as even in some cases to set aside in their
favour the plain moral commandments of God.
The words of Jesus are: ‘Is it well for you to set
aside the commandment of God, in order that
ye may observe your tradition? For Moses said,
Honour thy father and thy mother; and, He that
speaketh evil of father or mother, let him die the
death. But ye say, If a man has said to his father or
mother, That wherewith thou michtest have been
benefited from me is corban, that is. a gift, [he is
absolved I, Ye no longer allow him to do anything
for his father or mother.’ The same incident is
recorded, with slight variations. in Mt 153-5.
Commentators are divided as to whether the !
facie
CORBAN
dedication was meant seriously, and the property
actually given to God and put into the treasury ;
or whether the utterance of the word was a mere
evasion, and when the magic word corban had
been uttered over any possession, the unfilial son
was able to ‘square’ matters with the Rabbis, so
as to be free from obligation to support his aged
parents (Bruce on Mt 15°). It must be admitted
that the Jews were much addicted to making rash
vows. One tractate in the Talmud, Nedarim, is
specially devoted to the subject. We there find
that the customary formula among the Jews for
devoting anything to God was, ‘ Let it be corban’ ;
though, to allow a loophole of possible escape from
the vow if they regretted it afterwards, they were
in the habit of using other words which sounded
like corban. Nedarin, i. 2, says: ‘When any one
says ‘‘kondm, or kondh, or konds (be this object, or
this food),” these are by-names for korbdn.’ These
words came to be used as a mere formula of inter-
diction, without any intention of making the thing
interdicted ‘a gift to God’; e.g., a man seeing his
house on fire, says, ‘ My tallith shall be corban if
it is not burnt’ (Ned. 111. 6). In making a vow of
abstinence a man says: ‘ /vonds be the food (vi. 1)
or the wine (vill. 1) which I taste.2 When a man
resolves not to plough a field, he says, ‘ Konds be
the field, if I plough it’ (iv. 7), Repudiation of a
wife is thus expressed, ‘ What my wife might be
benefited by me is konds (Ὁ niq3 vagy dp), because
she has stolen my cup’ or ‘struck my son’ (iii. 2).
In vili. 11 we have the very same formula as in
Mk 7", except that we have the subterfuge or
substitute, op for j27R, ὁ 7393 ANY Dp (Lowe's
Mishna, p. 88).
It is not necessary to think that Jesus had such
cases of recklessness in His mind. We prefer to
believe that He was thinking of bond fide vows, made
to the Temple, hastily, perhaps angrily, without
sufficient regard to the claims of aged parents. The
question was a very intricate one, What ought the
Rabbis to advise the man to do? The Law was
most emphatic in its insistence that all vows, when
once made, must be kept (Dt 237!-*8), Which has
the higher claim on a man’s conscience? The service
of God, promoted by the gift, and the Law obeyed
by keeping the vow inviolate? or, the support of
poor aged parents, the Law broken and the vow
violated? It was a delicate matter, and we can
scarcely wonder that the Rabbis of Christ’s day
adhered to the literal significance of Dt 237!-*%, and
held that nothing could justify the retractation of
a vow. In other words, they allowed the literal
and the ceremonial to override the ethical. Jesus
disclosed a different ‘spirit,’ as He ruled that duty
to parents is a higher obligation than upholding
religious worship, or than observance of a vow
rashly or thoughtlessly made.
In Nedarim, ix. 1, we find Eliezer ben Hyrkanos
(c. A.D. 90), who in many respects felt the influ-
ence of Christianity, give the same view as the
Lord Jesus with regard to rash vows. We trans-
late the passage thus—
*R. Eliezer said that when rash vows infringe at all on parental
obligations, Rabbis should suggest a retractation (dit. open a
door) by appealing to the honour due to parents. The sages
dissented. R. Zadok said, instead of appealing to the honour
due to parents, let them appeal to the honour due to God ; then
might rash vows cease to be made. The sages at length agreed
with R. Eliezer that if the case be directly between a man and
his parents [as in Mk 711], they might suggest retractation by
appealing to the honour due to parents.’
The words of R. Meir (ec. A.D. 150) are also inter-
esting in this connexion as given in Nedarim,
ix. 4—
‘One may effect a retractation of a rash vow by quoting what
is written in the Law. One may say to him: If thou hadst
known that thou wast transgressing such commandments as
these, ‘Thou shalt not take vengeance nor bear a grudge”;
CORN
“Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart”; ‘Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself” [Iv 1917f]; ‘‘ Thy brother shall
live with thee” [Lv 25%6|,—wouldst thou have made the vow?
Perhaps thy brother may become poor, and thou (because of
thy rash vow) wilt not be able to support him. If he shall say,
If I had known that it was so, I would not have made the vow,—
he may be released from his vow.’
These quotations show that, in some directions,
the spirit of humaneness was triumphing over the
literalism which Jesus combated in His day.
LITERATURE. — The Mishnic treatise, Nedarim; artt. on
‘Corban’ in Hastings’ DB, Eneyc. Bibl., and Jewish Encye. ;
Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus, ii. 17 ff. ; the Commentaries
of Wetstein, Grotius, and Bruce on Mt 15° and Mk 7!1; Light-
foot’s Hor. Heb., and Winsche’s Evlauteruny, in loco.
J.T. MARSHALL.
CORN.—In AV of the Gospels ‘corn’ is used to
translate four distinct words in the original :
(1) σπόριμα : ‘Jesus went on the Sabbath day
through the corn’ (Mt 12'). Here ‘corn’ should
be ‘cornfields,’ the rendering of RY in this verse,
and of both AV and RV in the parallel passages
in Mk. (2) and Lk. (61). σπόριμα properly means
seed land (σπείρω), and in classical Greek is not
found in its N'T sense of ‘ corntields.’
(2) σῖτος, in Mk 458, where a contrast is drawn
between the dilierent stages in the growth of the
cornstalk—‘ first the blade, then the ear, after that
the full corn in the ear.’ In LXX, as in classical
Greek, σῖτος is a generic word for cereals, but refers
especially to wheat as the staple grain food. Corre-
sponding to this, we find that elsewhere in the NT,
both in AV and RV, the word is always translated
ewheab «(Mit 3 1375-2 20° Tk 917 16% 2231, Jn 124).
(3) ordxus=‘an ear of corn’ (Mt 12! |; Mk 438).
So in LXX as an equivalent for n>2¥ in Gn 41° ete.
(4) κόκκος -- ἃ single grain or ‘corn.’ It is rendered
‘corn’ only in Jn 12% (AV): ‘Except a corn of
wheat [ὁ κόκκος τοῦ σίτου) fall into the ground and
die...” (ef. the use of the words ‘ peppercorn,’
‘barleycorn’). Elsewhere in AV (Mt 13°! || 17?° || ),
as always in RV, it is rendered ‘a grain.’
‘Corn’ is thus used in AV in four distinguishable
senses—as applying to a corufield, to a ripe corn-
stalk, to an ear of wheat, and to a single grain.
And it is noteworthy in each case how intimately
the Gospel references to corn are associated with
our Lord’s revelation of the mysteries of the Kinv-
dom and the truth regarding His own person and
saving work. The parable of the Blade, the Ear,
and the Full Corn was used to unfold the law of
growth in the Kingdom of God. The incident of
the plucking of the ears of corn in the cornfields
on the Sabbath day served as the occasion for a
notable declaration regarding both the dignity of
the Son of Man and the graciousness of Him who
loves mercy more than sacrifice. The death and
fruitful resurrection of the grain of wheat became
the prophecy and type of Christ’s Passion and con-
sequent power to draw all men unto Himself. And
these lessons from the corn in the records of the
Lord’s ministry may be greatly extended as we
recall what He said about the sowing of the corn
(parable of the Sower) and its reaping (the Tares
and the Wheat); how He saw in the white fields
a vision of a great spiritual harvest only waiting
to be gathered (Jn 4%); how at Capernaum He
turned the people’s minds from the barley bread
of the previous day’s miracle to think of Himself
as the Bread of Life (Jn 6) ; and said of the broken
loaf at the Last Supper, ‘ Take, eat, this is my body.’
For further information the reader is referred to
AGRICULTURE, BARLEY, SOWING, etc.
LITERATURE. —Candolle, Origine des Plantes Cultivées ; Low,
Aramitische Pflanzennamen ; Tristram, Natural History of the
Bible ; see also Bruder’s Concord. NT’ Greeci ; Grimm-Thayer’s
Lez. 8.vv. J. C. LAMBERT.
CORNER-STONE (733 νη, κεφαλὴ ywvias).—The
quotation from Ps 118” oceurs at the close of the
VOL. I.—24
CORNER-STONE 369
parable of the Wicked Vinedressers (Mt 21”, Mk
1910. Lk 201). A question was asked about the
punishment of such unfaithful servants and the
transferring of the vineyard to the charge of others;
and the quotation afforded Scripture proof that
the necessity for such a transference, however
surprising to those rejected, may actually arise in
God’s administration of His kingdom.
1. Literal meaning of corner-stone. —The term
‘stone of the corner’ is applied in Palestine not
only to the stones at the extreme corners of a
building, but to the stone inserted in any part of
the outer wall to form the beginning of an interior
room-wall at right angles to it. It applies especi-
ally, however, to the stone that is dxpoywviaios,
belonging to an extreme corner οὗ the building.
In the construction of a large edifice, the founda-
tions are generally laid and brought up to the
surface of the ground, and are then left for several
months exposed to the rain, so that the surround-
ing earth may settle down as close as possible to
the wall. When the first row of stones above the
ground line is to be laid, the masons place a long,
well-squared block of stone at the corner to be a
sure rest for the terminus of the two walls. It is
the most important corner-stone (Eph 2”).
2. Selection and treatment of the cornei-stone.—
It is always carefully chosen, and is specially
treated in view of the service expected of it. (a)
It must be sound, in the case of sandstone being
free from weakening cavities, and in the case of
limestone being without any white streaks of spar
that under pressure and strain might lead to
cleavage.—(b) It must be carefully dressed so as to
be quite a rectangular block, whereas the ordinary
stones usually slope away at the back, and the
empty spaces are filled in with stone chips and
plaster. It is expected to be in close and solid
contact with whatever is under it and above it.—
(c) In preparing a place for it, the mason gives it a
more liberal allowance of mortar so as to increase
the power of adhesion. ‘These qualifications are
summarized in Is 28% Thus the corner-stone is
expected to be strong and sound in itself, and able
to control the tier that belongs to it, and check any
tendency to bulge either outwards or inwards.
The thought of Mt 2144 and Lk 9018 passes beyond
the idea of a corner-stone, which is required to
remain in its place, and neither falls on any one nor
is fallen upon. The transition is so abrupt that
some have been inclined to attach importance to
the fact that the addition is omitted in Mk 121°,
and that certain ancient authorities (e.g. D 33)
omit it even in St. Matthew. It is a similar con-
ception that appears in 1 Co 1%, 1 P 26:1, namely,
that of a stumbling-block on the public highway.
The ‘way of life’ was a familiar religious term,
‘the Way’ being a descriptive epithet which Christ
applied to Himself (Jn 14°), and one of the first
designations of the Christian Church (Ac 623. The
same situation of conflict is presented in Is 8%,
where the fear of the Lord would be to some a
sanctuary, a place of safety and rest by the way,
but to others a stone of stumbling and a rock of
offence. Those who marked out to their own
liking the moral highway of the nation had
obscured the truth that Israel existed for God, not
God for Israel, and left no space for the sufferings
of Christ. It was an error of blindness like that
of the house-builders concerning the rejected
corner-stone. They should have made allowance
for the immovable object of bed-rock truth that
had the right of priority. In the Syrian town of
Beyrout one of the carriage roads has at one point
a third of its width »ceupied by an ancient saint-
shrine, with its small rough room and dome. It
is a useless and inconvenient obstacle to the trattic,
but any petition to have it removed would be
CORNER-STONE
frowned down as an act of irreverence and in-
fidelity. The shrine was there before the road.
3. Oriental respect for the builders.—In connexion
with the rejection of a particular stone, it has to
be remembered that the ancients had no explosive
by means of which to lighten their labours. The
work had to be done by hammer, chisel, and saw,
though they knew how to insert wooden wedges
in prepared sockets in the line of desired cleavage,
and make them expand by soaking with water.
They would naturally pass by a stone that required
a great deal of work and yielded only- ordinary
results. ‘They carried this principle to the leneth
of often taking prepared stones from one building
for the erection of another at a considerable dis-
tance, as when the carved stones of the Ephesian
temple of Diana were taken to build the church
of St. Sofia in Constantinople, and the ruined
edifices of Roman Czesarea supplied the material
for the city wall of Acre. It would, however,
sometimes happen that a stone discarded by cer-
tain builders would be recognized by a wiser master
as that which he needed for an important place in
his building, and this gave rise to the proverbial
saying quoted in Ps 1185, which is familiarly re-
peated and applied to-day in Syria.
The epigrammatic value of the saying is en-
hanced by the fact that in the East the master-
knowledge of the different trades has always been
carefully guarded, and a sharp distinction is drawn
between the man who thinks and plans and the
man who by his elementary manual labour merely
carries out the orders of another. In the art of
building, a familiar proverb says, ‘ One stroke from
the master, even though it be behind his back, is
better than the hammering of a thousand others.’
In explanation of this the story is told of a Lebanon
prince who engaged a master-mason to build a large
bridge of one arch over the river Adonis, and
agreed to defray all costs and give the master a
certain sum when the work was done. When the
bridge was constructed, and nothing remained but
to remove the scaffolding, the master claimed his
remuneration ; and as the prince argued for a re-
duction of the sum, the master declined to remove
the scaffolding. Other men were engaged to do
this, but they found it to be such a complicated
and dangerous task that they abandoned it, and
the original builder had to be called in on his own
terms. He stepped forward, and, standing with
his back to the network of supporting beams, gave
a single tap with his hammer to a particular wedge.
Its removal liberated the supports, and as he
hurriedly sprang back, the scaffolding collapsed,
and left the empty arch of the completed bridge.
He alone knew how to do it. Similar proverbs are
current with regard to the baker, tailor, carpenter,
blacksmith, teacher, doctor, and almost every form
of technical industry and specialized profession.
The master in his trade occupies a position of
respect similar to that of the father in the family
and the sheikh in the tribe. In no department is
this submission more thoroughgoing than in the
deference shown to the Rabbis and priests as the
trained masters of religious observance and ecclesi-
astical duty. In consequence of this the people
of the country find a keen though guarded enjoy-
ment in any situation that seems to discredit the
Wisdom of the wise.
4. Figurative
applications of the corner-stone.—
In Je 20% and ;
20" LS 14° the word pinndth (<corner-
stones’) 1s translated ‘the chiefs’ of the people,
as pee those whose opinions and actions gave
Stability and direction to others. In Is 19" it is
stated that the errer of Egypt was through her
trust in the princes of Zoan and Noph, who were
the corner-stones of her tribes. In the East, the
2 . aC . Υ ἘΣ "2
mason in laying a row of stones begins with the
Pee
COSMOPOLITANISM
corner-stone, and some twelve feet farther down,
or at the other terminus of the wall, if it be short,
another stone of the same height is laid with lime,
and then the mason’s measuring-line is stretched
tightly over the outer top-corner of each. This
gives the line of frontage and elevation to all the
stones that fillin the space between them. Zoan
and Noph, the corner-stones, being themselves in
a false position, affected all between that took
measure from them. In Zeph 1'® 3° the same
word is translated ‘towers,’ as the corners of the
wall were especially fortified; and in 2 Ch 26%
‘bulwarks’ (RV in all three passages ‘ battle-
ments’). In Job 38° the act of laying the founda-
tion corner-stone of a house is made to describe
that of the creation of the world. In Jer 51*° the
inability of Babylon to furnish any more a corner-
stone is made to figure its perpetual desolation. In
Zee 104, in the prophecy of the pre-eminence of
Judah, the corner-stone is a conspicuous emblem,
along with the tent-peg and the bow, as signifying
that that tribe was to excel in the peaceful in-
dustries of the city and the field, and in the art of
War.
Such were the meanings of the rejected corner-
stone that in their Messianic application were
hidden from those who crucified the Lord of glory
(1 Co 28), but were revealed to the Gentiles, the
‘other husbandmen,’ when the word of acceptance
and service came to them (Eph 25:23).
It is a tragical error to suppose that the message
of the rejected -corner-stone was exhausted in the
forfeiture and fate of Israel. The city of God is
still being built, and blindness with regard to the
corner-stone, the mystical presence and the mis-
sionary command of Christ, may again expose the
builders to scorn, and necessitate another trans-
ference of the service.
LITERATURE.—Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Corner-stone’; Expositor,
5th ser. ix. [1899] p. 35ff.; Hapos. Times, vii. 372, xiv. 384;
Jonathan Edwards, Works [1840], ii. p. 61 ff. ; Maclaren, Sermons
Preached in Manchester, 1st ser. p. 1 ff.
G. M. MACKIE.
COSAM.—A name occurring inthe Lukan gene-
alogy of our Lord (Lk 955).
COSMOPOLITANISM.—That the Jews were of all
nations the most exclusive, was familiar to classic
writers (cf. Juv. Sat. xiv. 103 ‘non monstrare vias
eadem nisi sacra colenti,’ and Mayor's references
ad loc.) ; though both political and social conditions
in the Ist cent. had made cesmopolitanism more
possible than it had ever been before (cf. Juv. 26.
111. 62 ‘in Tiberim Syrius defluxit Orontes’). Under
the Roman emperors the world was becoming more
and more one great State ; St. Paul’s Roman citizen-
ship stood him in good stead in Philippi as in Jeru-
salem (Ac 167! 22°). Even in Palestine there were
distinctly cosmopolitan elements, as was inevitable
in the case of a country lying across the great
trade routes of the world. Decapolis was almost
entirely Greek ; in Galilee there had for long been
a large Gentile population ; and foreigners as well
as proselytes from all parts of the empire found
their way to Jerusalem (Ac 27; see Sehiirer, HJ P,
Index, s. ‘Hellenism’; and Merrill, Galilee in the
Time of Christ). The presence of foreigners, how-
ever, is seldom mentioned in the Gospels, save for
a few references to centurions (Mt 8°, Lk 7? 23%),
strangers from Tyre and Sidon (Mk 35), a short jour-
ney to Decapolis (Mk 7*!, where, strangely enough,
the Aramaic word ‘Ephphatha’ finds special place
in the text), and the notice of the Greeks who
sought for Jesus at the feast—though no account of
His interview with them is given (Jn 12°). Traces
of a cosmopolitan atmosphere may be detected in
Mk 157! (‘ Simon, father of Alexander and Rufus’),
in the Greek names of two of the disciples (Andrew
COSMOPOLITANISM
and Philip), and the trilingual ‘title’ on the cross
(nels):
Jewish exclusiveness was apparently endorsed
by Christ Himself (Mt 5*7 (RV) 67: 33). the Twelve
are forbidden to go into any way of the Gentiles
(Mt 10°) ; and the Syropheenician woman is at first
addressed in thoroughly Jewish language (Mt 152},
Mk 7*). On the other hand, our Lord speaks the
parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 103"); com-
mends the faith of a Roman centurion as greater
than any faith He had found in Israel (Mt 8, Lk
7°); and, notwithstanding His first words to the
Syropheenician woman, recognizes and rewards the
greatness of her faith (Mt 157!, Mk 747). Simeon
welcomes the infant Messiah as a light to lighten
the Gentiles (Lk 2*), in spite of the markedly
Jewish tone of Lk 1 and 2. St. Matthew is the
narrator of the visit of Wise Men from the East
(Mt 2'); and if he traces the genealogy of Christ
to Abraham (Mt 1°), St. Luke takes it back to
Adam and God (Lk 358).
It is true that the Gospels are full of protests
against Jewish exclusiveness (Mt 3% ‘Think not
to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our
father’; cf. Jn 8518. where the claim founded on de-
scent from Abraham is contemptuously dismissed ;
also Mt 12##-, Lk 112/& ‘the men of Nineveh . . . the
queen of Sheba shall rise up in the judgment with
this generation and shall condemn it’; Mt 8", Lk
13° ‘many shall come from the east and the west
... but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast
forth’; and Mt 1151, Lk 1013, where the unrepentant
Bethsaida and Chorazin are contrasted with Tyre
and Sidon). So far as this break with the Jews shows
itself, it rests on (@) enthusiasm for humanity ; οἵ.
esp. the references to publicans and sinners, Mt 9!
119, Mk 2%, Lk 5* 797 15") and the fragment in
Jn 7-81! ; (6) the universalism of the gospel, Mt
244, Mk 14° (‘ what she hath done shall be preached
in all the world’), Mt 28, Mk 16%, Lk 2479
(‘make disciples of all the nations’); so Jn 36
12° (<I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto
myself’); the same thing would result from Mt
2025, Mk 10* (‘ to give his life a ransom for many’),
if carried ont to its logical conclusion; (6) anti-
legalism in regard to the Sabbath (Mt 12!, Mk 2°,
Lk 6! 134), ceremonial ablutions (Mt 15!, Mk 715),
the provisions of the Law (Mt 57!- 38. %- 45), and the
inadequacy of the righteousness of the scribes and
Pharisees (Mt 5%). It is noteworthy that the
ground of marriage fidelity is carried back from
Moses to the Creation (Mt 191, Mk 10°), and the
Sadducees are referred, on the subject of the resur-
rection, to God’s language to the pre-Mosaic patri-
archs (Mk 1238, Lk 20%); still Christ regards as
final a combination of Dt 64 and Ly 1918 (Mk 1275"),
and He asserts that His purpose is not to destroy
the Law but to fulfil it (Mt 5!’, ef. Mt 3%).
The real nature of Christ’s teaching cannot be
understood apart from the deductions from it in
the Acts, where the recognition of the cosmo-
politanism of the gospel is forced on the Apostles
almost against their will (Ac 82° 10!-*+ 11°"), and
even opposed by a powerful party in the Church
when explicitly stated by St. Paul (Ac 15°); but it
reaches its full statement in Ro 1013, Gal 3°, Col
311 (‘neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free’), and
Ph 3” (‘our citizenship is in heaven’). (Cf. J. R.
Seeley, Eece Homo, ch. xii. ‘The Universality of
the Christian Republic’). It will thus be seen that
the recognition of cosmopolitanism in the sense
of a universal mission of Christianity is, in the
Synoptic Gospels, only slight (ef. Harnack, Fx-
pansion of Christianity, Eng. tr. vol. i. pp. 40-48,
especially the statement that, omitting what is
probably unauthentic, ‘Mark and Matthew have
almost consistently withstood the temptation to
introduce the Gentile mission into the words and
COUCH 37]
deeds of Jesus,’ p. 40). St. Luke differs from them
in a slight colouring of expression rather than in
the narration of fresh facts. St. John had both
watched and taken part in the expansion ; but the
universalism of the Fourth Gospel is chiefly con-
fined to the striking use of the expression ‘the
world’ (see above and 4% 6°! 1247 17% ete.), which
silently bears out the view—to a Christian, abund-
antly confirmed after 70 A.D.—that the Jews were
a reprobate people. From the rejection of one race
followed the acceptance of all (Ro 11"). See
also articles EXCLUSIVENESS, GRECIANS, and UNI-
VERSALISM. W. F. LOFTHOUSE.
COUCH.—The word ‘couch’ is found in Lk 519-39
(as tr. of κλινίδιον), Where Mt 95: ὁ and Mk 95 ἢ have
‘bed’ (κλίνη and κράβαττος respectively ; κλίνη also
in Lk 538). It is found also in RVm of Mk 74 as
tr. of κλίνη. In Ac 5”, where the AV and RV
have ‘beds and couches,’ the correct text is ἐπὶ
κλιναρίων καὶ κραβάττων, ‘small beds and couches,’
or, as some render, ‘small couches and beds.’ The
fact is, the terms used for ‘couch’ and ‘bed’ are
not always sharply distinguished—certainly not
by translators. The distinction made by Bengel
and Kuinoel between κλινῶν (TR of Ac 5") and xpa-
βάττων, that the former denotes ‘soft and costly,’
and the latter ‘poor and humble,’ beds is quite
arbitrary (Meyer). In English usage the distine-
tion between ‘bed’ and ‘couch’ is clear enough ;
a couch is a piece of furniture on which it is
customary to repose or recline when dressed. A
like distinction was made by the Romans, and in
a measure by the Jews in the time of Christ, when
‘couches’ were often used for the purpose of
reclining at meals. They were known among the
Romans as triclinia, because they ran round three
sides of a table. Such ‘ couches’ were undoubtedly
in common use among the Jews of Christ’s day,
though they are not mentioned in the Gospels in
express terms, unless, against the best authorities,
we accept καὶ κλινῶν in Mk 74. They were provided
with cushions, such as are now in vogue, on which
the left elbow could rest, so as to leave the right
arm free; and were often arranged around three
sides of a table in the form of a parallelogram, the
fourth side of which was left open for the con-
venience of those waiting on the guests.
This practice of reclining at table first appears in the Bible in
the prophecy of Amos (64, cf. Ezk 2341), and is denounced by
the prophet as of foreign origin and as savouring of. sinful
luxury. The ‘couches’ there coming into view were of costly
cedar-wood inlaid with ivory (64); the feet were plated with
silver, and the backs covered with gold-leaf (cf. Ca 319), They
were usually furnished with pillows and bolsters, often of fine
Egyptian linen or silk, and richly embroidered coverings,
costly rugs, ete. (cf. Pr 716). The Tel el-Amarna tablets show
how early such luxury prevailed in Palestine, and state that
even in those ancient times couches of rare and costly wood in-
laid with gold were sent as presents from Palestine to Egypt.
Keeping this in mind will throw light on some
otherwise obscure passages in the Gospels, e.g.
where the woman is spoken of (Lk 7°°*%) as wash-
ing and anointing the feet of Jesus while He was
‘sitting (reclining) at meat in the Pharisee’s
house’; where our Lord washed the feet of His
disciples while they were at supper (Jn 13°); and
where it is said of the beloved disciple at the
supper that he, ‘leaning back, as he was, on
Jesus’ breast,’ spoke to Him of His betrayer (v.*).
There is reason to believe, however, that among
the Jewish people in general, in the most ancient
times and later, the ‘ bed,’ so far as use went, was
‘bed’ and ‘couch’ in one—a plain wooden frame
with feet and a slightly raised end for the head
(Gn 4781), differing very little, indeed, from the
bed of the Egyptians represented on the monu-
ments (Wilkinson, Anc. Eq. i. 416, fig. 191). In
the daytime and at meals people sat on it, in the
most ancient times, perhaps, with crossed legs ; and
372 COUNCIL, COUNCILLOR
then at night they placed it here or there, as the
season or need suggested, and slept on it. In the
East to-day the beds are often made by laying
bolsters on the raised part of the floor, or on the
low divans which run along the walls, and the
sitting-room of the day becomes a bedroom at
night. (See BED, CLOSET). Gro. B. EAGER.
COUNCIL, COUNCILLOR.—See SANHEDRIN.
COUNSELS OF PERFECTION.—See PERFEC-
TION (human).
COUNTENANCE.—See FACE.
COURAGE.—dviptioua, the Gr. equivalent for
Heb. pin and 72x, is not found in the Gospels,
and, except in 1 Co 16%, not in the NT. The
valour of the battlefield, so often commended in
the OT, nowhere comes into view. Christ’s king-
dom is not of this world. It does not call for the
prowess of the warrior. But there was no taint of
cowardice in Jesus, and to be His disciple did not
involve any slackening of moral fibre, or impairing
of true manliness. He foresaw a situation bristling
with menace to His followers, and courage was
therefore a prime desideratum in His disciples, as
it was an outstanding quality of His own nature.
With unsparing hand He lifted the curtain of the
future, and disclosed to all who would follow Him
the hostility and peril which discipleship must
involve (Mt 511 1016999498" Mk 1393) Ik 21/2, Jn
15” 162). He who would follow Christ must not
be faint-hearted or double-minded (Lk 9°), he
must be prepared to surrender many interests that
were formerly dear to lim, brace himself even to
the renunciation of the closest earthly relationships,
and, recognizing that the disciple is not greater than
his Master, be ready to tread the same rough path,
and bear the same cross. The demand for courage
is all the more severe that it is not the courage
of resisting, but of enduring wrong. The disciple
of Jesus is called to meekness, to the patient en-
durance of suffering wrongfully inflicted, to the
heroism of a calm and trustful heart. But the
meek temper is not the sign of weakness. It is
restrained strength. It is the high courage of en-
durance, in the spirit and for the sake of Christ.
It is of this sustained heroism that Jesus says, ‘In
your patience (ὑπομονή, ‘patient endurance’) ye
shall win your souls’ (Lk 9115), ‘ He that endureth
to the end shall be saved’ (Mt 102 2413) ; and those
who, in spite of pain and persecution, confess Him
before men, He declares He will confess before His
Father.and the holy angels (Lk 12%, cf. Mt 10°).
Of this high moral courage Jesus Himself is the
supreme example. The emphasis which is so
rightly laid upon His gentleness and compassion
tends to obscure His strength and virility. But
the remark in Ac 4% ‘When they saw the bold-
ness of Peter and John . . . they took knowledge
of them that they had been with Jesus,’ is the
record of the dominant impression made by Jesus
upon His enemies. The depth and warmth of His
sympathy had not deluded them into the thought
that He was deficient in courage. They bore wit-
ness to His fearlessness and fidelity to truth (Jn
7°*, Mt 221, His fearless exposure of hypocrisy
(Mt 1514, Mk 7!-13, Mt 231-39 e¢ al.) His disregard
of, or opposition to, religious practices which had
been invested with the sanctity of Divine law, and
the performance of which was the hall-mark of
righteousness (Mt 914 191. 9 Mk 218-33 7, Lk 598 61-8):
His defiance of and religious caste in
receiving sinners and eating with them were the
moral utterances of a courageous righteousness and
love (Mt 9, Lk 153). In circumstances of danger
He is calm and self-possessed (Mt 836), He does
social
COURTESY
not rush into danger, and more than once retires
from scenes where His life is threatened (Lk 43°;
Jn 859. 108), At those times He felt that His hour
had not come. His courage was inspired by faith
in God (Mt 855), and was controlled by obedience
to the Divine will. When He knows that His
hour has come, He presses to the cross with an
eagerness Which made those who saw Him afraid
(Mk 10%). But it is only as we enter into the
consciousness of Jesus and see Him in His perfect
purity of soul taking upon Him the sin of the
world, that we feel the wonder of His heroism.
We do not marvel that He shrank from the cup
His Father gave Him to drink. We are amazed
equally at the love and at the courage which bore
Him through until He said, ‘It is finished’ (Jn 19*°).
See, further, FEAR.
LITERATURE.—Hastings’ DB, art. ‘ Courage’ ; Aristotle, Ethics,
iii. 6-9; Denney, Gospel Questions and Answers, p. 85 ff.
JOSEPH MUIR.
COURSE.—See ABIJAH, and PRIEST.
COURT (αὐλή, tr. ‘court’ in Rev 11°, ‘sheepfold’
or ‘fold’ in Jn 10116, and ‘palace’ [RV ‘court’]
in Mt 208: ® ete.).*—-The ‘ court’ is an essential part
of the typical Oriental house. The Eastern house
represented on the monuments of Egypt and
Assyria is much like that now found, and doubt-
less found in the time of Christ, in Palestine. It
is built around an open square called ‘the court,’
into which each room opens, seldom one room into
another. Sometimes the house has more than one
‘court,’ if the wealth or the official station of the
owner warrants it.
In the richer private and public houses the
‘court’ is fitted up with great magnificence. In
Damascus we find several courts connected with a
single house, in some cases of rare richness and
beauty. The houses of two or more storeys have
chambers on each floor opening on to a common
balcony running round the inside of the court,
with a staircase in a corner of the court open to
the sky. This type of ‘court’ is usually paved
with marble or flagging, and has a well or foun-
tain in the centre (28 1718), with orange and lemon
trees and other shrubs around it. Some of them
are planted with choice tropical trees, and the
walls, verandahs, staircases, etc., are covered and
adorned with creepers and vines of untold varieties.
In Mt 26 it is said that ‘Peter sat without, ἐν
τῇ αὐλῃ, 1.6. in the ‘court’ of the high priest’s
house (v.°’). It was during the trial of Jesus ; and
‘without’ is used in contrast with an implied
‘within’—the interior of the audience-room in
which Jesus was appearing before the authorities.
Peter was not allowed into this room, but was
out in the open air of the ‘court’; and this was
‘beneath’ (Mk 14"), 7.e. on a somewhat lower level
than the audience-chamber.
The ‘court of the Gentiles,’ which was ‘ without
the temple’ (Rev 113), was on the lowest level or
terrace of the Holy Mountain, and separated from
the ‘Sanctuary’ or ‘Mountain of the House’ by a
stone wall four or five feet high, called ‘the
Soreg. All Gentiles were warned to remain out-
side of this sacred enclosure under penalty of
death (cf. Ac 9138. 29 241! 9671), See also artt. Door,
HOUSE. GEO. B. EAGER.
COURTESY.— The courtesies of life have always
received more strict and formal recognition in the
East than in the West. The people of Palestine
in Christ’s time were no exception to this rule.
They were punctilious about those conventional
forms which hedge in and govern social life, and
were not slow to resent the breach or neglect of
* “Tn kings’ courts’ of Lk 725 represents ἐν τοῖς βασιλείοις [only
occurrence of this Gr. word in NT}.
COVENANT
COVENANT
373
2277, Lk 14%!) A remarkably complete picture
of the ordinary forms of courtesy observed by
them may be made up from the Gospel narratives.
The incidents of Christ’s life, together with His
sayings and parables, show us the marked defer-
ence paid to authority, position, and learning (Mt
17}4 2216. *4 936-7 ete.), the elaborate and somewhat
burdensome hospitality bestowed on friends and
strangers when received as guests into a house
(Lk 7°), the embracings and prolonged saluta-
tions practised (Mt 26%, Mk 14”; ef. Lk 101 152
2247, Mt 10:3), the formalities observed in connexion
with feasts in rich men’s houses (Mt 22”, Lk 141”).
These courteous habits must not be regarded as
mere superficial forms. The fact that the neglect
of them, especially if believed to be intentional,
caused such serious offence to the suffering party,
is a sufficient evidence that they were more than
surface forms. At the same time the courtesies
practised were not always sincere (note the kiss of
Judas), and were, moreover, occasionally violated
in a peculiarly flagrant manner, as we learn from
the treatment Christ received once and again from
those who opposed Him, especially the treatment
He received immediately before His death. The
warm Oriental temperament, indeed, which had
so much to do with creating these courtesies, and
which found so much satisfaction in observing them,
was ready, under certain circumstances, to violate
them to an extent that the colder Western tem-
perament would never have done.
Christ’s attitude towards the established rules of
courtesy is a question of interest and importance.
His relation towards these time-worn rules was the
same as His relation towards the Law of Moses.
He observed them in the spirit and not in the
letter, and only in so far as they sincerely re-
vealed His thoughts and feelings. They were
never mere forms to Him, much less forms used
to hide the real intents of His heart. That His
attitude was not the conventional attitude of
others, but was peculiar to Himself, like His atti-
tude towards the Law (Mt 517), is evident from the |
following considerations: (1) He recognized and
followed the customary laws in so far as they
served to express His real sentiments (Lk 74-46 10°,
Jn 13+*-) ; (2) He transgressed them boldly at times,
as in His cleansing of the Temple, His injunction
‘Salute no man by the way’ (Lk 104), and His inter-
course with tax-gatherers and sinners ; (3) He gave
a larger and more humane interpretation to them
by His generous and considerate treatment, not
only of tax-gatherers and sinners, but of women,
children, Samaritans, and others who were re-
garded as more or less outside the ordinary rules
of courtesy.
There are two instances where Jesus seems to
fail in the matter of courtesy—in His reply to His
mother, ‘ Woman, what have I to do with thee?’
(Jn 24), and in His reply to the Syro-Pheenician
woman, ‘ Let the children first be filled: for it is
not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast
it unto the dogs’ (Mt 15° || Mk 72). It is only in
appearance, however, that He offends against
courtesy in these instances. The study of the
passages with the aid of a good commentary will
clear up any difficulty attaching to them.
LITERATURE.—Van Lennep, Bible Lands, their Modern Cus-
toms ; G. M. Mackie, Bible Manners and Customs ; Geikie, Holy
Land and the Bible ; Robinson, Biblical Researches in Pales-
tine [contains passim personal experiences which throw light
on the tedious courtesies of the East]; Martensen, Christian
Ethics, ii. 202ff.; T. Binney, Sermons, ii. 226; Paget, Studies
in the Christian Character, p. 209 ff. ; Dale, Laws of Christ for
Common Life, p. 107 ff. ; Expositor, 1st. ser. iv. [1876] p. 179 ff.
MOoRISON BRYCE.
COVENANT. — In order to a correct apprehen-
these forms when it affected them directly (Mt | Lord in the Gospels, a brief survey of the OT
usage is necessary.
The covenant conception is of frequent occurrence in the OT.
Used at first in connexion with single transactions and partial
aspects of the religious intercourse between God and man, it
later becomes the formula designating the entire structure and
content of the religion of Israel in its most comprehensive sense.
This latter representation occurs as early as Gn 171-14, Ex 195
247-8, and often in Deuteronomy. The earlier covenants be-
longing to the time of Noah and Abraham (Gn 618 98-17 1518) do
not yet possess this comprehensive character, but appear as
solemn religious rites whereby some particular promise of God
is made sure. Whether the word berith (Π 3) originally meant
‘enactment,’ ‘appointment,’ ‘law,’ a meaning which it un-
doubtedly has in several instances, or did from the beginning
signify a two-sided agreement, cannot be determined with
certainty. It seems easier to conceive of the former sense as
developed out of the latter than the reverse. At any rate, the
comprehensive signification in which it stands for the whole
religious relationship between God and Israel, rests on the idea
of the covenant as a two-sided agreement. It should be re-
membered, however, that the two-sidedness never extends so
far that God and Israel appear on an equal footing in the de-
termination of the covenant. The planning and proposing of
the covenant belong exclusively to God. Still the fact that
Israel voluntarily accepts the covenant is as strongly empha-
sized (Ex 19° 243.7, and elsewhere). Indeed, the covenant idea
serves primarily to express the free, ethical, historically origin-
ated bond that exists between God and Israel. Its covenant
character marks off the religion of Israel as a religion of real,
conscious, spiritual fellowship between God and His people, in
distinction from the religions of paganism, in which either the
Deity and the creature are pantheistically fused, or the God-
head after a deistic fashion is so far removed from the creature
as to render true communion impossible, and where the relation
between a national god and his worshippers is not a matter of
choice but of necessity on both sides.
In the early Prophets the conception of the covenant is not
particularly prominent. With Hosea, the figure of marriage,
probably not viewed as yet by the prophet as a species of
covenant, serves the same purpose. There is no reason, how-
ever, for denying that Hosea knew the covenant conception in
its comprehensive religious sense, and on this ground to call in
question the genuineness of 81. Greater prominence the cove-
nant idea obtains from the age of Jeremiah onwards. Besides
the emphasis thrown on the ethical-historical. character of
Israel's religion. two other important principles attach them-
selves to the term, partly developing out of the principle just
stated. On the one hand, the covenant idea begins to express
the continuity of God’s dealings with His people ; as it is a bond
freely established, so it is the fruit of design and the fountain of
further history, it has a prospective reference and makes Israel’s
religion a growing thing ; in a word, the covenant idea gathers
around itself the thoughts we have in mind when speaking of
a history of redemption and revelation. On the other hand,
inasmuch as God is the originator of the covenant and has
solemnly bound Himself not merely to fulfil His promises to
Israel, but also to carry out His own purposes contemplated in
the covenant, the same bond which originally expresses the
freedom of the relation between God and Israel can also be-
come the pledge of the absolute certainty, that God will not
finally break with His people, Israel’s infidelity notwithstanding.
In Isaiah 40-66, and especially in Jeremiah, the covenant thus
stands to express the continuity and sureness of the accomplish-
ment of the Divine purpose with reference to Israel. Out of
the combination of these two ideas arises the Messianic or
eschatological significance which the covenant idea obtains in
both these prophets. In Isaiah 40-66 it is more than once
introduced to emphasize the infallible character of the Divine
promise given of old (Is 549-10 553 5921 618). In two passages
(428 and 498) the servant of Jehovah is designated as Dy n73,
a somewhat obscure phrase, of which the two most plausible
interpretations are, either that the servant will be the instru-
ment of realizing the future covenant between God and Israel,
or, placing the emphasis on 07, that he will be the means of
establishing a people-bevith, a b’rith in which Israel, in con-
trast to its present scattered condition, will once more become
a unified, organized nation. These two passages are of import-
ance, because they bring the idea of the covenant into con-
nexion with the figure of the Servant of Jehovah, which,
assuming that the latter was Messianically interpreted by our
Lord and applied to Himself, would explain that He represents
Himself as the inaugurator of ἃ new covenant.
In Jeremiah the covenant idea appears as a Messianic idea in
two forms. Inso far as the promise given to the house of
David was a promise pledged in solemn covenant, the Messianic
blessings are a covenant gift (3320-21 ; cf. Ps 8928, Is 553). This
is an instance of the old application of the idea to a concrete
promise, which, however, in the present case, owing to the
wide scope of the promise involved, would easily become
identified in the mind of later generations with the expectation
of an eschatological covenant in the comprehensive sense. The
latter is the other form in which Jeremiah uses the covenant
with reference to the future (319134). This is the only place
where the notion of a new covenant occurs explicitly, although
the thought itself is not foreign to the older prophets. Hosea
| has it in the form of the new marriage which Jehovah will con-
sion of the term ‘covenant,’ as it is used by our |
tract with Israel. Jeremiah conceives of the new covenant as
374
COVENANT
COVENANT
the outcome of the covenant character of the relation between
God and Israel in general. To the prophet’s mind religion and
the covenant have become so identified that the covenant idea
becomes the stable, permanent element in the historical de-
velopment; if in its old form the covenant disappears, then in
anew form it must reappear. The newness will consist in the
twofold feature, that the sin of the people will be forgiven, 7.e.
the former sin, and that the law of Jehovah, instead of being an
outward, objective covenant obligation, will become an inward,
subjective covenant reality, written on the heart in consequence
of the universal and perfect knowledge of Jehovah which will
prevail. This passage in Jeremiah lies at the basis of the NT
use of the phrase ‘the new covenant.’ : Page
Two further passages in the prophets, to which a Messianic
application of the covenant idea could easily attach itself, are
Zec 91land Mal 3l. In the former passage the original reads :
‘Because of the blood of thy covenant, / have sent forth thy
prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water’; the LXX has, in
the second person of address to Jehovah, ‘ Because of the blood
of thy covenant, thow hast sent forth,’ etc. On the former ren-
dering the covenant is the covenant made with Israel, or, since
this interpretation of the suffix ‘thy’ is deemed impossible by
some, we may refer the suffix to the compound phrase ‘ cove-
nant blood,’ and understand the phrase ‘thy covenant blood’ of
the sacrificial blood by means of which Israel continually up-
holds and renews the covenant with Jehovah. On the render-
ing of the LXX the covenant is represented as the covenant
made and maintained by Jehovah. In the Malachi-passage the
coming of the ‘angel’ or ‘messenger of the covenant’ is pre-
dicted. This ‘angel of the covenant’ is not identical with the
Lord, but asa distinct person he accompanies the coming of the
Lord to His temple. He is called ‘the angel of the covenant,’
either because he realizes the covenant, or because his coming
is in virtue of the existing covenant. It is easy to see how on
either view a significant connexion could be established between
the Messiah and the covenant.
The LXX regularly renders berith by διαθήκη, the later Greek
versions prefer συνθήκη. The latter term better expresses the
idea of a two-sided agreement ; but probably this was precisely
the reason why the LXX translators, desiring to emphasize the
one-sided Divine origin and character of the covenant, avoided it.
It should also be remembered that in not a few instances berith
in the original meant not a covenant but an authoritative dis-
position, which, as stated above, is according to some scholars
even the primary meaning of the word. On the side of the
Greek, also, there were considerations which explain the choice
of διαθήκη in preference to συνθήκη. It is true, in classical Greek
the former meant usually a testamentary disposition, and might
in so far have seemed unsuitable as a rendering for berith. But
occasionally at least διαθήκη could stand for a two-sided agree-
ment (Aristoph. Av. 432). The verb δια τίθεσθοι was not bound
to the notion of ‘ testament,’ but signified authoritative arrange-
ments generally. And above all things it should be noted that
the testamentary διαθήκη among the Greeks before and at the
time of the LXX translation differed in many respects from our
modern Roman-law ‘testament,’ and possessed features which
brought it into closer contact with the Hebrew berith. The
διαθήκη was a solemn and public transaction of a religious char-
acter, by which an irrevocable disposition of rights and pro-
perty was made, and which for its effect was not dependent
on the death of the διαλέμενος, but immediately set in opera-
tion certain of the duties and relationships established. ‘Thus
conceived, the διαθήκη could all the more easily become the
equivalent of the berith between God and Israel, because
already in the OT the idea of ‘the inheritance’ had signifi-
cantly attached itself to that of the covenant.
In the NT the noun used is always 34267
The word retains
the one-sided associations of the LXX usage, yet in most
cases the NT writers show themselves aware of the peculiar
covenant-meaning descended with it from the OT. An addi-
tional possibility of interpreting it in the sense of testament
was furnished by the fact that the blessings of the Messianic
era were derived from the death of Christ. Hence in He 916.17
the new covenant is represented as a testament bestowing upon
believers the eternal inheritance, because the death of Christ
had to intervene to make the bestowal effectual. As Ramsay has
pointed out (Hapositor, Nov. 1898, pp. 321-330), this representa:
tion is based on Roman law, according to which a testament
has no force until the death of the testator. On the other
hand, the Pauline representation of Gal 317-18 is based on the
Grieco-Syrian law of the earlier period, under which the διαθήκη,
once made, could not be subsequently modified, and took effect
in certain directions immediately. “No reflexion is here made
on the death of the testator. Still, that διαθήκη does not here
have the unmodified OT sense of ‘covenant,’ but means ‘testa-
mentary disposition,’ is plain from the fact that “sonship’ and
‘heirship’ are connected with it in the course of the argument.
These two passages in Hebrews and Galatians are the only NT
passages which explicitly refer to the testamentary character of
th > διαί In how far in other instances the associations of
the testament idea lay in the speaker's or writer’s mind cannot
“alnzn.
be determined with certainty (ef. Ac 8525 υἱοὶ τῆς διαθήκης ; Gal
421) διαθήκη γιννῶσα εἰς δουλείαν). ; ei
; In the AV of the NT διαθήκη is in 14 instances rendered by
testament’ (Mt 2628, Mk 14°4, Lk 2220, 1 Co i125, 2 Co 36.14. He
722 915 bis 18, 2
16. 17 ) Rev 1119), AS
‘testament’ is also offered in Ro 94, Gal
In all these cases,
‘testament’ by
ἃ marginal alternative
i 315 424, He 86 1224 1320,
except in He 916.17, the RV has replaced
‘covenant,’ offering, however, the former as a
marginal alternative in Mt 2628, Mk 1424, Lk 2220, 1 Co 1125,
2 Co 36-14, Gal 315.17, He 722 86. 7. 8.9 bis. 10. 18 915 bis, 20, Rev 1119,
In the American RV the marginal reading ‘testament’ has in all
these cases been dropped, except in He 915.20, The principle by
which the Revisers were guided is plain. The only question
can be whether, in view of what was stated above, they were
right in rendering ‘covenant’ and not ‘testament’ in Gal
319.17, The point to be determined in each case is not whether
the associations of ‘testament’ were present to the speaker’s
or writer’s mind, but whether those of ‘ covenant’ were absent :
only where the latter is the case ought ‘covenant’ to be
abandoned, and Gal 815. 17 seems to belong to this class. What
motives in each case underlie the choice of ‘testament’ and
‘covenant’ in AV is not so plain. Possibly these motives were
not always exegetical, but derived from the usage of earlier
(English and other) versions. The following explanation is
offered tentatively : wherever the contrast between the old and
the new διαθήκη is expressed or implied, ‘testament’ was
chosen, because ‘testament’ had long since, on the basis of
the Latin Bible, become familiar as a designation of the two
canons of Scripture, in the forms ‘the,Old Testament,’ ‘ the
New Testament.’ This will explain Mt 2628, Mk 1424, Lk 2220,
1 Co 11, 2 Co 36.14, He 722, In He 915-20, of course, the import
of the passage itself required ‘testament.’ He 88. (‘a better
covenant’) 7 (‘that first covenant’) 8- (‘a new covenant’) 9.
10.13 (Sa new covenant’), 91 (‘the first covenant’), 1224 (‘the
new covenant’), seem to run contrary to the explanation
offered, but in each of these instances the context furnished a
special reason for favouring ‘covenant’: in He 8-48 the dis-
course revolves around the quotation from Jeremiah, which had
‘covenant’ ; 91 is still continuous with this section, and in 1224
the contrast between the mediatorship of Moses and that of
Jesus, and the reference to the transaction of Ex 24, suggested
‘covenant.’ In 2 Co 36-14 ‘testament’ was especially suitable,
because here the idea of διαθήκη might seem to approach that
of a body of writings (v.14 ‘the reading of the Old Testa-
ment’). Strange and unexplained is Rev 1119 (‘ the ark of his
testament’), cf. He 94 (‘ the ark of the covenant’).
It seems strange at first sight that a conception
so prominent in the OT is so little utilized in the
NT. Perhaps the main reason for this was the
intensity of the eschatological interest in that
age, which made other terms appear more suitable
to describe the new order ot things felt to be
approaching or to have already begun. On the
whole, the covenant idea had not been intimately
associated with eschatology in the OT. The con-
sciousness that the work of Christ had ushered in
a new state of things for the present life of the
people of God, distinct and detached from the legal
life of Judaism, for which latter the word ‘cove-
nant’ had become the characteristic expression,
dawned only gradually upon the early Church.
The phrase ‘ Kingdom of God,’ while emphasizing
the newness of the Messianic order of things,
leaves unexpressed the superseding of the Mosaic
institutions by the introduction of something else.
With this agrees the fact that the conception of
Christianity as a covenant is most familiar to pre-
cisely those two NT writers who with greatest
clearness and emphasis draw the contrast between
the Mosaic forms of life and those of the Christian
era, viz. St. Paul and the author of Hebrews.
Even with St. Paul, however, the contrast referred
to finds only occasional expression in terms of the
covenant: as a rule, it is expressed in other ways,
such as the antithesis between law and grace, works
and faith. The Epistle to the Hebrews is the only
NT writing which gives to the covenant idea the
same central dominating place as it has in the
greater part of the OT.
In the Gospels the word ‘covenant,’ in a religi-
ous sense, occurs but twice, in Lk 17, and in the
words spoken by our Lord at the Supper. In the
former passage the covenant with Abraham is
referred to, and the Messianic salvation repre-
sented as a fulfilment of the promise of that cove-
nant. The emergence of the idea here is in
harmony with the best OT traditions : it expresses
the consciousness of the sovereign grace and unde-
served faithfulness of God which pervades the pro-
phetie pieces preserved for us in the gospel of the
incarnation according to St. Luke. Of course, in
a broad sense the idea of the relation between God
and Israel embodied in the word ‘ covenant’ under-
lies and pervades all our Lord’s teaching. Notwith-
COVENANT
COVENANT 375
standing the so-called ‘intensive universalism’
and the recognition of religion as a natural bond
between God and man, antedating all positive
forms of intercourse, our Lord was a thorough-
going supernaturalist, who viewed both the past
relationship of God to Israel and the future re-
lationship to be established in the Kingdom not as
the outcome of the natural religion of man, but as
the product of a special, historic, supernatural
approach of God to man, such as the OT calls
‘covenant.’ While probably the legalistic shade
of meaning which the word had obtained was less
congenial to Him, He must have been in full accord
with the genuine OT principle expressed in it.
Mk 8* and Mt 12° speak of the Jews as an
‘adulterous generation,’ and probably the later
prophetic representation of the covenant as a
Inarriage-covenant lies at the basis of this mode
of statement.
The words spoken at the Supper were, according
to St. Matthew (2678) and St. Mark (14%), τοῦτό
ἐστιν τὸ αἷμά μου THs διαθήκης (AD in Matthew and
A in Mark τῆς καινῆς διαθήκης) ; according to St.
Luke (2250) and St. Paul (1 Co 1135) τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον
ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη ἐν τῷ αἵματί μου [in 1 Cor. ἐμῷ αἵματι].
There is some doubt, however, about the genuine-
ness of the context in St. Luke in which these
words occur. In D and some other MSS, 22! (be-
ginning with τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν) and v.* are lacking.
The textual-critical problem is a very complicated
one (cf. Westcott and Hort, Nofes on Select Read-
ings in the Appendix, pp. 63-64; Haupt, Ueber
die urspriingliche Form und Bedeutung der A bend-
mahisworte, pp. 6-10 ; Johannes Weiss, Das alteste
Evangelium, pp. 294-299; Johannes Hoffmann,
Das Abendmahl im Urchristenthum, pp. 7, 8 [all
of whom adopt the shorter text]; Schultzen, Das
Abendmahl im Neuen Testament, pp. 5-19; R. A.
Hoffmann, Die Abendmahlsgedanken Jesu Christi,
pp. 7-21 [who are in favour of the TR]. It ought
to be remembered, though it is sometimes over-
looked, that the rejection of νν. 13": °° as not origin-
ally belonging to the Gospel is by no means
equivalent to declaring these words unhistorical,
i.e. not spoken by Jesus. Wendt, e.g. (Die Lehre
Jesu”, p. 496), assumes the originality of the shorter
text in St. Luke, and yet believes, on the basis of
the other records, that Jesus spoke the words which
St. Luke, for reasons arising out of his ‘ combina-
tion-method,’ omitted. (Similarly Haupt, p. 10).
Still, as a matter of fact, with some writers the
adoption of the shorter text is accompanied by the
belief that it represents an older and more accurate
tradition of what actually took place. On the
other hand, it remains possible, even in retaining
the TR as originally Lukan, to believe that St.
Luke’s source supplied him with a highly peculiar
version of the occurrence preserved in νν. 15.198. and
that he assimilated this to the other more current
representation by borrowing vv.!-** from St.
Paul. On the whole, however, the acceptance of
the genuineness of the longer text naturally tends
to strengthen the presumption that a statement in
regard to which all the records agree must be his-
torical. Contextual considerations also seem to
speak in favour of the genuineness of the disputed
words. If vv.'%-°° do not belong to the text, St.
Luke must have looked upon the cup of v.7 as
the cup of the Sacrament, for it would have been
impossible for him to relate an institution sub una
specie. But this assumption, viz. that the cup of
v.'7 meant for St. Luke the eup of the Sacra-
ment, is impossible, because v.!* comes between
this cup and the bread of ν.}8, Further, ν. 5. so
closely corresponds to y.!® as to set νν. 518 by
themselves, a group of four verses with a care-
fully constructed parallelism between the first and |
the third, the second and the fourth of its mem-
bers respectively ; and inasmuch as vy.” belongs
to this group, it cannot very well have been con-
nected by the author with ν.}9 in such a close
manner as the co-ordination of the cup and the
bread in the Sacrament would require. In general,
the advocates of the shorter text do not sueceed in
explaining how the author of the Third Gospel,
who must have been familiar with the other
accounts, and can hardly have differed from them
in his belief that the Supper was instituted as
celebrated in the Church at that time, could have
regarded vy.!°"!* as an adequate institution of the
rite with which he was acquainted. It is much
easier to believe that a later copyist found the cup
of the Sacrament in v.!7, and therefore omitted
v.”, than that a careful historian, such as St.
Luke was, should have deliberately entertained
this view, even if he had found a version to that
effect in one of his sources.
Altogether apart from the textual problem in St.
Luke, the historicity of the words relating to the
covenant-blood has been called in question. Just as
the saying about the λύτρον in Mk 10* and Mt 20°,
so this utterance has been suspected since the time
of Baur on account of its alleged Paulinizing char-
acter. Recently this view has gained renewed
advocacy by such writers as W. Brandt, Die Evan-
gelische Geschichte, pp. 289 ff., 566; Bousset, Die
Evangeliencitate Justin des Martyrers, p. 1124. ;
Wrede, ZNTIW, 1900, pp. 69-74; Hollmann, Die
Bedeutung des Todes Jesu, p. 145 ΤΠ The prin-
cipal arguments on which these writers rest their
contention are, that whilst to St. Paul the idea of
the new covenant is familiar, no trace of it appears
elsewhere in the teaching of Jesus; that it is ex-
pressive of an antithesis to the OT religion and its
institutions out of harmony with Jesus’ general
attitude towards these; that in Justin Martyr’s
version of the institution the disputed words do
not occur (so Bousset); that the structure of the
sentence in Matthew and Mark still betrays the
later addition of the genitive τῆς διαθήκης (50
Wrede). The mere fact, however, that a certain
conception occurs with a degree of dectrinal
pointedness in Paul, does not warrant us in sus-
pecting it when it occurs in the mouth of Jesus.
With St. Paul himself the shade of meaning of the
word is not in every passage the same. It cannot
be proved that the Apostle read into what were to
him the words of the institution an anti-Judaistice
significance, such as belongs to the conception in
Gal 4% and 2 Co 3°. Even the characterization of
the διαθήκη as καινή does not require us to assume
this. Even to St. Paul, we shall have to say, the
phrase καινὴ διαθήκη has in the present instance the
more general soteriological associations, in view of
which the antithesis of the new to the old and the
superseding of the old by the new recede into the
background. The new covenant is the covenant
which fulfils the OT promises, rather than the new
covenant which abrogates the OT law. With still
more assurance we may affirm this of the words as
ascribed to Jesus in Mark and Matthew. Here
(apart from the hardly original reading of A and D
in Matthew and A in Mark) the explicit desig-
nation of the διαθήκη as καινή is not found. While
the thought of the substitution of one covenant for
another is undoubtedly the logical correlate of the
statement even in this form, yet such an inference,
if present at all, can have lain in the periphery
only, not in the centre of the consciousness of Him
who thus spoke.
It ought to be observed that the literal rendering
of the words is not: ‘This is my covenant-blood,’
with the emphasis on the pronoun, but: ‘This
is my blood, covenant-blood.’ The enclitic μου
is too weak to bear the stress the former ren-
dering would put upon it. Accordingly, μου be-
376 COVENANT
longs neither to διαθήκη nor to the compound
idea ‘covenant-blood,’ but to the noun ‘blood ἦ
only, as is also required by this, that τὸ αἷμά
μου should be the exact correlate of τὸ σῶμά
μου. The other construction, ‘my covenant,’ could
only mean either ‘the covenant concluded with
me,’ as in the original of Zee 9", or ‘the covenant
made by me as a contracting party,’ as in the LXX
rendering of that passage, hardly ‘the covenant
inaugurated by me between God and you.’ | And
ye the last it would have to mean here, if μου
went with διαθήκη. By these considerations we are
led to adopt the rendering ‘this is my blood,
covenant-blood’; and this rendering makes it
appear at once, that our Lord does not in the first
place contrast His covenant-blood with the Mosaic
covenant-blood, but simply speaks of His blood as
partaking of the character of covenant-blood after
the analogy of that used by Moses. But even if
the comparison with the Mosaic covenant bore
more of an antithetical character than it does, it
would still be rash to assert that such an antithesis
between the relation to God inaugurated by Him-
self and that prevailing under the Mosaic law could
find no place in our Lord’s consciousness, especially
towards the close of His life. His attitude towards
the Mosaic law, as reflected in the Gospels, presents
a complicated problem. This much, however, is
beyond doubt, that side by side with reverence for
the Law there is, both in His teaching and con-
duct, a note of sovereign freedom with regard to
it. From the position expressed in such sayings
as Mk 22! 2715-83 to the conception of a new cove-
nant superseding the old there is but one step.
We take for granted that the words were actu-
ally spoken by Jesus. In view of the fact that He
uttered them in Aramaic, the question, whether
the rendering of Matthew and Mark or that of
Paul and Luke more nearly reproduces the original,
becomes difficult to decide and also of minor im-
portance. Zahn (Luvin. εἰ. Matt. p. 686, note 52)
suggests that from the Aramaic form spn °97 both
renderings might, without material modification of
the sense, have been derived. That the thought
is in both forms essentially the same will appear
later, after we have inquired into the content of
Jesus’ statement.
The intricate problems connected with the insti-
tution of the Supper can here be touched upon in
so far only as they bear upon the meaning of the
words relating to the covenant. We give a brief
survey of the various interpretations placed upon
those words.
First we may mention the interpretation according to which
the covenant spoken of by Jesus stands in no real connexion
with His death. Most modern writers who detach the original
significance of. the act of Jesus from His death, assume that the
reference to the covenant is a later addition. Thus Johannes
Hoffmann makes Jesus say no more than ‘This is my body,’
‘This is my blood,’ and interprets this as meaning, that the
disciples must be closely knit together as members of one body,
Himself forming the centre. The meal is a meal of friendship.
Phe Saviour even at this eleventh hour did not expect to die,
but confidently looked forward to the immediate glorious
ippearance of the Kingdom of God. With this thought in mind
He asked the disciples to unite themselves symbolically into the
littl flock for which the Kingdom was appointed.
Dismissing this and similar views, because they leave the
covenant words out of consideration, we note that Spitta has
developed a hypothesis which, while cutting loose the Supper
from the death of Christ, nevertheless interprets its symbolism
a3 a covenant symbolism (Zur Geschichte und Literatur des
Urehristenthums, i. pp. 207-337). According to Spitta, the
covenant is none other than the Davidic-Messianic covenant
promised by the prophets, and inasmuch as this covenant had
been frequently represented under the figure of a great feast,
our Lord could by means of the
5 Supper give to the disciples a
symbolic anticipation of its 7 f ‘
approaching joys, the more so since
the figure of a banquet to describe the eschatological Kingdom
occurs also elsewhere in Jesus’ teaching. The partaking of this
Messianic feast could be represented asa partaking of the
Messiah (‘This is my body,’ ‘ This is my blood’), because the
Messiah was the Author and Centre of these future blessings
Jesus, while knowing that His death was at hand, yet in faith
projecsed Himself beyond death into the time of the Kingdom :
COVENANT
the Supper was to Him a feast of joy, nota memorial of death. It
was a single triumphant anticipation of the great feast of victory,
not intended to be repeated asa rite. The present description
of the covenant as a 2ew covenant in the Pauline-Lukan record
is, according to Spitta, a later modification of the conception in an
anti-Judaistic direction. So far asits understanding of the term
‘covenant’ is concerned, this hypothesis has a certain OT basis
to rest upon. To be sure, the Davidic covenant, to which Spitta
makes Jesus refer, is in the OT a past covenant, a covenant
made with David, the pledge and basis of future blessings, not
a name for the blessings of the Messianic age themselves. But
this might easily become blended with the prophetic prediction
of a new covenant in the Messianic time, and then actually the
covenant of David could become equivalent to the Messianic
blessedness (cf. Is 55% ‘the sure mercies of David’), There is,
however, no prophetic passage which joins together the con-
ceptions of the Messianic covenant and of a feast, so that no
explanation is offered of the association of the one with the
other in the mind of Jesus. The account of Ex 24 far more
plausibly explains the combination of these two ideas, for here
the covenant and the feast actually occur together. And if this
be the more direct source of our Lord’s reference to the cove-
nant, then it follows that the blood and the covenant stand in a
much more direct connexion with each other than Spitta assumes.
According to Spitta, it is the blood which represents the person-
ality of Jesus, who is the Author and Centre of the covenant.
According to Ex 248 it is the blood directly inaugurating the
covenant. Apart from every reference to Ex 24, when the blood
is brought into connexion with the covenant (‘this is my blood
of the covenant’), it becomes entirely impossible to think of
anything else than a covenant based on sacrificial blood : every
other mode of joining these two terms is artificial. Spitta’s
further assumption, that the eating of the bread and the drink-
ing of the wine stand for a partaking of the Messiah’s body and
blood, as a symbol of the eating of the Messiah, altogether apart
from His death, is highly improbable. The feast as a whole
might be the symbol of a participation in the Messiah, though
even the examples quoted by Spitta of this mode of speaking
are not sufficient to prove a current usage, if the sacrificial meal
be left out of account. Assuming, however, that the general
phrase ‘eating the Messiah’ was familiar to Jesus and the dis-
ciples outside of every connexion with the sacrificial meal, the
distributive form in which the records present the thought, that
of eating the Messiah’s body and drinking His blood, could
hardly have possessed such familiarity, and compels us, while
not rejecting the idea of appropriating the Messiah, to think of
Him as appropriated in His sacrificial capacity.
We turn next to the theories which recognize that the cove
nant stands through the blood in connexion with the death of
Jesus. When the blood is called ‘covenant-blood,’ this un-
doubtedly implies that Jesus’ death is instrumental in intro-
ducing the covenant. Justice is not done to this when merely
in some indirect way the death is supposed to prepare the way
for the covenant, viz., in so far as it forms the transition to a
higher life which will enable Jesus to bestow upon His disciples
the covenant-blessings. Thus the direct nexus between the
blood and the covenant is severed. The view stated is that
of Titius (Die neutestamentliche Lehre von der Seligkeit, i.
p. 150ff.). According to this writer, the Supper is to be
explained not from the idea of the forgiveness of sin, but from
that of the communication of life. Titius does not identify this
covenant with the consummate eschatological state ; it is some-
thing intermediate between that and the communion with God
into which Jesus introduced His disciples before His death.
The new covenant is made possible by the death of Jesus,
because through this death He will be raised into heaven,
whence the powers of eternal life can descend upon His Church
through the gift of the Holy Spirit. It may be justly objected
to this construction, that in it the death of Jesus appears not
as a source of blessing by itself, but as a more or less accidental
entrance into the life of glory, from which the blessing flows.
As Titius himself admits, in the abstract it would have been
quite possible to procure the new covenant and the perfected
communion with God without the intervention of Jesus’ death,
viz., if it had pleased God to exalt the Messiah in some other
way. Thus it becomes difficult to understand how so much
emphasis can be placed by Jesus upon the appropriation of
His death, or how He can require the disciples to drink His
blood. The appropriation symbolized certainly cannot relate
to the accidental form in which the blessing is prepared, it must
have reference to the substance of the blessing itself. If the
death is the object of appropriation, then it must possess a
direct and intrinsic significance for the covenant in which the
disciples are to share.
This isrecognized by Wendt (Lehre Jesu 2, p. 502 ff.), according
to whom Jesus reyarded His death as a covenant-sacrifice,
standing in the same relation to the new covenant predicted by
Jeremiah as the sacrifice brought by Moses sustained to the
Sinaitic covenant. In his opinion, the record of Ex 24 shows
that the Mosaic sacrifice had nothing to do with atonement,
but consisted of burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, meant as
a gift to God expressing the people’s consent to His revealed
law, and hence became a seal of covenant relation. The sacrifice
pledged both God and the people. In analogy with this, Jesus
represents His death as a gift dedicated to God, for the sake of
which God will establish the new covenant, i.e. the state of
salvation in the Kingdom of God, not, to be sure, on any strictly
legal principle of recompense, but in harmony with His inex-
haustible goodness and grace. Wendt’s interpretation is wrong,
not so much in what it affirms as in what it denies. That Jesus
regarded the sacrifice of His life as a gift to God, and ascribed
2 ee
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to it saving significance because it was an act of positive
obedience, may be safely affirmed. The confidence, however,
with which He appropriates the effects of this act to the dis-
ciples does not favour Wendt’'s assumption, that He made these
effects dependent on a gracious will of God, imparting to the
sacrifice a value which intrinsically it did not possess. But,
apart from this, the analogy with the Mosaic sacrifice leads us
to believe that Jesus did not confine Himself to viewing His
death under the aspect of a gift. The prominence here given
to the blood forbids us to interpret the sacrifice as exclusively,
or even primarily, a symbol of gratitude or consecration to God.
Even though the sacrifices brought were not specific sin-
offerings, but burnt- offerings and peace - offerings, this does
not eliminate from them the element of expiation. The Law
itself speaks of expiation in connexion with the burnt-offerings
(Ly 14), and the Passover-sacrifice, closely akin to the peace-
offerings, certainly had expiatory significance. It may even be
doubted whether the idea of a gift to God, except in the most
general sense in which every sacrifice is a gift, was present to
the mind of the author of Ex 24. When Moses calls the blood
sprinkled on the people ‘the blood of the covenant which
Jehovah has made with you,’ this can scarcely mean ‘the blood
by the dedication of which God is induced to make the
covenant.’ It must mean either ‘the blood by whose ex-
piatory power the covenant is inaugurated,’ or ‘the blood
by which, as a bond of life between God and the people,
the covenant is established and maintained.’ Perhaps it may
express both of the thoughts just mentioned, since the ideas of
expiatio and communio were often united in the conception of
sacrifice. Besides this, the association in the mind of Jesus
between the new covenant and the forgiveness of sins is
rendered highly probable by the joint-occurrence of the two
ideas in the Jeremiah-passage, where the forgiveness of sins is
named as the great blessing of the new covenant. Now, if
Jesus had this thought in mind, and spoke at the same time
of the sacrificial pouring forth of His blood, then it was almost
impossible for Him not to unite the two thoughts, so as to
conceive of the blood as a blood of expiation securing forgive-
ness. It is by no means necessary to rest this argument on
the words in Matthew ‘unto the forgiveness of sins.’ Supposing
that these words are a later interpretation of the thought, we
shall still have to recognize them as an essentially correct
interpretation, which merely resolves the ὑπέρ of Mark and Luke
into περί-Ἐ εἰς.
A further argument may be added to this from the part which
the covenant conception plays in the second part of the Book
of Isaiah in connexion with the figure of the Servant of Jehovah,
who is called, as we have seen, the 0 n72. In our opinion,
although this has been denied by Ritschl and others, there can
be no doubt that the Servant-of-Jehovah-prophecy, and parti-
cularly Is 53, was an influential factor in determining the
Messianic consciousness of Jesus. In this prophecy, however,
the sacrificial role of the Servant, in an expiatory, vicarious
sense, is so distinctly delineated, that, once finding Himself in
the chapter, Jesus could not conceive thereafter of His death,
or of the relation of His death to the covenant, on any other
principle than is here set forth (cf. Denney, The Death of
Christ, pp. 13-56).
Asa matter of fact, the trend of recent investi-
gation of the problem of the Supper is towards the
acknowledgement, that the words, as they stand,
not merely in Luke and Paul, nor merely in
Matthew, but even in Mark, clearly express, and
were intended by the writers of the Gospels to
‘express, the expiatory interpretation of the death
of Jesus. So far as the purely exegetical deter-
mination of the sense of the words ex animo
auctorum (in distinetion from. the estimate put
upon their historic credibility) is concerned, the
traditional Church-doctrine is being more and more
decisively vindicated. True, many modern writers,
while granting this, emphatically deny that our
Lord spoke, or could have spoken, the words which
St. Paul and the Synoptists attribute to Him, or
that what He spoke can have had the meaning
which the words in their present setting and form
convey. The two main reasons for this denial are,
‘that, on the one hand, the teaching of Jesus about
‘the sinner’s relation to God is such as to leave no
room for sacrificial expiation as a prerequisite of
the sinner’s acceptance, forgiveness flowing from
God's free grace; and that, on the other hand, in
the early Apostolic Chureh the expiatory inter-
pretation of the death of Jesus is not present from
-the beginning, as it would have been if Jesus had
taught it, but marks a subsequent doctrinal de-
velopment. Neither of these contentions has
sufficient force to discredit the unanimous witness
of St. Paul and the Synoptists. In point of fact,
Jesus nowhere represents the forgiveness of sins as
COVENANT 377
absolutely unconditioned. It is one of the gifts
connected with the state of sonship in the Kingdom.
Consequently, it is bound to His own person in the
same sense and to the same degree as the general
inheritance of the Kingdom is. Unless one is
ready to assert with Harnack, that in the gospel,
as preached by Jesus Himself, there is no place
for His person, it will be necessary to believe that
our Lord considered His own Messianic character
and work of supreme importance, not merely for
the preaching, but also for the actual establish-
ment of the Kingdom of God. This being so, it
became necessary for Him to combine with the
specific form He gave to His Messiahship a specific
conception of the manner in which the blessings of
the Kingdom are obtained by the disciples. His
views about the forgiveness of sins would be less
apt to be determined by any abstract doctrine as
to the nature of God, than by the concrete mode
in which the developments of His life led Him, in
dependence upon Scripture, to conceive of the char-
acter of His Messiahship and its relation to the
coming of the Kingdom. If He anticipated death,
as there is abundant evidence to show He did,
from a comparatively early point in His ministry,
then He could not fail to ascribe to this death’ a
Messianic meaning; and this Messianic meaning,
if there was to belong to it any definiteness at all,
could hardly be other than that portrayed by the
prophet Isaiah in the suffering Servant of Jehovah.
It is quite true that the silence observed by our
Lord in regard to this important matter till very
near the close of His m‘nistry is calculated to
awaken surprise. But this silence He likewise
preserved till the same point with regard to His
Messianic calling in general; the problem is not
greater in the former respect than in the latter;
the reasons which will explain the one will also
explain the other. Nor should it be forgotten
that, side by side with His high conception of the
love of God, Jesus asc1ibed supreme importance
to the Divine justice. He carefully preserved the
valuable truth contained in the exaggerated Jewish
ideas about the forensic relation between God and
man (ef. Keim, v. 331, ‘A continual oscillation
between the standpoint of grace and that of Jewish
satisfaction can be established’). Recognizing this
element in His teaching as something He did not
hold prefunctorily, but with great earnestness of
conviction, we have no right to assert that every
idea of expiation and satisfaction must have been
on principle repudiated by Jesus as inconsistent
with the love of God. Nor is there much force
in the second contention, namely, that the absence
of the expiatory interpretation of the death of
Jesus from the early Apostolic preaching proves
the impossibility of deriving this doctrine from
Jesus. The doctrine is certainly older than St.
Paul, who declares that he ‘received’ ἐν πρώτοις,
as one of the fundamental tenets of the Apostolic
faith, that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures (1 Co 159). This ‘receiving’ on the part
of St. Paul is separated by no more than seven
years from the death of Jesus ; according to recent
schemes of chronology, by an even shorter interval.
When in the discourses of the earlier chapters of
Acts the emphasis is placed on the resurrection
rather than on the death of Jesus, this must be ex-
plained from the apologetic purpose of these dis-
courses. They were intended to prove that,
notwithstanding His death, Jesus could still be
the Messiah. Probably even upon the disciples
themselves, at that early date, the full meaning
of the teaching of Jesus concerning His death had
not dawned ; but if it had, to make this the burden
of their preaching to the Jews would have been an
ill-advised method. We know from these same
discourses in Acts that the disciples looked upon
378 COVENANT
the death of Jesus as foreordained. It is not
likely that, holding this, they can have rested
in it as sufficient for their faith, and entirely
refrained from seeking the reasons for the Divine
foreordination, which in this, as well as all other
cases, must have appeared to them teleological.
In the light of this, the references to Jesus as the
Servant of God, which occur in these early dis-
courses, sometimes in connexion with His suffer-
ing, become highly significant, partly because they
sound like reminiscences of Jesus’ own teaching,
partly because they render it probable that our
Lord’s death was interpreted in dependence on
Is 53. Finally, attention should be called to the
central place which the forgiveness of sins occupies
in the early Apostolic preaching. The prominence
of this theme requires for its background a certain
definite connexion between the Messiahship of
Jesus and the forgiveness of sins, and this is
precisely what is afforded by the expiatory inter-
pretation of the Saviour’s death (cf. Denney, The
Death of Christ, pp. 65-85, where the preceding
points are luminously discussed).
On the grounds stated we conclude that there
is neither exegetical nor historical necessity for
departing from the old view, that Jesus repre-
sented His death as the sacrificial, expiatory basis
of a covenant with God. The next question arising
is, Who are meant as the beneficiaries of this expia-
tion on which the covenant is founded? At first
sight it would seem as if only one answer were
possible, viz. those to whom He gives the cup in
which the wine, the symbol of the expiating blood,
is contained. Nevertheless, the correctness of this
view has been of late strenuously disputed. This
has been done mainly on the ground before stated,
that for the disciples the whole tenor of our Lord’s
teaching represents the forgiveness of sins as un-
conditioned, assured by the gracious love of God
as such. Hence it is assumed that Jesus intended
the covenant-sacrifice not for His disciples, but for
the unbelieving mass of the people, who were so
hardened in their unbelief as to render an atoning
sacrifice necessary in order to their reacceptance
into the favour of God (thus Johannes Weiss,
Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, p. 28 tt.; and R. A.
Hofimann, Die Abendmahlsqedanken Jesu Christi,
pp- 60-88). Weiss, while believing that the cove-
nant-blood is primarily shed for the nation, would
not exclude the disciples from its effects. Hoff-
mann, on the other hand, distinguishes sharply
between those who are concerned in the covenant-
sacrifice as its direct beneficiaries, 7.e. the enemies
of Jesus, and those whom He desires to appropriate
the spirit of His self-sacrifice for others, and
therefore invites to eat His body and drink His
blood. The words spoken with the cup express
on this view two distinct thoughts: (1) the blood
is covenant-blood for the unbelieving Jews; (2)
the blood as the exponent of the spirit of self-
sacrifice of Jesus must pass over into the disciples,
so that they too shall give their life for others. In
other words, the disciples do not drink the blood
in the sense in which it is defined by the phrase
τῆς διαθήκης, but in the sense in which it symbolizes
the subjective spirit on Jesus’ part which led Him
to offer His life for others. It will be readily per-
ceived that this introduces an intolerable dualism
into the significance of the blood: it must mean at
the same time objectively the life poured forth in
death as the principle of atonement, and subjec-
tively the life pouring itself forth in death as the
principle of selt-sacritice. There is no hint in the
words themselves at any such double meaning.
From the simple statement no one would ouess
that the blood is drunk by the disciples in any
otner capacity than that in which the Lord de-
scribes it, as ‘blood of the covenant.’ St. Paul
COVENANT
and St. Luke have not understood Jesus in the
manner proposed ; for, according to their version,
the cup, that which the disciples drink, is the new
covenant itself in the blood, not merely the blood
which for others is the covenant-blood. Hoffmann
has to assume that St. Paul and St. Luke mis-
interpreted the intent of Jesus, and regards Mark
and Matthew as giving the correct version. But
even into the words of St. Mark and St. Matthew
his view will not fit readily. If our Lord invited
the disciples to drink His blood, in the sense of
receiving into themselves the spirit of His self-
surrender to death, the description of this blood
as covenant-blood becomes irrelevant to the ex-
pression of this thought. Whether the blood is
covenant-blood or serves any other beneticent pur-
pose, is of no direct consequence whatever for the
main idea, viz., that it is the exponent of a spirit
which the disciples must imitate, nay, the intro-
duction of the tormer thought only tends to ob-
scure the latter. Our Lord certainly did not
expect the disciples to make the sacrifice of their
own life a covenant-sacrifice in the sense His was
for the nation. The ὑπὲρ πολλῶν in Mark and the
περὶ πολλῶν in Matthew, to which Hoffmann appeals,
cannot prove the exclusion of the disciples from
the covenantal effect of the blood. The phrase is
derived from Is 53"-}*, where it serves to aftirm
the fruitfulness, the efhcacy of the self-sacrifice
of the Servant of Jehovah. This simple thought
suffices here as well as in Mk 10” to explain Jesus’
statement that many will be benefited by His
death. Who the many are, disciples or non-
disciples, the ὑπὲρ πολλῶν alone does not enable us
to determine.
The one question that still remains to be answered
is, Whether the covenant-blood appears in the words
of Jesus, ‘ Thisis my blood of the covenant,’ primarily
as the blood which through expiation inaugurates
the covenant, or primarily as the blood which by
being sacramentally received will make those who
receive it partakers of the covenant. Both mean-
ings are equally well suited to the words them-
selves. In order to choose definitely between them,
we should have to enter upon the extremely com-
plicated discussion that has of recent years been
carried on, and is still being carried on, concerning
the origin of the Lord’s Supper and the significance
of the act performed and the words spoken by our
Lord on the last evening of His earthly life. A
few remarks must suffice to indicate the bearings
of this problem on the question before us. The
two views above distinguished coincide with the
so-called parabolic or purely symbolic and the so-
called institutional or sacramental interpretation
of the transaction. According to the former, Jesus
did not mean to institute a rite, did not intend the
act to be repeated, but simply enacted before the
eyes of His disciples, in a visible parable, the drama
of His death, indicating by the parabolic form He
gave it that His death would be for their good
through the inauguration of a covenant. Accord-
ing to the latter, Jesus instituted, and for the first
time caused His disciples to celebrate, a rite in
which He made the partaking of bread and wine,
as sacramental symbols of His body and _ blood,
to stand for the appropriation of His expiatory
sacrifice and of the covenant founded on it.
It ought to be observed that these views are not
in themselves mutually exclusive. The parabolic
significance of the body and blood, as symboliz-
ing death, must on the second view be assumed
to form the background, expressed or presupposed,
of the sacramental transaction—expressed, if the
breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine
be made significant ; presupposed, if the broken
bread and the poured wine be made the starting-
point of the observance. That the so-called para-
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bolic view is frequently advocated in a form which
excludes the sacramental complexion of the act, is
due not so much to the view itself, but largely to
a general theory on the nature of the parables of
Jesus.
Julicher, the foremost representative of the parabolic interpre-
tation of the Supper (cf. Theologische Abhandlungen C. v. Weiz-
sucker gewidmet, Ὁ. 207ff.), is also the strenuous advocate of
the theory that in every genuine parable of Jesus there can be
but one point of comparison. Consequently it is insisted upon
that, if the broken bread and the wine stand as figures for the
death of Jesus, figures which involve the destruction of these
elements, they cannot at the same time stand as figures for the
appropriation of the benefits of His death, because this would
involve the usefulness of the elements, the very opposite of
their destruction. Julicher was not at first disposed to carry
this to an extreme, but admitted that as a secondary point of
comparison the usefulness of the bread and wine as food and
drink might have stood before the mind of Jesus. Others, how-
ever, demand that on the parabolic view every figurative sig-
nificance of the eating and drinking must be rigorously excluded,
and make this a ground of criticism of said view, because in the
records the eating and drinking are undoubtedly made prominent
(cf. Johannes Hoffmann, Das Abendinahl im Urchristenthum,
pp. 61-65, and Julicher’s review of Hoffmann’s book in Theol.
Literaturzeitung, 1904, col. 282 ff.).
Julicher’s canon of interpretation, while on the whole repre-
senting a sound principle of exegesis, leads in single instances
to the rejection of undoubtedly genuine material. It makes
Jesus construct His parables with conscious regard to the unity
and purity of their form, rather than with the practical end of
their efficacy in view (cf. Bugge, Die Haupt-Parabeln Jesu).
Where, as in the present case, the two points of comparison,
that of the dissolution of the elements and that of their ap-
propriation for nourishment, are so naturally combined into
the one act of the meal, it were foolish to require the exclusion
of either on the ground of a puristic insistence on the rules of
formal rhetoric.
In all probability the combination of these two
aspects of the symbolism was not first made by our
Lord, but was antecedently given in the union of
the OT sacrifice and the sacrificial meal. Sechultzen
(Das Abendmahl im Neuen Testament, p. 53 tf.) has
shown, to our mind convincingly, that the eating
of the bread and the drinking of the cup are placed
by our Lord under the aspect of a sacrificial meal,
for which His own death furnishes the sacrifice.
As in the sacrificial meal the offerer appropriates
the benefits of the expiation and the resulting
benefits of covenant-fellowship with God (Ex
241-11, Ps 50°), so the disciples are invited to
appropriate by eating and drinking all the benefits
of expiation and covenant-fellowship that are
secured by the sacrifice of the Saviour’s death.
We may assume, therefore, that both the sym-
bolism of sacrifice and the symbolism of the sacri-
ficial meal are present in the transaction performed
by Jesus. But the question still remains un-
answered, whether the former is present in explicit
form or merely as the unexpressed background of
the latter. Those who emphasize the symbolical
significance of the breaking of the bread, a feature
named in all the records, hold that the death is not
merely presupposed but formally enacted. On the
whole, however, the trend of the discussion has of
late been in the direction of the other view, which
attributes no special significance to the breaking
of the bread or the pouring forth of the wine, but
makes the broken bread and the wine, as symbols
of the death as an accomplished fact, the starting-
point for the enacted symbolism of the sacrificial
meal. It has been pointed out with a degree of
force that the formula, ‘This is my body,’ ‘ This is
mv blood,’ in the sense of ‘This symbolizes what
will happen to My body and to My blood,’ is out
of all analogy with Jesus’ usual parabolic mode of
statement, because elsewhere not the symbol, but
the thing symbolized, always forms the subject
of the sentence (so Zahn, Das Evangelium des
Matthius, p. 687, note 53). It may also be urged
that the natural sequence, in case a parabolic
enactment of the death of Jesus were intended,
would have been as follows: ‘He brake the bread
and said: This is my body; and he gave it to
them and said, Take,’ and similarly with the cup.
COVENANT
As the record stands, the pouring out of the wine
is not mentioned at all. It seems that Jesus took
a cup which had already been filled. If He had
intended to give a parabolic representation of the
event of His death, He would have taken pains to
fill one before their eyes. The fact that with both
elements the giving to eat and to drink precedes
the declaration of what the bread and the wine stand
for, favours the view that this declaration deals
primarily with the symbolism of the sacrificial
meal. The words, ‘This is my body,’ then obtain
the meaning: To partake of this bread signifies
the partaking of My sacrificed body in a sacrificial
meal ; the words, ‘ This is my blood,’ the meaning :
To partake of this wine signifies the partaking of
My sacrificial blood in a sacrificial meal. Thus we
would reach the conclusion that the phrase ‘ blood
of the covenant’ has for its primary import: blood
through the partaking of which participation in
the covenant is assured. The Pauline-Lukan ver-
sion, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood,’
cannot be quoted with conclusiveness in favour of
either view. This version may either mean: this
cup is by the blood it contains the new covenant,
or: this cup is the new covenant, which new cove-
nant consists in My blood. Each of these two
renderings leaves open the two possibilities, that
the shedding of the blood is represented as the
source of the new covenant, or that the drinking
of the blood is represented as the participation in
the new covenant. To prevent misunderstanding,
however, it should be stated once more, that the
sacramental interpretation of the words has for its
background the symbolic significance of bread and
wine as exponents of the expiatory death of Jesus
itself.
In conclusion, we must endeavour to define the
place of the covenant conception thus interpreted
within the teaching of Jesus as a whole, and its
correlation with other important conceptions.
Like the Kingdom of God, the Messiahship, and
the Church, the Covenant idea is one of the great
generalizing ideas of the OT, the use of which
enables Jesus to gather up in Himself the main
lines of the historic movement of OT redemption
and revelation. From the Kingdom the Covenant
is distinguished in several respects. The Kingdom
conception is more comprehensive, since it em-
braces the eschatological realization of the OT
promises as well as their provisional fulfilment in
the present life, being on the whole, however,
eschatologically conceived, the present Kingdom-
powers and blessings appearing as so many antici-
pations of the final Kingdom. The Kingdom is
also comprehensive in this other respect, that it
covers indiscriminately the entire content of the
consummate state, the external as well as the
internal, the judgment- as well as the salvation-
aspect. Over against this the Covenant idea,
while by no means pointedly excluding the es-
chatological state (in Hebrews the idea is used
eschatologically, the new covenant coinciding with
the αἰὼν μέλλων), yet is more characteristic as a
designation of the blessings of believers in the
present intermediate period. And among the
manifold contents of salvation it pre-eminently
designates the internal ones of forgiveness of sin
and fellowship with God, as is already the case
in the passage of Jeremiah.
If the word rendered by διαθήκη had in our Lord’s
mind the associations of the word ‘testament,’
and if the statement found in the context of
Luke (2259. 50). ΣΤ appoint unto you (διατίθεμαι ὑμῖν),
even as my Father appointed unto me a kingdom,
that ye may eat and drink at my table in my
kingdom,’ may be understood as having been
suggested to Him by this testamental sense of
διαθήκη, then this would bring the Covenant idea
380 COVENANT
much nearer to the Kingdom idea, inasmuch as in
the latter saying the full content of the blessed-
ness of the final state is the object of the διατίθεσθαι.
It is not certain, however, that the sequence of
the narrative here in Luke is chronological, and
that, therefore, these words were uttered im-
mediately after the reference to the covenant-blood
in the Supper. In Mt 19%’ words in part identical
occur in a different connexion. In the Supper, God
is the διαθέμενος, Whereas here it would be Jesus.
It is better, therefore, not to introduce the testa-
mentary idea into the words of the Supper, and to
adhere to the distinction between the Kingdom and
the Covenant from the point of view already indi-
cated. According to the Pauline interpretation,
the Supper, and with it the Covenant, belong to
the pre-eschatological state, in which believers are
during the present life, for the Supper is a pro-
clamation of the death of Jesus ‘until he come’
(1 Co 11%), The sayings in Mk 14”, Mt 26%, Lk
2218. i8 also mark the Supper and the participation
in the Covenant as belonging to a state distinct
from the final Kingdom of God. Our Lord, how-
ever, does not place this second stage of tlie
covenant-life of the people of God in contrast with
the former stage from the point of view that it
involves the abrogation of the OT legal forms of
life, as St. Paul does in 2 Co3 and Gal 8. If it is
anew covenant, it is new simply for the positive
reason that it brings greater assurance of the
forgiveness of sin and closer fellowship with God.
From the idea of the Kingdom that of the
Covenant is still further distinguished, in that it
appears in much closer dependense than the
former on the Messianic person and work of Jesus.
In our Lords preaching of the Kingdom, His
Messianic person and work remain almost entirely
in the background, at least so far as the verbal
disclosures on this subject are concerned, while
the matter comes to stand somewhat differently
if the self-revelation contained in Jesus’ Messianic
acts be considered. The Covenant is explicitly
declared to be founded on His expiatory death,
and to be received by the partaking of His body
and blood. This importance of the person and
work of Jesus, both for the inauguration and the
reception of the Covenant, agrees with the view
that the.Covenant designates the present, pro-
visional blessedness of believers, for this stage is
specifically controlled and determined by the
activity of Christ, so that St. Paul calls it the
Kinedom of Christ in distinction from the King-
dom of God, which is the final state. The Cove-
nant idea shares with the idea of the Church this
reference to the present earthly form of possession
of the Messianie blessings, and this dependence on
the person and work of the Messiah (cf. Mt 1618
1817. The difference is that in the conception of
the Church, the organization of believers into one
body outwardly, as well as their spiritual union
inwardly, and the communication of a higher life
through the Spirit, stand in the foreground, neither
of which is reflected upon in the idea of the Cove-
nant. The Covenant stands for that central, God-
ward aspect of the state of salvation, in which it
means the atonement of sin and the full enjoyment
of fellowship with God through the appropriation
of this atonement in Christ. —
LITERATURY.—Riickert, Das Abendmahl, 1856; Baur, Vorle-
sungen uber neutest. Theologie, 1864, pp. 102-105; Volkmar,
Die E mngelien, 1870, p. 566ff., Jesus Nazarenus, 1882, p.
1 A) 72: Guthe, de Iederis Notione Jeremiana, 1877: Keim,
ea of N ripe (Eng. tr.), 1881, v. pp. 275-343 : Wellhausen,
OKIZZ2N Un orarobeiten, 1887, iii. p 122; A. Bra Zeit-
Schrift f. wiss. Theol. 1888, p. 30 ff. PWR. smith 1S? 1804
Lobstein, La Doctrine de la Sainte Cene, 1889, pp. 62, 258:
Bousset, Die Evangeliencitate Justins des Médrtyrers 1890 p.
112f*. ; V. Zittwitz, Das Christliche Abendmaal iin Li hte ‘der
Religi msg schichte, 189 » Pp. Sf. 3 Jiilicher in Theol. Abhand-
lungen C. von Weizsticker gewidm t, 1892, p. 217 ff.; Joh:
[Me
COVETOUSNESS
Weiss, Jesu Predigt vom Reiche Gottes, 1892 (2nd ed. 1900), p.
28 ff., Das dlteste Evangelium, 1903, pp. 289-299; W. Brandt,
Die Evangelische Geschichte, 1893, pp. 289 ff., 566; Spitta, Zur
Geschichte und Literatur des Urchristenthwms, 1893, i. p. 207 ff. ;
Mensinga in Zeitschrift f. wiss. Theologic, 1893, ii. p. 267 ff. ;
Gardner, The Origin of the Lord's: Supper, 1893; Haupt, Ueber
die urspringliche Form und Bedeutung der Abendmahlsworte,
1894, p. 22ff.; Schultzen, Das Abendmahl im N7', 1895, pp.
33-87, 41, 53, 55, 96; Grafe in Zeitschrift f. Theol. u. Kirche,
1895, pp. 101-138 ; Titius, Die Neutest. Lehre von der Seliykeit,
1895, i. p. 150ff.; Joachim, ‘Die Ueberlieferung tiber Jesus
letztes Mahl’ in Hermes’ Zeitschrift f. Klassische Philologie, 1895,
p. 43; Zockler, ‘Moderne Abendmahlscontroversen’ in Hvang.
Kirchenzeitung, 1895, 108 ff. ; Kattenbusch, ‘Das _ heilige
Abendmahl’ in Christl. Welt. 1895, Nos. 13-15; Kraetzschmar,
Die Bundesvorstellung im AT’, 1896; R. A. Hoffmann, Die
Abendmahisgedanken Jesu Christi, 1896, pp. 47-77 ; Schaefer, Das
Herreninahl, 1897, pp. 888-392 ; Ramsay in Hapositor, Nov. 1898,
pp. 321-330; Eichhorn, Das Abendmahl im NT, 1898; Smend,
Alttest. Religionsgeschichte, 1899, p. 24ff.; Giesebrecht, Die
Geschichtlichkeit des Sinaibundes, 1900; Wrede in Zeitschrift
J. ἃ. Neutest. Wissenschuft, 1900, pp. 69-74; Wendt, Die Lehre
Jesu2, 1901, pp. 257-258, 502-509 ; Hollmann, Die Bedeutung des
Todes Jesu, 1901, p. 145 ff. ; Denney, he Death of Christ, 1902,
pp. 46-60; Joh. Hoffmann, Das Abendmahl im Urchristenthum,
1903. The literature on the Lord’s Supper is not given complete,
but only in so far as it is of importance for the discussion of the
Covenant idea. See, further, art. Lorp’s Suprer.
GEERHARDUS VOs.
COVETOUSNESS.—This word (Gr. πλεονεξία) has
the root-idea of greed, shown in a strong desire to
acquire, even more than in a keen wish to keep.
In the Gospels, as elsewhere in Scripture [see, how-
ever, Eph 4:5], the term is confined to a reference
to property ; the verb (πλεονεκτέω) 1s wider in sense.
As the complexity of social life increases, so may
the shapes the evil can assume. To ordinary
avarice have to be added subtle temptations in the
realm of rank and fashion, conventional ambition, .
cultured ease, or delight in successful activity
unsubordinated to ethical aims. The tinge of
covetousness comes in wherever men so absorb
their life in the temporal that they impair its
high instincts for the spiritual. ‘What is a man
profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose
his own soul?’ (Mt 167°).
To the mind of Jesus what stands condemned
is, characteristically, the possession of a certain
spirit—the spirit of grasping selfishness. The
forms assumed, the methods employed, are not
minutely dealt with, and not matters for specific
cure. Rather the one tap-root is to be cut, or a
general atmosphere created in which the noxious
weed must perish. And the almighty power to
this end is the holy spirit of the gospel, which on
the one hand is a spirit of loving trust towards
God the Father in providence, and on the other
a tender feeling towards fellow-mortals which
prompts to ready sacrifice of all things to their
good. The man with the great possessions (Mk
10), who attracted Jesus, had yet one luxury to
discover—that of doing good, giving to the poor,
and so coveting wealth of the right kind. Not
the coming to our hands of earthly good is con-
demned, but the absence of the one spirit which
shall inform and vitalize its use. The triumph of
religion is to turn it into ‘treasure in heaven’ (v.”").
A classical passage is Mt 6-4, with which com-
pare Lk 122 and 16 15:5. The higher life heme
concerned with faith and goodness and the things
of the spirit—the realm revealed in the Beatitudes,
it is clear inversion to be absorbed for their own
sake in the things of time and sense. ‘ Moth and
rust’ are the emblems of their corruptibility ; and
they are unstable, like property exposed to ‘thieves.’
It is the mark of a pagan mind to be full of anxious.
and self-centred concern for meat and drink and
raiment (v.*2). Such persons reverse unconsciously
Christ’s principle that ‘the life is more than meat’
(Mt 625); and the Pharisees, ‘who were covetous’
(Lk 1614), by their blindness to the true order of
importance called forth essentially the same re-
buke, ‘that which is highly esteemed amongst men,
is abomination in the sight of God’ (v.5). Though
COWARDICE
they had one eye for religion, they kept the other
for the world, hence inevitably their truly distorted
views. In the last resort of psychological analysis
‘no man can serve two masters’ (Mt 6%), and the
Pharisees are pilloried for evermore as the awful
example of hypocrisy in this respect. With Jesus,
in these passages, the first postulate of religious
worth is, that people must be single-minded and
whole-hearted in service—‘ Where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also’ (Mt 62!). And to
only one quarter can the enlightened heart turn—
‘the kingdom of God and his righteousness’ (v.*?).
Coincident with that, as humble faith feels, all
needed things shall be added unto us. With
exquisite insight Jesus points to the fowls of the
air and the lilies of the tield as eloquent at once
of the minuteness of Divine Providence, and the
trust we may place in a Heavenly Father’s care.
‘Are not ye,’ He asks, ‘much better than they?’
(v.25), (Cf. as an enforcement of the lesson, Christ’s
own unworldliness of character, and trustfulness
in earthly matters. And as a counter-illustration
to the Pharisees, ef. the convert from their straitest
sect, St. Paul, who having food and raiment learned
therewith to be content, 1 Ti 68, ef. Ph 42),
On a question arising of family inheritance
(Lk 12%), Jesus warns against covetousness, and
for impressive depth nothing excels the summary
there—‘ A man’s. life consisteth not in the abun-
dance of the things which he possesseth’ (v.!°), As
one concerned with the spiritual domain, Jesus
refuses to touch the civil matter of property.
Wisdom lay in leaving questions of the law to
lawyers, although the consideration is doubtless
implied that even then there should be found a
permeation of the Christian spirit. The point
which Jesus presses is the falsity of the vulgar
notion that it is ‘possessions’ which make life
worth living. Devotion to the outward is, in His
gospel, vanity; the loving and discerning soul has
God for its possession, and from sheer sympathy of
heart joys in His work amongst men.
A parable follows (Lk 12!**!), not necessarily
associated originally with the foregoing incident,
although in full affinity of theme. The Rich Fool
is the personification of the successfully covetous
man, and yet a revelation in almost the same
breath of how little such success amounts to from
the standpoint of eternity. He sowed only to the
world ; therefore he reaped inwardly no riches of
the spirit. ‘So is he,’ saith Jesus, ‘that layeth up
treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God’
(v.24), There is affinity of teaching in the parable
of Dives and Lazarus (which see).
LITERATURE.—The standard works on the Sermon on the
Mount and on the Parables. Among special discourses: F.
W. Robertson, Sermons, 2nd series, Serm. I. (with which com-
pare XVII. of Ist series); J Service on ‘Profit and Loss’ in
Salvation Here and Hereafter ; J. Oswald Dykes, The Relations
of the Kingdom to the World, pt. i; A. Maclaren, A Year's
Ministry, 1st series, No. 16; J. Martineau, Hours of Thought
ii. and iii, Endeavours after the Christian Life, pp. 76-86;
Mozley, University Sermons, pp. 275-290.
GEORGE MURRAY.
COWARDICE.—Cowardice must be distinguished
from a natural timidity in circumstances of danger,
from the awe which, in the presence of the mirac-
ulous or the extraordinary, may so possess the
mind as for the moment to paralyze its activities,
and above all from the fear of God, His paternal
love, power, and holy judgment, which may be
the strongest antidote to all base and servile fear,
and the source of the highest courage. The dis-
tinction is partly preserved in the words φόβος and
δειλίας. The latter word is ‘always used in a bad
sense’ (Trench, Synonyms of the NT, p. 34). It
expresses ‘not the natural emotion of fear, but the
cowardly yielding to it. It is the craven spirit
which shrinks from duty, loses hope, abandons
CREATION 381
what it should hold fast, surrenders to the enemy,
or deserts to his side’ (Bernard, Central Teaching
of Jesus Christ, pp. 188, 189). δειλία oceurs only in
2 Ti 17, but δειλιάω Jn 14*7, and δειλός (EV ‘ feartul’)
Mt 8:5, ef. Mk 47° and Rev 21°. But the line of dis-
tinction cannot be drawn hard and fast by the use
of these words. In Mt 85 (ef. Mk 4%) the question
τί δειλοί ἐστε, ὀλιγόπιστοι; IS NOt so much a serious
imputation of craven fear, as the expression of ‘per-
sonal fearlessness, to gain ascendency over panic-
stricken spirits’ (Bruce, Expos. Gr. Test., in loc.).
On the other hand, an ignoble fear in face of danger
or difficulty, or the disapprobation and hostile
sentiments of others, is sometimes in view when
φόβος, φοβεῖσθαι are used (Mt 1038, ef. Lk 123, Mt
25:5, Jn 115 1038 9019). When fear of physical con-
sequences impairs fidelity to Christ, causing men to
be ashamed of Him (Mk 888, Lk 936), or even to go
the length of denying Him (Mt 1058), it inenrs His
severest disapprobation (Mt 10*, cf. Rev 215). It
is not cowardice to fly from the rage of the perse-
eutor. Jesus not only counselled flight in circum-
stances of peril (Mk 13'4, Lk 215), but Himself
evaded the malice which would have brought His
life to an end before His hour was come, and His
mission completed (Lk 4°, Jn 859. 10°). It is only
when the fear of man tempts to the compromise
of truth, and the disowning of allegiance to Chiist,
that it becomes a snare and a sin. Cowardice is
not ultimately evinced in feeling, but in action.
It is cowardice when a man declines the task he
was meant to render: ‘I was afraid, and went and
hid thy talent in the earth’ (Mt 25-°); when he
turns away, however sorrowfully, from the path of
self-sacrifice which the call of Christ points out to
him (Mt 19”). (See Paget, Studies in the Christian
Character, p. 104).
The antidote to cowardice lies in the fear of God,
in His power over the soul as well as the body (Mt
1038), the ma nyv which drives out all baser fear ;
in the spirit of watchfulness and prayer that, in
circumstances of trial, we do not fall into the
temptation to forsake Christ or deny Him (Mt
2641); but most of all in faith (Mt 8:5, Jn 14'- 5).
Faith in the Fatherhood of God—that the manifest
duty, however difficult and dangerous, is His will ;
that from Him life has its appointed twelve hours,
and in the path of obedience to Him there is no
possible foreshortening of them (Jn 1155); that
over all is His unsleeping and loving care—will save
the soul from all base betrayals of itself and its
Divine trust through fear. To this end was the
Comforter promised and bestowed, that, co-operat-
ing with the spirit of men, He might brace them
to consistent courage in action and endurance.
And the effect of His presence and power is seen
in the contrast between those who ‘all forsook
him and fled’ (Mk 1459), denied Him (Mt 26°74),
‘eathered in an upper room for fear of the Jews’
(Jn 9019), and the same men, not many months
later, impressing the authorities by their boldness
(Ac 4!%), and displaying, in circumstances of severest
trial, minds delivered from all craven fear, and in-
spired with the high and solemn courage of faith.
See art. FEAR.
LiveRATURE.—Aristotle, Eth. iii. 7; Strong, Chr. Ethics;
Paget, Studies in the Christian Character, 100ff.; Denney,
Gospel Questions and Answers, 86 ff. JOSEPH MUIR.
CREATION.—The beginning of the world, as the
earliest starting-point of time, is mentioned in
Mt 2422, Mk 1315, The other Gospel references to
this subject include one by an Evangelist and two
by our Lord Himself. The first (Jn 15) teaches
that the Divine Word, who afterwards became
incarnate in Jesus (v.!4), was the direct Agent in
Creation (ef. Col 116, He 12; and see following art. ).
The second (Jn 5'7) occurs in a discussion on the
382 CREATOR (CHRIST AS)
CREATOR (CHRIST AS)
Sabbath. In the words ‘my Father worketh
hitherto,’ Jesus shows that the Divine rest follow-
ing the work of creation has been a period of con-
tinued Divine activity. His primary object is to
justify His own works of healing on the Sabbath
day, but He shows incidentally that the seventh
‘day,’ and therefore also the other ‘days,’ of Gn 1
need not be understood in a literal sense. In the
third allusion (Mt 194, Mk 10%) the words of
Gn 17 2%, describing the original creation of man
and woman, are quoted in support of Christ's ideal
of marriage (cf. Eph 5*). JAMES PATRICK.
CREATOR (CHRIST AS).—The Synoptic Gospels
do not bring forward any specific teaching of Christ
as Creator. Whatever Jesus may have taught on
this subject, the controlling purpose of the writers
of these Gospels did not require the inclusion of it.
Hence it is that only by implication is any doctrine
of Christ’s creatorship introduced into the Synoptic
Gospels. The implication, however, is striking and
worthy of notice.
1. The assertion of original power, e.g. the
healing of the leper (Mk 1", Mt 8", Lk 5%); the
lordship of the Sabbath (Mk 2%, Lk 6°, Mt 123).
The Sabbath is a Divine institution, and only the
establisher of it could have power over it. The
forgiveness of sins (Mk 2°, Mt $?) is a prerogative of
Godhead.
2. The note of authority.—The people felt this
in Jesus’ teaching (Mk 1”, Lk 455, He claims
authority for Himself (Mk 2", Mt 9°, Lk ὅδ). He
gives authority to His disciples (Mt 10!), and the
unstated assumption is that it is by an original
right inherent in Himself.
3. Miracles.—Jesus quiets the sea as one who
has original power over it (Mk 459, Lk 8%). This
is the right of the Creator of it. He restores life
to the dead (Mk 5”, Lk 8°4 74). To give life is the
prerogative of Creatorship. It is an original right
of the Creator. Jesus exercises this right in His
own name. He creates directly in the miracle of
the loaves and fishes (MI 641-44, Mt 1419 15%8),
4. Ownership.—Jesus calls the angels His own
(Mt 2481). His lordship of the Sabbath implies
ownership (Mk 255).
All these are clear, and the more significant
because undesigned, narrations which imply the
Creatorship of Jesus. If St. Paul held a supervisory
relation to the Gospel of Luke, and St. Peter to
the Gospel of Mark, as many of the best modern
scholars believe, then we shall feel the corrobo-
rative evidence which is so outstanding in their
Epistles for the Creatorship of Jesus.
This evidence in the Pauline Epistles lies in
(a) the pre-existence of Christ (Ro 8%, 1 Co 104,
ΡΟ ΟΣ 89; Gall 44 Eph 14)" Ply 2% Col 127, 2 "Tis 1).
The self-impoverishment (/2nosts) implies previous
Divine fulness. If all things were created through
(διά), in (ἐν), and for (es) Him, He would neces-
sarily be pre-existent. The Pauline Christ of the
Epistles is not merely the historic Christ, but more
especially the Creative Principle both in the world
and in man. (ὦ) Creation is through Christ (Col
1”). He is the causal agent, according to the
eternal purpose. (6) Creation is in Him, i.e. in
the sphere of Christ, ‘the creative centre of all
things, the causal element of their existence’
(Ellicott). Hence all things are to be gathered
up in Him (Eph 110), (ὦ) Creation is for Him.
He is the goal as well as the explanation of all
creation. 1 Co 8° expands this idea, and makes
Him both the souree and the goal of all created
things. (e) He is the bond which holds the whole
fabric of men and things together. This is the
doctrine of the Divine inmanence (Col 117), and sets
forth Christ as the eternally existent Creative
Principle in all things. All this teaching is an
amplification of the teaching of the Synoptics, and
sets forth the cosmic relations of Christ in Creation
in order to show more clearly His cosmic relation
in Atonement and Salvation.
There are two passages in the Petrine Epistles
which teach the pre-existence of Christ (the Spirit
of Christ in the prophets, 1 P 1"; and Christ before
the foundation of the world, v.?°), but there is no
direct teaching of Creatorship.
The Gospel of John opens at once into a circle of
new and profounder conceptions of Jesus. He is
the Eternal Logos who was in the beginning (11).
He is the eternal and immanent Reason manifest-
ing creative activities. He mediates the creation
of the universe (v.*). The Prologue sets forth
Jesus Christ in His fourfold mediation. (a) As
the Eternal Logos, who was ‘in the beginning
with God, and was God’ (1), He mediates the
creation of all things (v.*). The whole process and
product of creation lie inwrapped in the Logos.
Neither angels nor other beings assisted. ‘And
without him was not anything made that hath
been made’ (ν.3, ef. 1 Co 8°). (ὁ) As the Creative
Logos, He mediates life for men. He is immanent
in the Creation. ‘In him was life’ (v.4), and ‘He
was in the world, and the world was made by him,
and the world knew him not’ (v.!°). He was the
ground and source of life. St. Paul’s saying,
‘The world through its wisdom knew not God’
(1 Col”), shows the amazing inability of the world
to recognize its Creator who was the ground of its
own life. Sin had indeed become darkness which
was incapable of apprehending the light (Jn 1°),
(c) As the Logos made fiesh or incarnate, He medi-
ates a revelation of God to man (νν. 1.18), The
whole measure of revelation lies in the incarnate
Logos. ‘God manifested’ to men was manifested
wholly in Jesus Christ. (d) As ‘the only-begotten
from the Father’ (v.4), He mediates an atonement
or reconciliation, through His death, between a
holy God and alienated sinners. This is the climax
of His wondrous mediatorship, and makes Him the
perfected Mediator. The historic Christ is brought
forward in this Gospel only enough to explicate or
illustrate the eternal Christ, but it was in the
historic Christ that the eternal and cosmic Christ
was first recognized. The transactional phases of
the historic incarnation lead, in St. John’s view,
straight to the eternal Logos who mediated the
whole creation. Christ, as Creator, is so wrought
into the Cosmos which He made and sustains, that
upon the entrance of sin into the world He be-
comes of necessity the mediator of new relations
between the sinner and God. His mediatorship of
redemption rests on the fact that He was ‘in the
beginning’ the Logos who mediated the creation of
all things. Christ, as Creator, is the fundamental
idea of this Gospel. It is the starting-point of the
whole history of the earth and the heavens, of man,
his fall and his doom, of the redemption and the
final glory. It is the interpretive key to the whole
framework of the Fourth Gospel, whose author sees
the designed correspondence between the Creator
and the created, and that creation was primarily
intended to be responsive to Him. ‘He came unto
his own, and they... received him not’ (111),
expresses the failure of creation to fulfil the Divine
purpose. St. John gathers up all that the Synop-
tists have taught, but adds new conceptions of
Jesus in a profounder interpretation of Him. He
teaches (a) the pre-existence of Christ (12° 318, 31 68
86-8 1411 175) more plainly and fully than the
Synoptists; (ὁ) His authority (172); (ὦ) His in-
herent power to work miracles (28 6" 114) ; (d) His
ownership of all things (11). But new conceptions
are added. (a) He is the source of an abiding or
eternal life. He has power to give this life to
whom He will [235 410. 14 521-24. 40 627: 51 1078 1139 1419
|
|
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CRITICISM
CRITICISM 383
177). (8) His life is the light of men. But the
fact that as Creator He is the source of both life
and light to men does not prevent their rejection
Gi ΗΠ (I~ 8 05 12%. 36.46)" (1) He shows His
identity with the Father: ‘I and the Father are
one’ (10°) ; ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the
Father’ (14° 12%). (δ) He shows familiarity with
the life and conditions of Heaven (14? 17%).
But these conceptions of Christ, as well as those
which St. John and the Synoptists have in common,
rest on the fact of His having mediated the creation
of all things. His rights in the whole creation, as
well as the obligations which He has toward it,
grow out of the fact of His Creatorship. The
eternal and universal characteristics of both in-
carnation and reconciliation are grounded in the
creational character of Jesus Christ.
LITERATURE.—B. Weiss, [eligion of the NT, 190-191, and
Bibl. Theol. of NT, ii. 99; G. B. Stevens, The Christian Doctrine
of Salvation, 438; G. A. Gordon, The Christ of To-Day, 81-93;
A. M. Fairbairn, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, 341;
D. F. Estes, Outline of New Testament Theology; A. B. Bruce,
St. Paul’s Conception of Christianity, 335; H. R. Reynolds,
‘St. John’ (Pulpit Coinmeitary), vol. 1. 1-21. The literature on
the subject is very scanty. NATHAN E. Woop.
CRITICISM. —1. A little more than seventy
years ago (1835-1905), a turning-point was reached
in NT criticism, the importance of which is gener-
ally admitted.* In the year 1835 David Strauss
published his Leben Jesu (to be followed exactly
ten years later by F. C. Baur’s Paulus). The
mythical theory was remorselessly applied by
Strauss to the whole of the Gospel history.
It must not be forgotten that from the middle of the pre-
ceding century Semler had applied the word ‘ myths’ to some of
the OT narratives, as, e.g., to the exploits of Samson ; and later
on at the beginning of the 19th cent. de Wette had not hesi-
tated to point out the important part which, in his judgment,
was played both by myth and by legend in the writings of the
OT.+ At the same time he had not hesitated to accentuate,
in language very similar to some of the utterances familiar to
us to-day, the difference which lay between the application of
the mythical and of the legendary theory to the OT and to the
NT.t There were, indeed, two parts of our Lord’s life, the be-
ginning and the end, which this earlier criticism did not scruple
to regard as shrouded in darkness, and to relegate to the
same domain of myth or legend. The supporters of this kind
of criticism were content, as Strauss himself expressed it, to
enter the Evangelical history by the splendid portal of mythand
to leave it by the weary paths of a natural explanation. This
method of so-called natural explanation, which in its most crude
form was characteristic of Paulus and the school which bore
the name of Rationalists, a method which Strauss remorselessly
attacked, became discredited and gave place to the mythical
theory, which at least laid claim to thoroughness. But it is not
too much to say that an explanation of the miraculous which is
often akin to the crude exegesis of Paulus, meets us not infre-
quently in Strauss himself and in much more recent attempts
to prove that miracles did not happen.$
But by another path of inquiry the way was being prepared
for Strauss. In 1750, J. D. Michaelis published his Introduction
to the N17’, and in the fourth edition of that work he examined
with caution and candour the origin of all the NT books.
Michaelis was followed by Semler in his Treatise on the Free
Investigation of the Canon, the very title of which seemed to
mark the new principle of inquiry which was abroad. Semler
has been recently called ‘the father of criticism’; and if that
title is not always appropriate to him, we may, at all events,
speak of his epoch-making influence, and of the break which he
caused between the traditional views of inspiration and the free
examination of the authority and origin of each sacred book. ||
The new century was marked by Eichhorn’s Introduction. This
writer applied systematically the principle laid down by his
forerunners, like Semler and Herder, and continued the attempt
“to read and examine the writings of the NT from a human
* See, e.g., Schwarz, Zur Gesch. der neutest. Theol.; Pfleiderer,
Development of Theology, p. 133; Nash, History of the Higher
Criticism, Ὁ. 123: ‘ Altogether 1835 is something more than a
date in the history of literature. It stands for a new turn and
direction in the Higher Criticism.’
+ For a discussion of the differences between myth and legend,
τοΙοτο πο may be made to Knowling, Witness of the Epistles,
Ῥ 16 ff.
; see e.g., Dr. Driver's remarks, LOT p. xvii, and further
below.
§ Lichtenberger, History af German Theology in the 19th
Century, p. 328.
|| Cf. B. Weiss, Hinleitung in das ΝΤ 5, p. 5 ff.
point of view.’ His rule was that the NT writings are to be
read as human books, and tested in human ways.*
But up to this time and even later, no systematic attempt,
if any, was made, as by F. C. Baur, to place the NT in relation
to the varying phases and circumstances of early Church history
and life. Even de Wette, one of the best representative men of
the period, who combined so remarkably deep evangelical piety
with freedom from prejudice and with thoroughness of learning,
was often undecided in his judgment, and his conclusions were
vague and uncertain. The criticism characteristic of the time
was carried on,asil were, piecemeal: one book was defended or
attacked, or the alleged author was accepted or rejected, but
there was no attempt to bring the books of the NT under one
general conception.
There were henceforth two great critical move-
ments proceeding side by side—the effort to in-
terpret the Gospel narratives, and the effort to
investigate the origin of the NT books.
To the former of these efforts Strauss stood in
the closest relation, and he claimed to introduce a
theory of interpretation which should be complete
and final.t To the latter Baur stood in the closest
relation, and he claimed to make good a theory
which treated the books of the NT from the point
of view not only of their origin, but of their pur-
pose. Baur’s book on the Pastoral Epistles, pub-
lished in the same year as Strauss’ Life of Jesus
(1835), showed that his intention was to treat the
NT books in connexion with their historical set-
ting.
Some of the most successful attacks upon tlre
first edition of Strauss’ book were based upon the
fact that he paid so little attention to the Gospel
sources. A few pages are all that he devotes to
the authorship of the Gospels, and it is no wonder
that men like Tholuck rightly fastened on this
weakness in their opponent’s position, and that
much of Strauss’ own subsequent vacillation was
due to the same cause.t
But in 1864, apparently stirred by the reception
given to Renan’s Vie de Jésus, Strauss published
his popular edition for the German people. And
here he showed how thoroughly he was prepared
to endorse Baur’s view of the late dates of the
Gospels, and to assimilate the methods and con-
clusions of the Tiibingen school.g But, as Dr.
Matheson and other writers have so forcibly
pointed out, the two theories of Strauss and Baur
are incompatible. The conscious tendencies and
the dogmatic purpose discovered by Baur in the
composition of the NT books cannot coexist with
the purely unconscious working of myth.||
That which is mythical grows up unconsciously.
But if our Gospels were constructed to meet or to
modify certain special historical circumstances, if
they are to be regarded as artistic creations, or
as ‘tendency’ writings, they cannot be mythical,
as Strauss maintained, nor can they be regarded
as the spontaneous and unconscious workings of
* Nash, op. cit. p. 114.
+ On the unsatisfactoriness of the attempt to apply the mythi-
cal theory to the rise of the primitive Christian tradition, see
esp. Fairbairn, Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 467 ff.
τ Cf. O. Zockler, Die christliche Apologetik im neunzehnten
Jahrhundert, 1904, p. 16.
§ See Lichtenberger, op. c’t. p. 333; and J. E. Carpenter, The
Bible in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 277, 278.
|| Baur saw in the NT literature the workings of a compromise
between the two radically antagonistic parties of Judaism and
Paulinism. In the exigencies of his theory he divided the period
of literary development into three divisions—(1) Extending to
A.D. 70, a period including the Hauptbriefe of St. Paul and the
Apocalypse of St. John. Here the antagonism was at its height
between the original Ebionitic Christianity and Paulinism. (2)
Extending to about a.p. 140, in which period we have the
Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, the former being Petrine,
the latter (with the Acts) Pauline, but bearing marks of con-
ciliation with reference to the above antagonism, and later the
Gospel of St. Mark (also of a conciliatory type), whilst Ephe-
sians and Colossians were invented by the Pauline party for the
same conciliatory purpose. (3) Extending to a.p. 170, when
the controversy was finally settled, and the conflicting extremes
rejected by the ‘Catholic’ Church, a period marked by the
Gospel and Epistles which bear the name of St. John, as also by
the Pastoral Epistles assigned to St. Paul.
CRITICISM
384
CRITICISM
the human mind in its efforts to impart reality
to its hopes. One cannot, in short, have the
‘mythical’ Gospels of Strauss and the ‘ tendency’
Gospels of Baur.* ὃ
But while Strauss thus attempted to adapt this
later work to some of the results and methods of
the Tiibingen school, he also caine nearer to Baur
in that he gave in this popular edition of his
famous book an account of Jesus utterly incom-
mensurate with the greatness of His influence and
of the position which He achieved. Baur had
taken little or no account of Jesus Himself and
His Person, and now Strauss, by withdrawing
what he had conceded in the second edition of his
Leben Jesu as to the greatness ard moral perfec-
tion of Jesus, was in a position no less imprac-
ticable than Baur’s, so far as any satisfactory
explanation of the work and person of the Founder
of Christianity was concerned. We cease to be
so much surprised that Strauss should regard the
history of the resurrection of our Lord as a piece
of colossal humbug, when the Jesus whom 116
depicted was so insignificant ; or that Baur should
regard this same account of the resurrection as a
fact outside the province of historical inquiry,
when he made no serious attempt to answer the
question who Jesus was, or to underst*.d Him
and His life.
This supreme importance of the 3 erson of Jesus
had been rightly emphasized by earlier writers of
the century. Paulus, with all his fanlty method,
had at least recognized that the miraculous in
Christianity was Christ Himself, His Person.
Schleiermacher had seen in Christ ‘the greatest
fact in history, the one only sinless and _ perfect
Man, in whom the Divinity dwelt in its fulness,’
Herder, of whom it has been said that his Christ-
liche Schriften gave the first impulse to the immense
literature generally known under the name of the
Life of Christ, did not forget even in his constant
denunciations of the corruptions of Christianity
to hold up to admiration the Person of Jesus as
the Prophet of the truest humanity.
This primary importance of the fullest considera-
tion of the Person of Christ is nowhere seen more
strikingly than in one of the earliest and most
effective replies to Strauss’ work, by C. Ullmann,
a reply which so influenced Strauss that he modi-
fied his position, at least for a time, so far as to
concede to Christ a place historically unique as a
religious genius. As Ullmann insisted, Strauss
was by his own fundamental philosophical assump-
tions debarred from doing justice to the Person of
Jesus.t But if Strauss’ position is correct, then
it is impossible to understand why the disciples of
Jesus should have regarded Him as the Messiah ;
for they could scarcely have done so, and with such
surprising success, unless there had been something
extraordinary about Him. The dilemma, there-
fore, which Ullmann proposed was really this—
Did Christ create the Church, or did the Church
imvent Christ? Τί the former, Jesus must have
been no mere Jewish Rabbi, but a personality of
extraordinary power; if the latter, we have an
invention which would make the history of Chris-
tianity quite incomprehensible. It was, of course,
open to Strauss to reply that whilst the powerful
personality of Jesus had created the Church,
yet subsequently mythical hopes and conceptions
might have been at work, transforming and mag-
nifying the idea of the Christ.t But at all events
for a time Strauss hesitated. He not only ac-
* Matheson, Aids to the Stud rer "he 51 ;
οἵ. also B. Weiss, Leben Jesus el ak MEP
t To the same effect Weinel, Jesus im
hundert, 1904, p. 4
¢ See Pfleiderer, op
to Strauss, referenc
Epistles, pp. 20, 132.
neunzehnten Jahr-
cit. p. 220.
For Ullmann and his reply
may be made to Knowling, Witness of the
knowledged the supremacy of Jesus in the sphere
of religion, but he maintained that He possessed
such power over the souls of men, to which there
may have been conjoined some pliysical force like
magnetism, that He was able to perform cures
which were regarded as miraculous. He even
went so far as to consider the Fourth Gospel as
a possible historical authority. ἢ
In face of all this confusion, and of the number
of replies to Strauss and the position which they
took up, it is easy to understand that the question
of the sources of the Gospel history and a criti-
cism of them assumed a growing importance. This
importance Strauss had practically ignored, and
now Baur’s theory of early Church history and of
the origin of early Christian documents was to be
worked in to supply the want, and to be adopted
by Strauss as a remedy for his own indecision or
indifference as to the Gospel sources. Strauss
felt, it would seem, the justice of Baur’s reproof,
viz. that he had written a eriticism of the Gospel
history without a criticism of the Gospels. +
But just as it may be affirmed that Strauss had
started with dogmatic philosophical assumptions,
so the same judgment must be passed upon Baur’s
starting-point. Noone has admitted this more fully
than Pfleiderer, so far as the first three Gospels are
concerned (op. cit. pp. 231, 282).
Wilke and Weisse had already proved, says
Pfleiderer, the priority of Mark (and had thus,
with Herder, anticipated much later criticism),
and it could only have been the fact that Baur was
wedded to his dogmatie method which prompted
him to place Mark’s Gospel at least as late as A.D.
130, and to see in it a Gospel consisting of ex-
tracts from Matthew and Luke.
The impossibility of separating any account of
the dife of Christ from its sources became more
and more evident in the succeeding literature.
2. Closely related in point of time to Strauss’
popular book is that of the Frenchman Renan.
To attempt any examination of the defects of this
famous work would be beyond our province. But
just as Strauss was blamed for his indifference to
any treatment of the sources, 1.6. the Gospels, so
Renan was blamed for his half-and-half treatment
of the same Gospels. For this he is severely taken
to task by Schwarz.t He blames Renan for pass-
ing so lightly over the inquiries of a man like
Baur as to the origin of our Gospels ; and he points
out that Renan’s half-and-half treatment of these
same Gospels, especially of the Gospel of John,
avenges itself upon him, in that it leads him on
from half-rationalistic explanations of the miracles
to explanations, which are adopted even at the
cost of the moral perfection of Jesus. And in this
connexion he refers, like other writers, to the ex-
planation which Renan gives of the resurrection of
Lazarus. Of course the earlier Renan placed the
Gospels, the more difficult it was for him to
account for the miracles which gathered around
Jesus; and it is not too much to say that the
earliest Gospel, St. Mark, the Gospel which Renan
himself regarded as the earliest, is bound up with
the miraculous. Renan’s short and easy method
was to declare dogmatically that there was no
room in history for the supernatural. Like Strauss
and Baur, Renan too had his assumption as to
the historical worth of the Gospels; he too sets
out with a general and comprehensive judgment
as to their contents; for him the Gospels are not
biographies, after the manner of those of Suetonius,
nor are they legends invented after the manner
of Philostratus; they are legendary biographies.
* Lichtenberger, op. cit. p. 328.
ἡ See Schwarz, op. cit. p. 545f.
t Op. cit. pp. 538-540; see also B. Weiss, Life of Christ, i. pp.
203, 205, Eng. tr.
CRITICISM
CRITICISM
‘T would compare them with the Legends of the
Saints, the Lite of Plotinus, Proclus, Isidorus, and
other similar writings, in which historie truth and
the purpose of presenting models of virtue are
combined in different degrees.’ It is not, perhaps,
surprising that B. Weiss should speak of Renan’s
Vie de Jésus as not a history but a romance, and
should add that, as our sources in their actual
form were in many respects out of sympathy with,
indeed almost incomprehensible to him, he could
not escape the danger of rearranging them accord-
ing to lis own taste, or in a merely eclectic way. *
3. If we turn to Theodor Keim (1867-1872), to
whom has sometimes been attributed the ‘ Life of
Jesus’ from a rationalistic standpoint, we notice
that he too is severely taken to task by Pfleiderer
for his unsatisfactory and fluctuating criticism of
the Gospels as sources, and for his too close ad-
herence to the views of Baur, especially in regard
to the relation of the Synoptics to each other. St.
Mark, ¢.g.,isa compilation from St. Matthewand St.
Luke, and St. Matthew’s is regarded as the earliest
Gospel. In comparing Keim’s various works relat-
ing to the life of Jesus, we certainly find a strange
fluctuation with regard to his statements as to the
sources and their validity. Thus he actually places
St. Matthew in its primitive form as early as A.D.
66, and supposes it to have been revised and edited
some thirty years later; St. Mark he places about
100; and St. Luke, in which he sees a Gospel
written by a companion of St. Paul, about 90.
But in 1873 Keim issued a book of a more
popular character, and in this we find that the
revision of St. Matthew is placed about 100, St.
Mark about 120, St. Luke also about 100, while it
is no longer referred to a companion of St. Paul.
Some years later (1878) Keim’s position with regard
to the Gospels was again differently expressed,
and he seems to be prepared to make certain con-
cessions to his opponents, and to attach more
weight to the two-document theory as the result
of a fresh study of Papias.t But it will be noticed
that Pfleiderer has nothing but praise for Keim’s
treatment of the Fourth Gospel, which in 1867 he
places between 100 and 117, and a few years after
(1873) as late as A.D. 130. It must not, however,
be forgotten that, as Dr. Drummond rightly points
out, Keim’s position with regard to St. John’s
Gospel marks a very long retreat in date from the
position of Baur, whilst Pfleiderer himself is the
sole critic of importance who still places the
Gospel in question at the extravagant date, 170,
demanded by the founder of the Tiibingen school.
But with all these variations as to dates, and
with the free concession of the presence of mythical
elements in the accounts of the great events of our
Lord’s life, Keim takes up a very different position
from Strauss and Baur, and at all events the early
members of the Tiibingen school, with regard to
the importance of the Person of Jesus and of our
knowledge of Him. Nowhere is this more plainly
seen than in the remarkable stress which he lays
upon St. Paul’s references to the facts of our Lord’s
earthly life and upon his high Christology. Baur
and his followers had fixed men’s attention upon
Paul, Keim insists upon the unique and supreme
importance of Jesus, and he sees in Him the Sinless
One, the Son of God.
But Keim’s portraiture of Jesus is marred by many incon-
sistencies. Thus he is prepared to admit that the miracles of
healing may have happened in response to the faith evoked by
the personality of Jesus, or he is thrown back in his treatment
of the miraculous upon the old rationalistic methods ; the story,
e.g., of Jesus walking upon the sea had its origin in the words,
“Ye know not at what hour of the night your Lord cometh.’ In
some respects it is not too much to say that even the moral sin-
lessness of Jesus is endangered, if not sacrificed. Keim rejects,
* B. Weiss, op. c’t. pp. 184, 187. ‘
t Sanday, art. ‘Gospels’ in Smith’s DB? ii. p. 1218.
VOL. I.—25
it is true, the visionary hypothesis, but he finds no alternative
except the conviction that nothing irrefutable can be known
concerning the issue of the life of Jesus, an assertion equally
unsatisfactory with that of Baur. He speaks sometimes of the
early and Apostolic testimony rendered to the appearances of
the risen Jesus, while at times he seems unable to realize the
full force of this early testimony and its marked reserve. In
his chronology we note another instance of Keim’s arbitrary
method, for he knows of no going up to Jerusalem before the
last Passover, and the public career of Jesus is comprised within
a single year.
In spite of much that savours of subjectivity,
Keim, however, stands out as the writer who, in
the ‘ Life of Jesus movement,’ as Nippold lias
called it, has hitherto treated most fully of the
Gospels as authorities, with the exception, perhaps,
of Weizsiicker. We have seen how this need of a
full treatment of the Gospels as sources had been
felt since the days of Strauss’ first edition of his
Leben Jesu, and we shall see that this need is still
further felt and emphasized.
4, Within a few years of the latest publication
of Keim’s work, two important Lives of Jesus, which
are often mentioned together, issued from the
press in Germany, viz. B. Weiss’ Leben Jesw and
Beyschlag’s book bearing the same title. These
books are of interest not only as important in the
‘Life of Jesus movement,’ but as further and
valuable attempts to deal with our Gospels and
their sources. Here it must be sufficient to say
that they testify to the new importance which had
been given to the Synoptic problem by H. Holtz-
mann’s book, Die Synoptischen Evangelion, 1863.
8. Holtzmann’s book gains its value not only by
its rejection of the ‘tendency’ theories with regard
to the composition of the Gospels, but also because,
in its advocacy of the two-document hypothesis,
as we now eall it, it marks a new departure, and
lays down a foundation for future study.* Holtz-
mann’s investigations had been published in the
year before Strauss gave to the German people his
popular Life of Jesus, in which, as we have seen,
his account of the Gospels was still based upon the
Tiibingen researches ; but Holtzmann’s theory has
a permanent interest for us to-day, while the
author’s subsequent statements of his views may
be found in his published commentaries. It has
indeed been said of the two-document theory that
it may almost be reckoned to have passed out of
the rank and number of mere hypotheses ; + and at
all events any account of the hfe and teaching of
Jesus, or any investigation as to the historical
character of the Gospels, will have to take note of
it not only in itself, but im its many possible com-
binations with other sources.
This statement can be easily verified by a perusal of recent
expositions of their views by representative writers. We turn,
e.g., to Wendt’s Die Lehre Jesu, and we see how he allows a
connexion in all likelihood between the statement of Papias as
to St. Mark being the interpreter of St. Peter, and the actual
contents of our earliest Gospel, and how he finds in the Logia
of St. Matthew an uncommonly rich and valuable material of
Apostolic tradition, which may be placed by the side of St.
Mark as a complementary source for a knowledge of the teach-
ing of Jesus. Bousset, in his little but important book, Was
wissen wir von Jesus 32, is loud in his praises of the way in which
modern research as to the original sources of the Synopties
harmonizes so strikingly with the famous statement of Papas.
So, too, von Soden refers to the previous work of Weizsacker
and Holtzmann, and speaks of two Uvrevangelien (although he
uses this term with some hesitation), which go back one to St.
Peter and the other to St. Matthew, and he finds it possible to
trace a connexion between the familiar statement of Papias and
our Gospels of St. Mark and St. Matthew (Die wichtigsten
Fragen im Leben Jesu, 1904, pp. 42, 02).
* See also J. Estlin Carpenter, The Bible in the Nineteenth
Century, p. 901, and his remarks on the two-document hypo-
thesis. He points out that the conclusion of Weizsacker's
investigations pointed in the same direction (cf. his Untersuch-
ungen uber die Hvangelische Geschichte, 1869, 2nd ed. 1901).
+ Moffatt, Historical NT2, p. 264.
+ So, too, Deissmann, ‘Evangelium und Urchristentum’ in
Beitrdge zur Weiterentwicklung der christlichen Religion, p. 128.
Deissmann seems inclined to attach some considerable weight
to oral tradition and its trustworthiness, a very important
consideration.
386 CRITICISM
CRITICISM
It must, of course, be remembered that, like
H. Holtzmann, these other writers referred to
did not regard the two-document theory as alone
sufficient to explain the origin of the Gospels. Other
material was no doubt present in the Synoptics in
addition to the two documents, as we can see In
the case of St. Luke (ef. art. LUKE).*
And it must also be remembered that Holtzmann
did not start with a belief that the sources of the
first two Gospels, St. Mark and St. Matthew,
must correspond with the two documents referred
to by Papias. On the contrary, the investigation
of the Gospels showed him that there were two
sources at the base of our Synoptic writings, which
closely resembled the statements of Papias with
regard to the documents which he referred to St.
Mark and St. Matthew.
6. But some half dozen years before Holtz-
mann’s book was published, another, and in many
respects ἃ more serious, opposition to the methods
of the Tiibingen School, had made itself felt in the
breaking away of Albrecht Ritschl from his former
standpoint. In 1857 this final break was made,
and for more than thirty years Ritschl was des-
tined to be a great and growing factor of interest
in the German theological world. Ritschl was
keenly alive to the importance to be attached
to the Person of Christ. In his treatment of the
books of the NT he was to a great extent con-
servative, inasmuch as he accepted the traditional
authorship of so many of those books, as, ¢.g., of
the Gospel of St. John.
But, on the other hand, it is urged that Ritschl’s
own peculiar doctrine and the paramount stress
which he laid on our experimental knowledge of
Christ’s power to confer spiritual freedom and
deliverance, no doubt tended to make him inde-
pendent of, if not inditferent to, the results of
criticism. Ritschl and his distinguished follower
W. Herrmann lay the greatest stress, and would
have us lay the greatest stress, upon the impres-
sion made upon us by the ‘historicil’ Christ.
But it is not easy to ascertain what is meant by
this ‘historical’ Christ, by loyalty to whom the
true Christian is known, This is the favourite
Ritschlian position, this insistence upon the im-
pression which Christ makes upon the soul histori-
cally confronted with Him. But we naturally
ask, From whence and from what is this impression
derived? Not, surely, from the impression of the
earthly life of Jesus alone, as Herrmann main-
tained, but from what Kahler has called the
‘Biblical Christ’; the Christ of the NT is the
Christ not only of the Gospels, but of the Epistles
and of the Church.
It is urged, indeed, by the Ritschlians repre-
sented by Herrmann, that this faith in the his-
torical Christ guarantees that, whatever criticism
may effect, it cannot interfere with the truth
* The two-document theory is sharply criticized by M. Lepin
(Jésus Messie et Fils de Dieu, p. xxxvi, 1905), although he admits
that it is adopted by a certain number of Romanist writers, 6.0.
Loisy, Batiffol, Minocchi, Lagrange. M. Lepin’s contention is
that the theory in question is not in agreement with the most
ancient testimony, which regards St. Matthew as the first of
the Gospels, composed for the Jewish Christians of the first
days, and as an authentic work of the Apostle. He admits at
the same time (p. xxxvi) that some Protestant writers claim to
make this two-document theory accord with the full authenticity
of the First Gospel (i.e. St. Matthew), and that admission is at
least made of the semi-authenticity of this Gospel by those who
claim to recognize in the primitive document, the Logia of
I apias, the actual work of St. Matthew. He also observes that
even Schmiedel allows that if St. Matthew was not the author of
the Logia, he may at all events have been the author of a
writing, more ancient still, upon which the Logia depended
(Encuve, Bibl. art. ‘Gospels,’ ii. 1891). See also Stanton. The
Gospels as Historical Documents, pp. 17, 18, for the fact that the
Gospel which bears the name of St. Matthew is the most often
quoted of the Synoptics in early days ; and it is difficult. as even
Jiilicher allows, to account for the attribution of a Gospel to an
Apostle so little known as St. Matthew. ;
' January 1906,
and power of the position already won, and with
the response made by the human soul to the
perfection of Christ presented to us in the Gospels.
But whatever may have been the case with
Ritschl himself, it can searcely be said that his
method has prevented those who claim in some
measure to be his followers from dealing very
loosely with the Gospel miracles, or with such
events as the Virgin-birth and the Resurrection
of the Lord. And it is difficult to see how this
process of solution can fail to weaken the impres-
sion made by the ‘historical’ Christ, and our con-
fidence in the revelation which we owe to His life.
Many of those who are classed as HRitschlians
dismiss in a somewhat arbitrary fashion sayings
and deeds of our Lord which seem to them to
admit of difficulty. The manner, e.g., in which
J. Weiss has dealt with the oldest Gospel, that of
St. Mark, in his Das dlteste Evangelium, cannot
be said to inspire a conviction of the truthfulness
of many of the most familiar Gospel narratives.
Herrmann’s own statements help us to see how sub-
jective his method may become. He maintains,
e.g., that through the impression which Christ
makes upon us and our experimental knowledge
of His power to confer freedom and deliverance,
all uncertainty as to whether the fignre of Jesus,
which works thus upon us, belongs to legend or to
history is in the nature of the case impossible. *
But it seems a cvrious argument to maintain
that the impression which Jesus makes upon us is
the positive revelation made by God in Christ,
while the Gospels from which we derive that
impression may or may not consist in this in-
stance or in that of legendary and untrustworthy
matter. Herrmann himself says that, in face of
the seriousness of a desire for a salvation which
means forgiveness of sins and life in spiritual
freedom, the miracles in the NT necessarily be-
come of minor importance . . . he who has found
Jesus Himself to be the ground of his salvation
has no need of those miracles (op. cit. p. 180). But
if Jesus is ‘found’ through the portrait of His
life presented to us in the NT, it is not too much
to say that that life is inextricably bound up, from
its beginning to its close, with the miraculous, and
that the impression which that life has made
upon the world has been made by a record from
which the miraculous cannot be eliminated. Con-
viction of sin, ¢.g., must precede deliverance from
it; and St. Peter’s ery, ‘Depart from me; for I am
a sinful man, Ὁ Lord’ (Lk 5%), resulted not only
from Christ’s teaching, but also from the proof of
His miraculous power.
7. It is in this attitude towards the miraculous,
and in this effort to lessen its scope, that we may
find a point of contact between what we may call
the ‘scientific’ and the Ritschlian school. In a
large and growing number of German crities who
might be described as ‘scientific,’ if not as radical,
there is an acceptance of the miracles of healing
as due to the power of the personality of Jesus
and to the response of faith which He evoked.
We may see this in more or less degree in the
statements of O. Holtzmann (Leben Jesu, pp. 58,
149, 166), or in those of Furrer (Das Leben Jesu
Christi, pp. 129, 130), or in Bousset (Was wissen
wir von Jesus ?, p. 56). So, too, statements of a
similar kind meet us again and again in the ac-
count of the miracles of Jesus given us in the
series of popular little books on the religious-
historical aspects of Christianity, which is now in
course of publication in Germany (ef. Die Wunder
im NT, pp. 32ff., 51ff, by Traub).+ And in our
*See, e.g., Communion with God, p. 177, and cf. p. 81ff.
Eng. tr., for other statements made above.
1 See on the value of these little books the Hibbert Journal.
CRITICISM
own country we remember how decisively Dr. P.
Gardner would discriminate between mere wonders
of healing and ‘miracles proper,’ and how he
describes Jesus as a healer of disease as_his-
toric.*
But at the same time it is evident how much
there is which is arbitrary in this modern treat-
ment of the miraculous. ‘Thus Lepin justly eriti-
cises Schmiedel’s attitude in this connexion.+
Schmiedel distinctly aftirms that it would be
wrong in any investigation of the miracle-narra-
tives of the Gospels to start from any such
postulate or axiom as that miracles are impossible
(Encyc. Bibl. art. ‘ Gospels,’ col. 1876). But a few
pages later in the same article (col. 1885) he writes
that it is quite permissible for us to regard as
historical only those cures of the class which even
at the present day physicians are able to effect by
psychical methods—as, more especially, cures of
mental maladies (cf. also Harnack, Das Wesen des
Christentums, p. 18). The same occasional power
is ascribed to Jesus by Professor N. Schmidt, Zhe
Prophet of Nazareth, p. 264.
So, too, Schmiedel (op. cit. col. 1882) and Wendt
(Die Lehre Jesu, p. 471) agree in interpreting the
words in our Lord’s message to the Baptist as
referring to the spiritually dead, ‘the dead are
raised’ (Mt 11°, Lk 7”), just as in their opinion
the preceding words are to be interpreted of the
spiritually lame and blind. But, in the first place,
there is no proof that the previous clauses are to
be interpreted in any such spiritual sense, and
the Evangelists evidently did not so interpret
them. It is urged that we can find a precedent for
this spiritual interpretation in the familiar passage
Is 35°; but nothing is said in Isaiah of the raising
of the dead, a fact entirely ignored by N. Schmidt,
who is at one with Schmiedel and Wendt in their in
terpretation (/.c. p. 238). Moreover, it is very open
to question if there was any Jewish expectation
that the Messiah would raise the dead, so that St.
Matthew and St. Luke had no ground of general
belief upon which to base the raisings of the
dead which they so evidently attributed to Jesus
of Nazareth. Even if there are isolated state-
ments in Jewish theology which attribute to the
Messiah the power of raising the dead, it would
seem to have been far more generally believed
that God would Himself raise the dead. Fur-
ther, even in those passages which do attribute
this power to the Messiah, it is most important
to remember that they refer to the resurrection
of all the dead, and that there is no allusion of
any kind in Jewish writings to the raising by the
Messiah of single individuals (cf. Edersheim, Life
and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 1. p. 632).
But this attitude, maintained by some of
Ritschl’s followers and by the representative critics
of the ‘ scientific’ school, extends to a crucial ques-
tion and a crucial miracle, viz. the Resurrection of
our Lord from the dead. We may readily grant
Ritschl’s own acceptance of this fundamental his-
torical fact of Christian belief.t But what is to be
said of a large number of his followers? Some
of them would no doubt allow that Christ awoke
to a heavenly life with God, or they would labour
to draw a distinction between the Easter faith and
the Easter message ; or they would allow that the
Resurrection was a fact of religious faith, or that,
whilst the traditional record is often doubtful, the
essential contents of the record are, and mean,
everything.§ But it is upon this question of the
Resurrection that Feine rightly takes his stand,
and upon the inclusion or exclusion of this fact
* A Historic View of the NT, p. 141 ff.
ἡ Jésus Messie et Fils de Dieu. 1905, pp. 1xvi, Ixvii.
t See the remarks of Garvie, The Ritschliun Theology, p. 225.
ἃ Orr, Ritschlian Theology, p. 203.
CRITICISM 387
in any satisfactory picture of the historical
Christ. ἢ
If we turn again to one of the most prominent
critics who may be classed as Ritschlians, A. Har-
nack, we are not only met by his famous distine-
tion between the Easter faith and the Easter
message, but we also become aware that his
classification of the Gospel miracles is not caleu-
lated to increase our belief and confidence in the
character of the Gospel narrative. Harnack admits,
indeed, that the spiritual power of Jesus was so
great that we cannot dismiss offhand as an illusion
the reports that He could make the blind to see
or the deaf to hear. But, apart from these reports
of surprising cures, Harnack would regard the
stories of the miraculous which are connected with
Jesus as arising from exaggerations of natural
and impressive events, or from the projection of
inner experiences on to the outer world, or from
an interest in the fulfilment of OT records, or from
various parables and sayings. In these and in
similar ways the miraculous stories arose. And
yet, after all is said, it will be noticed that there
are narratives of miracles which do not fall under
the above heads, and these Harnack comprises
under one category as impenetrable stories, the
secret of which we cannot solve.
8. One other and important point in which the
‘scientific’ German theologians and the left wing
of Ritschl’s followers agree is in the rejection of
the Apostolic authorship of the Fourth Gospel.
And with this rejection there must needs be a
serious weakening of the evidence as to our Lord’s
Deity, although no doubt this evidence may be
substantiated from the Synoptists alone. The
remarkable thing is that both Ritschlian and
‘scientific’ critics are alike impressed with the
indications that in the Fourth Gospel we are deal-
ing with a source or sources full of minute details
and vivid recollections.
Thus Wendt, while he refers the Gospel to some Christian
of Asia Minor, admits that this Evangelist, whoever he was,
belonged to the same circle in which the old Apostle St. John
had lived, and that he thus had access to written information
and to oral tradition received from the beloved disciple (Das
Johannesevangelium, Ὁ. 216ff.). P. W. Schmidt, in his Die
Geschichte Jesu (1904, p. 95), cannot help feeling the force of
the exact and minute geographical references which the Fourth
Gospel contains, although he rejects the Johannine authorship.
Von Soden, although he refuses to rank the Fourth Gospel
amongst the historical sources for a ‘Life’ of Jesus, admits on
the same page that the writer of that Gospel had access to good
traditions in his notices of place and time, in the small details
which mark his recitals, and in his information as to various
personalities (Die wichtigsten Fragen im Leben Jesu, 1904,
p. 5). If we turn to English critics we find Dr. Percy Gardner
inclined to follow Dr. Harnack’s view that the Fourth Gospel
was the work of John the Elder, who was a disciple of John the
son of Zebedee. Dr. Gardner, too, is so impressed with the
writer’s precise local knowledge, that he thinks it may well have
been derived from one of the Apostles, and very likely from
John the son of Zebedee.$
So far as English criticism is concerned, it cannot
be said that anything which has been urged has
broken down the strong lines of defence which we
* Thus, in dwelling upon the contending parties and their
disputes as to the ‘historical’ and the ‘biblical’ Christ, Feine
writes: ‘Die Streitfrage lief also darauf hinaus, ob die Aufer-
stehung Jesu mit in der Bild des geschichtlichen Christus
einzubeziehen sei oder nicht’; cf. Das Christentum Jesu und
das Christentum. der Apostel, 1904, p. 54.
+ See especially the reply of Prof. W. Walther of Rostock to
Harnack’s Das Wesen des Christentums®, 1904, pp. 47, 48:
Harnack’s last category is expressed by the word ‘ Undurchdring-
liches.’ Reference should also be made to T. H. Wright’s 716
Finger of God, 1903, p. 194, and his valuable Appendix on the
view taken by Dr. Percy Gardner and by Dr. Harnack of our
Lord’s miracles, and also on early Christian and medieval
miracles.
t See, further, Lepin, op. cit. p. 360. He rightly emphasizes
the fact that Julicher, in the last edition of his Einleitung (p.
324), dismisses the attribution of the Fourth Gospel to a presbyter
John as without value, and regards the Gospel as composed by
a Christian, dependent upon the Apostle John, at the opening
of the 2nd century.
§ A Historic View of the NT, pp. 153, 184.
388 CRITICISM
CRITICISM
owe to Lightfoot, Westcott, Sanday, and more
recently to Dr. Drummond. As Dr. Stanton has
rightly urged, there must have been good grounds
for believing that the Fourth Gospel was founded
upon Apostolic testimony, in order to overcome the
prejudice which would be created by the contrasts
between it and accounts which had been more
generally received.*
9. But whilst, in the respects which we have
mentioned, the position of the Ritschlian School
is so unsatisfactory, we may welcome, with those
who are not at all in sympathy with Ritschl’s
views or with the views of his followers, the
witness borne by so many Ritschlians to a living
Lord and the unique place which they assign to the
Person of Christ in any account of Christianity.+
Among those, e.g., who are classed as Ritschlians we have on
the one hand men like Troeltsch supporting strongly and
ardently the value of the study of Comparative Religion for a
right knowledge of Christianity, and maintaining that the
religious-historical method should be applied to every depart-
ment of theological thought; whilst Harnack, with Reischle,
hesitates to follow, and is evidently alive to the fact that the
method in question may be carried too far. Dr. Harnack’s words
on the subject are remarkable. He expresses his desire that
the German theological Faculties may remain so for the pursuit
of inquiry into the Christian religion, because Christianity is
not a religion by the side of other religions, but the religion,
and because Christ is not one Master by the side of other
Masters, but the Master ; the disciples were conscious that they
possessed in Christ not merely a Master, but that they knew
themselves to be men, new men, redeemed by Him, and that
therefore they could preach Him as Saviour and Lord.{ It is
quite true that the American writer, Professor W. A. Brown,
sees in some of Harnack’s statements, and in his recognition of
the gospel of Jesus as that which satisfies the deepest depths of
humanity, the promise of a better understanding between the
two parties in the Ritschlian ranks: ‘With this recognition of
the anima naturaliter Christiana, of a preparation for Christi-
anity within the very nature of man, we find Harnack, even
while insisting with Ritschl upon the originality of Christianity,
admitting the complementary truth for which the speculative
school contend.’ §
Unfortunately, however, the advocates of the religious-his-
torical method, at least in its extreme form, show no disposition
to confine themselves to the comparison of Christianity with
other religions in respect to its inward witness alone; they
extend this comparison to the historical facts of the NT, and
they do so in a manner which savours of recklessness and ex-
travagance.|| The need of caution seems to be admitted even
by Pfleiderer when he writes, ‘ Before all things, we must guard
against the constant practice of imagining that the inward
affinity of religious conceptions implies a connexion in their
external history.’ J
And when we turn to the Ritschlians, it is evident that men
like Reischle are well aware of the many safeguards with which
the religious-historical method and its study should be guarded. **
His criticism, e.g. that we should note not only points of like-
ness but points of unlikeness in any pursuit of the method in
question, is endorsed by Heinrici and others, who have joined
with Harnack in opposing the religious-historical study of
* The Gospels as Historical Documents, i. p. 277; and cf. to
the same effect, Sanday, The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel,
1905, pp. 15, 41; see also Dr. Chase, Cambridge Theological
Essays, 1905, p. 883. Mr. Conybeare has the boldness to assure
us that any modern scholar who upholds the hypothesis of the
Apostolic authorship of the. Fourth Gospel is at least as wanting
in perspective and insight as the much derided upholders of the
view that the Pauline Epistles were only concocted in the 2nd
cent. (Hibbert Journal, July 1903, p. 620). But he takes no
notice of Dr. Drummond’s defence, and, whilst he is loud in his
praises of the Abbé Loisy, it may be of interest to note that
another liberal Romanist, Pére Calmes, has now given us an
admirable defence of the Johannine authorship, UEvangile
selon Saint Jean, 1996. For a sharp and decisive reply to the
extraordinary attack by Kreyenbihl upon the authorship, see
Gutjahr, Die Glaubenswiirdigkeit des Irendischen Zeugnisses
whe δὶ » Abfassung des vierten kanonischen Evangeliums, 1904,
Ρ. ἀπ.
__t See Orr, The Christian View of God and the World, pp. 53,
“9, on the central place of Christ’s Person in His religion.
*Ritschlianism is perhaps nothing more nor less than a deter-
mined attempt to find the whole contents of Christianity in the
Person of Christ’ (Cambridge Theological Essays, 1905, p- 517).
| Die Aufgabe der theol. Facultdéten und die allgemeine
Religionsaeschichte, Dp. 16.210:
§ The Essence of ( hristianitu, 1903, pp. 286, 287.
See, ¢.y., Dr. Blass on Gunkel’s extraordinary theory as to
the resurrection of our Lord on the third day, Expos. Times,
Xvi. [1904] p. 14; and the present writer may refer to The Testi-
mony of St. Paul to Christ, pp. 526, 527, or A. Meyer's Die
Auferstehund Christi, 1905, p. 167. i
§| Early Christian Conception of Christ, pp. 153, 154.
** See his T'heologie und Religionsgeschichte, 1904, p. 27 ff.
Christianity; as if it were only one of many religions. Thus
Heinrici insists with great force that if the resurrection of Jesus
is considered from the religious-historical point of view it is
unique; and in the same manner A. Jeremias, in answer to
Gunkel, insists that the resurrection of Jesus, as it is described
as taking place, is without analogy in any other religion.* In
the same pamphlet Reischle warns us against the danger of
attaching too great value to analogies, and transforming them
into relations of dependence. He does not deny that analogies
exist between Oriental religions and Christianity, but he is
keenly alive to the fact that their right and correct apprecia-
tion is a very difficult matter. He allows, e.g., the existence of
a Jewish Gnosticism in the Apostolic Age, but he regards as a
fantastic hypothesis Gunkel’s attempt to attach to this Jewish
Gnosticism an important réle in establishing points of con-
nexion between Christianity and other religions (op. cit. pp. 30,
31). So, too, he rightly draws attention to the danger of over-
valuing the form of an expression to the neglect of the actual
meaning of its contents, and he quotes the aphorism, ‘Si duo
dicunt idem, non est idem’ (op. cit. pp. 31, 33). He further
illustrates this position by the use of the familiar formula, ‘ In
the Name of Jesus,’ of which Heitmiuller has made so much. ἢ
Such words might, no doubt, be emploved as a magical or super-
stitious formula, but they might also be used as a confession of
Christian faith in Jesus, or as an invocation to Him in prayer,
or as an appeal to Him as the Mediator with God.
Once more, and above all, Reischle rightly insists upon the
insurmountable limits which beset the religious-historical
method in any endeavour to solve the problem of the personal
religious life of great religious personalities. If this is difficult
in the case of Paul, it is still more so, urges Reischle, in the case
of Jesus (op. cit. pp. 42, 43).t
10. But this acknowledgment of the marvellous
personality of Jesus may not only be seen in the
writings of the Ritschlian School and its various
and variant members. We may recognize it—it is
not too much to say—in German writers of every
school and in German works which appeal to all
sorts and conditions of men.
Amongst modern Church historians in Germany no name
stands more deservedly high than that of von Dobschutz. ‘The
Apologist,’ he tells us in the concluding words of his work on
Primitive Life in the Early Church, ‘could point triumphantly
to the realization of the moral ideal among Christians of every
standing. That was due to the power which issued from Jesus
Christ, and actually transformed men. In the midst of an old
and dying world this new world springs up with the note of
victory running through it. ‘‘If God be for us, who can he
against us?” ‘‘And this is the victory which overcometh the
world, even our faith.” . .. Christianity possessed what the
speculations of Neo-Platonism lacked, the sure historical basis
of Jesus Christ’s Person.’ But the remarks of von Dobschiitz
are of further interest, because he again emphasizes the im-
portance to be attached to the Person and work of Jesus, in his
contribution to the ‘ Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbicher,’ in
the course of publication in Germany. Here, too, he dwells
upon the Apostolic Age, and he points out that in it we do not
only find Judaism with a strong addition of Messianic expecta-
tion; Jesus had transformed the stiff monotheistic belief in
God into a living trust in God, and a joyous spirit of adop-
tion as God’s children had taken the place of Pharisaic self-
satisfaction and timorous fear.§ Or we turn to another series
of books, of a somewhat larger and more expensive kind, en-
titled Lebensfragen, and here, too, we meet with the same
emphatic testimony. Thus Weinel tells us that the Hegelian
philosophy hindered Strauss from estimating or understanding
the greatness of the personality of Jesus (Jesus im newunzehnten
Jahrhundert, p. 42, 1904). Again, a little later on (p. 64), in
summing up the significance of modern criticism, he declares
that no century has striven so earnestly to discover the featurcs
of the true historical Jesus as the nineteenth ; and he points o1.t
that whilst almost all the witnesses whom he cites in proof of
this occupy a critical standpoint in dealing with tradition, they
show at least respect, and for the most part reverence, for Jesus
of Nazareth, and have recognized the power of salvation in the
gospel which He taught. And as this image of Jesus in its
living reality and in its purity is placed before the eyes of men,
he prophesies that it will win the heart of humanity until all
men are more and more transformed into its likeness.
11. But then we have to face the remarkable
fact that this picture of the wondrous personality
of Jesus is most frequently derived by advanced
critics from the Synopties alone. The Fourth
Gospel is ruled out of court, or at the best reduced
to a testimony of secondary worth. The account,
* Heinrici, Urchristentwm, 1902, p. 38; A. Jeremias, Babi 'lon-
isches im NT, p.43: ‘Die Tatsache der Auferstehung Jesu
Christi ist in der Religionsgeschichte analogielos.’
t Im Namen Jesu, 1903, p. 197 ff.
t See on this pre-eminence belonging to the Person of Christ
in contrast to other religions, Fairbairn, Philosophy of Religion,
pp. 532, 533; and Soderblom, Die Religionen der Erde, 1905,
pp. 62-64.
§ Das Apostolische Zeitalter, p. 5.
CRITICISM
e.g., of the raising of Lazarus, if it is no longer
treated after the manner of Renan as a flagrant
deception to which Jesus lent Himself, is regarded
not as historical but as allegorical.* But even in
what is allowed to us of the Synoptic record, doubt
is thrown upon our Lord’s claim to judge the
world, or upon His declaration that He would give
His life as a ransom for many, to say nothing of
the refusal to admit, as we have already noted,
a large proportion of His miracles as historical.
In like manner the significance of St. Paul’s
testimony to the facts and teaching of the Gospels,
as also the significance of his claim to work mir-
acles in the power which Christ bestowed, is
minimized, if not disregarded.
We thus owe this wonderful picture of a great
personality mainly, if not entirely, to documents
bearing the names of three writers of whom we
are assured that we know very little, and whose
claims to be the authors of the books (in their
present shape at all events) which bear their
names must be very largely and seriously dis-
counted. And yet these obscure writers have
given us the picture of a life and of a teaching the
beauty and the excellence of which mankind has
never ceased to acknowledge.
‘Here,’ says a learned and cultured Jew, after allowing that
the Synoptic Gospels do contain teaching which in comparison
with average Judaism is both valuable and original, both new
and true, ‘we have religion and morality joined together at a
white heat of intensity. The teaching often glows with light
and fire. . . . The luminous juxtaposition of even familiar OT
doctrines may be novel and stimulating. The combination of
Dt 645 with Ly 1918—the love of God with the love of man—
in Mk 1229-31 was surely a brilliant flash of the highest religious
genius.’+ Elsewhere he speaks of ‘the first-classness’ of the
Synoptics, and points out that there are one or two facts
which still tend to weaken the effect of the best Rabbinic
teachings and sayings upon the average Jewish consciousness.
The first fact is that ‘these nobler sayings and teachings are
buried in a mass of greatly inferior matter, so that they are
difficult to unearth. They are not collected together in a lovely
setting, united and illumined by the story of a noble life.’ He
further remarks that, suppose we make a selection of the great
sayings and teachings of the Talmud and the Midrash, it must
be admitted that the same ‘powerful, driving, and emotional
effect. as the sayings and teachings of the Gospels’ is not pro-
duced.t
12. But we note that this picture is in many
respects entirely opposed to current Jewish concep-
tions of the day. No one has emphasized this more
strongly than Bousset in relation to the Jewish
anticipations and expectations of the Kingdom of
God. He insists, indeed, upon the Messianic con-
sciousness of Jesus, without which he regards not
only the whole work of Jesus, but the conduct of
His disciples after His death, as unintelligible.
But if Jesus regarded Himself as the Messiah, it
is evident, continues Bousset, that He did so in
a manner totally opposed to the predominant and
current Jewish expectations. Spiritual concep-
tions of the Messiah were not altogether wanting,
but political hopes always occupied the central
place in the picture. In the sense of such hopes
Jesus was not the Messiah, and would never have
become so. He expected the sovereignty of God
and not that of Israel, the victory of good and the
judgment of evil, not the triumph of the Jew and
the annihilation of the Roman; He preached a
kingdom in which the vision of God was granted
to the pure, and as the preparer for and the ruler
in that kingdom He regarded Himself.§ But the
Synoptists no less than St. John furnish us with
another picture which was even more decisively
* See, e.g., the remarks of Loisy, Autour dun petit livre, 1903,
p. 97ff.; and, on the other hand, Loisy’s fellow-countryman
and religionist Th. Calmes, L’Evangile selon Saint Jean, 1906,
pp. 68, 75.
+ C. G. Montefiore, ‘The Synoptic Gospels and the Jewish
οπβοιούθπεναν in the Hibbert Journal, July 1905, p. 658.
t Ib. p. 652.
§ See Bousset’s remarks in his Was wissen wir von Jesus?
p. 6L
inquiry.
---- -- --------------.--------.----------
CRITICISM 389
opposed to the current conceptions of the Jewish
nation, the picture of a suffering Messiah. It is
not too much to say that ‘the idea of the Messianic
sufferings and death is one that wakes no echo in
the heart of any Jewish contemporary of our Lord,
not excepting even His disciples.’** In short, the
words of Dalman are amply justified, ‘Suffering
and death for the actual possessor of the Messianic
dignity are in fact unimaginable according to the
testimony of the Gospels’ (Words of Jesus, p. 265,
Eng. ‘tr.).
‘Nothing could mark more strongly the contrast between
Jewish Messianic notions and the picture of the Messiah as
realized in our Gospels, than the following passage from the
Jewish Encyclopedia: ‘‘ Jesus’ word on the cross, ‘*My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” was in all its implications
itself a disproof of the exaggerated claims made for Him after
His death by His disciples. The very form of His punishment
would disprove those claims in Jewish eyes. No Messiah that
Jews could recognise could suffer such a death.”’ +
This representation of a suffering Messiah which
the Gospels presented so uncompromisingly, pressed
hard for a solution upon the famous founder of the
Tiibingen School :
* Never was that which bore the outward appearance of ruin
and annihilation turned into such signal and decisive victory,
and so glorious a passage into life, as in the death of Jesus. Up
to this time there was always a possibility that He and the
people might come to agree on the ground of the Messianic
faith . . . but His death made a complete and irreparable
breach between Him and Judaism. A death like His made it
impossible for the Jew, as long as he remained a Jew, to be-
lieve in Him as the Messiah. To believe in Him as the Messiah
after His dying such a death involved the removal from the
conception of the Messiah of all the Jewish and carnal elements
which were associated with it’ (Church History, i. p. 42, Eng.
tr.).
Baur’s solution of the difficulty forms one of
the most curious pages in the history of modern
criticism. He allows that nothing but the miracle
of the Resurrection could restore the faith of the
disciples after such a death as that of the Cross,
and yet he assures us in the same breath that the
question as to the nature and the reality of the
Resurrection lies outside the sphere of historical
What history requires is not so much
the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus, as the belief
that it was a fact.
In more recent utterances we seem to catch an
echo of Baur’s words, and his remarks anticipate
Harnack’s familiar distinction between the Easter
faith and the Easter message. The Easter faith,
according to Harnack, is a conviction which tells
us that the Crucified has achieved an inward
victory over death, and has entered into eternal
life. But this so-called Easter faith appears, not
unjustly, to many thoughtful minds to do away
with the need of Easter altogether. The Crucified
overcame death on Good Friday, so far, that is,
as an inward triumph was concerned. On Good
Friday, and not upon the third day, He entered
upon eternal life. And if nothing special happened
on Easter Day, there seems to be little sense or
point in talking about ‘ Easter faith.’ Ὁ
But, further, this contrast between the current
ideas of the Messiah and the Messiahship of Jesus
in the Gospels may be illustrated from the succeed-
ing history of the Jewish nation and from the cul-
* Muirhead, Eschatology of Jesus, 1904, p. 256. See, further,
Fairbairn, Studies in the Life of Christ, p. 308 ff.; J. Drum-
mond, The Jewish Messiah, 1877, pp. 356, 357; Row, Jesus of
the Evangelists 4, pp. 140, 213; Bishop Gore, Bampton Lectures,
p. 192. The whole appendix in Schtrer’s GJV 4 ii. p. 553 ff.,
entitled ‘ Der leidende Messias,’ should be consulted.
+ Professor Votaw (Chicago), ‘The Modern Jewish View of
Jesus,’ in the Biblical World, xxvi. No. 2 [Aug. 1905], p. 110.
The passage above is cited from the Jewish Encyc. vii. p. 166 ;
and the present writer would venture to refer for further litera-
ture to the Witness of the Epistles, pp. 23, 360.
+ See Dr. Walther’s valuable criticism, Ad. Harnack’s Wesen
des Christentums fiir die christliche Gemeinde gepriift®. 1904,
p. 134; and also Dr. F, Blass, ‘Science and Sophistry’ in Expos.
Times, Oct, 1904,
390 CRITICISM
CRITICISM
mination of the Jewish hopes in the pretender Bar
Cochba in the reign of Hadrian. The report was
circulated that the Messiah had at last appeared,
and fabulous numbers are said to have joined his
standard in insurrection against the Romans. We
know how the strugele ended in terrible disaster
to the Jews, although for some few years they
fought with all their characteristic stubbornness
and desperation. But the chief actor in the drama,
Bar Cochba, reveals to us only too plainly the
kind of Messiah whom the majority of the Jews
expected, and whom they were prepared to wel-
come: ‘Jesus ofiered Himself unresistingly to
death ; the impostor died in arms . . . whatever
Jesus Christ was not, this pretender was. What-
ever this pretender was, Jesus Christ was not.’*
One feature in the new Messiah’s career may be
specially noted, viz. the absence of any attempt
on his part to work miracles, although no doubt
all sorts of exaggerated stories of strength and
power gathered round his name.t But if, as we
are told, there was an irresistible tendency to
attribute miraculous powers to the Messiah, 1f, as
Professor Percy Gardner asserts, there was every
probability that whether actual or not the miracles
would be reported, how is it that no such miracles
gathered around the name of Bar Cochba? Is not
the only explanation to be found in the fact that
Jesus of Nazareth actually worked miracles, while
the pretender worked none?{ Nor must it be for-
gotten in this connexion that the Jews in early
times never attempted to deny that our Lord
wrought miracles ; on the contrary, they admitted
the miracles, whilst they referred them to Satanic
arts or to a knowledge of the sorcery which Jesus
had brought with Him from Egypt.§ In the same
manner the modern Jews admit that our Lord
gained His notoriety not merely from His teach-
ing but from His miracles, specially from those
which He wrought as a healer of the sick. ‘It
was not,’ writes Dr. Kohler in the Jewish Encye.
vii. p. 167, ‘as the teacher of new religious prin-
ciples nor as a new lawgiver, but as a new won-
der worker that Jesus won fame and influence
among the simple inhabitants of Galilee in his life-
time.’ ||
18. But there were other claims made by our
Lord, in addition to the claim to work miracles, and
of these great and supernatural claims it may be
said that they cannot possibly be derived from the
picture of the Messiah which meets us in the OT.
Some words remarkable in their bearing upon this
subject were uttered by Dr. Charles in speaking
before the University of Oxford on ‘The Messiah
of the Old Testament and the Christ of the New
Testament’ :
“As other claims which are without parallel in the Old Testa-
ment prophecy of the Messiah, we shall mention first His claim
to judge the world ; and next, to forgive sin ; and, finally, to be
the Lord of life and death. In the Old Testament these pre-
rogatives belong to God alone as the essential Head of the
kingdom, and appear in those prophetic descriptions of the
kingdom which ignore the figure of the Messiah, and represent
God as manifesting Himself among men. Here, then, we have
the Christ of the Gospels claiming not only to fulfil the Old
Testament prophecies of the various ideals of the Messiah, but
ae τ discharge the functions of God Himself in relation to the
ingdom.’ 4]
* Row, Jesus of the Evangelists, p. 147 ft.
t Edersheim, History of the Jewish Nation, p. 200 ff.
1 See especially the Church Quarterly Review, Jan. 1904.
§ Jesus Christ in the Talmud (Laible), p. 45 [Eng. tr.].
| The Modern Jewish View of Jesus, by Prot. Votaw p. 109
Chicago University Press, 1905. ys ‘ i
§| Expositor, 6th series, v. [1902] p. 258.
lyptic literature, it should be added,
cases the agent of God in the judgment which takes place at
the beginning or close of the Messianic reign; even in the final
judgment He is represented as God’s agent, and only in the
later section of the Book of Enoch does He appear as the judge
at the last day. We may also contrast our Lord’s own words
as to His Parousia with the fantastic and grotesque descriptions
of Jewish theology.
In Jewish apoca-
the Messiah is in many
Nor can it be said with any justification that
these Divine prerogatives are ascribed to our Lord
late in time, or that they were simply Christian
accretions. We need look no further than St.
Paul’s earliest Epistle, 1 Thess., to come across
statements which can scarcely mean anything less
than that our Lord was associated as Judge with
God the Father; that He is the medium ot salva-
tion, and that we obtain life through His death ;
that the prayers of Christians are to be addressed
to Him; that whether we wake or sleep our true
life is in Him (cf. 1 Th 918 5%), Nor is there
any reason to suppose that in such statements to
the Thessalonians St. Paul is putting forward a
conception of Christ which differed from that en-
tertained by the rest of the Church:* ‘The Son
of God,’ he writes to the Corinthians, ‘who was
preached among you by us (not by St. Paul himself
alone), even by me and Silvanus and Timothy,
was not yea and nay, but in him is yea,’ 2 Co 1%
(cf. 1 Th 1). Moreover, in the expression ‘ the
Son of God’ St. Paul’s teaching no less than that
of the Gospels indicates a unique relationship be-
tween the Father and the Son; cf. e.g. Ro 89:82,
And if we ask whence St. Paul’s conception was
derived, it seems not unreasonable to maintain
that it was derived from the statements and the
teaching of our Lord Himself.
There is a famous passage contained in two of
the Synoptic Gospels which so strongly resembles
the phraseology of St. John that it has been called,
and not unjustly, an aerolite from the Johannine
heaven : ‘ All things have been delivered unto me
of my Father, and none knoweth the Son save the
Father, neither doth any know the Father save
the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to
reveal him’ (Mt 11%, Lk 107). Dr. Harnack,
although he does not deny that Jesus spoke these
words, weakens their force and meaning, and it is
well to turn for a criticism of lis statements to
Dr. Swete’s remarks on ‘ The Teaching of Christ,’
Expositor (6th Series, vii. [1903] p. 407) :
‘The knowledge claimed is that of a son, and it rests upon
sonship ; it is a strange misreading of the words which reverses
this order, as Professor Harnack seems to do—it is not know-
ledge which makes Christ ‘‘the Son,” but sonship which
enables Him to know. He declares that He knows God as only
a son can know his father, and that this knowledge is not a
possession which other sons of God naturally share with Him,
but one which belongs of right to Him alone, and to others only
so far as He is pleased to impart it. ‘This is to claim not only
unique knowledge, but a unique Sonship. It is difficult to dis-
cover any essential difference between this statement of St.
Matthew and the closing words of St. John’s prologue.’
The Abbé Loisy does not allow that our Lord ever
spoke these words, but affirms that they are derived
from some primitive Church tradition; and he
goes so far as to suppose that they were derived, in
part at all events, from Sir 51.+ But it is diff-
cult to believe that such words could have found
the place which they occupy in two of our Gospels
unless they were spoken by our Lord. It should
be remembered that they are regarded, not merely
by conservative but by ‘scientific’ critics, as form-
ing part of that ‘collection of discourses’ which
probably comes to us from the Apostle St. Matthew.
Indeed, Keim long ago affirmed that there is no
more violent criticism than that which Strauss had
introduced, viz., the repudiation of a passage so
strongly attested. Moreover, the alleged depen-
dences upon Sir 51 are in reality very superficial ;
in some particulars the alleged likenesses are such
as might be found in the utterances of any Jewish
speakers. It may also be noted that while the
* See, further, Dr. Sanday, Criticism of the Fourth Gospel,
p. 231; Bishop Gore, The Permanent Creed and the Christian
Idea of Sin, p. 10ff. If we compare 1 Co 28 and Ja 91, it is
notable how both St. Paul and St. James can speak of Jesus as
‘the Lord of the (i.e. the Divine) glory.’
+ See for a recent criticism, Cambridge Theological Essays,
1905, p. 455 ff.
CRITICISM
CRITICISM 391
points of comparison are preserved, the points of
contrast are entirely omitted. For example, Jesus
the son of Sirach in his prayer thanks God because
He has hearkened to him and delivered him from
peril; our Lord in His prayer thanks the Father
for revealing to babes that which had been con-
cealed from the wise and prudent.*
But it should further be borne in mind that
these statements in Mt. and Lk. do not stand alone ;
that the Gospel which is probably the earliest of
the Synoptics speaks of ‘the Father’ and of ‘the
Son’ absolutely, and that the words employed can
only be fairly explained as assigning to our Lord a
unique relationship to God: ‘ But of that day or
that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father’ (Mk 1353).
If such words are suspected, we may fairly ask
who would have been likely to introduce them?
Dr. Schmiedel, who generously allows us to con-
struct a ‘scientific’ ‘ Life of Christ’ from five say-
ings and four incidents of the Gospels, does not
attempt to deny that our Lord spoke these words ;
and although, of course, he uses them for his own
purposes of exegesis, we may now take it that
this representative of the most advanced criticism
allows us to regard this verse in St. Mark’s Gospel
as an utterance of our Lord Himself.+t Professor
N. Schmidt refuses to accept even Mk 1353, and
regards the words in question, ‘neither the Son,’
as probably an interpolation (The Prophet of Naza-
reth, pp. 147, 231). Such words presuppose, he
thinks, such a doctrine of subordination as was
cherished in the Church of the second century.
But has he forgotten the doctrine of subordination
in 1 Co 15%, a passage which even he dares not
refuse to St. Paul?
In addition to Dr. Swete’s remarks, to which reference has
been made above, we may cite the following passage, as bearing
closely on our subject, from the Dean of Westminster's Study
of the Gospels, p. 109: ‘Observe that the titles ‘‘the Father”
and ‘‘ the Son” are used absolutely (¢.e. in Mt. and Lk. loc. cit.).
We are familiar with this use from St. John’s Gospel. But it
occurs but once again in the Synoptic Gospels, Mark xiii. 382... .
It is an important fact to be borne in mind in connexion with
the Christology of John’s Gospel, that this special mode of
speech is attested once for St. Mark and once also for the non-
Markan document. We could hardly have stronger evidence,
from the historical point of view, that our Lord Himself did
thus speak of Himself absolutely as ‘“‘the Son.” It is not
necessary to explain how unique is the claim which is put
forward by this language.’ t
Professor N. Schmidt, indeed, has boldly argued
against this uniqueness in His relation to the
Father which our Lord claims, by asserting that
He always availed Himself of the general expres-
sion ‘Abba, Father,’ and that the variants ‘my
Father’ and ‘ your Father’ were introduced by the
Greek Evangelists.§ But, as M. Lepin has pointed
out in his valuable book, it is to be noted that a
distinguished Aramaic scholar, Dr. Dalman, does
not hesitate to aflirm, in contradistinction to the
* Cf. Lepin, op. cit., Appendix, on the Abbé Loisy’s position,
1904.
t See art. ‘Gospels,’ Encyc. Bibl. ii. 1881. For a valuable
criticism of Schmiedel’s position, cf. Fairbairn, The Philosophy
of the Christian Religion, p. 303.
t See, further, Sanday, Criticism of the Fourth Gospel, p. 211;
Fairbairn, op. cit. p. 476 ; Headlam, Critical Questions, pp. 190,
191; Cambridge Theological Essays, 1905, p. 431.
§ Enecyc. Bibl. art. ‘Son of God,’ iv. 4696. This is one of the
most painful articles in the whole of the four volumes, and we
cannot be surprised that Professor Schmidt throws doubt upon
our Lord’s exact words, when at this time of day he can throw
doubt, as in this same article, upon St. Paul’s authorship of
1 Thessalonians. More recently Professor Schmidt has repeated
these arguments, and he appears to regard Mt 11%, Lk 102! as
casting an undeserved reflexion upon the character of Jesus!
(The Prophet of Nazareth, p. 152). On Schmidt's denial that our
Lord ever called Himself the Son of Man see Stalker's Chris-
tology of Jesus, p. 72, and Muirhead’s Eschatology of Jesus, p.
148). If the Gospels were written as late as Schmidt believes,
it is certain that the introduction into all of them of such a title
as ‘the Son of Man’ would have been regarded with the gravest
suspicion, and would have failed to gain acceptance in Chris-
tian circles where our Lord’s Godhead was fully recognized.
assertions of Dr. Schmidt, that the unique position
assumed by Jesus follows from the .invariable
separation which He makes between ‘my Father’
and ‘your Father’ (Words of Jesus, Ὁ. 281 [Eng.
tr.]); and a few pages later Dr. Dalman writes:
‘Nowhere do we find that Jesus called Himself
the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a
merely religious and ethical relation to God, a
relation which others also actually possessed, or
which they were capable of attaining or destined
to acquire’ (p. 287).*
14. We must remember, too, that not only do a
great number of English and German writers of
note acknowledge the closeness of St. Paul’s ac-
quaintance with our Lord’s life and teaching,+ but
that this testimony of St. Paul is materially and
increasingly strengthened by the large number of
Epistles which are now almost universally ac-
knowledged to have been from his pen. Some
sixty years ago (1845), F. C. Baur, the founder of
the Tiibingen School, published his ‘ Life’ of St.
Paul, and accepted only four of the Apostle’s
letters, in which he believed that he could discover
the notes of a fundamental difference between
Paul and the Twelve; to-day at least double that
number of the Epistles which bear St. Paul’s
name is accepted by nearly all critics alike. It
would be easy to point in proof of this to Dr. C.
Clemen’s statements in his recent Life and Work
of St. Paul (see i. pp. 6-162). We must not forget
that Professor Schmidt is prepared to accept only
the Hauptbriefeand Philippians, and that he regards
even the former as having suffered insertions ; thus,
1 Co 15°" is a later insertion (The Prophet of
Nazareth, pp. 193, 200, 397). Colossians and even
Philemon are rejected ; and we are told, in the only
reference to Bishop Lightfoot in the volume, that his
is the ablest defence of these two Epistles, but that
it fails to do full justice to the counter arguments (p.
194). It is not surprising after this that Professor
Schmidt, following on the lines of Van Manen,
rejects all the Epistles of St. Lgnatius, and that he
makes no reference to their acceptance by Light-
foot, Harnack, Zahn.
If we turn for a moment to the little books
of a popular kind which are in course of publica-
tion in Germany, at the price of a few pence each,
we find that to Professor Vischer of Basle (known
to us in England first of all through Dr. Harnack)
is committed the volume which treats of the
Epistles of St. Paul. Vischer accepts all the
Epistles, nine in number, which are accepted by
Dr. Clemen; and even when he comes to deal
with Ephesians (which Clemen rejects), he frankly
acknowledges, with Erich Haupt in the latest
edition of Meyer’s Commentary, that the alleged
objections are by no means decisive, and that more
is to be said for St. Paul’s authorship than against
it. In cases, moreover, in which the traditional
structure of the Epistles is questioned, as in 2 Cor.,
it is frankly allowed that the separate letter
alleged to be found in chs. 10-13 is, no less than
the rest of the Epistle, the work of St. Paul ; and
even in the case of the Pastoral Epistles, the
existence of genuine Pauline fragments is con-
stantly maintained (see, further, von Soden’s Ur-
christliche Literaturgeschichte, 1905, pp. 28, 162).
* See also Lepin, Jésus Messie et Fils de Dieu, pp. 297, 200,
2nd ed. 1905.
+ See, e.g., Zahn, Einleitwng, ii. p. 166ff., where references to
(1) the history, (2) the words of Jesus, are drawn out at length ;
J. Weiss, Das dilteste Evangelium, 1903, p. 33 ff.; Weinel,
Paulus, 1904, p. 246 ff.; P. W. Schmidt, Die Geschichte Jesu,
1904, ii. pp. 67, 68; Bacon, Story of St. Paul, 1905, p. 53;
Fairbairn, The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 443 ff. ;
Chase, Credibility of the Acts of the Apostles, p. 252 ff.; H. A. A.
Kennedy, St. Paul's Conceptions of the Last Things, p. 96 ff. ;
Headlam, Critical Questions, 1903, p. 161 ff.; and the present
writer would venture to refer to the last lecture in The Vesti-
mony of St. Paul to Christ.
CRITICISM
392
15. It has been recently said by Dr. Driver that
‘the testimony to our blessed Lord’s life and work is
so much more nearly contemporary with the events
recorded than can often be shown to be the case in
the Old Testament, and also so much more varied
and abundant, that by an elementary principle of
historical criticism it 1s of proportionately higher
value.’* This claim to be so nearly contemporary
with the events of the Gospels may fairly be made
for the testimony of St. Paul; and even if Dr.
Zahn is right in refusing to follow the recent trend
of criticism, which places the Apostle’s conversion
within a year or two of our Lord’s death, it is
certain that St. Paul must have been acquainted,
at a very early date, with those who had known
the Christ, and who had recognized and felt His
power (Gal 1%, Ro 107). Professor Schmidt has
lately argued (The Prophet of Nazareth, p. 157)
that as the distance of time increased between
Jesus and the later Pauline literature, the term
Son of God assumed more and more a metaphysical
significance. But Professor Schmidt accepts Philip-
pians as undoubtedly the work of St. Paul. How
then does he deal with the great Christological pas-
sage, Ph 2%? We are simply informed that this
passage may easily be an interpolation (p. 195 f.).
It seems to the present writer quite beside the
mark to maintain that, in investigating the facts
and beliefs which lie between A.D. 30-45, we have no
contemporary documents, that, in fact, none exist,
and that our only guide is inference based on
later writings and developments.+ We have al-
ready seen the inferences to be derived from the
statements in one of St. Paul’s earliest and prac-
tically undoubted Epistles, 1 Th., and that these
inferences of necessity presuppose a preaching and
teaching considerably anterior in time to the actual
date of the Epistle mentioned.
Moreover, we may well ask, What is meant by
the word ‘contemporary’? General Gordon was
murdered in the Sudan in 1884. If a man wrote
an account to-day of the closing years of Gordon’s
life, we should scarcely refuse to give it the title of
a contemporary record.t But we are separated
from the death of Gordon by a longer period of
time than that which elapsed between the conver-
sion of St. Paul and his earliest written testimony
to the belief and practice of the primitive Church.§
16. But, further, in any attempt to estimate, how-
ever brietly, the bearings of modern criticism, it
must not be forgotten that the Gospels are now
placed at a much earlier date than formerly.|
* The Higher Criticism, 1905, pp. ix and 32; cf. also and esp.
Dr. Driver’s remarks in his LO7'6 p. xi, where the same point
is more fully elaborated : ‘Viewed in the light of the unique
personality of Christ, as depicted both in the common tradi-
tion embodied in the Synoptic Gospels and in the personal
reminiscences underlying the Fourth Gospel, and also as pre-
supposed by the united testimony of the Apostolic writers
belonging almost to the same generation, the circumstances are
such as to forbid the supposition that the facts of our Lord’s
life on which the fundamental truths of Christianity depend
can have been the growth of mere tradition, or are anything
else than strictly historical. The same canon of historical eriti-
cism which authorizes the assumption of tradition in the OT
forbids it—except within the narrowest limits, as in some of the
divergences apparent between the parallel narratives of the
Gospels —in the case of the NT.’
ΣῊΝ ae apparently maintained by Dr. Moffatt, Historical
= . 0,
4 Preb endary Sadler (The Lost Gospel, p. 196), writing in 1876,
well asks if we should refuse to describe an account of the
prance War (1854-1855) as a contemporary history.
᾿ δ in this connexion we may recall Renan’s words, ‘Jesus is
fet to us by at least one contemporary piece of evidence,
dat of St. Paul’ (Histuire du Peuple d’ Israel 3, 1887, i. p. Xviii).
a An excellent summary of data bearing out this in connexion
Pe eeouinent critics 1s given by Lepin, op. cit. p. xxxi. Cf.
gers [paebee pore Evangelium und Urchristentum,’ in Beitrdge
= lees $i icklung der ( Δ 5 hen Religion, 1905 ; and also
nacl “(1807 ‘ron. 1. pp. 654, 655. In this first volume Dr. Har-
ἘΣ ὴ ( 9.) places the Synoptic Gospels well within the 1st
ct ni peepee A.D. 110 is assigned as the furthest limit for the
ὉΌΒΡΕ of St. John with the Epistles of St. John and the Apoca-
lypse. In this and in other respects great jubilation was raised
CRITICISM
Strauss long ago maintained that the Gospel story
would be impregnable if it was certain that it was
written by eye-witnesses, or at all events by men
who lived close to the events. And this hypothesis
of Strauss has at least been verified to this extent
in our day, by the acknowledgment that all three
of the Synoptics rest in no small degree upon
genuinely Apostolic sources. Even Jiilicher, who
places our First Gospel at the year 100 or there-
abouts, admits that the writer used our Second
Gospel and a collection of Logia made by St.
Matthew ; and in this Second Gospel he sees the
work of John Mark, founded on reminiscences of
the Petrine circle. And if, as is generally ad-
mitted, the writer of our Third Gospel eniployed
Mark and the Matthzean Logia among his chief
means of information, he, too, must have based a
great part of his work upon two Apostolic sources. *
The force of St. Paul’s contemporary testimony
we have already noted, and we are now able to
point in addition to the Apostolic sources under-
lying our Gospels. And thus we have a twofold
guarantee against the alleged process of idealiza-
tion which magnified by degrees the deeds and
sayings of Jesus, a theory which, as M. Lepin
observes, is urged by writers in many respects so
far removed from each other as Schmiedel and
Loisy.t
17. And if modern criticism has strengthened the
external evidence for the early date of our Gospels,
may we not say that it has strengthened the in-
ternal evidence also? If we turn, for example, to
the Gospel of St. John, we find a remarkable
testimony in Furrer’s well-known Leben Jesu
Christi (1905), a testimony the force of which is
increased when we remember the writer’s close ac-
quaintance with the geography of the Holy Land.
Thus Furrer speaks of the definite and exact
geographical notices which are scattered up and
down the pages of the Fourth Gospel, many of
which we know only through the author of the
book, and which correspond so thoroughly to the
actual conditions.t The narrator must thus have
been a man who was acquainted with the home of
Jesus by his own personal observation, so that we
have the feeling that we are able to realize the
scenes as it were with our own bodily eyes. If we
consider the picture drawn by the Synoptists, we
are again struck with its vivid reality, its truthful
correspondence to the conditions, social and _ poli-
tical, of the country, its acquaintance with the
religious parties of the Jews and the Messianic
hopes of the people, with its curious mixture of
a foreign civilization and government with the
hereditary customs and judicial procedure of the
Jews. But the picture thus presented to us could
not have been drawn except by the hands of men
contemporary with the events which they purport
at Dr. Harnack’s conservatism; but he soon made it clear that
the acceptance of the date or the authorship of a book by no
means involves the acceptance of its contents. Hiihn’s series
of ‘Helps to the Understanding of the Bible,’ which has had a
large circulation in Germany, is not very satisfactory in relation
to the,Gospels. Huhn, however, admits that the ‘ Logia’ which
were used by Matthew, if not composed by him, date before
A.D. 70. Of the author of the Gospel of Mark he holds that
nothing definite can be known; but at the same time he speaks
of Matthew as composed after 70, and of Mark as being of an
earlier date. Luke is the latest of the three, and, like so many
advanced critics, Huhn places Luke after 70 on the ground of
2121-24, But it does not increase our confidence in Hiihn’s
researches when he places St. John’s Gospel at 135-140, and
gives as one of his chief reasons the passage Jn 54%, in which
he sees a reference to Bar Cochba (A.pD. 132), who came ‘in his
own name,’ and was recognized as the Messiah of the Jews (Das
Neue Testament, 1904, p. 13 ff.). In answer to Huhn’s inference
from Lk 2121 see Blass, Philology of the Gospels, 1898, p. 41.
*See Biblical World (Chicago), December 1895, art. ‘Sources
of the Life of Christ,’ by Professor Burton; and the Church
Quarterly Review, January 1905, art. ‘The Synoptic Gospels
and Recent Literature,’ pp. 416, 417.
t Op. cit: pp. xlviii-l.
} See, further, Sanday, Criticisin of the Fourth Gospel, p. 118.
CRITICISM
to describe. It would have been impossible after the
fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and the entire bowle-
versement which that catastrophe caused, to re-
create, as it were, the conditions which prevailed
socially, politically, religiously before that capital
event.* This impression of truthfulness which the
contents of our Gospels cannot fail to make, is wit-
nessed to even in quarters in which we might not
altogether expect it. Thus Jiilicher speaks of our
Gospels as of priceless value as authorities for the |
history of Jesus; and even if much of their data
may be uncertain, Jiilicher nevertheless maintains
that ‘the impression of the Saviour which they
leave on the reader’s mind is a faithful one; if the
total picture of Jesus which we obtain from the
Synoptics displays all the magic of reality, this. . .
is owing to the fact that they . . . painted Jesus
as they found Him already existing in the Christian
communities, and that their model corresponded in
all essentials to the original.’+
48. In concluding this article, it will not be un-
fitting, especially in a Dictionary devoted to the sub-
ject of ‘Christ and the Gospels,’ to emphasize once
again theimportance attached tothe Person of Christ
in the current literature of to-day. It would be easy
to refer in this connexion to the statements made
by representative writers in England and America.
We turn, ¢.g., to Professor Nash’s History of the
Higher Criticism, and we tind him speaking (p. 25)
of ‘that Christ who is humanity’s Amen to all the
Divine promises’; or to Dr. P. Gardner’s Historic
View of the NT, and we find him maintaining
(pp. 88-91) that the founder of Christianity stands
above all other religious teachers. Even Professor
Schmidt can speak again and again of the wonder-
ful personality of Jesus : ‘ While other teachers may
and will do much for our modern world, the heal-
ing, purging, elevating influence of Jesus is of
priceless value. No man can come into contact
with him without feeling that life goes out of him’
(The Prophet of Nazareth, p. 360).
At the Liverpool Church Congress, 1904, one of
the speakers on NT criticism, Professor F. C.
Burkitt, remarked at the close of his speech that |
the only time when Christians would have cause
to be afraid was when the far off figure of Jesus |
Christ no longer attracted the critic and the stu-
dent, but that there was no evidence that that day
was within sight. The last statement finds ample
corroboration in the English and German litera-
ture of to-day.¢ We may look again at the little
series of popular books to which reference has been
made as in progress of publication for the German
people. One of them is entitled Die Quellen des
Lebens Jesu, by Professor Wernle of Basle, whose
name is widely known in England for his works on
the Gospels and the Beginnings of the Christian
Religion. Here again we find this same primary
importance attached to the Life and Person of
Jesus, in spite of so much which betrays impa-
tience of any definite dogmatic teaching. What-
* Swete, Critical Questions, pp. 47, 48; and Lepin, op. cit.
pp. XXi-Xxx.
+ See Church Quarterly Review, l.c. p. 411; and also Julicher,
Einleitung in das NT2, p, 294.
t In a noteworthy passage (cp. cit. p. 100) the same writer
says, after referring to the fact that Jesus does not use the
phrase ‘Our Father in heaven’ as jacluding both Himself and
His disciples : ‘It would not show a want of the critical spirit to
go further than this, and to maintain with Professor Harnack
that Jesus assigned a special significance to His death in rela-
tion to the forgiveness of sins, claimed an unique dignity as
King and Lord, regarded His death as a passage to glory, and
anticipated a speedy return to the earth as judge.’ It Is dis-
appointing to read the next paragraph : ‘ Yet 1 cannot persuade
myself that on strictly historical grounds these statements could
be definitely established.’
δ See, e.g., Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theclogy, pp. 18, 215
and Sir Oliver Lodge in Hibbert Journal, Apr. 1906, p 644,
where he ‘accepts the general consensus of Christendom as
testifying to the essentially Divine character of Christ
CRITICISM 393
ever else, in Wernle’s view, we may learn from
St. Paul, we may at all events learn this, that in
Jesus, notwithstanding the fact that He died a
death of shame on the cross, St. Paul saw his
own life and that of the world divided, as it
were, into two parts—with Jesus, without Jesus.
In Jesus we behold a man who helps us to under-
stand aright ourselves, the world, and God; who
accompanies us as the truest friend and guide in
the needs and struggles of the present, and to
whom we ean entrust ourselves with all confidence
for the future. In the same series Professor
Ptleiderer, who discusses the preparation for Chris-
tianity, finds in the sentence, ‘The Word was
made flesh,’ the dividing line between the many
and varied speculations of philosophy and the full
and actual manifestation of the Divine Logos in
the life of the Son of God (Vorbereitung des Chris-
tentums in der Griechischen Philosophie, p. 66).
Another writer, Dr. Bousset, to whom reference
has been made, and who is also well known to
| English readers, expresses himself in the little
book Was wissen wir von Jesus 2, which H. Holtz-
mann recommends as the best guide-book for the
German laity, in almost rapturous language :
‘Gradually there rises before us a Form in which the soul
rejoices, the Form of the great liberator, the mighty opponent
of all forms of Pharisaism, and at all times the great upholder of
simplicity in religion. And more even than this: there stands
before us the Form of Jesus the friend of sinners, the preacher
of the forgiveness of sins, who in all the greatness of His own
moral strength condescends with all the tenderness of a woman
to the lost and the outcast, the Form of One who, conscious of
victory, could unite His disciples to Himself by an everlasting
bond when the last sad night of His earthly life had come and
death stood before His eyes.’
In this Personality Bousset finds the true origin
of Christianity. Other factors no doubt contri-
buted, but there was one factor above and beyond
them all, the Person of Jesus. Jewish Messianic
hopes, Greek philosophy, the social conditions of
the Roman Empire, the organization and the spirit
of the religious social clubs and of the mysteries,
all these contributed. One by one, ina few graphic
pages, Bousset passes them in review, and shows
how each of them was insufficient alone, because
each of them wanted the distinctive power which
made Christianity all-sufficient and all-victorious,
the power of a life-giving Personality, the possessor
and the bestower of new spiritual agencies, the
bringer of life out of death. In words of almost
evangelical fervour Bousset proclaims the presence
_in history of this unique personal power. None can
doubt the power of personality in the religious life,
and all religions which occupy the foremost place
in the world testify to this in some measure more
or less.*
In face of such acknowledgments, we cease to
wonder that von Soden in his recent Die wich-
tigsten Fragen im Leben Jesu, 1904, devotes so
much of his book to a consideration of the
Personality of Jesus (p. 821f). Amongst other
jatters of varied interest, he points out that there
is no evidence that Jesus was influenced in any
direct manner by Buddha or Plato, or by Philo
and his predecessors (p. 108). He was the child of
His people and country, He knew no foreign litera-
ture (p. 109), He was far removed from any asso-
ciation with the hard and gloomy character of
Pharisaic piety, but at the same time His life was
in harmony with all that was best in the Jewish and
*This insistence upon the importance of the personal in-
fluence is again notably marked in one of the most recent of
popular ‘ Lives‘ of Jesus by Dr. Furrer of Zurich. See. e.g., the
closing page of his Leben Jesu, 1905, p. 261, in which, after
insisting upon regarding Jesus as man, he ends, as he himself
expresses it, with the confession of the centurion, ‘ This man
was the Son of God.’ Furrer’s treatment of his theme is marked
by reverence and sympathy. and he rightly points out that,
| until the heart is in sympathy, no justice can be done to the
holiest portraiture of humanity (Vorwort, p. v).
394 CRITICISM
CROSS
Greek types of humanity, and von Soden concludes
his book (p. 111) by saying that this Personality
which was beyond the invention of the Evangelists,
and which is presented to us in a picture which
knows no flaw, is an irrefutable, integral fact, and
the wonder of wonders in the world’s history rich
in wonders. (See, further, the same writers Ur-
christliche Literaturgeschichte, p. 5).
Once more; we turn to H. Wendt, another
German well known in England, not only by
his works on the Teaching of Jesus and the
Gospel of St. John, but by two lectures delivered
in this country in 1904. He speaks of the signi-
ficance of Jesus in revelation (115 Idea and
Reality of Revelation, p. 28 ft.). Jesus is for him
the highest revelation of God, although not the
only one.* At the foundation of all the forms of
Christianity there is a reverence for Jesus Christ
as Saviour and Mediator. And Wendt concludes
by assuring us that a large number of the German
theologians of to-day aspire to lead Christianity
back to its original form, to the simplicity and
sublimity of the primitive teaching of Jesus (p.
91). There is much in such acknowledgments
which carries us back to the confession of A.
Reville. For him ‘Jesus is supremely great,’ and
he adds, ‘ Let us fear nothing as to the glory of the
Son of Man. We owe it to Him, to the Divine
ideal dwelling within Him, that we know ourselves
to be the children of God ; it is in His pure heart
that love between God and man has been realized,
and in this He possesses a crown which none can
ever take from Him’ (History of the Doctrine of the
Deity of Jesus Christ, Eng. tr. p. 164).
In such utterances as these, which might be
easily multiplied, although they fall very far short
of the language of the Church and the Creeds,
we mark how the interest of thoughtful minds in
Germany, America, France, England is centred
in the Person of Christ, and how also many of
these writers whom we have mentioned admit that
there was a relationship between Jesus and the
Father so intimate as to be, if not metaphysical,
yet at all events unique, and that this is conceded
y critics who would depreciate St. Luke’s opening
narrative of the Gospel history or St. Peter’s con-
fession at Cxesarea Philippi (Mt 16").
And as we listen to such utterances, sometimes
full of hope and confidence, sometimes full of
pathos and tender religious feeling, we are con-
scious that the old question, ‘ Lord, to whom shall
we go?’ has not lost its interest for the world or
for ourselves, and we thankfully recognize the
acknowledgment rendered even by the spirit of
criticism and inquiry, as it searches into the will
and the teaching of Him who alone is the Revealer
of the Father, ‘Thou hast the words of eternal
life.’
LItTERATURE.—Lichtenberger, Hist. of Germ. Theol. in 19th
Cent., Eng. tr.; Mill, Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels ;
Pfleiderer, Development of Theology, Germany and Great
Britain; J. Ἐς Carpenter, The Bible in the Nineteenth Cen-
tury ; Nash, Π δι. of the Higher Criticism ; Matheson, Aids
to the Study of Germ. Theol.; Fairbairn, Place of Christ in
Mod. Theol., and Philos. of Christ. Rel.; Schwarz, Zur Gesch.
der neuvesten Theol.; A. S. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Free Thought
(Bampt. Lect. 1862); Plumptre, Christ and Christendom (Boyle
Lect.) ; Nippold, Hdbch. der neuesten Kirchengesch. vol. iii.
pt. 2; Οὐ L. Broun, ‘Protest. Crit. of NT in Germany,’ Inter-
preter, vol. ii. No.1; W. Adams Brown, The Essence of Christi-
anity; Weinel, Jesus im neunzehnten Jahrh undert; N. Schmidt,
od ti ὃ p. 88) Wendt speaks of the Gospel type of
( hristian piety Which has no analogy in other religions, and
the significance of salvation by Jesus Christ is found in His reve-
lation, as perfect Son of God, of God’s fatherly love, and in the
powerful impulse which He has exerted on men to draw them
into this blessed sonship. This Gospei type, he adds, has found
its expression in Apostolic times in many great passages of the
Pauline letters, and abov lin the First Epistle of St. John
which Wendt regards as the genuine work of the disciple who
stoud nearest to Jesus, the )
υ : Ι most beautiful record of a min
directly inspired by His words and life. Ξ
*In this book (
The Prophet of Nazareth, p. 21ff.; Harnack, Chronol. der
Altchrist. Litt. i., and Das Wesen des Christentums ; Cremer,
A Reply to Harnack on the Essence of Christianity, Eng. tr. ;
Walther, Ad. Harnack's Wesen des Christentums fiir die Christ-
liche Gemeinde gepruft ; Herrmann, Communion with God, Eng.
tr.; Orr, Christ. View of God and the World, and Ritschlianism :
Expository and Critical Essays; Garvie, Ritschlian Theology ;
Reischle, Theol. und Religionsgesch.; Sdderblom, ‘ Religionen
der Erde,’ ili. Heft 3, in Religionsgesch. Volksbiicher and other
volumes in the same series, as, ¢.g., ‘Der Ursprung des Bud-
dhismus’ by Hackmann, and ‘Welche Religion hatten die Juden
als Jesus auftrat?’ by Hollmann ; Bousset, ‘ Die Religionsgesch.
und das NT’ in Theol. Rundschau, July 1904 and following
numbers; Cumont, Les mysteres de Mithra; A. Jeremias,
Babylonisches im NT; Gunkel, Zum religionsgesch. Verstdnd-
niss des NT’; ‘Impressions of Christianity from the point of
view of non-Christian Religions,’ a&tbbert Journal, July 1905
and following numbers ; Farnell, Hvolution of Religion ; Jordan,
Comparative Religion; Cheyne, Bible Problems; Westcott,
The Gospel of Life; Wace, Christianity and Agnosticism ;
Illingworth, Reason and Revelation; Swete, The Teaching of
Christ; Stalker, The Christology of Jesus; Godet, Defence
of the Christian Faith, Eng. tr.; Row, The Jesus of the Evan-
gelists; Stanton, The Jewish and the Christian Messiah;
Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, i.; Hennecke, Neutest. Apokryphen,
1904; Baldensperger, Die Messianisch-apokalyptischen Hof-
nungen des Judenthums; Schurer, GJV*%; Muirhead, The
Eschatology of Jesus; Votaw, ‘Modern Jewish View of Jesus,’
Biblical World, xxvi. 2 [1905]; Sanday, Inspiration, and Criti-
cism of the Fourth Gospel ; J. A. Robinson, Study of the Gospels ;
Gore, I'he Permanent Creed and the Christian Idea of Sin,
Contentio Veritatis, 1902; Headlam, Critical Questions, 1903 ;
Cambr. Theol. Essays (esp. those by Chase, Mason, Foakes-
Jackson); Criticism of the NT' (St. Margaret’s Lectures), 1903 ;
W. M. Ramsay, The Education of Christ; P. Gardner, A Historical
View of the NT, with Sanday’s criticism in J7'ASt, Jan. 1902 ;
Moffatt, Historical NT’; von Soden, Urehristliche Literatur-
geschjchte ; Gamble, Christ and Criticism; Loisy, L’ Evangile
et UEglise, and Autour dun petit livre; Lepin (esp. in reply
to Loisy), Jésus Messie et Fils de Dieu, 2nd and 8rd edd.;
T. A. Lacey, Harnack and Loisy; Hollmann, ‘Leben und
Lehre Jesu’ in Theol. Rundschau, April 1904 and following
numbers; Luthardt, Gesammelte Vortrdge, pp. 3-173; G.
Uhlhorn, Das Leben Jesu in seinen neueren Darstellungen ; E.
de Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, pp. 4-56; Annibale Fiori, 11 Christo
della Storia e della Scrittura, 1905 ; Vischer, ‘ Jesus und Paulus’
in Theol. Rundschau, April, May, 1905; Feine, Jesus und
Paulus; Deissmann, ‘Evangelium und Urchristentum’ in
Beitrage zur Weiterentwicklung der Religion, 1905; M. Dals,
The Bible. See, further, books mentioned above, and in artt.
BiktH OF CuRist, GOSPELS, etc.
R. J. KNOWLING.
CROSS, CROSS-BEARING.—F or the historical
aspects of the literal cross, see CRUCIFIXION.
The English word ‘cross’ is from the Latin evua through the
French croix, Old French and Middle English crois. But
σταυρός (from iccyus) is ποῦ synonymous with crua, but was
originally a wider term, and, like σκόλοψ, meant a stake (Hom.,
Herod., Thuc., Xen.). In the NT, however (not present in
LXX), it is used only in the sense of. erua.
This article deals only with the figurative uses
of the term in the Gospels or in relation to the
death of Christ on the cross as interpreted in the
Acts and Epistles. For the archeological and
magical history of the sign of the cross outside
as well as within the pale of Christianity, see
| Zockler’s Das Kreuz Christi (1875 [Eng. tr. 1878]),
| Goblet d’Alviella’s Migration of Syibols (1894),
and his art. ‘Cross’ in Hastings’ forthcoming
Dictionary of Leligion and Ethics. The true
mysticism in the cross of Christ as conceived by
St. Paul comes properly before us.
1. The use of the word by Jesus in the sense of
cross-bearing.—On three separate occasions Jesus
spoke of cross-bearing as essential to discipleship.
The first is in Mt 10%, when He sent out the
Twelve on a special preaching tour at the close of
the Galilean ministry, just a little over a year
before His death. Meyer, in loco, considers this
passage proleptically misplaced by St. Matthew,
and thinks it should come after Mt 16%. But
there is no need of this supposition, for the figure
of bearing one’s cross would be quite intelligible
to Jews since the days of Antiochus Epiphanes,
Alexander Janneus, and Varus. Josephus (BJ
Vv. xi. 1) even says that Titus crucified so many
that there were not places for the crosses, or
crosses for the victims. The Jews themselves had
not favoured crucifixion, save Alexander Jannzeus,
the ‘Thracian’ in spirit.
Broadus (on Mt 16”)
CROSS
πα 6 ι΄ πε eS ee
rightly denies that this saying of Jesus about
bearing one’s cross is an anachronism before His
own crucifixion. He did bear His own cross (Jn
1917), perhaps the crosspiece properly speaking ;
but so did the criminals usually who were cruci-
fied, for Plutarch says: ἕκαστος κακούργων ἐκφέρει
τὸν αὑτοῦ σταυρόν (de Sera Num. Vind. 9). It is a
general illustration that the disciples could have
easily understood, though they were not yet able
to see the evident prophetic allusion to Christ’s
own literal experience. It is not without special
point that Jesus thus expressed the fundamental
principle of self-sacrifice under the image of the
cross. He did not plainly say that He would be
crucified till shortly before His death (Mt 20%),
but Jesus Himself is conscious of the death on the
eross which ‘He himself will be called upon to
endure’ (Meyer on Mt 1674).
The second time that Christ spoke of cross-
bearing was when He rebuked Peter for playing
the part of Satan (Mk 8*, Mt 16%, Lk 9%). On
the first oceasion the Master was giving directions
to the disciples about their preaching, but here He
addressed this vivid condition of discipleship ‘ unto
all’ (Lk 959) as a ‘deterrent in a high degree, sug-
gesting a procession of furciferi headed by Jesus
and consisting of His followers’ (Swete on Mk 892).
Many of the followers of Judas and Simon in
Galilee had been crucified (Jos. Ant. XVII. x. 10).
St. Luke adds ‘daily,’ though the aorist term
ἀράτω is used. The permanence of this cross-
bearing is emphasized by the present tense of
‘follow’ (ἀκολουθείτω).
St. Luke alone gives the third use of the expres-
sion (1457), and it is in Pera, not long before the
raising of Lazarus from the dead. In this instance
βαστάζω, not αἴρω, is used, the only NT example of
the figurative, as Jn 1917 is the only NT instance
of the literal, use of the verb with σταυρός (Plummer,
Internat. Crit. Com. in loco).
2. The term ‘ Crucified’ comes to be a favourite
one with the name of Jesus. The angels at the
empty tomb speak of ‘Jesus the Nazarene, the
Crucified One’ (Ἰησοῦν ζητεῖτε τὸν Ναζαρηνὸν τὸν
ἐσταυρωμένον, Mk 106, Mt 285). St. Peter in his
great address on the day of Pentecost charges
the Jews with having crucified Jesus (Ac 2”).
He repeats the charge when brought before the
Sanhedrin (4:0). St. Peter elsewhere always (Ac
δ50 10°, 1 P 253) speaks of Christ as hanging on a
tree (ξύλον) ; but this non-classical use of ξύλον as
equal to gibbet or cross (the stocks in Ac 1053) is
found in the LXX as tr. for Heb. yy (Gn 40?" cte.).
St. Paul so uses the term also in Ac 13” and Gal
3:19 (quotation here from Dt 21°). Each example
in the NT is a quotation from the LXX. But in
the LXX ξύλον does not refer to crucifixion, but
rather to the prohibited nailing up of unburied
bodies after the manner of the heathen nations
(Ι 5. 31:0, But St. Paul speaks rather of ‘ Christ
crucified,’ more properly, ‘Christ as crucified’ (pre-
dicate), Χριστὸν ἐσταυρωμένον (1 Co 155), and once
he sharply accents the idea by saying Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν
καὶ τοῦτον ἐσταυρωμένον (1 Co 2°), in opposition to
his Judaizing opponents. This was his method of
openly setting forth (προεγράφη) Jesus as crucified
(Gal 81), like a public placard. The blindness of
the enemies of Christ comes out in St. Paul’s use of
the term with the Lord of glory (1Co 2%), and yet
He was crucified in weakness (2 Co 13). Rev 118
merely identifies Jerusalem as the city where Jesus
was crucified.
3. The cross as the epitome of the gospel.—The
disciples naturally passed to this idea when they
came to understand the meaning of the death of
Christ. The cross that had seemed the destruction
of their hopes (Lk 24?!) now became the symbol of
the gospel of grace.
‘But we preach Christ ecruci-
CROSS 395
fied’ (1 Co 1°), says St. Paul, as opposed to Jewish
spectacular apocalyptics and Greek philosophizing ;
and he preached nothing else, not simply at Corinth,
for he had done so at Athens (Ac 1791), and this
was the settled purpose of his ministry (1 Co 23).
It was not the example of Jesus that St. Paul
preached, but Jesus as the crucified Saviour, who,
and not Paul, was crucified ‘in your behalf’
(1 Co 113. It was, in fact, by His death on the
cross that Jesus made the sacrifice for our sins, in
our behalf, and in our stead. We are under (ὑπό)
a curse (Gal 910), and Christ became a curse (κατάρα)
for (ὑπέρ) us, and so redeemed us from (éx) or out
from under the curse of the Law (v.). He became
the curse, and came between us and the overhang-
ing law of God.
This conception of the cross reappears in Col 1°,
where Jesus is said to have made peace and recon-
ciliation with God possible according to the good
pleasure of God ‘through the blood of his cross.’
The word ‘ blood’ is probably used here to empha-
size, against the early Docetic Gnostics, the reality
of the human nature of Jesus. So in Col 24 by a
vivid image the Law itself is represented as nailed
to the cross with the body of Christ, and so taken
out of the way and no longer binding on us as a
means of salvation (cf. Ro 74). In Eph 9216 the cross
is presented as the basis for a double reconciliation,
both with God and so with each other, ‘through
the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.’ So
both Jew and Gentile have ‘access in one Spirit
unto the Father,’ and the middle wall of partition
is broken down. They form one body in Christ,
the Church of all the elect of which Christ is head,
one newman. ‘The word of the cross’ (1 Co 1),
then, is St. Paul’s message to men. It was to
proclaim this truth that Christ sent him forth
(1 Co 1"); and this he will do by holding fast to
the great essential fact rather than by fine-spun
theories (1 Co 117 25), lest the gospel be emontied of
all real power (κενωθῃ).
4, The shame of the cross.—It was a real shame
that Jesus underwent when He suffered on the
cross aS a common malefactor. The Jews con-
sidered as accursed one whose dead body merely
was hung upon a gibbet, and St. Paul recognized
this shame as belonging to Jesus (Gal 3). Jesus
not only foresaw the fact and the character of
His death, but was fully aware of the shame
of the cross. This death, called by Cicero ‘ crud-
elissimum teterrimumque’ (iz Verr. v. 64), had
its side of glory to Jesus, who saw the joy in store
at the end (ἀντί) of the race, and so consciously
despised the shame (He 12"). Here σταυρός is used
without the article, as in Ph 28, ‘in order to {ix
attention on the nature of the death’ (Westcott).
It is in Ph 28 that the cross is used to express ‘the
very lowest point of Christ’s humiliation’ (Vin-
cent). Jesus became obedient μέχρι θανάτου, θανάτου
δὲ σταυροῦ. It is the bottom rung in the ladder
that led down froin the throne of God. The cross
was a real stumbling-block to the disciples them-
selves till they were convinced of the fact of the
resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It remained
to the unbelieving Jews an insuperable barrier.
It was so when Jesus spoke of it before the event
(Jn 128°-34 ‘Who is this Son of man?’). St. Paul
found that Christ crucified was to the sign-seeking
Jews a stumbling-block (1Co 1*). The writer of
Hebrews (1915) urges Christians to go outside the
camp of Judaism, as Jesus suffered outside the
gate, when it was clear that the two ways must
part, ‘ bearing his reproach.’ The follower of Jesus
must not be ashamed of the shame of the cross.
Some of the Judaizers, indeed, were not willing to
‘be persecuted for the cross of Christ’ (Gal 613),
but St. Paul did not seek to escape ‘ the stumbling-
block of the cross’ (Gal 5"). Indeed, some carried
396 CROWD
their dislike of the cross to the point of enmity
(Ph 318). These men would endure neither persecu-
tion nor self-denial. But the philosophical Greeks
took the matter more lightly, and considered the
preaching of the cross to be foolishness (1 Co 1’***),
though in truth the cross reveals the hitherto
hidden wisdom of God (1 Co 2°).
While the Christian is to share the shame of the
cross, he is not to add to the suffering of Christ
by crucifying Him afresh (ἀνασταυρόω, He 6°).
5. The triumph of the cross over the flesh and the
world.—In a mystic, yet real, sense the Christian
is crucified with Christ on the cross: Χριστῷ συνε-
σταύρωμαι, St. Paul said of himself (Gal 259), It is
‘areal crucifixion of heart and will’ (Rendall).
This spiritual crucifixion of the old man on the
cross is the common experience of all genuine
believers (Gal 54, Ro 6°) who have died to sin and
have entered into the new life in Christ as sym-
bolized by baptism. In a word, the power of the
world over St. Paul’s fleshly nature is broken by
the cross of Christ. There is a double crucifixion
between him and the world (Gal 64). The world
in its sinful aspects is dead to him and he to it.
Hence not only is St. Paul not ashamed of the
cross of Christ, as the Judaizers are who are seek-
ing to enslave the Gentiles to the ceremonial law
(Gal 6), but he finds his only ground of glorying
in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal 614).
This sublime mysticism does not degenerate into
magic and crucifixes. The true philosophy of the
cross lies in the spiritual interpretation of man’s
victorious conflict with sin, which is made possible
by the shameful death of the Son of God on the
cross as the supreme expression of the love of the
father for sinful men, and as the propitiatory
sacrifice on the basis of which the repentant soul
can find access to the Father. The ‘blood of the
cross’ lies at the root of redemptive grace as set
forth by Jesus (Mt 2678), by St. Peter (1 P 1°), by
St. Paul (Ro 3744), by the writer of Hebrews (91),
and by St. John (1 Jn 17).
Mention should be made of the ingenious theory
of Prof. C. C. Everett in his Gospel of Paul, which
denies the penal character of the death of Christ
on the cross, and sees in this supreme event only
the ceremonial defilement which Christians share
who take Christ as Lord and who thus likewise
become accursed (Gal 35), and so have the power
of the Law over them removed. But this theory
misses the deeper aspects of the whole problem, by
overstraining an incidental truth connected with
the death of Christ on the cross. See the matter
well disposed of by Bruce, S¢. Paul’s Conception of
Christianity, p. 184 fi.
LITERATURE.—Zockler, Das Kreuz Christi (1875); Brandt, Die
Evangelische Geschichte, ete. (1893); Fulda, Das Kreuz und
die Kreuziqung (1878); Lipsius, de Cruce (1595); Everett, The
Gospel of Paul (1893); articles on ‘Cross’ in Hastings’ DB, in
Smith’s DB, in Herzog’s PRE, and in the Encye. Bibl.; Cremer,
Bibl.-Theol. Lex. of NT Greck (1892); the Lives of Christ and
Paul; the critical Commentaries ; the Biblical Theologies.
A. T. ROBERTSON.
CROWD.—In many passages of the Gospels we
read of the rapid gathering of a crowd around
Jesus. The healing of the man with the withered
hand seems to have been the first occasion on
which a great company was drawn to Him by
curiosity or by the hope of healing. ‘His fame
went throughout all Syria.’ The multitude was
gathered from Galilee, Jerusalem, Judea, Idu-
mea, and from the district round Tyre and Sidon ;
the whole country was moved (Mt 4%, Mk 379,
Lk 617-1), W hen Jesus retired for quiet to a desert
place alter receiving the news of the death of John
the Baptist, He was followed by a crowd of five
thousand people (Mt 1.41. Mk 6%, hk gli), The
words used for ‘crowd’ are ὄχλος and πλῆθος (both
usually rendered ‘ multitude’ in EV, but’ in
CROWD
Mk 24 577-39, Lk 819 198, ὄχλος is tr. ‘press’ [RV
‘crowd’]). In classical Greek πλῆθος means the
common people, the plebs, as opposed to ὄχλος, the
inchoate throng that comes together on any special
occasion, the turba. But in the NT the distine-
tion is not uniformly maintained ; in Mk 37-° the
words are used interchangeably. St. Luke is more
exact in his use of language, and in Ac 15° uses
πλῆθος in a technical sense, common enough in the
inscriptions, as meaning the membership of a
political or religious association in its totality
(Deissmann, bible Studies, Eng. tr. 232). The
question arises whether there were any special cir-
cumstances in those days that favoured the coming
together of such masses of people upon very short
notice.
4. The Messianic expectation was the motive of
many such gatherings. The misgovernment under
the Herods had cast the nation’s thoughts back
upon God, and the Messianic hope awakened with
new power. The attention that John the Baptist
attracted was due to the belief that he was the
Messiah, a belief that he took pains te shatter.
To John there flocked at the outset of his ministry
the people in the neighbourhood, but afterwards
the movement reached the north and the inflam-
mable Galilee. Jos. (Ant. XVIII. v. 2) says that
John was put to death because Herod feared lest
the crowds he was gathering about him should
‘put it into his power and inclination to raise a
rebellion, for they seemed ready to do anything
he should advise.’ It was in consequence of a
similar movement among the Samaritans that
Pilate was recalled. The bloodshed with which
the movement was checked led to an information
being laid against him at Rome (Jos. Ané. XVIII.
iv. 2). It is clear from these incidents that the
Messianic hope was very present with the people ;
and whenever the times raised up a man who
seemed to have a distinctive message, the Jews
were more than willing to flock to listen to him.
2. The splendid road system of Palestine facili
tated the gathering of such crowds. The Romans
made their roads partly on commercial grounds,
and partly to permit of the passage of troops
among the turbulent people. The commerce of
the country must have been considerable in spite
of the grinding taxation. Herod’s annual income
(Jos. Ant. XVII. xi. 4) was 900 talents, nearly
£400,000 of our money. The regular raising of
such a sum implies a settled trade, and much
coming and going between different parts of the
country. The excellence of the roads is borne
witness to by the fact that the Roman procurator,
who resided at Czesarea, could reach Jerusalem
with troops by way of Antipatris in less than
twenty-four hours. The distance is about sixty
miles. Along these splendid roads the crowd
would stream on the first hint of the appearance of
one who might be the Messiah.
3. The small size of the country must also be
remembered. Palestine bulks so large in spiritual
significance that one is apt to forget how small it
is. And yet from the shore of the Dead Sea one
may view the glittering snow of Hermon, while
from the hill above Nazareth may be seen on the
one hand the ships in the Mediterranean, and on
the other the rolling hills of Gilead. This land, only
about 4th the size of England, was densely popu-
lated. To-day its population is a little over 600,000,
but in OT and Roman times must have been very
much larger. 2 8 24° implies a population of
6,500,000 ; and, while it may be questioned whether
the land ever could have carried so great a popula-
tion as this, it is clear, both from the notices in
history and from the existing ruins, that the desola-
tions of to-day were formerly densely pcopled.
The population in the time of Christ is generally
CROWN OF THORNS
reckoned to have been about 24 millions (Sanday,
Sacred Sites of the Gospels, p. 16). See, further,
art. MULTITUDE. R. Bruck TAYLor.
CROWN OF THORNS (στέφανος ἐξ ἀκανθῶν or
ἀκάνθινος στέφανος, Mt 27:9, Mk 1511, Jn 192: 5), —This
was plaited by the soldiers and placed on Christ’s
head in mockery of His claim to Kingship, after
Pilate had condemned Him to be scourged. It
was a garland hastily twisted from the twigs of
some thorny plant, which it is difficult now to
identify. Tristram (Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 429)
supposes it was the thorn-tree or nubk of the
Arabs, which is very common in the warmer parts
of Palestine. It abounds near Jerusalem, grows to
a great size; its twigs are tough and pliant, and
the spikes very sharp and numerous. Others
incline to think it was the Zizyphus Spina-
christi, a spiny plant covered with sharp prickles.
The purpose of the soldiers was rather, perhaps,
mockery of the Jews than cruelty to Christ.
Pliny speaks (Δ ) of ‘the meanest of crowns, a
thorny one.’
In the writings of St. Paul a crown is promised
to faithful followers of Christ, and in many parts
of the NT Christ Himself is spoken of as wearing
acrown. Sometimes the word fora victor’s wreath
is used (στέφανος), and sometimes that for a royal
crown (διάδημα). The emblematic significance,
afterwards seen by the Church in the crown of
thorns, is possibly hinted at in He 2° ‘crowned
with glory and honour.’ As a sacrificial victim,
in being led out to death, often wore a garland of
flowers, so Jesus, in the eyes of God and His own
disciples, even in suffering the deepest humiliation,
wears a crown of glory. In the death of Christ
His Chureh sees mankind crowned with life, be-
cause the law of sin and death was thereby abro-
gated, and the Kingdom of heaven opened to all
believers. The thorns with which a hostile world
pierced the Saviour’s brows are an emblem of the
sin of man, the curse of thistles and thorns having
been threatened after the Fall (see Dr. H. Mac-
millan’s Ministry of Nature, ch. v., where this idea
is finely worked out). But these wounds become
the world’s salvation. Through the sinful cruelty
of man new life comes to a condemned world.
God thus makes the wrath of man to praise Him.
What was meant as derision is really a prediction
of glory. See also art. THORN.
Davip M. W. LAIRD.
CRUCIFIXION.—Crucifixion was originally an
Oriental punishment. It was practised by the
Persians (Herod. ix. 122), by the Phoenicians and
their colonists the Carthaginians (Valer. ii. 7), and
by the Egyptians (Thue. iv. 110). It was practised
also by the Greeks, probably in imitation of the
Persians (Plut. Alex. 72. §2), and by the Romans,
who, though Cicero ascribes its introduction to
Tarquinius Superbus, probably learned it from
their enemies the Carthaginians. Regarding it,
however, as an ignominious doom, the Romans
reserved it for slaves (whence it was called servile
supplicium), the worst sort of criminals such as
robbers (Sen. Zp. vii.), and provincials. To inflict
it on a Roman citizen was reckoned an impiety
(Cie. in Verr. v. 66). It was a horrible punish-
ment. Cicero designates it crudelissimum teter-
rumumque suppliccum. The verb cognate to crux,
‘cross,’ was cruciare, ‘to torture’ (cf. ‘excruciat-
ing’).
There were two kinds of cross :
1. The crux simplex, which was a single stake.
Sometimes the victim was fastened to it by his
hands and feet, the former being extended above
* The distinction between στέφανος, the badge of merit, and
διάδημα, the badge of royalty. is not consistently observed in
Hellenistic Greek (see Hnecyc. Bibl. i. 963).
CRUCIFIXION 397
his head. Usually, however, it was a sharpened
stake (σκόλοψ), and the victim was impaled upon
it. It passed through the length of his body,
issuing from his mouth. Cf. Sen. Hp. xiv. : ‘ ad-
actum per medium hominem qui per os emergat
stipitem’ ; ef. de Consol. ad Mure. xx. The former
method was called affixio, the latter infixio.
2. The crux compacta, which was composed of
two pieces. It had three forms; (1} The crux
decussata XK, called also the cruaw Andreana, be-
cause it is said to be the cross on which St.
Andrew suffered at Patra. It was this form of
cross that the Fathers had in view when in the
crossing of Jacob’s hands as he blessed Ephraim
and Manasseh (Gn 48-4) they saw a prophecy of
the Crucifixion. Cf. Tert. de Bapt. § 8; Isid.
Pel. Epp. i. 362. (2) The crux commissa or St.
Anthony’s cross, resembling the letter T. Cf.
Barn. Ep. § 9; Luc. Jud. Vocal. §12. The up-
right was called stipes or staticulum, and the
transom patibulum or antenna. (3) The crux im-
massa, Which had the top of the upright protruding
above the transom, f From the middle of the
upright there projected a peg, the seat (sedile) or
horn (corn), on which, to support its weight, the
body rested as on a saddle. Cf. lren. adv. Her.
iu. 36. § 2: ‘Ipse habitus crucis fines et summitates
habet quinque, duos in longitudine et duos in lati-
tudine, et unum in medio in quo requiescat qui
clavis affigitur’; Just. Mart. Dial. ὁ. Tryph. p.
318 C (ed. Sylburg.): τὸ ἐν τῷ μέσῳ πηγνύμενον ws
κέρας καὶ αὐτὸ ἔξεχον ἐστίν, Ep ᾧ ἐποχοῦνται οἱ σταυρ-
ούμενοι.
It was generally assumed in early times that the
cross on which Jesus suffered was a crux inmissa.
Thus Augustine (i Psalm. cil. § 14) finds in Eph 318
a mystic allusion to the cross: ‘ breadth’ being the
transom on which His hands were outstretched ;
‘length,’ the upright, on which His body. was
fastened ; ‘height,’ the head of the upright pro-
truding above the transom; ‘depth,’ the lower
end buried in the earth. And it is a confirmation
of this opinion that the board inscribed with His
name and accusation was put up over His head
(Mt 27°), apparently on the projection of the
upright.
The early Apologists fancifully defended the sacred symbol of
the cross against the sneers of unbelievers by pointing to its
appearance everywhere, as though nature and art alike did
homage to it. It is seen in the quarters of the heaven, two
transverse lines, as it were, running from Ν. to 8. and from
E. to W.; in a bird soaring upward with spread wings; in a
man swimming or praying with outstretched hands; in the
nose and eyebrows of the human face; in a ship’s mast and
yard ; ina galley’s oars projecting on either side ; in the yoke
of a plough and the handle of a spade; in the shape of trophies
and jasces.* See TREE.
The cruciarius was spared no circumstance of
ignominy. He was required to carry the transom
to the place of execution ; + he was driven thither
with goad and scourge along the most frequented
streets, that the populace might profit by so signal
an exhibition of the terrors of justice ; and a herald
went before, bearing a board whereon the victim’s
name and offence were inscribed.t Thus burdened
and tormented, Jesus went His sorrowful way from
the Preetorium till He reached the gate of the city
(Mt 272); and there His strength failed, and He
could go no farther. Tradition has it that He
fell. The soldiers relieved Him of His burden,
and, impressing Simon of Cyrene, laid it on his
shoulders. Even then Jesus was unable to walk
unsupported, and had to be borne along to the
scene of His crucifixion. Cf. Mk 15” φέρουσιν
αὐτόν.
* Just. Mart. Apol. ii., ed. Sylburg. p. 90 C-E; Tert. A pol.
$16: Jer. on Mk 1521, Cf. Lips. de Crue. τ. 1x.
+ Plut. de Ser. Nwm. Vind. §9; Artemidor. Oneir. ii. 61;
Wetstein on Mt 1028,
tEus. HZ ν. 1; Lightfoot on Mt 2791.
CRUCIFIXION
398
CRUCIFIXION
On arrival at the place of execution (see GOL-
GOTHA), four soldiers were told off by the centurion
in charge to do the work (cf. Jn 1929). They pro-
ceeded in the customary way. First of all, the
cruciarius was stripped naked, his garments being
regarded as the rightful perquisites of his execu-
tioners.* ‘Then he was laid on his back over the
transom and his hands fastened to either end.
Thereafter the transom was hoisted on the upright
and his feet were fastened to the latter. Usually
the hands were nailed through the palms and the
feet were fixed either by two nails one through
each instep, or by a single nail transfixing both
through the Achilles tendon ; sometimes, however,
the hands and feet were simply tied.+ Though
less painful at the moment, the latter was the
more terrible method, since it protracted tlhe
victim’s sufferings. He hung till he died of hun-
ger and exhaustion, or was devoured by birds and
beasts of prey.t The hands of Jesus were certainly
nailed, but it seems that His feet were only tied
(cf. Jn 20° 25. 5) 8. The sole Evangelic authority
for supposing that they were nailed is Lk 24° 0),
which is probably assimilated to Ps 22!% From
two circumstances, (1) that a soldier could reach
the lips of Jesus with a short reed (Mt 27%=Mk
1590 -- [πὶ 1939), and (2) that wild beasts could tear
out the entrails of the cruciarius as he hung,|| it
appears that the cross was of no great height. It
was enough if the feet cleared the ground.
There was a humane custom among the Jews,
based on Pr 31°, that a potion of medicated wine
should be administered to the cruciarit in order to
deaden their sensibility. The merciful draught
was provided by a society of charitable ladies in Jeru-
salem.‘ It was offered to Jesus ere the nails were
driven through His hands, and He raised it to His
thirsty lips ; but on tasting what it was He would
not drinkit. What was His reason for rejecting it ?
It was not that the endurance of physical pain was
necessary to the efficacy of His sacrificial death ; **
nor was it merely that He had a sentimental repug-
nance to the idea of dying in a state of stupefac-
tion.t+ It was rather because He was bent on doing
to the last the work which had been given Him to
do. It was well for the penitent brigand that
Jesus did not drink the potion.
It was usual for the victims of that frightful
punishment, maddened by terror and pain, to shriek,
entreat, curse, and spit at their executioners and
the bystanders ;+t but Jesus endured the torture
meekly. A cry broke from His lips as they were
hammering the nails through His hands; but it
was a prayer—not an appeal to them for mercy on
Himself, but an appeal to God for mercy on them :
‘Father, forgive them: for they know not what
they are doing.’ §§ The transom with its quivering
load was hoisted on the upright, and there He hung,
conscious of all that passed around Him. It is
said that St. Andrew, as he hung upon his cross at
Patree, taught the people all the while;|j|| and
Jesus also in His anguish was mindful of others.
Two brigands had been crucified with Him, two of
*Cf. Wetstein on Mt 2735.
+ Cf. Lips. de Crue. τι. viii.
{ Cf. ib. xii.-xiii.
a δ Cf. Hv. Petr. δ 6: τότε ἀπίσπασαν τοὺ: ἥλους ἀπὸ τῶν χειρῶν τοῦ
Cf. Lips. de Crue. 11. xiii.
Ἵ Cf. Lightfoot on Mt 2734; Wetstein on Mk 1523. See art.
GALI
*" Cf. Calv.: ‘Nam et hee pars sacrificii et obedientia ejus
erat, I inguoris moram ad extremum usque sufferre.’
tt Cf. Dr. Johnson: ‘I will take no more physic, not even my
opin Εἰ ἴον I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God
unclouded.’ ἣ
ΟὖΣ Ct. Cie. in Verr. i. 3, pro Cluent. 66; Jos. BJ τιν. vi. Up 206
vi. 4; Sen. de Vit. Beat. 19.
, δὲ Lk 2374, an interpolation, but unquestionably an authentic
ragment of the Evangelic tradition. Cf. WH, Notes.
| Abdiz, Hist. A post. iii. 41.
those outlaws who infested the steep road from
Jericho to Jerusalem, and by their deeds of violence
gave it the grim name of ‘the Ascent of Blood’
(cf. Lk 10°); and when one of them, recognizing
the majesty of the meek Sufferer, turned to Him
and prayed Him to remember him when He ‘ came
in his kingdom,’ He granted more than he sought,
promising him a place that very day in Paradise.
And He thought of His mother, as she stood by
distracted with grief, and commended her to the
care of the beloved disciple. While He hung, He
was compassed with insults. The Jewish rulers,
exulting in their seeming triumph, mocked Him,
and the multitude joined in the poor sport. So did
the soldiers who were charged with the duty of
watching the crosses lest a rescue should be
attempted.* Heated by their labour, they were
refreshing themselves from their jar of posca, the
vinegar which was the only drink allowed to
soldiers on duty (see VINEGAR). Jesus was in
their eyes a pretender to the Jewish throne, a
rebel against the imperial government; and, hear-
ing the gibes of the rulers, they joined in, and,
holding up their eups in mock homage, drank His
Majesty’s health (Lk 2356).
Crucifixion was a lingering doom. The victims
sometimes hung for days ere they died of hunger,
exhaustion, loss of blood, and the fever of their
wounds,+ unless they were despatched either by a
spear-thrust or by the coup de grace of the eruri-
Jragium, a brutality which the Romans practised
usually on slaves, beating the life out of them by
shattering blows with a heavy mallet.t It was,
however, contrary to the Jewish law (Dt 21°: 3)
that they should hang overnight; and it was the
more necessary that the requirement should be ob-
served in this instance, since the next day was not
only the Sabbath but the Sabbath of the Paschal
week, a day of special solemnity (Jn 195, There-
fore the rulers waited on Pilate, and requested that
Jesus and the brigands might be despatched by the
crurvfragium, and their bodies taken down from
the crosses ere 6 o'clock that evening, when the
Sabbath would begin. Pilate consented, and the
soldiers set about the brutal work. They de-
spatched the two brigands, but when they came
to Jesus, He was already dead. There was no
need to strike Him with the mallet; but one of
them, to ensure that He was really dead, drove his
spear into His side. See BLooD AND WATER.
The prominent characteristic of crucifixion was
the ignominy of it (cf. Gal 3", He 1239). This con-
stituted ‘the stumbling-block of the cross’ (Gal
5") in Jewish eyes. Since it was expected that the
Messiah would be a glorious and victorious King,
it seemed incredible that one who was slain, and
not only slain but crucified, should be the Messiah.
In the eyes of the NT writers, on the contrary, its
very ignominy constituted its supreme suitability
to the Messiah. It identified Him utterly with
sinners, making Him a sharer in the worst ex-
tremity of their condition. St. John recognized a
providential dispensation in the enslavement of the
Jews to the Romans, inasmuch as it brought about
the Crucifixion (18*!**), Had they been free, Jesus
would have been stoned as a biasphemer; but
since they were vassals of Rome, it was not Jaw-
ful for them to put any one to death (Jn 1881).
The Sanhedrin’s sentence had to be referred to the
procurator. It was invalid without his ratification,
and it was executed by his authority after the
Roman manner.
It is remarkable that, unlike the medieval
* Cf. Petron. Sat.: ‘Cruciarii unius parentes ut viderunt noctu
laxatam custodiam, detraxere pendentem’; Jos. Vit. 75: three
cruciarti taken down ; one recovered from his wounds.
t Cf. Lips. de Crue. τι. xii.
1 Cf. tb. xiv.
CRUSE
CRY 399
artists, who loved to depict the Man of Sorrows as
He hung on the cross abused and bleeding, the
Evangelists have drawn a veil over the scene, detail-
ing none of the ghastly particulars, and saying
merely : ‘ They crucified him.’ They recognized in
the Crucifixion not the triumph of human malice but
the consummation of a Divine purpose—‘ the deter-
minate counsel and foreknowledge of God’ (Ac 2”).
At the moment all was dark to the disciples ; but
when their minds were illumined by the Holy
Spirit, they saw not only ‘ the sufferings that befell
Messiah’ but ‘the glories that followed these’
(1 P 1"). Their Lord had never seemed so kingly
in their eyes as when He ‘reigned from the tree.’ *
In early days, according to some authorities, Lk 9!
ran: ‘They were speaking of the glory which He
was about to fulfil at Jerusalem.’ + So Chrysostom
quotes the passage; and this is the constant con-
ception of the NT. ‘ We look upon Jesus,’ says
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ‘ because
of the suffering of death crowned with glory and
honour’ (99: ef. Ph-2*-).
Throughout His ministry Jesus recognized the inevitable
necessity of His Passion. He had come to die. Cf. Mt 915- ΜΚ
220—Lk 535; Mt 1621=Mk 881=Lk 922; Mt 1722. 23=Mk 9%1=Lk
944; Mt 2018. 19=Mk 1033. 34=Lk 1882-33, As early as the close of
the 2nd cent. Celsus stumbled at the idea that Jesus foreknew
and foretold all that happened to Him (Orig. ὁ. Cels. ii. 13).
Strauss pronounces those intimations mere vaticinia ex eventu.
A crucified Messiah was ‘to Jews a stumbling-block and to
Gentiles foolishness’ (1 Co 12%); and the Apostles, eager to re-
move ‘the stumbling-block of the Cross,’ represented the Cruci-
fixion as no ignominious catastrophe, but ‘a link in a chain of
higher knowledge, part of a Divine plan of salvation.’ Keim, on
the other hand, regards the announcement as ‘the expression
of a natural, reasonable, correct anticipation,’ suggested by the
fate of the Baptist and the difficulties wherewith Jesus was
beset. The definite details, however, must be pruned away.
In point of fact, the Lord’s prescience of the end is inextricably
interwoven with the Gospel history. The cross was His goal,
and He knew it all along.
LITERATURE.—In addition to the works quoted in the art. and
the standard Lives of Christ, reference may be made to Fair-
bairn, Studies in the Life of Christ, ‘The Crucifixion’ ; Newman,
Selected Sermons, pp. 175-188; Liddon, Bampton Lect.58 Ὁ
472 ff.; Farrar, Christ in Art, pp. 389-423; Dale, Atonement,
p. 436 ff. DAVID SMITH.
CRUSE.—The word occurs frequently in the OT
(generally as rendering of Heb. no=s), where it
means a ‘small earthen bottle or jar’ in common
use among the Hebrews chiefly for holding liquids,
such as water (1S 2611) or oil (1 K 1713. ‘Cruse’
(marg. ‘ flask’) is substituted by RV for ‘box’ of
AV in Mt 267 (|| Mk 14°, Lk 757) as the designation
of the ἀλάβαστρος used by the woman who anointed
our Lord. See ALABASTER and ANOINTING.
DUGALD CLARK.
CRY.—The term ‘cry’ occurs in the NT with
various shades of meaning corresponding to different
Greek words, which express sometimes articulate,
sometimes inarticulate utterances ; in some cases
it connotes strong emotion, in others a more or less
heightened emphasis is all that is expressed.
According to classical usage, the Gr. terms employed in the
NT may be thus distinguished : ‘z«aiv denotes ‘to cry out”
for a purpose, to call; βοῶν, to cry out as a manifestation of
feeling ; πράζειν, to cry out harshly, often of an inarticulate
and brutish sound’ (Grimm-Thayer, 8.0. Boéw). πραυγάζειν is the
intensive of χράζειν. The corresponding nouns are βοή, ‘a cry
for help,’ and κραυγή, ‘outcry, clamour’ (both rare in NT). To
these should be added the use of ¢gwveiv=‘to cry’ (most freq.
in Lk.).
In classifying the NT usage of the term, it will
be convenient to group the instances in each case
under the Greek equivalents.
* In the LXX version of Ps 9610 many codicesadd ἀπὸ τοῦ ξύλου
after ὁ Κύριος ἐβασίλευσεν. So Old Lat. and Copt. versions, Just.
Mart., Tert., Aug.; cf. Venant. Fortunat. Hymn. de Pass. Dom.:
‘ Impleta sunt que concinit
David fideli carmine,
Dicens: In nationibus
Regnavit a ligno Deus.’
+ Chrysost. in Matth. lvii.: τὴν δόξαν ἣν ἔμελλε πληροῦν ἐν “Tepov-
σαλήμ. πτούτεστιν, τὸ πάθος καὶ τὸν σταυρέν. οὕτω γὰρ αὐτὸ καλοῦ-
σιν ἀ εἰ.
δέξαν γράφουσι.
Euth. Zig. on Μῦ 113: τινὰ δὲ τῶν βιβλίων οὐκ ἔξοδον ἀλλὰ
δόξα γὰρ καλεῖται καὶ ὁ σταυρός.
A. (1) “Τὸ ery’ or ‘ery out’ (-Ξ- κράζειν, ἀνακράζειν) :
(a) of articulate cries, followed by words uttered
(often with ‘saying’ or ‘and said’ added): of joy,
Mk 11% andj ; Mt 21” (children crying in the temple,
‘ Hosanna’); of complaint or distress, Mk 10% || Lk
18”, Mt 2051 (Bartimzeus); Mt 14% (Peter erying
out while walking on the water) ;* Mk 1” |) Lk 459
(ἀνέκραξεν ; Lk. adds ‘with a loud voice’); Mk 9%;
Lk 4" (demons crying out and saying), οἵ. Mk 3"
57; of the angry cries of the multitude, Mt 27”,
Mk 15®- 4 + (ef. Ac 21°) ; in ref. to Jesus, of solemn
and impressive utterance, Jn 7° (cf. 115 158. 12%).
(ὁ) of inarticulate cries: with ref. to the possessed,
Mk 5° (cf. Lk 828 dvaxpdéas); Mk 976 || Lk 9%; of
the disciples, Mt 1456 (‘and they cried out for fear’);
with ref. to Jesus, of the ery on the cross (prob.
inarticulate), Mt 27° (‘eried . . . with a loud voice,
and yielded up his spirit’).
(2) “Τὸ ery’ or ‘ery out’ (Ξε κραυγάζειν) :
(a) of articulate utterances [ef. (1) (a)J: of joy,
Jn 12% (‘Hosanna’); of distress, Mt 15% (Canaan-
itish woman .. . ‘cried, saying’: cf. v.%); with
ref. to Jesus, of utterance under strong emotion,
Jn 115 (‘ Lazarus, come forth !’).
(6) of undefined or inarticulate utterance: Τὴ
the quotation from Is 425, cited in Mt 12!” (‘He
shall not strive nor cry’ [kpavydcec], 1.6. indulge in
clamorous self-assertion).
(c) ‘Cry’=xpavyy: ‘the loud cry of deeply stirred
feeling of joyful surprise’: Lk 1” (kKhsabeth’s
greeting of the Virgin-mother: ‘she litted up her
voice with a loud cry); the midnight cry, Mt 25°
(‘ Behold the bridegroom cometh’).
For He 57 see below under B.
(3) ‘To ery’ or ‘cry out’ (-- βοᾷν, ἀναβοᾷν, ἐπι-
Boay) :
(a) of articulate utterances: of solemn and im-
pressive emphasis (=to speak with a high, strong
voice), Mt 3?|| Mk 13, Lk 34, Jn 1% (all in the
quotation from Is 405 ‘the voice of one crying,’
ete.) ; of distressful appeal, Lk 9°; esp. ‘to ery
for help to’ (=>x ps1 in OT), Lk 187 (the elect who
cry day and night); in ref. to Jesus, of the ery of
agony on the cross (‘My God, my God,’ etc.), Mk
15** and || Mt 27%.
In this connexion the passage in Ja 54 deserves notice:
‘Behold the hire of your labourers. . . crieth out (ze¢fu) ; and
the cries (8%«:) of them that reaped have entered into the ears
of the Lord of Sabaoth.’ Here the verb is used of crying for
vengeance (cf. Hab 211) and the noun (G«/) of cries for help.
The latter sense is esp. frequent in the Psalms (e.g. 52 188. 41 etc.),
corresponding to the Heb. yi and derivatives. This word is
‘used exclusively of crying for help’ (Driver).§ Though fre-
quent in the Psalms (LXX and Heb.), it occurs rarely in the NT.
(b) of eries of joy, pain (inarticulate): of joy,
Gal 4% (quotation from Is 541); οἵ. of pai, Ac 81
(of unclean spirits crying with a loud voice).
(4) “Τὸ ery,’ ‘ery out,’ or ‘cry aloud’ (-- φωνεῖν,
ἐπιφωνεῖν):
(a) emphatic, followed by words uttered, Lk
88:54. ef. 14 (ἀνεφώνησεν, ‘she spake ont,’ AV ;
‘lifted up her voice,’ RV); of angry cries of multi-
tude (ἐπιφωνεῖν), Lk 2371.
(b) of the inarticulate cries of the possessed,
Mk 1% (‘and the unclean spirit . . . erying witha
loud voice’).
(2) ‘cry’= φωνή, esp. in the phrase φωνῇ μεγάλῃ,
‘with a loud voice or cry,’ added to verbs.
B. ‘Crying’ in He 57,—This passage, which has
direct reference to our Lord, calls for special notice
here: ‘Who, in his days of flesh, having offered
up, With strong crying (μετὰ κραυγῆς ἰσχυρᾶς) and
* Probably here should be added Mt 152% (‘she crieth after
us’), where articulate cries seem to be meant, though the words
uttered are not given.
+ In [| passages Lk 23?! has Exegavouy λέγοντες, In 196 ἐκραίγασαν
λέγοντες.
4 In the || passages Mk 15°7 has ἀφεὶς φωνὴν μεγάλην, and Lk 2346
φωνήσας Can μεγάλη.
§ Parallel Psalter, p. 441.
400 CUBIT
CUP
tears, prayers and supplications unto him that
was able to save him out of death,’ ete. The ref.
is doubtless primarily to Gethsemane (so Delitzsch,
Westcott), though ‘a wider application of the
words to other prayers and times of peculiar trial
in our Lord’s life’ * is not excluded. Schoettgen
(ad loc.) + quotes a Jewish saying which strikingly
illustrates the phrase: ‘There are three kinds of
prayers, each loftier than the preceding: prayer,
crying, and tears. Prayer is made in silence ; cry-
ing, with raised voice: but tears overcome all
things.’ The conjunction of the terms mentioned
often occurs in ΟἽ], esp. in the Psalms, e.g. Ps 3915:
‘Hear my prayer, O Lord,
And give ear unto my ery (nye);
Hold not thy peace at my tears.’
Also Ps 61°, and ef. Ps 80* ©.
The close association of the idea of prayer with
that of ‘crying’ or ‘cry’ may be illustrated from
the Gospels, esp. perhaps in the case of our Lord’s
cries on the cross (Mt 274 °°, Lk 23%). According
to Jewish tradition, in the solemn prayer for for-
giveness uttered by the high priest on the Day of
Atonement in the Holy of Holies, the words six
ἼΞ9 own “Ὁ Lord, forgive,’ were spoken with
heightened voice, so that they could be heard at a
distance.
Lirkrature.—Art. ‘Call’ in Hastings’ DB i. 343f., and the
Gr. Lexicons under the various Gr. terms (esp. Grimm-Thayer).
α. Η. BOX:
CUBIT.—See AGE, and WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.
CUMMIN.—Cummin (or cumin) is the seed of
the Cuminum cyminwn, an annual herbaceous
umbellifer. It has a slender, branching stem,
and grows to the height of a foot. The seeds,
which are ovoid in form. are strongly aromatic,
and have a flavour not unlike that of caraway, but
more pungent. Cummin was used by the Jews as
a condiment, and also for flavouring bread. It
has carminative and other medicinal properties,
and was employed not only as a remedy for colic,
but also to stanch excessive bleeding, and to allay
swellings. It is indigenous to Upper Egypt and the
Mediterranean countries, but it was also cultivated
from early timesin Western Asia, India, and China.
Cummin is mentioned twice in the Bible (Is 2875-27
33, and Mt 23% κύμινον). In the latter passage
Jesus rebukes the Pharisees, because they paid
tithe of mint, and anise, and ewnmin, and omitted
the weightier matters of the Law.
_ LITERATURE.—Eneyc. Brit. s.v.; Tristram, Nat. Hist. of the
Bible. HuGH DUNCAN.
CUP (ποτήριον, in general significance correspond-
ing to the Heb. 013 and so used in the LXX ; Vulg.
equivalent is calix).
1. Literal.—A few references to the cup as a
vessel in common use occur in the Gospels: Mk
7 4, Mt 10% (=Mk 91) 23% 6 (=Lk 113). The
first of these passages is plainly an explanatory
parenthesis furnished by the Evangelist for the
information of readers unacquainted with Jewish
customs. ποτήρια, he says, are amongst the things
subject to ‘ washings’ (Bamrricpot)-—which washings
were not such as simple cleanliness required, but
were prescribed by the decrees ‘intended to sepa-
rate the Jew from all contact with the Gentiles.’
rhe Talmudic tractate Kelim names seven kinds
of things requiring such ceremonial purification,
and amongst them are earthenware vessels and
vessels of bone, metal, and wood. Resting on such
Levitical prescriptions as are to be found in Lv
11 and Nu 31, the purification of vessels was
carried to the furthest extreme of stringent re-
quirement by ‘ the tradition of the elders.’ Vessels
that had in any way come into contact with the
* Westcott. | Cited in Westcott, ἐδ.
common people (‘am h@drez) were on that account
to be cleansed. (Maimonides, Yad. Mishkab and
Moshab, 11. 11, 12, 18).
The words of Jesus in Mt 23% °6 are simply an
instance of the use of a homely figure to express
hypocrisy.
2. Figurative.—Our Lord uses the familiar Heb.
figure of a ‘cup’ to denote the experience of
sorrow and anguish in two instances: (1) in His
challenge to James and John, checking their am-
bition (Mk 10° °—=Mt 207-23, «Are ye able to
drink the eup which I drink ?’); and (2) in con-
nexion with His Passion, both in His ery of agony
(Mk 14° || in Mt. and Lk. ‘this cup’), and in His
calm rebuke of Peter’s hasty attempt to defend
Him against His captors (Jn 18" ‘The eup which
my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it ?’).
In each case there is the same reference to His
singular experience of bitter sorrow which was no
mere ‘bitterness of death.’
It is noticeable that in the Gospels the use of this figure
occurs only in connexion with trouble and suffering. In the
OT the use is much wider. Experiences of joy, blessing, and
comfort are thus expressed (e.g. Ps 16° 235 11615, Jer 167), as
well as those of trembling, desolation, and the wrath of God
(UIs 5117. Jer 2515Π., Ezk 2382ff, Zee 122), Rabbinic writers
exhibit the figurative use of ‘cup’ for trouble and anguish
(Gesen. Thes. 8.0. 013). The kindred expression, ‘taste the
taste of death,’ is also to be met with (Buxtorf, Lea. 5.0.
Oyy). The conception of death as a bitter cup for men to
drink underlies it. (Note the Etymologicon Magnum gives
ποτήριον... σημαίνει καὶ τὸν θανατον). Instances of this phraxe-
ology in the Gospels are (in the words οὗ Jesus) Mk 9! (Ξξ- μὺ
1628) and (in the words of the Jews) Jn 852, Cf. also He 29.
3. In the imstitution of the Lord’s Supper.—
There are strong inducements to see in the cup in
the Last Supper one of the cups which had a place
in the later ceremonial of the Paschal feast. But
was the supper the usual Passover? This is a
much-debated question; but on the whole the
weightier considerations seem to support the view
presented in the Fourth Gospel, the account in
which may be intended, as some suggest, to cor-
rect the impression given by the Synoptics. That
is to say, the supper was not the Passover proper,
and it took place on the day previous to that on
which the Passover was eaten. It might still be
held that it was an anticipatory Passover. St.
Paul, it is true, speaks of the Eucharistic cup as
‘the cup of blessing’ (1 Co 1016), and one is inclined
to make a direct connexion with the third cup at
the Paschal celebration, which was known as the
Cup of Benediction (72727 iD), and is often referred
to in the Talmudic tractates (e.g. Berakhoth, 51a).
If St. Luke’s account of the Last Supper were to
be received without question, it would be tempt-
ing to trace three out of the four Paschal cups,
viz. the one mentioned in Lk 221”, the one common
to the Synoptics—the cup of blessing, and the
fourth, or Hallel cup, suggested by ὑμνήσαντες (Mik
14°°=Mt 26°), taking the hymn referred to as
none other than the second part of the Hallel (Pss
115-118), with which the Passover was usually
closed. Lk 22! Ὁ. however, is not above sus-
picion : and on other grounds we cannot definitely
connect the cup of the institution with the cere-
monial of the Paschal feast.
3ut the cup was an important feature in other
Jewish festivals and solemn seasons besides the
Passover. And even though the institution took
place at the close of an ordinary meal, the bread
and the cup were accompanied with the due Jéwish
graces (Mt 2676f, Mk 142f-) Lk 9217-19) and in the
after-view the cup thus used, and with such signifi-
cance, might well stand out as par excellence the
Cup of Blessing.
The words of Jesus regarding the cup are given with some
noticeable variation. Mk. gives τοῦτό ἐστιν τὸ αἷμά μου τής
διαθήκης τὸ ἐκκχυννόμενον ὑπὲρ πολλῶν (1424); and Mbt. reproduces
this with but slight changes, possibly of a liturgical character
CUP.
SS eS
(2678), The wording in Lk 2217 makes no reference to the
‘blood,’ whilst 2220 (referred to above) appears to be but an
interpolation, clumsily (ἐν τῶ «ies... + +» ἐκχυννόμενον)
το
combining the form in St. Paul with that in St. Mark. The
solemn expression, ‘my blood of the covenant,’ or ‘ my covenant-
blood,’ can be explained only by reference to Ex 9468, St.
Paul’s phrase, ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη. «tv τῷ ἐμῷ αἵματι (1 Co 11%),
introduces no important difference of meaning as compared
‘with the Markan formula. To lay stress on the idea of a ‘new
covenant’ is ali in keeping with the Pauline standpoint. One
other point as regards the words of the institution alone
remains to be mentioned. As with the bread so with the cup,
St. Paul alone represents our Lord as Saying τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν
ἐμὴν ἀνάμνυσιν (1 Co 1131.-29), Is it possible, then, that no per-
manent sacramental rite was contemplated by Jesus in doing
what He did at the Last Supper? Is the conception of a
memorial celebration due rather to St. Paul as a prime factor
in the development of Christianity? Obviously this is not the
place to deal with this important question, and the attitude of
historical criticism respecting it. We have assumed that what
took place at the Last Supper was an ‘institution.’ See artt.
CovENantT, Lorp’s SuPpPER.
4. In the Eucharist.—(1) From the first the com-
mon usage in administration no doubt gave the
cup after the bread, in accordance with the order
observed in Mark, Matthew, and Paul. St. Lukein
his shorter (and better supported) account (22!7-!)
exhibits a noticeable divergence in placing the cup
first in order. This may be due, as Wright sug-
gests (Synopsis of the Gospels, p. 140), to some ‘local
Eucharistic use.” The Didache (ch. 9) also puts
the cup first ; but the fact as to the general estab-
lished usage remains unaffected.
(2) As to the cup used in the communion there
would at first be no difference between it and such
vessels as were in ordinary use, and the materials
of which the Eucharistic vessels were made were
by no means of one kind. Zephyrinus of Rome, a
contemporary of Tertullian, speaks of ‘ patens of
glass,’ and Jerome (c. 398 A.D.) speaks of ‘a wicker
basket’ and ‘a glass’ as in use for communion
purposes. Cups of wood and of horn also appear
to have been used in some cases. We find certain
provincial councils in the 8th and 9th cents. pro-
hibiting the use of such, and also of leaden vessels.
Cups were sometimes mace of pewter ; and bronze,
again, was commonly used by the Irish monks, St.
Gall preferring vessels of this material to those of
silver. At the same time the natural tendency to
differentiate in regard to vessels devoted to such a
special service must have begun soon to manifest
itself. Where it was possible, at an early period
the cup was made of rich materials, such as gold
and silver. Similarly as regards form and orna-
mentation. Tertullian (de Pudicitia, 10) speaks
of the cup as being adorned with the figure of the
Good Shepherd. In the course of time we get
chalices of great price and wondertul workman-
ship, corresponding to the rare and costly Passover
and other festal cups which Jews similarly cherish
as art treasures,
It is needless to mention particularly the several
kinds of chalices which came to be distinguished
as the Eucharistic rites were made more elaborate.
Our own times, again, it may just be noticed, have
given us the ‘individual communion cup,’ which,
on hygienic grounds, finds favour in some quarters.
Though in some respects a modern institution,
perhaps it may claim a precedent in the most
rimitive usage. The use of separate cups might
e inferred from 1 Co 1111, Nor is the hygienic
objection to the common chalice wholly new. The
dithiculty was felt in medieval times when the
plague was so rife. In the 14th cent. special ‘ pest-
chalices’ were in use for sick cases.
(3) The custom of mixing water with the wine
in the chalice, to which Justin Martyr makes a
well-known reference (Apol. i. 67), accords with
Jewish precedent. Speaking of the Jewish use,
Lightfoot (Zor. Heb. on Mt 2677) says, ‘Hence in
the rubric of the feasts, when mention is made of
the wine they always use the word mizgu, they mix
VOL. I.—26
CUP 401
for him the cup.” Maimonides (Hamez wmaz. 7, 8)
assumes the use of water. If the cup our Lord
gave to His disciples were one of the ceremonial
Paschal cups, we may take it that it contained a
mixture of water and wine. And if it were not,
nothing is more likely than that the Apostles, in
observing the rite, would follow the Jewish custom
of mixture. A passage in the Talmud (Bab.
Berakhoth, 50, 2) suggests that water was thus
added to the wine for the sake of wholesomeness
and in the interests of sobriety.
In the course of time various fanciful suggestions came to
be made as to a symbolic purpose in connexion with the mixed
chalice in the Eucharist, ignoring its simple origin in an earlier
Jewish custom, ‘Thus it was variously held that in this way
the union of Christ and the faithful was signified; that the
water from the rock was represented; that the water and
the blood from the pierced side of the Crucified were com-
memorated. At last it was affirmed that the water was.addcd
to the cup ‘solely for significance’: and so the addition of a
very small quantity of water (a small spoonful) came to be con-
sidered sufficient. ‘One drop is as significant as a thousand’
(Bona, Rer, Liturg. τι. ix. note 8—‘Cum vero aqua mysteri?
causa apponatur vel minima gutta sufliciens est’).
(4) Was wine from the first invariably used and
regarded as obligatory in the Eucharist? Harnack
(‘Brod u. Wasser,’ Z'U vii. [1862]) holds that it
was not so up to the 8rd cent., and traces the
use of bread and water (but see, in reply, Zahn,
‘Brod u. Wein,’ 2d. ; Jiilicher’s essay in Theol. Ab-
handlungen; and Grafe, ZThK ν. 2). It would
be difficult to maintain that the genius of the
sacrament vitally depended on the use of wine;
but in its favour we have the great preponder-
ance of custom and sentiment. In modern times
there are those who, for one reason and another,
feel a difficulty regarding communion wine, and
are disposed to use substitutes of some kind.
Such might be disposed to welcome a sort of
precedent in the use permitted by Jewish recula-
tions in certain cases as regards their festival cups.
In northern countries, ¢.g., where wine was not
accessible as a daily beverage for the mass of the
Jews, syrup, Juice of fruits, beer or mead, ete., are
named as instances of allowable substitutes. Such
substitutes are curiously included under the com-
mon appellation ‘the wine of the country.’ (See
Shulhan’? Arukh, Orah Hag. 182. 1, 2).
(5) The withholding of the cup from the laity in
the Communion, which came into vogue in the
Western Church, and is still a Roman Catholie
usage, may be briefly referred to. It is admitted by
tomush authorities that communion in both kinds
was the primitive custom for all communicants.
Cardinal Bona, e.g., says: ‘It is certain, indeed,
that in ancient times all without distinction, clergy
and laity, men and women, received the sacred
mysteries in both kinds’ (Rer. Liturg. If. xviii. 1).
The practice of withholding the cup does not come
into view before the 12th century. The danger of
effusion was offered as a reason for it. Short of
this, as an expedient against effusion, we find
slender tubes (fistula) or quills brought into use, the
communicants drawing the wine from the chalice
by suction. Another intermediate stage towards
communion in one kind was the practice of intine-
tion, z.e. administering to the people the bread
dipped in the wine. ‘This practice, however, was
condemned in the West, but it remains as the
custom of the Eastern Church still, the sacred ele-
ments in this form being administered to the laity
with a spoon (λαβίς). Ultimately the rule of com-
munion in one kind was ordained in the West by
a decree of the Council of Constance in 1415; and
the reason assigned for the decree was that it
was ‘to avoid certain perils, inconveniences, and
scandals.” This momentous change, however, was
not brought about without much demur and opposi-
tion. The decree of Constance itself did not im-
mediately and universally take effect ; for after this
CURES
time there were even in Rome cases where the cup
was administered. The great Hussite movement
in Bohemia, contemporaneous with the Council of
Constance itself, oficred determined opposition to
the withdrawal of the eup; and the kindred Utra-
quist Communion in that country continued for
two centuries their protest as Catholies who claimed
the celebration of the Lord’s Supper in both kinds,
after the primitive usage. The badge of the Utra-
quists, a large chalice together with a sword—
signilicant conjunction !—bespoke the sternness of
the conflict.
᾿ς What really lay at the root of this prohibition
of the cup was the tremendous dogma of tran-
substantiation, with all its implicates, together
with a hardening of the distinction between the
clergy and the people. The growth of this Euchar-
istic custom proceeded part passu with the de-
velopment of the dogma. Naturally, therefore,
the restoration of the eup to the people was a
necessary part of the Reformation claim. It is
also worthy of remembrance that even in the Tri-
dentine Council there were not wanting Romanist
advocates of this as well as other reforms ; but ‘no
compromise’ counsels prevailed, and the rule in its
fullest rigidity was reailirmed.
How strange to look back over the welter of
controversy and the many saddening developments
eonnected with but this one point of Eucharistic
observance, away to that simple evening - meal
which took place ‘in the same night that he was
betrayed’! J. S. CLEMENS.
CURES.—The details of medical knowledge pos-
sessed by the Jews of our Lord’s time and of
eurrent medical practice can only be gathered
piecemeal from various sources, and relate largely
to what is known of these in OT and in post-
Biblical times. It is not unreasonable to belicve
that from these sources one can with fair accuracy
gather what was the knowledge and practice of
our Lord’s own generation. In the NT references
are made to physicians in Mt 5°, Lk 83. The
value of diet and the use of oil and wine in cases
of bodily injury are indirectly referred to in Lk
8° 10. Visitation of the sick is a Christian
virtue, and was warmly commended by Jesus (Mt
25°: 48), in terms implying that it was practised ;
but the Talmud, which also recognizes the virtue,
makes an exception in cases where visitation might
aggravate the disorder, The balm of Gilcad had
an ancient reputation for healing virtue, and the
Pools of Siloam and Bethesda and the springs at
Tiberias and Callirrhoé were reputed to be eura-
tive. Medical theory amone the Jews was almost
entirely borrowed empirically, and no system of
medical training and education existed in Pales-
tine in Bible times. Prevention of disease by
sanitary precautions was more emphasized, and it
has even been suegested that the whole Levitical
legislation was based upon hygienic considerations,
so far as these were understood. The priestly
class were the depositaries of such fedioal know-
lodge as was possessed, althoueh Solomon is said
to have known about the use of drugs, and various
references in the Talmud attribute to him a book
of cures which was said to have been withdrawn
from the people by Hezekiah.
In the time of Jesus medical practitioners would
be in possession of such medical lore as was held
and practised in former generations, and would
therefore be familiar with the art of midwifery,
and possibly had attained to considerable skill in
its practice, though there are few references to
surgical operations. Probal ly an aversion existed
to surgery, as to the practice. of bleeding, on
account of the natior ‘lief concerni
ccount of the national belief concerning the blood ;.
but later this aversion was overcome, and Jewish
CURES
physicians fell into line with the leading classical
schools, which freely employed bleeding as a
remedy. The Talmud (e.g. Bekhoroth, 45a; Nazir,
32) bears witness to some anatomical knowledge
possessed by post-Biblical practitioners, and from
this and other Rabbinical sources the common
maxims of the physicians, and indications of their
principles and methods, may be not obscurely
learned. The Talmud mentions myrrh, aloes,
cassia, frankincense, cinnamon, spikenard, and
camphire as having medicinal properties. Dietetic
rules and sanitary regulations were also carefully
enjoined, and many bodily disorders were treated
by homely remedies. Wunderbar (/.c. infra) gives
examples of the application of drugs and the like
to various ailments, but also plainly shows that
occult methods, involving astrology, and the wear-
ing of parchment amulets or charms, were with
more confidence prescribed. Various incantations
were in use to prevent miscarriage, and to ward
off the machinations of evil spirits from the cradle
of the newborn. Drugs and magic were, in fact,
generally employed, the chief reliance being placed
on the latter.
With these methods our Lord’s action in the
healing of disease had no affinity. Necromantie
or superstitious observances were entirely foreign
to His spirit. He never taught that sicknessces
were the result of the action of evil spirits [on Lk
1135" see below, and art. IMPOTENCE}. And it is
equally clear that He had no recourse to such
medical knowledge as was familiar to the physi-
cians of His time, and that He was not endowed
with knowledge of disease and of the curative art
in advance of His own generation. In the cures
recorded in the Gospels He employs nothing be-
yond His word, addressed either to the patient or
to a parent or friend, and sometimes a touch.
For use of saliva, see art. SicuT. The method of
Jesus must be sought on an entirely different line.
In every process of healing, whether in the time
of Jesus or in our own day, there are two ele-
ments: the physical, and the mental or psychical.
On the one hand, the disturbing and entecbling
causes, functional or organic, in the bodily tissues
and organs, are gradually removed by the action
of drugs or other medical treatment. On the
other, a new tone and vigour are restored to the
unseen and intangible but essentially real ‘life’ of
the patient. The two are most intimately and
vitally connected with each other, and neither
element can be ignored. Mind and_ body are
mutually interpenetrative, and although the rela-
tions between them are in many respects still pro-
foundly obseure, yet advancing knowledge onl
makes more certain what is already firmly estab-
lished, that this interdependence and mutual
influence are of the closest character. The uncer-
tain and incalculable element in every sickness or
feebleness, passing beyond all power to adequately
diagnose, is the psychical. The physical condition
may clearly point to a particular issue of the in-
firmity—recovery or death—and, so far as the physi-
cal goes, this might be determined with considers
able accuracy ; but the action of the incalculable
clement remains, cannot be predicted, and may
produce most surprising results. These are matters
of common knowledge, and amount to common-
places. But they must be st2adily borne in mind
when cases of restoration-—those in process to-day,
and those recorded in the Gospels—are considered.
The action of Jesus was upon the complex per-
sonality, body and spirit, but upon the body
through the spirit. His power went directly to
the central life, to the man, the living person, and
this may be traced in all His dealing with discase
and infirmity both of body and of mind (see
LUNATIC). The Divine power was, through His
CURES
life, at one with itself, brought to bear with living
encrgy on the unseen springs of the being. Con-
sideration of the actual phenomena of our Lord’s
working in the restoring of the sick will make
these facts more manifest.
4. Our Lord's own dependence upon the Divine
power.—Not only did He declare this close, trust-
ful dependence (Jn 550 878 10,35. 32-87-38 1410), but
it is evinced spontaneously in His action (Mk 7*,
Jn 1151: 2). The customary association of prayer
with His works of healing was proof of His utter-
most dependence upon God. The power of prayer,
which He marked as the condition of all human
victory, He indicates as vital also to His own
action (Mk 955. The prayer He desiderates is no
slack and formal petitioning of a far-distant Deity,
but a close absorption of life in a very-present
Helper. And this was the quality of our Lord’s
own dependence upon God. He cherished the
largest expectations from the power of the Living
God, of which He was so conscious. He felt the
throbbing in His own life of that Mighty Will and
Love which animated all being, and therefore He
intimated that the true value of prayer, for Him-
self and for mankind, was that it established in
man a close sympathy with, and an absolute de-
pendence upon, the Source of all healing and life.
2. His healings were an expression of intensest
sympathy with suffering humanity. Compassion
was the moving cause of many of His beneficent
actions (Mt 15%? 20%, Mk 85, Lk-7). True sym-
pathy is a mighty human energy in which the
Divine power is at work, and even on the lower
levels of our teeble personal force it has a con-
tinuous tendency towards healing. Experience
multiplies the evidence of this fact as the years
pass. And we are led to conceive in some measure
the vast resources of power in the full compassion
of Him who was morally one with the Source of
all love and pity. His sympathy was never viti-
ated or weakened by personal imperfection, and so
it possessed the power of self-identitication with
God and man. The healing of the Issue of Blood
(see article) shows that this sympathy with dis-
tressed humanity worked even apart from His
direct will.
3. His conviction that disease and suffering were
not part of the right and natural order of things.
This feature is scen in all His actions, but found
its clearest expression in the case of the woman
who could in no wise lift up herself (Lk 13'-1*)
(sec IMPOTENCE). ‘Ought not this woman, being a
daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo
these eighteen years, to have been loosed from this
bond on the day ef the Sabbath?’ In addition to
our Lord’s antagonism to the pedantry and inhu-
manity of His critics, the underlying note is heard
that humanity ought not to be held in bonds of
sickness and infirmity. Disease and suffering and
untimely death are not part of the natural, 1.6. the
richt and Divine, order of things. And all the
power of right is on the side of those who labour
to set man free and to enable him to stand erect in
body, mind, and soul before God and his fellows.
4. A clear feature in our Lord’s healings was His
sense of the necd of dealing with tv2 sin which often
lay at the root of the sickness and infirmity. Jesus
very carefully guards against the unwarranted
assumption made by the friends of Job, and by
the disciples (Jn 95), that sin was the secret cause
of all suffering and pain. Other and Diviner
reasons might account for much of the depriva-
tion and trouble of man (Jn 9°). Bat in two cases
(Mk 2°, Jn 54) He not obscurely marks the sin
as the deepest cause of the weakness (see artt.
PARALYSIS and IMPOTENCE). Sin is the violation
of the whole nature of man. body, mind, soul, as |
well as disobedience to the Holy Will of God, It!
CURES 403
depresses the springs of personal vitality, and there-
fore continually makes for sickness and feebleness
of body.
5. Haith was required on the part of the one to be
healed. Vaith must be clearly distinguished from
mental assent and from eredulity, which vainly
arrogate to themselves that august word. Faith,
as Jesus conceived it, was the noblest activity of
man’s being, the triumphant assertion of the
essential and Divine part of his nature against
all that dwarfs, disligures, and oppresses it, and
this faith our Lord most keenly desired to see.
The absence of it, even the fear of its absence,
chilled and dismayed His spirit (Jn 4%, Mk 95. 39
RV). He marks faith as the truly favourable
condition for His healing power to be efficacious
(Mit 922,, ΜῈ 10525 116 172.1842) Jn 55). Apparent
exceptions to this connexion between healing and
faith may be traced in Mt 91-8 1298, Lk 131-1" 141-6
92°9.51) but in all these eases the details are not
reported, the fact of the healing being in these
instances less prominent than other features of the
narrative, such as the controversy of Jesus with
the cold critics in the synagogue, and the personal
characteristics of the Saviour in His benelicent
action with respect to Malchus. It has also been
thought that demoniacs as such were incapacitated
from the exercise of faith in Jesus. But while
this is in part true, it is significant that our Lord
does in these instances seek to gain access to the
truce personality and to set it free from the oppres-
sion of all alien powers (see LUNATIC).
6. Jesus laboured. to produce. this. faith.—Not
only does He ask for it as a condition of healing,
but He spends Himself in the effort to evoke it.
His careful treatment of the blind man (Mk 85:55),
the deaf and dumb (Mk 7°!*‘), the blind and im-
potent (Jn 9-7 and 5°) is best understood as the
efiort of our Lord to produce the essential condi-
tions of receiving His healing virtue. In each case
the means used, as well as the words spoken, are
adapted to the particular case. We have not one
set of means used indiscriminately. The ears and
the tongue of the deaf-mute are touched, the blind
man in one ease is led out of the town, saliva is
applied to his eyes, and the touch of the Lord’s
hand; in the other the eyes are anointed and the
patient is sent to a distant pool in the exercise of
faith. The labour is to set free the patient from
all unnatural conditions of mind and spirit and
from hopelessness, which is the most unnatural of
all to men to whom God is so near.
This effort in Jesus produced weariness. It
involved a deep expenditure of nervous, physical,
and spiritual energy, and often in the Gospels we
read of the spent, tired worker seeking refresh-
ment in rest and in solitude, and most of all in ©
fellowship with God. ‘He went out into the
mountain to pray’ (Mt 1433, Mk 6%, Lk 6”).
7. Several of our Lord's cures were wrought
while 116 was at a distance from the patient: the
Syro-Pheenician’s daughter (Mt 1577, Mk 7**°),
the nobleman’s son (Jn 4%), and the centurion’s
servant (Mt 85:19, Lk 7'-!"). Difficulty is felt by
many on the ground that the power of a unique
personality which they acknowledge in Jesus
could not be active in these cases. Dr. Abbott
diseusses the third instance (Kernel and Husk,
Letter 18), and, excluding any ‘bond fide miracle,’
he inclines to regard the story as due to an exag-
ceration or to the influence of the knowledge of
his friend’s intercession with Jesus, ‘with a senti-
mental reserve in favour of brain-wave sympathy.’
Since the time Dr. Abbott wrote, telepathy has
_ become @ recognized fact in psychical research,
| and we have no need to deny its possible action in
these cases. But the explanation given of all His
works by our Lord goes beneath all such conjec-
404 CURES
tures and hypotheses. He ascribed His healing to
the Divine power with which He was able to bring
men into living communication. That Divine all-
pervading Life which informed His humanity was
not at adistance from any human life. Space and
Time are to the Infinite Power non-existent, and
only our bondage to the limited human ideas can
present any dilliculty.
8. In the three above cases and in the case of the
demoniae boy (Mt 17+, Mk 9!*-°9, Lk 051-22) our
Lord significantly seeks the co-operation of parent
and friend inthe work of healing ; and the fact is
most significant of the closeness of human sym-
pathy, and most of all of that most vital and
mysterious sympathy lying in the life-bond be-
tween parent and child, and the intimate depend-
ence of these ties upon the life-giving power of
the Almighty. These deep-lying sympathies that
bind parents to their own offspring are essentially
allied to the Divine power. ‘They ‘consist’ by its
indwelling, and Jesus desires this power to be
informed by a living faith, and so be at once at
its highest point of energy and also in living union
with God.
9. In some of the cures effected by Jesus a
process is observable in the recovery. The noble-
man’s son was first set free from the fever, and
from that decisive time bevan ‘to amend.’ The
crisis was safely passed, and the rest was left to
nature’s gentle action. The Syro-Phenician’s
daughter was delivered from her besetment and
left ‘thrown upon the bed,’ phyacally prostrate,
and requiring rest and care. The daughter of
Jairus was ordered rest and food, and the blind
man at Bethsaida was only by degrees restored to
perfect sight. These indications, casually given,
and probably not understood by the narrators,
lead us to think that a similar process would be
manifest in the other cures were they fully and
adequately reported, and it is always a salutary
reminder that our Gospels are only most frag-
mentary. It was a principle of Jesus not to do
anything by extraordinary which could be accom-
plished by ordinary means.
10. The healing power of Jesus went out freely
among the suffering multitude (Mt 815: 17. 1434-36
15-51, Mk 152-34 63-56 Lk 44-41 91), The con-
tagious influence of a multitude, in producing an
atmosphere in which remarkable psychical pheno-
mena are manifest and the result is seen in heal-
ing of the sick, is not uncommonly recognized
in modern times. In this way are explained the
miracles of which some genuine cases undoubtedly
happened around the tomb of Becket, the healings
that are associated with Lourdes, and many of the
similar results that we may believe were gathered
round famous saints like St. Francis of Assisi and
St. Theresa. A contavion of expectation is initi-
ated and spreads rapidly through a whole country-
side, and this condition of expectation and hope is
one which the most prosaie science recognizes as
favourable to the production of real cures, especi-
ally of ailments a large element of which is nervous.
W e have seen that the working of Jcsus did not
disdain to utilize these and all other forces in
human nature which make for healing; and by
reason of His unique and perfect alliance with the
Divine Source of all life and health, He was able
to bring instantaneous and permanent relief and
restoration to whole companies of suflerers.
11. Our Lord’s method has considerable affinity
with modern medical science. The power of the
mind over bodily ailments, in the maintenance and
restoration of health, is being inereasingly ac-
knowledged. Dr. Schofield says truly that most
remedies, if not all, are partly psychical in their
Operation,
of occupation, environment, and
Not only such pri scriptions as chansre
1
i
climate, physical
CURSE
and mental shocks and emotional incentives, eth-
ical and religious influences, travel, study, ambi-
tion and social influences, but also drugs, changes
of diet, baths and waters, minor operations, depend
much for their efficacy on their psychical action ;
while the personality of the doctor—in some cases
the unintelligibility of his prescription and the
magnitude of his fee—are valuable therapeutic
agents. In this way full recognition is given to
the influence of any power which can set free the
mind from its hopeless condition, its letharey and
depression, as a most potent force in the work of
healing. Schmiedel (art. ‘Gospels’ in Encye.
Bibl.) says of our Lord’s miracles: ‘It is only
permissible to regard as historical that class of
healings which present-day physicians are able to
efiect by psychical methods.? But he overlooks
the influence of mental action in the eure of all
kinds of disease, and not only of mental diseases to
which the above observations point.
Psychical methods, intelligently and of set pur-
pose applied to the cure of bodily ailments, are as
yet in their preliminary stages. On the same line,
if on no otlier, much greater possibilities remain
for human knowledge and power to achieve. No
limit can be laid down beyond which the occult
forces of human life may not be taken advantage
of for the healing not of nervous diseases only, but
of purely physical. Dr. Osgood Mason gives abun-
dant evidence, from his own knowledge and practice,
of the influence of sugvestion, with or without
hypnosis, in the healing of many physical ailments.
And the Christian faith, based upon the sugges-
tions found in the Gospels as they describe, without
at all understanding them, our Lord’s methods, is
that Jesus Christ, by His commanding action upon
the human mind and spirit, and by the Divine
power dwelling in Himsclf, was able to control
physical and physiological processes in the human
body so as to produce curative effects of a per-
manent character.
LiteraturE.—For ancient Jewish cures, see art. ‘Mcdicine’
(by Macalister) in Hastings’ DB; Wunderbar, Biblisch-Tal-
mudische Medicin, 1850-60 ; art. ‘Krankheiten und Heilkunde
der Isracliten’ in Herzog’s PR, For detailed accounts of
individual cures wrought by Jesus, see the Lives of Christ and
Comm. on Gospels, e.g. Gould on ‘Mark,’ Plummer on ‘ Luke’
in Internat. Crit. Commentary; Trench, Miracles; Laidlaw,
Miracles of our Lord; Belcher, Miracles. For valuable infor-
mation and suggestion respecting psycho-therapeutics, consult
artt. by Dr. Tuke on ‘Influence of the Mind over the Body’ in
Dict. of Psychol. Medicine; Dr. Lloyd Tucker on ‘Psycho-
therapeutics,’ 7b. ; Dr. Osgood Mason on ‘Hypnotism and Sug-
gestion,’ tb. 1901; and recent popular medical works by Mr. A.
T. Schofield on The Force of Mind, and Unconscious There-
peuties (Churchill, London). T. H. WRIGHT.
CURSE.—Two widely different words are in AV
translated ‘curse.’ It will be sufiicient to trace
their meaning, so far as the ideas represented by
them are found in the Gospels.
4.097, ἀνάθεμα, fan accursed (AV) or devoted
(RV) thing.’ (a) In its higher application this word
signifies a thing devoted—wholly or in part, per-
manently or temporarily, voluntarily or by Divine
decree—to a use (or an abstinence) exclusively
sacred. This is not a curse at all in the modern
sense of the word; it corresponds more nearly to
the nature of avow. With this extension of mean-
ing we may see a genuine instance in the special
consecration of John the Baptist (Lk 115 7°), and a
corrupt instance in the system of Corban (Mk 7!"),
(2) In its darker application it denotes an extreme
and punitive ban of extermination. This is of
frequent occurrence in OT, but in the Gospels no
clear case is found, unless, indeed, under this head
we include all the dcath-penalties of the Jewish
law (Jn [?] 8°), especially the punishment attempted
(Jn 8° 10%") and finally inflicted upon Christ Him-
self on the charge of blasphemy (Mk 14°, Jn 19°).
It is well to notice, in connexion with this kind
CUSHION
CYRENIUS 405
. - |
of anathema, the strong expression used by Christ
in addressing the Canaanitish woman, as one de-
scended from a ‘devoted’ race (Mt 15:5). It may
be added that profanity, in the special form of
self-cursing, seems to have adopted language de-
rived from this ban; see Mt 267, Mk 147! (κατα-
θεματίζειν and ἀναθεματίζειν). Ro 9* naturally sug-
gests itself as a verbal illustration ; in other respects
it is a complete contrast.* (c) The ban of ex-
termination gave place, under certain conditions,
to the remedial discipline of excommunication ;
that is to say, a temporary ‘cutting off from the
congregation’; referred to, as a Jewish institution,
in Jn 95 12 16°, and, as a Christian (apparently),
in Mt 1817, (See also Westcott on 1 Jn 5!*),
2. Πρ), κατάρα, ‘curse.’—(a) This is the word |
regularly used to denote a curse in the general
sense, as the natural antithesis of a blessing ; it is
not charged (as ‘anathema’ essentially is) with
sacred associations ; its quality, which is capable
of all degrees, from Divine to devilish, is to be
decided by the context. (6) The disappearance of
cursing in the NT marks very forcibly the con-
trast between the spirit of the New dispensation
and that of the Old; for in the OT its presence is
at times painfully prominent. See Lk 9%, where
even the unauthorized additions of some MSS are |
Such instances as |
are found or are alleged in the Epistles are judicial
undoubtedly a true comment.
in tone, not irresponsible and malevolent. The
exceptional case which occurs of a curse uttered
by Christ (upon the fig-trec [see art.], Mt 2119", Mk
11) is probably to be taken as a sign given to
impress His warning of impending judgements (Mt
Del 5 3st 515: 356. ete). It is a reminder that
we may not so exaggerate the goodness of God as
to leave no place for His severity.
the words ‘ye cursed’ to those who shall be on His
left hand at the Last Day (Mt 25"). (ce) Christ
became a ‘curse’ (Gal 3, see Lightfoot, ad Joc.).
It belongs to the Epistles to unfold the bearing of
this truth; but the fact is implied in the measures
taken by the Jews, after the Crucifixion, to avert
its consequences (Jn 19%, οἵ, Dt 21%). In the
Roman view the shame of crucifixion, in the Jewish
view its accursed nature, formed the special sting
of such a death. Hence in the matter of salva-
tion, which ‘is from the Jews’ (Jn 433), the curse
must necessarily be involved in the Death’s redemp-
tive efficacy. Ἐς 5. RANKEN.
CUSHION.—In NT only in Mk 48 RV [AV
‘pillow ᾽ for προσκεφάλαιον, a cushion for the head,
but also for sitting or reclining upon (see references
in Liddell and Scott, s.v.). By προσκεφάλαια LXX
renders nint> of Ezk 13'8 where the Arabic equi-
valent is mekhaddat.
the word used by the Sea of Galilee fishermen for
the cushion they place in the hinder part of their
fishing-boats for the comfort of the passenger
to-day. These boats are probably similar to those
used by our Lord and His friends, and on just such
a cushion the present writer has often rested in
crossing the same waters.
The cushions universally used to support the
head or the arm in reclining on the diwén are
* In Mt 154 || Mk 710 RV rightly substitutes ‘he that speaketh
evil of’ for AV ‘he that curseth’: the Greek is ὁ χακολογῶν, |
quoted from Ex 2117,
Christ applies |
Mekhaddch (sing.) is just |
add
in size about 24” x 15” 5”. They are usually made
of straw—less frequently of cotton or hair—sewn
into strong canvas, and covered with coloured
print or silk. The larger cushions for the seat of
the diwdn, and employed in the boats, are of the
same material. See PILLOW. W. Ewina.
CUSTOM.—See TRIBUTE.
CYRENE (Κυρήνη) was a Greek settlement on
the north coast of Africa, in the district now called
Benghazi or Barea, which forms the E. part of
the modern province of Tripoli. It was founded
B.C. 632. It was the chief member of a con-
federacy of five neighbouring cities; hence the
district was called either Pentapolis or Cyrenaica.
Under the first Ptolemy it became a dependency
of Egypt; was left to Rome by the will of
Ptolemy Apion, B.C. 96; was soon after formed
into a province, and later, perhaps not till 27,
united with Crete, with which under the Empire
it formed a senatorial province, under an ex-
preetor with the title of proconsul. It was noted
for its fertility and for its ecommerce, which, how-
ever, declined after the foundation of Alexandria.
It produced many distinguished men, such as the
philosophers Aristippus and Carneades, the poet
Callimachus, and the Christian orator and bishop
Synesius.
Jews were very numerous and influential there.
| The first Ptolemy, ‘ wishing to secure the govern-
ment of Cyrene and the other cities of Libya for
himself, sent a party of Jews to inhabit them’
(Josephus, c. Apion. ii. 4). Cyrenian Jews are
mentioned in 1 Mac 15°, 2 Mac 253 (Jason of
Cyrene). According to Strabo (ap. Jos. Ant. XIV.
vil. 2), the inhabitants of Cyrene were divided
into four classes—citizens, husbandmen (1.6. native
Libyans), sojourners (μέτοικοι), and Jews. The
Jews enjoyed equality of civil rights (Ant. XVI.
vi. 1, 5). An inscription at Berenice, one of the
cities of Cyrenaica, of prob. B.c. 13, shows that
the Jews there formed a civic community (πολί-
τευμαὴ of their own, under nine rulers (C7@ iii.
5361). The Cyrenian Jews were very turbulent ;
Lucullus had to suppress a disturbance raised by
them (Strabo, d.c.); there was a rising there at
the close of the Jewish war, A.D. 70 (Jos. BJ VI.
xi.; Vita, 76); and a terrible internecine war
between them and their Gentile neighbours,
under Trajan (Dio Cass. Ixvili. 32; Euseb. HE
iv. 2).
Simon of Cyrene (the father of Alexander and
Rufus [wh. see]), who was impressed to bear
our Lord’s cross (Mt 272, Mk 1571, Lk 9556), was
doubtless one of these Jewish settlers. Other NT
references to Cyrenian Jews are: Ac 2” (at Pente-
cost), 6? (members of special synagogue at Jeru-
salem, opposing Stephen), 11°°(preaching at Antioch
to Greeks [or Hellenists]), 13! (Lucius of Cyrene,
probably one of these» preachers, a prophet or
teacher at Antioch).
LITERATURE.—Rawlinson’s Herodotus, iii. p. 130 ff.; Smith,
Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography ; Schirer, HJ P τ. ii. 283,
i. ii. 230f., 245f.; Marquardt, Romische Staatsverwaltung
(1881), i. 458 ff.; art. ‘ Diaspora’ (by Schtrer) in Hastings’ DB,
Extra Vol. p. 96>, HAROLD SMITH.
CYRENIUS.—See QUIRINIUS.
406 DAILY BREAD
DALMANUTITA
D
DAILY BREAD.—See Lorp’s PRAYER.
DALMANUTHA.—Mk 8" only. The textual and
geographical problems involved in this name have
not found as yet a satisfactory explanation. After
the feeding of the 4000, Jesus embarked with His
disciples, and came, according to Mt 15%, eis τὰ ὅρια
Μαγδαλά (TR) or Mayaddy (all critical editions) ;
according to Mk 8" eis τὰ μέρη Δαλμανουθά,.
In Mt. the variations are few and unimportant, except the
difference between Magdala and Magadan. For δοιὼ we find
occasionally ὄρια, δρη (with following ἀ καγδαλά), opy. Cod. D
places τής before the proper name. Μαγαδάν is the reading of
NDD (Β8 -év), Μαγεδάν of NC; the Old Latin has Magadan,
Mageda, -am, Magidam; Vulg. Magedan ; syr sin 7731, CBF 717313,
pal 43D, Pesh 14319 (Maydw; so also the Arabic Tatian). Most
uncials and cursives Meydare 3 CM 33. 102, etc., Μαγδαλάν.
In Mk. τὰ μέρη is replaced by τὰ ὅρια in DX.
τὰ opn ,, N.
5 τὸ Ay σὸ opes ,, 28, syrsins but in the
latter the addition of a dot makes the plural ; syr¢curis missing ;
B has the spelling AzAuevouwe, 474 AcuavevJe, 1S4ev Δαλ-
μμουνουθώ ; Vuly. Dalmanutha (with unimportant variations) ;
arm. Dalmanunea. But this is now replaced by :
Μελεγαδά (not Μαδεγαδά as read by Stephanus) in D*.
Μαγαιδά (not Μαγαδώ as printed by Tischendorf) in D1,
Μαγεδά in 28, 81.
Μαγδαλώ in 1. 13. 61. 69, etc.
Syrsin Κ 212, syr pal b339, Got. Magdalan, Old Lat. Mageda, -an,
-am, Magidan. Itis a natural supposition that in Mk. all read-
ings differing from pipy Δαλμανουνά are due to assimilation to
Mt., perhaps under the influence of Tatian. ‘The confusion of ὅρια
and opy(ope;)must be very early, and has its parallels in many
passages of the OT, from Jos 1116 1511 to Ezk 1110, Mal 18. On
its occurrence in syrsin see especially Chase, The Syro-Latin
Text of the Gospels, p. 97, esp. ἢ. 2, where he justly remarks :
‘This reading of the Sinaitic raises two questions: (@) Was
there an early Greek Harmony of the Gospels? . . . (b) What is
the relation of Sin. to Tatian?’ On the Cod. 28 which supports
the reading of syrsin, see WH ii. 242 (‘which has many relics of
a very ancient text’).
That Magadan, not Magdala, is the true reading in Mt. is
probable (independently of the witness of MSS) on internal
grounds; for itis difficult to explain how a name like Magdala,
which was well known through Mary Magdalene, should have
become Magadan. The introduction of both forms into MSS
of Mk. points to the fact that there were several stages in the
revision of our MSS. Both the readings, Majadan and
Magdala, may, however, go back to the same Heb. 9737, as is
shown by Jos 15°7, where B has Mzyade Iced for Μαγδὰλ Vad
of A. Even for Dalinanutha such an explanation has been
attempted by Dalman (Gramm. p. 133; change of y into », and
transposition of syllables Δαλιανουθά from Μαγδαλουθά -- ΠῚ Δ,
But in the 2nd ed. p. 168 he has left out this note and all
references to this word).
” ” ”
That τὰ dpa in Mt. and τὰ μέρη in Mk. are almost
identical expressions, is shewn by Mt 15”! εἰς τὰ
μέρη Σιδῶνος καὶ Τύρου compared with Mk 733 εἰς τὰ
ὅρια (TR μεθόρια) Τύρου (καὶ Σιδῶνος), and by the fact
that in the OT 4 of the 11 Heb. equivalents for
ὅριον (1°, 7D, AND, 7) reappear among the 22 Heb.
equivalents of μέρος. ‘The next supposition is
therefore that Magadan (or Magdala) in Mt. =
Dalmanutha in Mark. But how is this possible ?
Many explanations have been started. The one
proposed by Dalman may be dismissed at once,
as 1b is given up by himself; ef. also Wellhausen’s
remarks on it (Zv. Marci). Lightfoot and Ewald
derived Dalnanutha from nobs by the supposition
of an Aramaic or Galilean pronunciation. Keim
(Jesus of Nazara, Eng. tr. iv. 238) explained it
similarly as ‘Shady Place.? Schwarz (Das heilige
Land, p. 189) derived it from the cave Teliman
(jN2n), which eave, however, according to Neu-
bauer, was in the neizhbourhood of Herod’s
Cesarea. J. W. Donaldson (Jashar: fragmenta
archetypa carminum Hebraicorum, editio secunda,
184), p. 16) suggested: ‘Aad- istud residuum esse
veri noniinis Maydadd scil. τη, μανουθά autem re-
|
presentare pluralem vocis 732 pars, portio, quam in
Greco μέρη conversam habomus.’ A similar idea
was struck out independently by R. Harris (Codex
Beza, p. 188) and the present writer (Philologica
Sacra, p.17; LapT ix. 45), that Dalmanutha is the
transliteration of the Aramaic equivalent of εἰς τὰ
μέρη, Which by some form of dittography took the
place of the proper name. Against Harris sec
Chase, Bezan Text of Acts, p. 145, n. 2; and against
the whole suggestion, Daan Words of Jesus,
p. 66f. Dalman doubts whether 77:2 in Aramaic
meant anything clse but ‘portion.’ But in the
Syriac Bible at least it is frequently used for the
allotted portions of land (Jos 14% 15], Is 57°).
N. Herz saw in the word an Aramaized form of the
Greck λιμήν ‘harbour’ (LxpT viii. 563, ix. 95, 420).
Others, finally, give no explanation, and consider
Magadan and Dalmanutha as the names of two
difierent places near cach other, neither being very
well known. But this leads to the topographical
problem.
Eusebius in his Onomasticon has but one para-
graph on a name beginning with M immediately
after names from the prophet Jeremiah (Mephaath,
Maon, Molchom, 482-25 401, It runs (in Ixloster-
mann’s edition, p. 134 [=Lagarde, OS p. 282]):
Μαγεδάν (Mt 1559). εἰς τὰ δρια Μαγεδὰν ὁ Χριστὸς ἐπεδήμεησεν,
ὡς ὁ Ματθαῖος. καὶ ὁ Μάρκος δὲ τῆς Μαγεδὰν μνημονεύει, καὶ ἔστι
γὺν ἡ ΔΙαγεδεινὴ περὶ τὴν Γερασᾶν.
In Jerome’s transiation :
‘Magedan, ad cuius fines Mattheus evangelista scribit domi-
num pervenisse, sed et Marcus cius@em nominis recordatur,
nunc autem regio dicitur Magedena circa Gerasam.’
The unique MS, in which the work of Eusebius
is preserved, writes Μαγαιδάν (as D*) and λαγαιδανή.
Eusebius may have been reminded of the name
by the occurrence of Μαγδώλω beside Méudis in Jer
δῚ (44)1, which he quotes a few lines before (ed.
Klost. p. 134, 1. 15). At all events it follows from
the entry, that Eusebius did not find Dalmanutha
in his text of Mark, and that he sought the place
on the eastern side ; but Gerasa seems too far from
the Lake, unless we are to suppose that it had
some sort of enclave on its shores.
A strange identification is that with the ‘ Phiala’
Lake mentioned by Jos. BJ 1Π. x. 7 as one of the
sources of the Jordan. See the Maps published by
téhricht, i. (ZDPV xiv. 1891):
‘Hune fontem Josephus appelat Phialam, Marcus Dal-
manicha, Mattheus Magedan, Saraceni Modin. Hine est verus
ortus Jordan; unde palew hic miss recipiuntur in Dan sub-
terraneo meatu ductz.’
Furrer (ZDPV ii. 59) identified Dalmanutha with
Khan Minych, which name he connected with
mensa (the table where Jcsus sat with the Twelve,
first mentioned in the Commemoratorium, A.D. 806),
and this with (Dal)manatha; but see against this
Gildemeister (26. iv. 1971). Thomson (LB 305)
suggests a ruined site up the Yarmuk half a mile
from the Jordan called Dalhamia or Dalinamia
(Robinson, PPP iii. 264, ‘Delhemiyeh’) ; Tristram,
a site one and a half miles from Migdel; Sir C.
Wilson, a site not far from the same. The aged
Prof. Sepp in a recent paper, ‘ Die endlich entdeckte
Heimat nee Magdalena’ (Volkerschau, ili. 3, pp.
199-202, 1904), argued for Migdal Gedor or Maq-
dala Gadara, a Jewish suburb of Gadara (Jerus.
Erubin ν. 7). Wellhausen has no doubt that it
must be sought on the eastern shore, in the neigh-
bourhood of Bethsaida (Mk 8%), if this town itself
did not belong to it. For he holds 8*-?° to be
identical with 8", the object αὐτούς of ἀφείς in 88
DANCING
being the ὄχλοι, not the Pharisees, and πάλιν he
regards as a harmonistic insertion. He believes
that 815 originally followed immediately upon 82
καὶ ἔρχονται εἰς Βηθσαιδάν.
Thus not even the geographical problem is solved.
If the suggestion on the origin of Dalmanutha, as
put forward by Donaldson, Harris, and the present
writer, were to turn out correct, it would have im-
portant consequences for the Synoptic Problem. For
then this reading cannot well have had its origin in
oral tradition, but presupposes a written (Aramaic)
document as the basis of our Second Gospel.
LivERATURE.—A collection of Notes on ‘Dalmanutha’ left by
Gildemeister (ZDPV xiv. 82); the monograph of Martin
Schultze, Palmanutha: Geographisch-lingwistische Untersuch-
ungen zu Mk 810, Oldesloe, 1884; A. Wright, NZ’ Problems, p.
71; Henderson in Hastings’ DB; G. A. Smith in Encyc. Bibl. ;
Sanday, Sacred Sites of the Gospels, p. 22f.; Merx, Die vier
kanonischen Evangelien, ii. 2 (1905), p- 79 [warns against
identification with Eddelhemiye, gives as reading of the Arm.
Dalmanoun, and claims for the reading Dalmanutha, which is
not recognized by the old texts (syrs™ D, Old Lat. Ulf.), an
Egyptian origin]. EB. NESTLE.
DANCING.—1. Mannev.—The Oriental dance was
performed either by an individual man or woman,
or by crescent lines of men dancing together and
holding each other’s hands, or of women by them-
selves performing similar movements. The one at
the end of the line waved a scarf and acted as
chorégos, or dance-leader. At times also a line of
men and women, with hands joined, confronted
another similar line, and the dance consisted in
their alternate advance and retreat, accompanied
by the hand-clapping of the cnlookers beating time
to the music, by the scarf-waving and occasional
shout, and, at regulated intervals, the resounding
tread of the dancers. In the case of the individual,
the abrupt muscular actions were artistically re-
lieved, as in the contrasting lines of male and
female attire in the Western dance, by the soft
and swaying undulations of the dancer’s figure.
The accompaniment of song, hand-clapping, and
musical instruments served to control the energy
and secure unity of movement.
2. Place.—On the occasion of a wedding in a
peasant’s house a space was kept clear near the
door, and into it one after another stepped forward
and danced, and retired among the shadows; the
dancing of the bride receiving especial attention
and applause. For dancing in companies, the flat
roof, or any level space beside the house, was
resorted to. In the cities and in the houses of the
rich, the large reception room, or the open paved
court, into which all the apartments opened, was
available for the purpose. In festive processions
the male or female performers, singly or in couples,
stepped to the front and danced with sword and
shield, and then gave place to others.
3. Occasions.—In the East, dancing has never
been regarded as an end in itself and promoted as
an entertainment chiefly for those actively taking
part in it, but rather as a demonstration of feeling
due to some special incident or situation. In
family life this was principally the event of mar-
riage (Mt 1117, Lk 7); and a similar expression
of feeling often attended the birth of a son, re-
covery from sickness, return from a journey, or
the reception of a guest whose presence called for
such a manifestation of grateful rejoicing. Birth-
days did not usually receive such notice, as they
lacked the element of relief from danger, recom-
pense and rest after hardship, or the introduction
of something new into the family conditions.
Herod’s birthday feast (when Salome danced before
the guests, Mt 14°, Mk 6") was an imitation of
Gentile customs. More general occasions were the
founding of a building, the ingathering of harvest,
and the religious festivals of the year.
The prevalence of such a custom, embracing old
DARKNESS 407
and young, and including all classes, indicated a
simple life, in which the feeling of the moment
found hearty and uncritical expression. The view
of life was one that recognized the easy and rapid
interchange of joy and grief (Ps 30°", La 5”, Ee
9). Further, it implied a very close connexion
between mental and physical states. As there
Was a union of mirth and dancing, so there was
an equally natural correspondence between sorrow
and sighing (Is 351). Even in places dedicated to
relaxation and delight, by the rivers of Babylon,
it was impossible for captive exiles to sing the
songs of the Lord’s deliverance (Ps 137!4). The
elder brother could take no part in mirth and
dancing of which the occasion was so afironting
and ofiensive to himself (Lk 15*°-?8), Hence among
a people marked by mobility of temperament and
prone to extremes of feeling, the children in the
market-place might well reproach their companions
who heard the wedding music without rising to the
dance, and the wail of bereavement without being
moved to pity (Mt 1117, Lk 753).
LITERATURE.—Hastings’ DB, art. ‘ Dancing’; Delitzsch, Z7is,
189 fi.; Thomson, Land and Book, 555 f.
G. M. MACKIE.
DANIEL.—The influence of Daniel on the Apoca-
lyptic conceptions of the Gospels is profound (see
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE). For the possible in-
fluence of Dn 7 see SON OF MAN. The only pas-
sage in which the book is explicitly mentioned is
Mt 2415, where the phrase τὸ βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως
(‘the abomination of desclation’) is quoted. See
art. ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION. It is to be
noted that in the corresponding passage in Mark
(134), no mention is made of Daniel. In view of
the accepted priority of Mark and his closer fidelity,
and also of Matthew’s fondness for OT references,
the absence of the clause raises the suspicion that
it is not part of the original utterance, but a
comment added by the latter Evangelist. In that
case it would not be necessary to assume that
Jesus meant to use the phrase in the same sense as
itis used in Daniel. He may have only adopted
or borrowed it as a current popular expression to
describe some minatory event which He foresaw
portending the forthcoming calamity.
A. MITCHELL HUNTER.
DARKNESS.—The word ‘dark’ is used in the
sense of the absence of natural light in Jn 617 201.
The darkness that lasted for the space of three
hours at the crucifixion is referred to in Mt 97:5,
Mk 15, Lk 234-45, For a brief summary of the
views held as to the nature of this darkness, see
Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Darkness.’ It may suffice to
remark that, the Passover falling at full moon,
there can be no question here of a solar eclipse.
Generally ‘darkness’ is used in a metaphorical
sense, but with slightly different significations.
Darkness is the state of spiritual ignorance and
sin in which men are before the light of the
revelation of Jesus comes to them (Mt 41%, Lk 1”,
Jn 8! 12-48), This darkness the presence of Jesus
dispels, except in the case of those who love the
darkness and who therefore shrink back into the
recesses of gloom, when the light shines, because
their deeds are evil. Those who have a natural
affinity to the light, when Jesus appears, follow
Him and walk no longer in darkness.
But there is the deeper darkness that comes
through incapacity of sight (Mt 055, Lk 1135, This
state results from long continuance in evil (Jn 315).
It is the judgment passed upon the impenitent
sinner. To love the darkness rather than the light
is to have the spiritual faculty atrophied, and this
is the Divine penalty to which he is condemned.
The light that isin him has become darkness. The
gospel contemplates for the human soul no more
dire calamity.
a 8
408 DATES
DATES
And the final fate of the impenitent sinner is to
be cast into outer darkness (Mt 8!" 22% 25°). There
is a kingdom of darkness which wars against the
light, and which has power at times to prevail (Lk
22°), This is the darkness of sin, chosen and loved
as sin, the instinctive hatred, inwrought with
what is radically evil, of the Divine purity and
light. Itis the negative of all good—outer dark-
ness, the darkness that has ceased to be permeated
or permeable by any ray of light. f
Darkness is twice used of secrecy or privacy
(Mt 10-7, Lk 12%). In these cases, however, a
metaphorical use of the word is also implied. In
the former passage the reference is to the dark-
ness of perplexity and sorrow ; in the latter, to the
darkness of sin. See also LIGHT, UNPARDONABLE
SIN.
In the later mystical theology there is a use of the term that
may be here referred to. There is a ‘ Divine darkness’ which
is the consummation of the experience of the puritied soul—
the darkness that comes from excess of light. The pseudo-
Dionysius speaks of the ‘luminous gloom of the silence’ which
reveals the inner secrets of being, and in which the soul is raised
to the absolute ecstasy. It is an attempt to express the in-
finitude of the susceptibility of the human soul to emotions
of either joy oranguish, From the outer darkness to the light
which is above light, and therefore inconceivable, the soul of
man is capable of responding to every shade of experience.
LiTeRATURE.—Cremer, Bib.-Theol. Lex. s.vv. σπκέτος, σκοτία ;
Martineau, Endeavours after the Christian Lifes, p. 463 ff. ;
Phillips Brooks, Candle of the Lord, p. 74 ff.; Expositor, τι. iii.
[1889] 321 fi. A. MILLER.
DATES. — The chronological sequence of the
Gospels is quite as important as that of the Epistles
to the student of the beginnings of Christianity,
and forms an essential branch of the study of the
development of our Lord’s revelation and His
Messianic consciousness. The difficulties in the
way of forming an exact time-table of the dates in
the Gospels are due (1) to the indifference of the
early Christians, as citizens of the heavenly city,
to the great events that were taking place in the
world around them; (2) to their lack of means of
ascertaining these events, and their obliviousness of
the important bearing they might have on the evi-
dences ot the faith ; (3) to the fact that, the early
Christian traditions being recorded in the interest
of religion and not of history, the writers confined
their attention toa few events, which were arranged
as much according to subject-matter as to time
sequence. The result is that there are many gaps
which can be only approximately filled up by
strict inierence from casual remarks. The author
of the Third Gospel is the only one to give parallel
dates of secular history in the manner of a true
historian, and to profess to relate things ‘in order’
(καθεξῆς, Lk 15). There are many inferences as to
time to be drawn from statements in Mt., but they
are of an accidental character. St. John marks
points of time of significance in his own and in his
Master’s life, but his purpose is to trace the de-
velopment of the drama of the Master’s passion,
not to suggest its chronological relation to the
history of the world.
The early Fathers, Irenzeus, Tertullian, Clement
of Alexandria, Africanus, and Hippolytus, were
the first to attempt to arrange the events of the
Gospel in chronological sequence. But these
attempts are not always to be relied upon, owing
Lo the difficulties of ascertaining many of the dates
of secular history, to which reference has already
been made, and which were still further increased
in their case by the different ways of reckoning
the years of reigning monarchs and of calculating
time in the different eras. For example, Lk 3!
‘In the 15th year of the reien of Tiberius’ may be
reckoned trom Augustus’ death, Aug. 19 A.D. 14,
or trom the time when Tiberius was associated
with Augustus in the empire by special law ; but
that law, again, is variously dated, being identified
by some with the grant of the tribunicia potestas
for life in A.D, 13, but assigned by Mommsen (after
Velleius Paterculus, ii. 121) to A.D. 11. So that
we have to choose between A.D. 29, 28, and 26.
Furthermore, the Roman calendar began on Jan. 1,
so that the imperial year might be adjusted to the
civil year (1) by counting the fractional year as a
whole, and by commencing a second imperial year
on the first New Year’s Day of each reign,—Light-
foot (Ignatius, ii. 398) mentions the practice of
Trajan and his successors of beginning a second
year of tribunicia potestas on the annual inaugura-
tion day of new tribunes next after their accession,
—or (2) by omitting the fractional year altogether,
and calculating the emperor’s reign from a fixed
date, like Eusebius, who seems to commence er 2h
emperor’s reign from the September following his
accession (see art. ‘Chronology’ in Hastings’ DB
i418). The Julian reform of the Roman calendar,
by which the year B.c. 46 was made to contain 445
days, in order to bring the civil year into line with
the solar year, adds to the complications.
Furthermore, the Jewish calendar bristles with
problems. Originally the Paschal full moon was
settled by observation, but that became impossible
when the people were spread over distant lands,
and was also hindered by atmospheric causes ; and,
in any case, the beginning of the month was deter-
mined not by the astronomical new moon, but by
the time when the crescent became: visible, about
30 hours afterwards, the first sunset after that
event marking the beginning of the new month.
A fresh difficulty was created by the 13th month,
Veadar, which was intercalated whenever the
barley was not within a fortnight of being ripe
at the end of the month Adar; but this was for-
bidden in sabbatical years, and two intercalary
years could not be successive. The lunar year
was correlated with the solar by the rule that the
Paschal full moon immediately followed the spring
equinox. There were also various calculations of
the equinox, Hippolytus placing it on March 18,
Anatolius on March 19, the Alexandrians on
March 21.
And with regard to chronology in general it is
to be noted that in the East the year almost
always began with September. The Jewish civil
year began in Tishri (Sept.); the religious and
regal in Nisan (April) (Jos. An¢é. I. iii. 3), the order
of months beginning with the latter, that of the
years with the former. The Alexandrian year
began on Aug. 29; the era of the Greeks started
from Sept. B.C. 312, the Olympiads from July B.c.
776. In the Christian era, also called the Dionysian
after Dionysius Exiguus of the 6th cent., 753 A.U.C.
RO 5π|Ὲ} D4 ἈΠῚ Cole ADs
The points of chronology in our Lord’s life
which have to be settled before any table of dates
can be drawn up are (1) date of nativity, (2) age
at baptism, (3) length of ministry, (4) date of
crucifixion. While no one of these can be verified
with anything like precision, it is certain that the
accepted chronology, based on the calculations of
Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th cent., is erroneous.
Dionysius started, seemingly, from Lk 31, the 15th year of
Tiberius, placed the public ministry of our Lord one year later,
and counted back 30 years, on the strength of Lk 325. This
gave 754 A.U.c. for the year of Christ’s birth. Following
Hippolytus, he fixed on Dec. 25 in that year, and, according to
the usual method for reckoning the years of monarchs, counted
the whole year 754 as 1 A.p. (see Ideler, Handbuch, ii. 383 f.).
That his views need correction will be proved in the course of
this article.
1. Date of Nativity.—This may be fixed some-
what approximately by its relation to (a) the date
of Herod’s death (Mt 921-33), (6) the enrolment under
Quirinius (Lk 21), and by (6) Patristic testimony.
(a) Herod’s death, the terminus ad quem of the
Nativity, is generally settled by the Jewish chron-
DATES
DATES 409
ology in Ant. and BJ, in which are found indica-
tions of the dates of Herod’s accession and death,
and of the dates of his predecessor Antigonus, and
of his immediate successors, Archelaus, Herod
Philip, and Herod Antipas. lor notice of Herod’s
death see Anf. XVII. viii. 1, ‘having reigned, since
he had procured the death of Antigonus, 34 years,
but, since he had been declared king by the
Romans, 37 years.’ The death of Antigonus is
noted in Ané. XIV. xvi. 4. ‘This destruction befell
the city of Jerusalem when Marcus Agrippa and
Canidius Gallus were consuls at Rome, Olym. 185,
in the 3rd month, on the solemnity of the fast, like
a periodical return of the misfortunes which over-
took the Jews under Pompey, by whom they were
taken on the same day 27 years before.’ The
consuls mentioned held office B.c. 37, and 27 years
from B.C. 63 (consulship of Cicero and Antonius),
when Pompey took Jerusalem (Ant. XIV. iv. 3),
allowing for the three intercalary months of B.C.
46, gives practically the same date, B.C. 37, for the
confirmation of Herod in his kingdom. Herod’s
death might therefore be placed in the month
Nisan (see below) B.C. 4 (Sivan 25 B.C. 37 to Nisan
B.C. 4, according to the method of counting reigns,
being 34 years).
Of Herod’s successors (1) Archelaus, ethnarch of
Judiea, was banished in the consulship of Lepidus
and Arruntius (A.D. 6), in the 10th year of his
reign (Ant. XVII. xiii. 2), or in the 9th (BJ 11. vii.
3), and therefore would have come to the throne
B.C. 4, being probably banished before he cele-
brated the 10th anniversary of his accession. (2)
Herod Philip died in the 20th year of Tiberius,
having been tetrarch of Trachonitis and Gaulanitis
37 years (Ant. XVII. iv. 6), and would have com-
menced his reign B.C. 4-3.
There are two more data to help us to fix the
year of Herod’s death: the eclipse of the moon
which preceded his last illness (Ané. XVII. vi. 4),
and the Passover which followed soon after (XVII.
ix. 3). The lunar eclipses visible in Palestine dur-
ing B.C. 5-3 were those of March 23 B.c. 5, Sept. 15
B.c. 5, March 12 B.c. 4. As it is quite possible
that the final scene of Herod’s life and his obse-
quies did not cover more than one month, we
might, with Ideler and Wurm, fix on the eclipse
of March 12 B.c. 4 (Wieseler, Chron. Syn. p. 56),
which is also indicated by the Passover that im-
mediately followed. B.C. 4, Herod’s death, would
therefore be the terminus ad quem of the Nativity.
But how long before B.c. 4 Jesus was born
cannot decisively besaid. The age of the Innocents,
ἀπὸ διετοῦς καὶ κατωτέρω (Mt 915), would give B.C. 6 as
the superior limit and B.c. 5 as the inferior, as this
clause is qualified by the diligent investigation of
Herod (κατὰ τὸν χρόνον ὃν ἠκρίβωσε παρὰ τῶν μάγων).
This massacre, quite in keeping with the growing
cruelty and suspicion of Herod, who had recently
procured the murder of his two sons, Alexander
and Aristobulus, was secretly carried out and
seemingly of small extent, not being mentioned by
Josephus, and being apparently limited to children
to whom the star which the Magi saw in the east,
at least six months before, might have reference.
Although Mt 2" τὸ παιδίον does not suggest an
infant babe, the stay of the Holy Family in Beth-
lehem, where the Magi found them, cannot have
been long, the presentation in the Temple follow-
ing 40 days after the Nativity. 8.6. 6-5 would then
be approximately the date of the Nativity.
Of the star in the east it cannot be said with truth that ‘the
star shines only in the legend’ (von Soden in Encyc. Bibl. art.
‘Chronology ’), for the appearance of a striking sidereal pheno-
menon between the years B.c. 7 and B.c. 4 has been proved by
Kepler and verified by Ideler and Pritchard. Kepler suggested
that a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the zodiacal sign of
the Pisces, similar to that which took place in Dec. 1603, took
place in 8.0. 7. But this would be too early for the star that
-
stood over Bethlehem. Wieseler (1.6. p. 67) therefore, elaborat-
ing another suggestion of Kepler, held that a brilliant evanes-
cent star, similar to that which appeared in Sept. 1604 between
Jupiter and Saturn, and waned in March 1606, may have
appeared then. The Chinese tables mention such an appear-
ance in B.c. 4. Edersheim (Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah) suggests that the conjunction in B.c. 7 first aroused
the attention of the Magi, and that the evanescent star of B.c. 4
stood over Bethlehem. Two Jewish traditions, one that the
star of the Messiah should be seen two years before His birth,
and the other that the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in
Pisces portended something of importance for the Jewish
nation, might be mentioned. The former is found in the Mid-
rashim, the latter in Abarbanel’s Com. on Daniel (15th cent.).
While no theory could be established on such a basis as this
appearance, yet it may support a theory founded on more
certain data. If the coming of the Magi took place shortly
after the death of Herod’s sons Alexander and Aristobulus
(8.6. 7) and the mission of Antipater, his heir, to Rome (8.6. 6),
their question, ‘Where is he that is born king of the Jews?’
would, indeed, be startling to Herod.
(6) The enrolment under Quirinius (Lk 2? αὕτη 7
ἀπογραφὴ πρώτη ἐγένετο ἡγεμονεύοντος τῆς Συρίας
Κυρηνίου, ‘this enrolment took place for the first
time when Quirinius was governor of Syria’; cf. ὅτε
πρῶτον ἐκέλευσαν ἀπογραφὰς γενέσθαι [ Strom. i. 147)).
A Roman census took place in A.D. 6, after the
deposition of Archelaus, and caused the revolt of
Judas of Gamala (Ané. XVI. 1. 1), who in con-
sequence became the founder of the Zealot party,
which resisted Gentile taxation and authority.
This taxing (XVII. ii. 1) was concluded in the 37th
year of Cvesar’s victory at Actium (A.D. 7). To
this enrolment the author of Ac 5% refers. But
it cannot be the enrolment of Lk 2% And
Josephus should not be accused of having ascribed to
A.D. 7 what took place in B.C. 6-5, as the census he
mentions was made after and in consequence of the
removal of Archelaus. _Mommsen and Zumpt sug-
gest that Quirinius held office ἐτσίοῦ in Syria. And
his, indeed, might be the name wanting in a muti-
lated inscription, describing an official who was
twice governor of Syria under Augustus. But
Saturninus was governor B.C. 9-7, and Varus B.C.
7-4, being in power after Herod’s death ; so that no
place can be found for the rule of Quirinius before
B.C. 4, the terminus ad quem of our Lord’s birth. He
may have come, B.C. 3-2, and completed a census
begun by his predecessor. And there is also the
possibility of his having received an extraordinary
military command by the side of Varus. The Annals
of Tacitus (ii. 30, iii. 22, 48) describe him as a keen
and “zealous soldier (tmpiger militia et acribus mini-
stertis), who had obtained a triumph for having
stormed some fortresses of the Homonadenses in
Cilicia, but who was distinctly unpopular on
account of his friendship with Tiberius, his sordid
life and ‘dangerous old age.’ Such an officer weuld
have been a most useful agent for Augustus in
preparing the document called by Suetonius (Awq.
23) the rationarium imperii, which contained a
full description of the ‘subject kingdoms, pro-
vinces, taxes direct and indirect’ (regna, provincia,
tributa aut vectigalia, Tac. Ann. i. 11), made out
by the emperor himself, especially as Varus was
slack, and inclined to favour Archelaus. Certain
riots mentioned in Josephus (Ant. XVII. ii. 4), in
which the Pharisees appear, may have been due to
the census. Justin Martyr (Apol. 1. 34, 46; Dial.
c. Tryph. 78) appeals to the ἀπογραφαί made in the
time of Quirinius, whom he styles ‘the first ἐπί-
rporos or procurator in Juda.’ For until Palestine
became a Roman province in A.D. 6 there could be
no procurator in the strict sense of the term.
Previous to that, if Q. did hold office, it would be as
a military officer of Syria, and so he might be well
described by the vague ἡγεμονεύοντος, although the
word is also applied (Lk 3!) to Pilate, whom Tacitus
styled procurator (Ann. xv. 44). With regard to
the census, of which no mention is made in con-
temporary history, it is to be noted that there is
evidence that periodic enrolments, ἀπογραφαί, were
410 DATES
DATES
made in Egypt (Class. Rev., Mar. 1803). _ Prof.
Ramsay (Was Christ born at Bethlehem?) Wailds
on these. It is quite possible that a scries of
periodical enrolments in a cycle of 14 years were
initiated by Augustus, an indefatigable statistician,
in other parts of the empire, and that the first of
these may have taken place in the days of Herod,
who would have carried it out according to Jewish
tastes, and so without much disturbance (unless
the riots of Ant. xvu. ii. 4, BJ τ. xxxiii. 2 might
be connected with it), whereas the later census was
conducted according to Roman ideas, and pro-
voked a rebellion. If this be true, the first census
would occur B.C. 7-5, just where it would be re-
quired. Some hold that it is possible that St.
Luke made a mistake in the name Quirinius (C.
H. Turner), and also in the census (von Soden).
(c) Patristic testimony, as represented by Iren-
zeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Hippolytus, and
perhaps based upon Lk 2°, favours a date between
B.c. 3 and B.c. 2. Ireneus wrote, ‘Our Lord was
born about the 4150 year (B.c. 3, reckoning from
the death of Julius Cesar B.c. 44) of the empire of
Augustus’ (Har. ili. 21. 8). Clement stated, ‘Our
Lord was born in the 28th year (B.c. 3, counting
from battle of Actium, B.c. 31) of the reign of
Augustus, when first they ordered the enrolinents
to be made’ (Sérom. i. 147). Hippolytus said, in
his Com. on Danicl, ‘Our Lord was born on
Wednesday, Dee. 25, in the 42nd (B.C. 2) year of
the rcign of Augustus.’
With regard to the month and day of the
Nativity, no data exist to enable us to determine
them at all. Farrar (Life of Christ, p. 9) inferred
from the presence of the shepherds in the ficlds
that it was during winter, but Lewin (Fasti Sacri,
pp- 23, 115) argues for August 1 as the approxi-
mate date. The date of the Annunciation is given
in Lk 15 as ἐν δὲ τῷ μηνὶ τῷ Exrw—‘in the sixth
month,’ which is generally referred to Lk 1° οὗτος
μὴν ἕκτος ἐστὶν αὐτῇ, k.7.A., ‘this month is sixth with
her,’ but which may with equal probability refer
to the sixth month of the Jewish calendar, Elul, or
to both dates, both terms of six months running
concurrently. The date of the service of the
course of Abia, the eighth in order (1 Ch 24!°), for
the year 748 A.U.C. (B.C. 6) has been calculated
from the fact that the course in waiting on Ab 9
A.D. 70, when Jerusalem was taken, was the first,
Jchoiarib (Taanith on ‘ Vasting,’ p. 29a; BJ VI. iv.).
This would give courses of Abia for 748 A.U.C.,
ΡΟ. 6, April 18-24, and (24 weeks later) October
3-9. Six months from the latter date would give
a day in March as the date of the Annunciation
and a date in December for the Nativity ; but six
months from the former date would give Elul, or
the sixth month of the Jewish year, beginning
about Sept. 19, for the Annunciation, and the third
month, Sivan or June, for the Incarnation. Elul
was the month of the constellation Virgo, who
holds in her hand the spica Virginis, which may be
‘the offspring of a Virgin.’ The fourth month
belongs to Cancer, among two stars of which is a
group called ‘The Manger.’
Patristic tradition. —Hippolytus is the first
to give Dee. 25 for the date of the Nativity. On
his chair in the library of St. John Lateran in
Rome his celebrated table is given. The second
year of the cycle has April 2, γένεσις Χριστοῦ, evi-
dently the conception, the ealeulation being made
on the strength of Lk 198, which seems to imply an
interval of 6 months between the conception of our
Lord and that of the Baptist, and on the popular
presumption that Gabriel appeared to Zacharias on
the great Day of the Atonement, the 10th day of the
seventh month. This W ymuld bring the conception
of our Lord to the 14th day of the first month, or the
Passover full moon. Hippolytus afterwards, in his
Com. on Daniel, in order to allow for two additional
years in our Lord’s life, altered the date April 2
to March 25, en which the Church has always
celebrated the conception, and consequently the
Nativity was assigned to Dee. 25. Edersheim (The
Temple, p. 293) suggests the influence of the feast
of the Dedication of the Temple, held on the 25th
of Chisley.
2. The Baptism of Jesus might be settled, but
not very approximately, by (1) the statement (Lk
3°) that He was ὡσεὶ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα ἀρχόμενος (at the
beginning of His ministry); (2) the date of the
Baptist’s preaching, Lk 3! ‘ Now in the fifteenth
year of the reign of Tiberius Cesar... the word
of God came unto Jolin the son of Zacharias in the
wilderness’; and (3) by the retort of the Jews in
Jn 2° ‘Forty and six years was this temple in
building.’
(1) This is an elastic expression, which gave the
Valentinian Gnosties a basis for their belief that
Jesus was in His 0th year when He came to His
baptism (Zar, ii. 25. 5). But as Irenzeus, in his
reference to Jn 8” ‘Thou art not yet fifty years
old,’ pointed out, 40, not 30, is the perfect age of a
master (ef. Bab. Abloda Zara); and on the strength
of this statement the presbyters in Asia Minor,
who misled Irenzeus, ascribed an age of 40 or 50
years to Jesus. Again, while the maximum age of
a Levite was 50 years, the minimum varied between
20 (1 Ch 237: *7, where the change is ascribed to
David), 25 (Nu 4°: 47 LXX), and 30 (Nu 42: 4” Heb.).
This latitude, added to the general sense of ὡσεί
(‘about’) and the vague ἀρχόμενος, which is omitted
in Syr. Sin., makes this indication of our Lord’s
age indefinite, and capable of meaning either two
years over or under 30.
(2) The preaching of the Baptist is the terminus
a quo of the baptism of Jesus, and is assigned to
the 15th year of ‘Tiberius. Dating that reign from
the death of Augustus, Aug. 19 A.D. 14, the 15th
year corresponds with A.D. 28-29. B. Weiss and
3eyschlag, however, count from A.D. 12, when
Tiberius was made co-regent with Augustus. W.
M. Ramsay has pointed out that on July 1 A.D. 71,
during the life of the Evangelist, Titus was
similarly associated in the empire with Vespasian,
which would give A.D. 26-27 as the first year of the
Baptist’s work. This would agree with the office
of Pilate, who could hardly have arrived much
sooner than A.D. 27, as he held office for 10 years,
end was on his way to Rome in A.D. 37, when
Tiberius died (Ané. ΧΥ ΤΙ. iv. 9). We might, there-
fore, if it is permitted to follow Weiss and Bey-
schlag, fix on A.D. 27-28 for our Lord’s baptism.
(3) Jn 2°° τεσσαράκοντα καὶ ἕξ ἔτεσιν φὠκοδομήθη ὁ
ναὸς οὗτος (cf. Ezr δ᾽΄᾽Ό6ῪΎ ὡκοδομήθη καὶ οὐκ ἐτελέσθη).
The Jews do not refer, therefore, to the completion
of the restoration, which took place much later
(Ant. XX. 1x. 7). This work was begun in the 18th
year of Herod (Ant. Xv. xi. 1, reckoning from
B.c. 37, death of Antigonus), in the 15th (BJ 1.
xxi. 1, reckoning from B.c. 40). This gives B.C.
19-18, from which to A.D. 28 is 46 years. The
Passover of A.D. 28 would be a likely date for the
events of Jn 2!**, The time of Jn 115-215 has yes
to be settled. Prof. Sanday (art. ‘Jesus Christ’ in
Hastings’ DB ii. 609) gives the time as ‘ Winter,
A.D. 26.2 Now there are certain indications of the
time of year in which our Lord was baptized which
show that His visit to the Baptist may have syn-
chronized with the preparations for the Passover
in the month Adar (cf. Jn 11% ‘And the Jews’
passover was at hand, and many went out of the
country up to Jerusalem before the passover to
purify themselves’), while His sojourn and fast in
the wilderness, of which St. Matthew and St. Luke
give details, may have been due not only to a
desire to be alone to reflect upon His mission, but
DATES
DATES 411
also to the feeling of the necessity of a great self-
restraint in order to check the urgings of His
Messianic consciousness to manifest Himself to
the Passover crowds in His connexion with His
country as its Redeemer, with the Temple as the
Son of God and its Priest, and with the world as
its King. It was on His return from the desert
that He was pointed out by the Baptist, when the
marks of the recent struggle and fasting on His
brow would have given additional point to the
Baptist’s remark, ‘ Behold the Lamb of God, which
taketh away the sin of the world’ (Jn 159), which
has a true Passover ring (cf. ‘ Christ our passover
[or Paschal lamb, τὸ πάσχα] was sacrificed for us,’
1Co 57). Passover time would also account for the
presence of so many Galilzeans in Judiea, while the
atmosphere of the scenes of the baptism of Jesus
and of His interviews with His first disciples in
Jn lis spring, the budding life of the year, in the
buoyant sunshine when men’s hearts are most
ready for a change of life. Nathanael, an Israclite
without the guile of Jacob, at the feast exclusively
for Israelites, is meditating under a fig tree, most
likely on the story of Jacob. Passover seems a
favourite time for baptism. It was after the Pass-
over of Jn 2° that Jesus and His disciples baptized
in Juda, while John was baptizing in Aénon near
to Salim (Jn 3555). And it is most improbable that
Jesus would have stayed away from the Passover.
On the other side may be urged the fact that Bethabara,
for which the best MSS, SADC, read ‘Bethany,’ has been
identified by Conder with a ford called‘ Abérah, N.E. of Beth-
shean, ‘a site as near to Cana as any point on the Jordan, and
within a day’s journey’ (art. ‘Bethabara’ in Hastings’ DB). On
the other hand, Eneve. Bibl. art. ‘ Bethany’ follows Sir G. Grove
and Sir C. W. Wilson (Smith’s DB2, s.v. ‘Bethnimrah’) in
holding that Beth-nimrah on the east of Jordan, opposite to
Jericho, is the place meant. Beth-nimrah, now known as
Nimrin, is ‘beyond Jordan,’ τέραν τοῦ ᾿Ισρδώνου (Jn 128 326); it
is well supplied with water, and accessible both from Jericho
and Jerusalem, and may have produced the variants ‘ Beth-
abara’ and ‘Bethany.’ Origen advocated Bethabara because
he could find no Bethany beyond Jordan. But the variant
Βηθαραβα for BrleBepe is found in his text. That variant and
the traditional site of our Lord’s baptism, Makhadet Hajla, are
strongly against Col. Conder’s suggestion, while tradition con-
nects our Lord’s temptation with the district of Quarantania,
named from His 40 days’ fast; and something must be allowed
for tradition in such matters. ‘The third day’ of Jn 21 may
possibly be counted from Jn 143‘ On the day after.” But it is
probable, in fact it is to be inferred from His mother’s informa-
tion of the exhausted wine, that our Lord was not present on
the first day of the marriae festivities, which generally extended
over a week, and were concluded with a supper (art. * Marriage’
in Hastings’ DB), and it was quite possible for Him and Ilis dis-
ciples to have accomplished the journey from the vicinity of
Jericho to Nazareth (about 60 miles) in three or four days ; so
that there is no necessity to select a site for His baptism within
one day’s journey of Cana. Again, the favourite time for such
marriages was March (Wetzstein in Ztschr. f. Ethnol. v. [1873]).
So that we have another indication of the early season of the
year, which supports the hypothesis of a baptism at the Pass-
over preceding the Passover of Jn 213, a period of time required
for the preparation and selection of the disciples, and for the
nursing of their nascent faith by miracles, of which one, a
typical sign, as are all the seven signs in the Fourth Gospel, is
narrated in Jn 21-12. To this faith reference is made in y.11
‘And his disciples believed in him.’ Nor does the Master’s
change of manner (v.24 ‘But Jesus would not trust himself to
them’) suggest the beginning of a mission.
The order in St. Mark’s Gospel is of little service
here. For Mk 14 (‘Now after that John was put
in prison Jesus came into Galilee preaching’) refers
to an event, the imprisonment of the Baptist, which
was clearly later than Jn 4', and is, therefore, to
be taken not as a note of time, but as a general
introduction to the Galilean ministry, which forms
the subject of the Second Gospel. The selection
of the disciples (Mk 110-19), the missionary work of
Mk 1°8 ἄγωμεν εἰς τὰς ἐχομένας κωμοπόλεις, a portion
of Mk 1-8, and apparently Lk 5151} (the scene with
Peter on the lake), may belong to the Galilean
work previous toJn 2, On this hypothesis, which
fills in the awkward gap between the 13th and 14th
verses of Mk 1, the baptism of Jesus would fall on
the Passover of A.D. 27.
3. Length of the Ministry.—If the date of
the beginning of the ministry be approximately
fixed, the year of its close will vary according to
the estimate we form of its length. Prof. von
Soden (Lneyec. Bibl. art. Chronology’) reduces it
to a one year basis, while Prof. Sanday (art.
‘Jesus Christ’ in Hastings’ DD ii. 610) requires
nearly 25 years for his scheme of our Lord’s
ministry. This difference is due to the fact that
St. John seems to extend that ministry over three
Passovers, while the Synoptists mention but one
Passover.
(a) In the Second Gospel there seem to be three
data for a chronology. (1) Mk 2% mentions ears
of corn (τίλλοντες τοὺς crdxvas). As the earliest
barley was in April, the latest in June, it is be-
lieved that the point of time we have here is Pass-
over, which was of old associated with ‘ears of
corn’; the name of the month in which it was
held being formerly ’Adib 2x or ‘ear of corn.’
(2) Mk 6% deseribes the miracle of the feeding of
the 5000, in the course of which we read that the
people were arranged in companies, πρασιαὶ πρασιαί
(a phrase suggestive of garden-plots), and seated
ἐπὶ τῷ χλωρῷ χόρτῳ, an indication of early spring.
(3) Mk 11, final Passover. In these data Turner
(‘Chronology of NT’ in Hastings’ DB) sees a sug-
gestion of a two years’ ministry. But it is evident
that the arrangement of this Gospel is according
to subject-matter, not to time. The time relation
of the episode of the ears of corn cannot be satis-
factorily settled with regard either to the events it
precedes or those it follows in the narrative. It
is, therefore, quite possible that it preceded the
Passover of Jn 2% In St. Luke’s Gospel it oceurs
shortly after the scene with St. Peter on the Lake
(Lk 5"), which must have preceded Jn 8355, where
Jesus and His disciples go into the land of Judea
and continue baptizing there; and in both the
Second and Third Gospels it directly follows the
question, ‘Why do the disciples of John and of the
Pharisees fast, and thy disciples fast not ?,? which
occasioned the Parable of the Bridegroom and the
Children of the Bridechamber, which seemingly
but not really corresponds with the discussion in
Jn 350 between the disciples of John and a Jew
about ‘purifying,’ which evoked from the Baptist
the rhapsody on the bride and bridegroom. Tor
the questions are quite different, and belong to
distinctly different contexts ; that in the Synoptists
being caused by the feast of Levi and perhaps in-
directly by the feast at Cana of Galilee, while that
of the Fourth Gospel arose in connexion with the
work in Juda after the Passover of Jn 918,
No fresh light is thrown on the passage by the
disputed point of time ἐν σαββάτῳ δευτεροπρώτῳ,
which Wetstein explains as the first Sabbath of the
second month, Scaliger as the first Sabbath after
the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Godet as the first
Sabbath of the ecclesiastical year. The ripeness
of the wheat suggests the month of Lyyar or May.
And it is quite possible to conceive our Lord in
that month (called in the old style Ziv (1) or the
‘month of flowers,’ and in the new style Jyyar
(vx) or ‘the bright and flowering month’) teaching
the people in the plain and on the hill to ‘ consider
the lilies of the ficld, how they grow’ (Mt 058). Τὸ
seems not impossible, therefore, to reconstruct the
Second Gospel on the basis of a single year follow-
ing the Passover of Jn 215, with a year or greatez
part of a year previous to that Passover.
(2) St. Luke’s Gospel is divisible into two parts.
The second (9°-19°8 containing matter peculiar to
him), being devoted to the doings and teachings of
the Master as the days of His assumption were
being fulfilled (951), seems to restrict the Lord’s
ministry to a single year, ‘the acceptable year of
| the Lord’ (41; ef. Is 61°), The reference to ‘three
412 DATES
DATES
years’ in the parable of the Fig-tree (157), which
suggested to many (Bengel among others) the be-
ginning of a third year of ministry, 1s a vague
expression to which 13% (‘to-day and to-morrow,
and on the third day’) might be a parallel. In
414_959 there is but one apparent reference to any
work outside the Galilean, Ἰουδαίας (NS DCL) of 444
being a variant for Ταλιλαίας. But ‘Judea’ in the
days of St. Luke included all Palestine (cf. 23°).
(c) The Fourth Gospel has seven notes of time
between the Baptism and the Crucifixion :
(1) 213.23 ‘And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus
went up to Jerusalem... And he was in Jerusalem
at the passover during the feast.’ ?
(2) 485 ‘Say ye not, There are yet four months {(τετρώμκηνο5),
and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift
up your eyes, and consider (Πεώσασθε) the fields that they
are white already to harvest.’
(8) 51 ‘After these things there was a [or the] feast of the
Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.’
(4) 64 ‘Now [the passover, τὸ πάσχα, uncertain] the feast of
the Jews was nigh.’
(5) 72 ‘Now the Jews’ feast of tabernacles was at hand.’
(6) 1022 ‘Then the dedication took place in Jerusalem,’
(7) 121 ‘Jesus then, six days before the passover, came to
Bethany.’
Jn 4 (a) οὐχ ὑμεῖς λέγετε ὅτι ἔτι τετράμηνός ἐστιν Kal
ὁ θερισμὸς ἔρχεται; (β) ἰδού, λέγω ὑμῖν... ὅτι λευκαί
εἰσιν πρὸς θερισμόν, is a difficult note of time. The
simplest interpretation is to take a literally of a
harvest still remote, and β spiritually of a harvest
already ripening. Origen, however, held that it was
already the middle or end of harvest when these
things happened (in Joan. tom. xiil. 39. 41); but
it is evident that our Lord made no long delay in
Judea after the unpleasantness that had occurred
between His disciples and John’s, and it would not
be long before the popular Baptist, with his great
following, would hear of his greater Rival (Jn 559),
or before the Pharisees would note the falling off
of the Baptist’s followers. The fact that the im-
pression His works in Jerusalem had made on the
Galileeans was still fresh (Jn 45), and that He did
not tarry more than two days, possibly only one
(μετὰ δὲ τὰς δύο ἡμέρας, Jn 49), among the kindly
and believing Samaritans, and that He was wearied
with the journey (4°), points to no long interval
between 215 and 445 and to no leisurcly mode of
travelling. Again, the word ἔτι has a touch of
reality, which suggests the natural interpretation
of τετράμηνος against those who would read the
passage proverbially ; ‘Is it not a saying that there
are four months between sowing and reaping?’
There is nothing, however, to prevent one taking
the lateness of the Galilean harvest into account,
and reading the passage thus: ‘Say ye not, ye
men of Galilee, where the harvest is later than in
Juda, where Jeroboam held his feast of ingather-
ing on the 15th day of the eighth month (1 K
12°°) instead of on the 15th day of the seventh (Lv
23"), that harvest is yet four months off?’ If
these words were spoken towards the end of Nisan,
the four months referred to would be Nisan
(March-April, end), Tyyar (April-May), Sivan
(May-June), and Thammuz (June-July, begin-
ning). This would be in keeping with the fact
that the harvest naturally varied not only with
season, but also with elevation, ete., and that,
while it commenced in the lowlands of the Jordan
Valley in April, it ended on sub-alpine Lebanon in
August (see art. ‘Wheat’ in Hastings’ DB).
Jn δ᾽ ‘And there was a feast of the Jews, and
Jesus went up to Jerusalem’ (with alternative
readings, ἑορτή and ἡ ἑορτή, the latter beine sup-
ported by the Alexandrian type of text, doubtless
through the influence of Eusebius, who maintained
a three years’ ministry with four Passovers).
δ hat this feast was cannot definitely be said.
-reneus regarded it as a Passover. The early
Greck Church identified it with Pentecost. West-
cott (ad loc.) suggests Trumpets (September), as
‘many of the main thoughts of the discourse—
Creation, Judgment, and Law—find a remarkable
illustration in the thoughts of the festival.’ But
Ex 19! states that it was in the third month (i.e.
after Passover) that the Law was given on Sinai.
This would correspond with Pentecost, which is
described in the later Jewish liturgy as ‘ the day of
the giving of the Law’ (Saalschiitz, Das Mos. Recht,
p. 42a), and by Maimonides (Morch ned. 111. 41) as
‘dies ille quo lex data fuit.’ Furthermore, the
strict regulations and calculations of the Sabbaths
of the harvest period between Nisan 16 and Pente-
cost, the Feast of Weeks, add point to the contro-
versy concerning the Sabbath day (Jn ὅ19-18 The
voluntary nature of the cure, a contrast with the
signs of 24 and 4°4 performed by request, suggests
that this act was in accordance with the Pente-
costal regulations of Dt 16”, a free-will offering of
Ilis own hand, and according to Ly 23” the glean-
ing of His harvest for the poor.
There is a useful indication of time in Jn 5-5,
where the Baptist, whose popularity is waning in
41, and whose utterance in 3°-*5 seems to contain a
presentiment of doom—‘ He must increase, but I
must decrcase’—is referred to as a Jamp that no
longer shines. ‘He was the burning and shining
lamp, and ye were willing for a time to rejoice in
his light.? It is probable that Herod Antipas,
who was jealous and suspicious of the Baptist’s
influence (Ant. XVII. v. 1), seized the opportunity
of his decreasing popularity to have him betrayed
(παραδοθῆναι, Mk 11) and arrested. The report
of that arrest may have reached our Lord on His
journey through Samaria to Galilee(Jn 4). If so,
the Synoptic statements of Mk 1"4, Mt 413, regard-
ing His work in Galilee as connected with the
imprisonment of the Baptist would be suitably
introduced by the healing of the nobleman’s son
at Capernaum (Jn 446-54),
The interval allowed by the Synoptists between
the arrest and the death of the Baptist, in which
room is found for an extended work of Jesus in
Galilee (Capernaum especially, Mt 11!**), for the
Baptist’s mission to Jesus (11°), and for Herod’s
procrastination with the Baptist, whom he feared,
tried to kecp safe, and for whom he did many
things (Mk 6°’), is also allowed in the Fourth
Gospel. In it Jesus is represented as walking
in Galilee (71:10) before the Feast of Tabernacles,
nearly five months (Sivan 8-Tishri 15) after the
Feast of Pentecost (51), but not afterwards,—a fact
which is in agrcement with the Synoptic account
(Lk 9%, Mt 14%, Mk 6°), which describes our
Lord withdrawing from the jurisdiction of Herod
Antipas to Bethsaida Julias, Czesarea Philippi,
and other districts of Herod Philip—the best of all
the Herods—in consequence of the former’s identi-
fication of Him with the Baptist, whom he had
beheaded (Mk 61).
With regard to the date of the Baptist’s execu-
tion, Keim, Hausrath, Schenkel, and others, on
the strength of Josephus’ account of the defeat of
Antipas by Aretas (A.D. 36), in connexion with his
narrative of the Baptist’s death, which the Jews
regarded as divinely avenged in that battle, have
held that the divorce of Herod Antipas’ wife
cannot have been long before A.D. 36. But Jose-
phus notes also a dispute about boundaries in
Gamalitis (Ant. XVIII. ν. 1) as subsequent to the
divorce of the daughter of Aretas, which he de-
scribes as ‘the first occasion’ of the bitterness be-
tween him and Herod. And there is nothing in
the annals of the Herods to controvert the date
A.D. 28 for the scene in the castle of Macherus as
described in the Synopties. In fact, A.D. 28 would
be a more suitable date for the clopement of
Herodias, and the description of her daughter
DATES
DATES 415
Salome as τὸ κοράσιον (Mk 652 33), than A.D. 36.
Herodias was the sister of Agrippa 1., who (Ant.
XIX. vill. 2) was 54 years old when he died in A.D.
44, and was, theretore, born B.c. 10. Herodias
must have been born shortly before or after, as
she was betrothed by Herod the Great (Ané. XVII.
i. 2), after the death of her father Aristobulus
(B.C. 7), when quite a child, to Philip his son by
Mariamne 11., daughter of Simon the high priest,
whom he married in the 13th year of his reien,
c. B.C. 24 (Ant. XV. ix. 8). Herodias would, there-
fore, be about 37 years old, and her husband 52 in
A.D. 28, and her daughter Salome not more than 18,
as Herodias was married ‘when arrived at age of
puberty’ (Ané, Xvi. v. 4). In A.D. 36 she would be
45 years of age, and Salome 26. The former age is,
therefore, more probable. The fact that retribution
was connected with the defeat in A.D. 36 proves
nothing, as retribution is proverbially long delayed.
The fourth point of time is Jn 6%. The difficulty
in it is the reading τὸ πάσχα. By many it is re-
tained; by others omitted. If it is retained, there
are three Passovers mentioned in Jn. (2% G* 12),
making the ministry extend over two years. But
if it is removed, this feast of the Jews becomes
identified with the Feast of Tabernacles of 77. And
the chronology of the ministry can be reckoned on
the basis of a year and several months previous.
1°°-2!", Work in Galilee.
213. Passover in Jerusalem (Nisan).
51. Pentecost in Sivan (May-June 1).
G4. Tabernacles in Tishri (September—October).
7°. Tabernacles in Tishri.
10". Dedication in Chisley (November—Decem-
ber).
11°, Passover in Nisan (March-April).
Hort urges the omission of τὸ τάσχα, which is supported
(1) by documentary evidence ; (2) by the fact that χόρτος πολύς
of Jn 610 apparently =xAapa χόρτῳ of Mk 689; (3) by the note
(Jn 71), ‘ After these things Jesus walked (ves re:re:) in Galilee,’
which implies some interval between the events of chs. 6 and 7,
but on the Tabernacles hypothesis sufiicient time would not he
allowed, as the same feast was ‘ncar’ in 64 and in 72; and (4) it is
said that St. John, who was writing for Christians who had holy
associations with Passover and Pentecost but not with Taber-
nacles, would hardly have spoken of that feast as ‘the Feast’
κατ᾽ ἐξοχήν. On the other hand, it is more than probable (1)
that Irenzeus would have mentioned 64 among the Passovers, if
he knew of it, even though ostensibly he was merely recording
the Passovers at which our Lord went up to Jerusalem, as his
main object was to confute the Gnostics, who held that Jesus
suffered a year after Ilis baptism (Her. ii. 22. 3); (2) that eyyus
is a vague term allowing for comparative nearness, and our Lord
did not hurry Himself for the feast, arriving only in the middle
of it (714); (3) that Origen’s Com. on St. John clearly postulates
the omission of a Passover between 4% and 77; (4) that St. John
wrote as one familiar with Jewish fasts and feasts, and Josephus
(Ant. vur. iv. 1) calls the Feast of Tabernacles ἑορτὴ σφόδρα παρὰ
σοὶ: Το βροιίοι: ἁγιωτώτη xxi μεγίστη, and it is in OT somctimces
called ‘the Feast’ (1 K 82:65, Ezk 4039); (5) that the tradition of
the Gnostics might have been more casily confuted by Irenxus
by a reference to a Passover in Jn 64 than by an attempt to
identify the feast of 5! with a Passover; (6) that the Alogi,
according to Epiphanius (H@r. 51. 22), found in Jn. only a
Passover at the beginning and another at the end of His
ministry ; (7) that the words τὸ σάσχα might have casily been
suggested by the discourse on the sacriiicial feast and the
‘barley’ loaves (ἄρτους ριθίνουΞ), Which, howcver, has a nearer
reference to the offerings (two leavened loaves of the best
wheat, etc.) and customs of Pentecost, which was distinguished
by thank-offerings (ANAT ΠΕ] τε εὐχαριστήσας) and festive gather-
ings for the poor (Ly 2422) ; (8) that the insertion of a Passover
here would break the unity of the plot and interfere with the
development of the drama from Jn 213 to 121, ercating a gap
between chs. 4 and 6 out of all proportion to the other intervals
in the Gospel after Jn 213. These reasons are not conclusive,
but they are sufficient to prove the possibility of τὸ racze being
an early gloss on ἡ ἑορτή.
The interval between the Feast of Tabernacles
(Tishri, A.D. 28) and the Passover (14 Nisan, A.D.
29) is Βα ΠΟΙ ΜΕΥ ample to allow for the work
in the towns of Cresarea Philippi (Mk 857), the pre-
aration of the disciples for His death (Lk 95 =
Ik 851), His Transfiguration six days after (Mt
178), His slow progress to ‘Jerusalem, preceded
by the Seventy’ (Lk 101), ‘when the days were
well-nigh come that He should be received up’ (Lk
9°!), the visit to Jerusalem at the Feast of Dedica-
tion (Jn 10°"), His work in the Perwa (Jn 1039, Mk
101), and in the wilderness of Judea (Jn 115). A
ministry from Passover A.D. 27, when He was
baptized, to Passover A.D. 29, is quite long enough
to allow for the development of the life of the
Master, and for the many journeys and missionary
tours in a district as small as Wales, and where the
festivals at the capital were so frequent. The details
would be distinctly meagre for a longer mission.
4. Date of the Cruciiuxion.—The procuratorship
of Pilate and the high priesthood of Caiaphas
roughly indicate the date. Josephus (Ané. XVII.
ii. 2) notes the appointment of Valerius Gratus by
Tiberius (ce. A.D. 14-15), his return to Rome after
11 years (6. A.D. 25-26), and the appointment of
Pilate in his place. In Ané. XVIII. iv. 2 we read
that ‘Pilate when he had tarried 10 years in
Judea made haste to Rome; but before he could
reach Rome, Tiberius diced’ (A.D. 37). His ofiice
might be, therefore, dated A.D. 26-36. Pilate at
the trial of Jesus seems to have already had
trouble with the Jews and Galilzans and Herod.
Hiis yielding to them in the present instance
through fear of their accusing him to Tiberius,
and his release of ‘a notable prisoner’ (δέσμιον
ἐπίσημον, Mt 271%), ‘who for a certain insurrection
made in the city and for murder’ (Lk 9919) ‘was
lying bound with them that had made insurree-
tion’ (Mk 157), imply at least part of the 10 years
of cross purposes which marked Pilate’s rule, but
need not be ascribed to the censure received from
Tiberius, c. A.D. 33, on account of the votive
shiclds (Philo, Legat. ad Gaium, ὃ 38), as he had
in his very first year of office experienced the in-
{flexibility of the Jews (Ané. XVIII. iii. 1). A Pass-
over earlier than that of A.D. 28 would hardly suit.
The high priesthood of Annas, referred to in Jn
11” 18! 34, is a terminus ad quem of the Crucifixion,
his deposition occurring about the same time as
Herod Philip’s death. It is assigned by Josephus
(Ant. XVUI. iv. 3, 6) to the 20th year οἱ Tiberius.
The latest possible date of the Crucifixion would
thus be A.D. 34, the earliest A.D. 26.
As it is hard to believe that such an event would
not be exactly chronicled by the Church, it is quite
possible to regard Lk 3!—‘in the fifteenth year of
‘Tiberius ’—as an indication of the ‘acceptable year
cf the Lord’ which terminated on the cross,
whether with Bratke (5.11, 1892) we regard that
acceptable year as terminating in the 15th, or
with von Soden (Lneye. Bibl. art. ‘Chronology ’)
in the 16th of Tiberius. A well-known tradition
of the Church assigns the Crucifixion to the con-
sulship of the Gemini, L. Rubcllius and C. Rufius,
A.D. 29, which year, according to the strict method
of computation from Aug. A.D. 14, would corrce-
spond with Tiberius 15, but, counting as a year
the semester Aug. A.D. 14-Jan. A.D. 15, when
the consuls dated their term of office, would be
Tiberius 16.
Among Patristic authorities for the year of the Crucifixion the
following are chief :—Clement of Alexandria: ‘With the 15th
year of ‘Viberius and 15th of Augustus so are completed the 30
ycars to the Passion’ (Strom. i. 147). Origen: ‘If you examine
the chronology of the Passion and of the fall of Jerusalem...
from Tiberius 15 to the razing of the temple are 42 years’
(Ilom.in Hierein. xix. 13). Tertullian: ‘In the 15th year of
the reign Christ suffered . . . in the consulship of Rubellius
Geminus and Rufius Geminus’ (adv. Jud. 8, but authorship
doubtful); and Hippolytus, who in his work on Daniel stated :
‘Our Lord was born on Wednesday, Dec. 25, in the 42nd year of
the reign of Augustus. . . . He suffered in the 33rd year, on
Friday, March 24, in the 18th year of Tiberius, and the consul-
ship of Rufus and Rubellio,’ evidently attempting to combine a
three years’ ministry with Lk 81. In his Chronicle the length
of our Lord’s life is estimated at 30 years. Dr. Salmon in Her-
athena, No. xviii., suggests that Hippolytus altered the
chronology of the latter work in A.D. 234, on discovering that
St. John’s chronology was incompatible with a one year’s
ministry. In the tables of Hippolytus the Passion is assigned
ΝΠ ee ἷἝὃἝἷὅὃ ΄'“...-.ςς-ς-ς-
DATES
414
DATES
to the 32nd year of the cycle, which, reckoning back by cycles
of 112 years from A.D. 222, the first year of the cycle, is A.D. 29,
which may have been suggested by the consulship of the
Gemini, whose names he gives erroneously with or after the
Acts of Pilate as Rufus and Rubellio. Other authorities who
may be cited are Julius Africanus, who seems to hover between
Tiberius 16 (in the Greek of Eusebius, Dem. Evang.) and
Tiberius 15 (Latin of Jerome’s Com. in Dan. ix.) ; Lactantius,
who wrote: ‘In the 15th year of Tiberius, that is, in the consul-
ship of the Gemini’ (Div. Inst. 1v. x. 18); the Liberian
Chronicle, which has, ‘Under Tiberius, the two Gemini con-
suls, March 25’; and Augustine (de Civ. Dei, xviil. 54): ‘Consuls
the Gemini, March 25.’ A.p. 29 is therefore well supported by
Christian tradition. The note of the annalist Phlegon, referred
to by Origen (6. Cels. ii. 33), and the Chronicle of Eusebius
(under Ol. 202. 4=A.p. 32-33), which mentions the earthquake in
Bithynia and the darkness at the sixth hour of the day, ob-
viously comes from some unreliable Christian source.
(a) Day of week and month.—Some indications
of the day of the weck are found in Scripture.
The general belief that the Crucifixion took place
on Friday is founded on inference from the fact
that He rose ‘on the third day,’ τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ
(1 Co 154), the Jews counting their days inclusively.
Westcott, however, held that it took place on a
Thursday, on account of the ‘three days and three
nights’ of Mt 12”, a saying found only there, and
evidently equivalent to ‘on the third day’ (Gn
Alt 15. Hist 415 ond 51):
(6) Day of month.—The question is, Did the
Crucifixion take place on the Passover, Nisan 15,
or on the day preeeding, Nisan 14 This question
also concerns the relation of the Passover to the
Last Supper; for while, strictly speaking, both
events took place on the same day, on the Jewish
reckoning from evening to evening, according to
the ordinary Roman method the Crucifixion fell a
day later than the Supper. Sanday (Authorship
ind Historical Charactcr of the Fourth Gospel),
Westcott (Introduction to the Gospels), and many
others maintain that it took place on Nisan 14.
The principal champion for Nisan 15 is Edersheim,
who holds that the Last Supper synchronized with
the Passover, and that the Pascha of which the
Jews desired to partake was the Chagigah ‘or
festive offering of the first festive Paschal day.
The Synoptists in some places identify the last
meal with the Passover, but in others give indica-
tions of an opposite view ; while the Fourth Gospel
gives unqualified support to the opinion that the
feast of which our Lord partook had a quasi-Paschal
significance, and preceded in ordcr to supersede
the Jewish Passover. <A list of passayes from the
Gospels for both views makes this clear :
For Nisan 15, the Passover—
Mt 2617 ‘The first day of the feast of unleavencd bread the
disciples came to Jess, saying unto him, Where wilt thou
that we prepare for thee to ent the Pagsover?’
Lk 227 ‘Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the
Passover must be killed.’
Mk 1415. ‘And the first day of unleavened bread, when they
killed the Passover.’
Lk 2215 “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with
you before I suffer.’
For Nisan 14—
Jn 101 ‘Now before the feast of the Passover.’
Jn 18:5. ‘And they themselves went not into the pratorium,
lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the
Passover.’
Jn 1329 ‘Buy that we have need of for the feast.’
Jn 1912 ‘An 1 it was the preparation of the Passover.’
Jn 19°l “Since it was the preparation, and that Sabbath day
was a high day.’ :
Mt 262-5 «Τῆς n assembled together the chief priests . . . and
con sulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty and kill
him. But they said, Not on the fec day, Jest there be an
uproar among the people’ (cf. Mk 142).
Mt 27 ΗΝ Now the next day, that followed the day of the pre-
paration. ;
Le + “And that day was the preparation, and the Sabbath
arew on.
Other incidents in the Synopties point to Nisan
14, such as the holding of the trial on the feast
day, the purchase of linen and spices, the arming
of I eter, the coming of Simon ‘from the field? (Mk
1551), the unseemly hurry with the trial, the execu-
tion and the final dispatch of the victims, the
sword of Peter (14, the armed multitude with
Judas (14%), it being unlawful to carry arms on
the feast day. It is to be noticed that Mt., Mk.,
and Jn. represent the Crucifixion as taking place
on the Paraskeue, which is distinctly Friday in
Jn 1951, being mentioned in connexion with the
Sabbath, and in Mk 15”, where it is defined as
προσάββατον. St. John in 19* describes it as ‘the
preparation of the passover,’ but as the weekly
Paraskeue in 19*!, and 1055 referring to the removal
from the cross and the hasty entombment says
‘for it was the preparation’ and ‘because of (διά
= because it was) the preparation of the Jews.’
Against all these passages there stands one ex-
pression common to all the Synoptists, ‘the day of
unleavened bread,’ for Lk 9215 mey merely indicate
the Paschal nature of the Last Supper. That ex.
pression is, therefore, to be reckoned with.
Chwolson (Das letzte Passamahl Christi, p. 3f.) maintains
that the Synoptists start with an error, for ‘from the Mosaic
writings down to the Book of Jubilees . . . indeed, down to the
present day, the Jews have always understood by the phrase
“the first day of the feast of unleavened bread” only the 15th
and not the 14th, so that it would be a contradiction in terms
to say with Mic 141°, ‘on the first day of unleavened bread when
they sacrificed the Passover.’ Ewald (Antiquities of Israel, p.
358 ff.) treats the Passover, which he shows from Ex 122-6 was
originally fixed for the 10th of the month when the Paschal
lamb was to be selected, as the preparatory expiatory festival of
the Spring Feast of Unleavened Bread, just as the Day of Atone-
ment, on the 10th day of the 7th month, preceded the great
autumn festival of Tabernacles. ‘Not till the 14th day, during
the last three hours before and the first three hours after sun-
set, was the sacrificial animal slain and eaten. ... It was always ~
appointed for the 14th, and in the earliest times at least the
view was strictly upheld that the Feast of Unleavened Bread
did not begir till the following morning.’ Philo: distinguished
the racxe of Nisan 14 from the τὰ ἄζυμα of Nisan 15-21. Mk
141 unites without confusing them. ἣν δὲ τὸ πάσχα καὶ τὰ ἀζυμα
μετὰ Ovo ἡμέρας.
It would seem that some technical error was
committed by the Synoptists, which may have
been due to (1) St. Peter’s inexact knowledge of
the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and probable
identification of it with the removal of leaven
before noon on Nisan 14 (Ex 12}°); (2) the eustom
of the Galilzeans, who, unlike the people of Juda,
who worked until the noon preceding, abstained
from work the whole morning preceding the Pass-
over, which was reckoned from evening to evening,
and consequently would make their preparations
aiter sunsct on Nisan 13 (Students? Com. on Mt
2011); (3) some verbal confusion between the Syriac
words for ‘kefore’ (kcdim, Mt 8°) and ‘first’
(kadmaya, Mt 26") owing to Petcr’s broad Galilean
accent, which may have caused St. Mark’s mistake ;
(<) ἃ comparative use of Gr. πρῶτος (cf. Jn 115 πρῶτός
μου, ‘before me’; 1518 ἐμὲ πρῶτον ὑμῶν, ‘before
you’), in which case Mt 9017 would mean ‘on the
day before the Feast of Unleavened Bread’; (5) a
difference in the mode of reckoning the days
adopted by St. John, who, according to Westcott
(Jn 10"), used the Western method of counting
from midnight to noon, and by St. Mark, who
adhered to the legal reckoning from evening to
evening (Mk 15*); (6) a natural confusion of the
preperation of the Passover (Jn 194) on Nisan 13
with the weekly Paraskeuc on Nisan 14 (Mk 153),
or of the day when leaven was removed from the
houses (Ex 12 [LXX ἀπὸ τῆς ἡμέρας τῆς πρώτης])
with the Festival of Mazzéth, which commenced
after the Passover day. The argument that the ex-
pression ‘not on the feast’ (μὴ ἐν τῇ ἑορτῇ, Mt 26°)
cannot refer to Passover has to reckon with Ex 124,
where the Passover is called ‘feast’ (ἑορτήν, LX X).
Support for Nisan 14 as day of Crucifixion in
NT and tradition (Christian and Jewish).—(1) 1 Co
Ὁ τὸ πάσχα ἡμῶν ἐτύθη Χριστός, identifies Christ with
the Paschal lamb slain between ‘the two even-
ings’; and 1 Co 15” identifies the Risen’ Christ
with the First-fruits of the 2nd day of the Feast of
Mazzéth, ἀπαρχὴ τῶν κεκοιμημένων. (2) The Quarto-
DATES
decimans, among whom was Polyearp, held a fast
on Nisan 14 as the day of Crucifixion (letter of
Treneus to Victor). (3) Jewish tradition fixes the
Crucifixion on the ‘erebh Pesah or Passover eve,
and the Greek Church always used leavened bread
in the Eucharist. (4) Apollinaris of Hierapolis
(c. A.D. 180) pointed out that the 14th is connected
with the Crucifixion. (5) Clement of Alexandria
said that Christ did not eat the Passover, but
sufiered on the 14th. (6) Hippolytus of Portus
declared that Christ ate a supper before the Pass-
over, ‘for He was the Paschal lamb who had been
promised and was sanctified on the appointed day.’
(7) Tertullian (adv. Jud. 8—a doubttul work) sug-
gests Nisan 14. (8) Irenweus (Her. Iv. x. 1), dis-
cussing Moses’ prediction of Jesus, says, ‘The day
of whose Passion he did not ignore, but foretold it
in a figure, calling it Pascha.’ This is not very
decisive, but suggests a memory of 1 Co 57. This
view of Nisan 14 may be said to be the best sup-
ported in the first two centuries.
Tradition in support of Nisan 15.—Origen, in
his comment on Mt 2017, follows the Synoptic tra-
dition: ‘Jesus celebravit more Judaico pascha
corporaliter.’? Chrysostom declares (//om. in Mt.
82) that the new feast appointed by Jcsus super-
seded the Passover. Ambrose, Proterius and others
follow on the same side. This view seems more
recently popular than the other. But the contro-
versy of Apollinaris in περὶ τοῦ πάσχα λόγος shows
that there were some in the 2nd cent. who con-
nected Nisan 14 with the Supper, and therefore
Nisan 15 (according to Roman reckoning) with the
Crucifixion.
The cumulative evidence of St. John, St. Paul,
and the early Fathers, joined with the ineredibility
of Jesus having been arrested, tried, and executed
on the great Sabbath of the Jewish Year, and the
statement of the Synoptists that that day was the
Paraskeuc, seem to turn the seale in favour of
Nisan 14 as the day of the Crucifixion. Sce also
LAST SUPPER. Nisan 14, A.D. 29, is the date to
be now tested by other evidence.
Clement of Alexandria (Strom. i. 147) notes the
various views of the Basilidians. ‘ With regard to
the Passion, some, after precise calculations, say it
took place in the 16th year of Tiberius on Phame-
noth 25 (March 21); others on Pharmuthi 25
(April 20); others, again, on Pharmuthi20(April24).
March 18 and March 25, however, are the best
supported. Epiphanius (Her, i. 1) had seen copies
of the Acts of Pilate which gave March 18 as the
date, but the Quartodecimans kept March 25 on
the strength of these Acts; this is evidence of
some hesitation between these dates. Hippolytus
(Com. on Dan.) gives March 25. With revard_ to
this date, also given in the Paschal Cycle, Dr.
Salmon says (Hermathena, No. xviii. p. 175): ‘We
can therefore regard the date March 25 as insepar-
ably connected with the sixteen years’ cycle of
Hippolytus.? As the Easter full moon was on
March 25 in A.D. 221, and, working on the prin-
ciple that after 16 years full moons return to
the same day, Hippolytus trusted his cycle that
it must have been on the same day in A.D. 29.
But, as Dr. Salmon shows, in that year the full
moon really fell on March 18, a weck previous.
An interesting confirmation of the date March 18
is given by the Jewish calendar of Paschal moons,
from which it would appear that Friday, which
is generally accepted as the day of the Crucifixion,
could not have fallen on Nisan 14 or 15 in the
years A.D. 28, 31, 32, so that we are left to choose
between 29, 30, 33, and of these A.D. 29 answers
all the required conditions best, as the 14th day
of the moon would fall in that year on Friday,
March 18 (so C. H. Turner, ‘Chronology’ in Has-
tings’ DB).
DATES 415
Dr. Salmon, in the article cited, said it was doubtful if
Hippolytus had any historical authority for fixing on the year
29 over and above the reason ‘that the day which his cycle
exhibited as the Crucifixion Day should be a Friday,’ and that
‘the only years he would find fulfilling this condition were, 26,
29, 32, and of these 29 is chronologically the most probable.’
Baron H. von Soden prefers A.p. 30, in which Nisan 15 would
fallon Friday April 7, and opposes A.p. 29 on the ground that
Nisan 15 fell on April 16in that year. But the previous luna-
tion, March 4-5, with 14th on March 18, would be more in
keeping with the ripening of the barley harvest, and would
have a prior claim.
The following table of dates is based on the argu-
ments in the preceding pages, the years, months,
and days especially, in each casc, being offered as
merely approximate.
TABLE OF DATES OF EVENTS IN THE GOSPELS.
Herod’s reign 6 Ξ .
Τοβυογαύϊομ of temple commenced
Star in the east ὃ Ξ .
Courses of Abia in temple ὦ
Conception of Elisabeth . - ee °
Annunciation (6 months after) . ο .
Birth of Baptist ° ° . . . δ
Birth of the Christ at Bethlehem during an
enrolment
Circumcision . . Β . . . .
Visit of Magi. . ° . ° ° -
Presentation in temple 40 days after Nativity
IIcrod plans massacre. ᾿ ὃ ἃ :
Flight into Exypt, apparently from Jerusalem
Death of Herod a . 3 δ δ .
Archelaus ethnarch of Judaa . . . .
Iferod Antipas tetrarch of Galilee . Ε
Return of Holy Family to Nazareth .
The child Jesus in temple (12 years old)
Annas high priest’. ὦ ὃ ὃ 5 .
Caiaphas high priest ὃ ° : . .
Pontius Pilate procurator of Juda 6 :
Preaching of the Baptist (15th ycar of Tiberius)
‘beyond Jordan,’ in the Perma, ‘where
John at first baptized’ (Jn 1030), ‘the
country about Jordan’ (Lk 8°)
Baptism of Jesus in Bethabara, John’s second
sphere of work
Selection and training of disciples, and work
in Galilee, with Nazarcth for a time as head-
quarters(Mt 41%) (early chapters of Mt. and
Mk. and Jn 129-212)
Purification of the temple and work in the
city during the Feast of Unleavened Bread
(Jn 213-23)
Work in Juda broken by conflict between
His disciples and the Baptist’s (Jn 32236
and 41-4)
Arrest. of the Baptist by Herod (Mk 617, Mt
143) (probably at /=non near to Salim, his
third sphere of work)
Departure of Jesus into Galilee through
Samaria (Jn 41-49)
Work in Galilee, with Capernaum as centre
(Jn 446, Mk 114, Mt 412-18, where His de-
parture from Nazareth is noted; see also
Lk 416)
Jesus at Feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem
(Jn 5)
Miracles in Galilee (Nain), and consequent
fame (Lk 711-17)
Injunctions to the Twelve, and their mission
(Mt 10, Mk 6, Lk 9)
Deputation from the Baptist (Mt 112, Lk 718).
Jesus at Feast of Tabernacles (Jn 7) :
Execution of the Baptist (Mt 14, Lk 9, Mk 6)
Herod hears the fame of Jesus (Mt 141)
Return of the Twelve with this and other news
(Mk 639)
Jesus, in consequence, departs finally from
Galilee (Mk 631, Mt 1415, Lk 910)
Work in Tyre and Sidon, Decapolis, and vil-
lages of Czesarea Philippi (Mk 72491 877,
Mt 1613)
The confession of St. Peter (Mt 1616, Mk 829,
Lk 920, Jn 663. 69)
The Transfiguration, ‘six days after’ (Mt 171,
Mk 92), ‘about an eight days after’ (Lk 938)
Prediction of death (Mt 1722
The great journey, which may be described
as a tour, whose final objective was Jeru-
salem, commences ‘when the days were
well-nigh come that he should be received
B.C. 37-4.
B.c. 19-18.
B.C. 7-5.
B.c. 6, April 18-
24, Oct. 3-9.
B.c. 6, Oct.- [or
April (25)}.
5, March (2£)
for Sept. (19)}.
B.c. 5, June (24)
forn.c. 5, Jan. ].
B.c. 5, Dec. (25)
forB.c. 5, June).
B.c. 4, Jan. (1).
BoC. 4 Jan (Ὁ
circa).
B.c. 4, Keb: (ὦ
circa).
B.c. 4, Feb.
B.C. 4, Feb.
B.C. 4, March (be-
fore Passover).
B.C. 4-A.D. 6.
B.C. 4-A.D. 37.
B.C. 3.
A.D. 7.
A.D. 7-15.
A.D. 24-34,
A.D. 26-36.
A.D. 25-27.
A.D. 27 (Passover).
A.D. 27-28 (Pass-
over).
A.D. 28, Passover,
March £0-April
6.
April 7-14 (circa).
April.
April 14-18
(circ).
April 18-May 14.
May 20 (circa).
October.
DATES
416
DATES
up’(Lk 951); given at great length (Lk 9°1-
1928
Rejected by a village of Samaria (Lk 952)
Mission of the Seventy beiore His face (Lk
101-17) [in Samaria, where He was in Roman
territory, safe trom Herod, Samaria having
been added to the Province of Syria after
the banishment of Archelaus, Jos. Ant.
XVII. xiii. 5]
Sentence on Galilee and Capernaum (Lk
1018-16, Mt 1120-24)
Journeys towards Jerusalem, teaching in the
towns and villares (Lk 1322), moving south-
wards between the borders of Samaria and
Galilee (1711), the Jordan on His left hand
At the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem . A.D. 28, Dec. 10
(circa).
Escapes from city into the Perwa, πέραν τοῦ
Ἰορδάνου (Jn 1049, Mt 191, Mk 10!)
Returns to Juda for the raising of Lazarus
at Bethany (Jn 117)
Withdraws to Ephraim (Jn 1154) in wilderness
of Judea
Final journey towards city
Prediction of His death (ΔΠς 1032, Lk 1881)
At Jericho: Zacchxus and blind Bartimaeus
(Lk 191-11, Mic 1046-52) :
Approaches city, at Bethany (Mt 211, Μὶς 111, A.p. 29, Nisan 9
Lk 1929, Jn 12!) six days before the Passover (March 12).
The chronology of. the last six days is still
further complicated by the difierence between the
Second and Fourth Gospels regarding the Anoint-
ing at Bethany. Mk 14!* gives the account of the
Anointing apparently in connexion with the date
‘after two days was the feast of the Passover and
the unleavened bread,’ while Jn 12'® gives the
account of the Supper seemingly under the note of
time, ‘Then Jesus six days before the Passover
came to Bethany.’ Two ways of getting out of the
difficulty are (1) by referring the note of time in
Mk. to the events of νν.}" 3" 111 as giving the con-
nexion of the conspiracy of the chief priests against
Jesus, and the oficr of Judas, and regarding the
scene of the Anointing as an intrusion of strange
matter similar to Mk 614-29 775-30; (2) by restrict-
ing the application of the note of time Jn 12! to
the arrival at Bethany. The notice of the day of
the entombment (τὴν ἡμέραν τοῦ ἐνταφιασμοῦ, v.")
would come more appropriately on the date given
in Mk 141, the reason of the mention of the feast
in connexion with the date of Jn 12! ‘six days
before,’ etc., being, perhaps, the fact that Jesus
and His disciples made the house of Lazarus and
his sisters the headquarters of His last mission to
the city. Against this it may be urged that it is
equally probable that this feast, which was attended
by many out of curiosity to sce not only Jesus but
Lazarus whom He had raised (v.°), occasioned on
the one hand the splendid reception given to Him
by the multitude, and on the other the malignant
opposition of the chief priests, who made plans to
procure the death of Lazarus also (ν.}). And the
anointing of Jesus’ fect in so lavish a style would
be in keeping with His entry as the Messiah, the
Anointed, into the city, which follows in the
Fourth Gospel. St. Mark’s order of events, how-
ever, is quite different. Our Lord proceeds straight
from Jcricho to Jerusalem by way of Bethphage
and Bethany (Mk 111), and when He entered the
temple and looked round on all things, the hour
being late (ὀψίας ἤδη οὔσης τῆς Spas, v.14), He with-
drew to Bethany with the Twelve. The cleansing
of the temple, which immediately follows the
entry in Mt 21 and Lk 19, is thus reserved for the
next day, and the banquet for the last evening
spent in Bethany. May it not be possible that
there were two banquets, and two similar acts of
homage paid by women to Jesus, one at the begin-
ning of His last mission, when His feet were
mencement of the year’s work by the purification
of the temple, the latter by the Synoptists, St.
‘side during this mission.
Matthew and St. Mark, who signalize its closing
scenes with a similar act ?
In the week itself there are three difficult notes
of time. (1) ‘Then Jesus six days before the Pass-
over came to Bethany’ (Jn 12! πρὸ ἕξ ἡμέρων τοῦ
πάσχα, cf Am 1! LXX πρὸ δύο ἐτῶν τοῦ σεισμοῦ
[yam ue omy], ‘two years before the earthquake’).
Six days before Friday, Nisan 15, that is, according
to Jewish reckoning, six evenings before the even-
ing that followed the sunset of Nisan 14, would
give the evening that directly followed the sunset
of the Sabbath of Nisan 9, in which case the Supper
would take place in the evening that was the close of
the Sabbath. Or if, as Westcott held, the Passion
icll on Thursday, the arrival at Bethany took place
on a Friday, in which case the Sabbath would be
kept as a day of rest, and would be followed by
a feast on the next evening. (2) ‘After two days
is the Passover’ (Mt 261), or ‘After two days was
the Passover and the un!eavened bread’ (Mk 14),
This date, including the day on which the words
were spoken, but excluding that of the Passover,
points to Wednesday, Nisan 13, the Crucifixion fall-
ing on Friday, Nisan 15. Bengel allows an interval
of one day only, ‘ biduum a feria quarté ad quintam
quae Paschatos et azymorum dies erat’ ; ef. Mk 891,
where μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας -- τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ. (3) ‘On
the first day of the unleavened bread the disciples
of Jesus came to him, saying, Where wilt thou that
we prepare for thee to eat the Passover?’ (Mt 261%).
Strictly speaking, that day would be Nisan 16, this
feast commencing on the evening after the close of
Nisan 15, the Passover, and lasting seven days.
But this note of time refers probably to the legal pbe-
ginning of the 14th day, the evening following the
sunset of Nisan 13, or may be due toa confusion with
the day Nisan 14 on which leaven was removed.
With regard to the method our Lord followed in
Hlis mission, see Luke 2157 ‘ And during the days he
was teaching in the temple; but during the nights
going forth to the mount that is called the Mount
of Olives, he used to abide (ηὐλίζετο) there: and all
the people came to him at early dawn (ὥρθριζε) in
the temple to hear him’; cf. Lk 2939 ‘And he
came out and went κατὰ τὸ ἔθος to the Mount of
Olives; and his disciples followed. And when he
was at the place’ (ἐπὶ τοῦ τόπου, evidently some
familiar locality [see Jn 181. ‘Jesus went forth
with his disciples beyond the brook Ikidron, where
was a garden, into the which he entered, and his
disciples. And Judas also, which betrayed him,
knew τὸν τόπον ᾽]). It would seem then that the night
was generally spent in prayer on the mountain
But the evening after
the Triumphal Entry was spent in Bethany (Mk
111-12); yet evidently the greater part of night
and morn was spent in prayer in the open air
ηὐλίσθη ἐκεῖ (Mt 2117. This fact would explain His
hunger on the morrow from missing the morning
meal. For His practice of going out to pray ‘a
great while before day’ see Mk 1°”.
The following is a provisional arrangement of
the days and occurrences of the Last Mission :
Sabbath, Nisan 9, ( Arrival in Bethany (Jn 121).
6th Day before Supper in the evening (122-5),
Passover. The Anointing of His feet.
First Day of Week Sora entry into Jerusalem (Mk
(Palm Sunday, 111-11 Mt 211-1, Lik 1929-44, Jn 1214-19),
ἡ κυριχπὴ τῶν Paiwy),-, Works of mercy in Temple (Mt 21 14. 15),
Nisan 10, 5th Day [Bets in the evening to Bethany (Mk
before Passover 1111, Mt 2117).
Returns on the morrow (τῇ ἐπαύριον) from
Bethany (Mk 1115); hungry after mid-
night vigil or early morning prayer
(155). Blasting of the Fig-tree ; sign of
an unfruitful nature (111214), Purifica-
Second Day of Week,
Monday, Nisan 11;
day of selection of
Paschal lamb (Ex
125), 4th Day before
Passover.
tion of the Temple, more drastic and
thorough in Mk 111-18 than in Lk 1949-48
or Mt 2112. 13,
Leaves the city in evening (Mk 1119),
Conspiracy of foes (Lk 1947).
DATES
DAVID 417
..-΄΄’'---ς --ς-ς-ς. --Ρ΄Ρ΄΄-ςς--..------------ς.-ς-Ὸς ὔ΄Ῥ---.-.--.---.--.-.-ς--ς-ς--ς--ςς-ςς-ςςς----- πὲ ξ’ετους--͵;--
Third Day of Weck, |
Tucsday, Nisan 12,
3rd Day before
Passover.
Fourth Day of Week,
Wednesday,
Nisan 13,
2nd Day before
Passover.
Returns early (+pa/) past the withered fig-
tree (Mk 119). Combination of foes,
chief priests, Sadducees, Pharisees,
Scribes, Herodians.
Day of Questions and Answers touching
the authority of Jesus, the baptism of
John, the tribute money, the brother’s
wife, the first commandment of all.
“What think ye of Christ? Whose son
ishe?’(Mt 21. 22). ‘From that day forth
no man dared ask him any more ques-
tions’ (2246). Woes on Pharisees (231-86),
Jesus in Treasury, the widow's mite (Mk
1241-44), The visit of Greeks, and
parable of Seed-corn (Jn 1220-36), Final
Rejection (1291). . Lament over Jeru-
salem (Mt 23%7-89), Prediction of the de-
struction of the Temple, and final scenes
of the coming of the Son of Man (24. 25).
Counsel of Caiaphas (Mt 263~).
“After two days is the Feast of Unleavened
Bread’ (Mt 262). It is supposed that
our Lord remained all this day in
Bethany, not returning to the city
openly after Jn12°6, The Anointing of
His head at the Supper in the evening.
The Bargain of Judas.
The morning was occupied by disciples
with preparations for the Supper (Mt
2617-19), by Jesus in prayer.
(A) The events of the evening may be
(9 p.m.-12).
The Day before the
Passover,
ἡ παρασκενὴ τοῦ
σόσχα (Jn 1914),
Thursday, Nisan 14,
Fifth Day of Week.
δ Rats
τῇ δὲ πρωτὴ τῶν ἀζύμων
(Mt 2617), ‘the first) Cock-crow.
day of unleayened ‘
bread’ evidently
being identified
with ‘ the first day’
on which leayen
was removed (Ex
1215), the bread of
Passover being un-
leavened (Dt 16°).
arranged according to the four Roman
{as distinguished from the three Jewish)
watches, ὀψέ (6 p.1m.-9 p.m.) 5 μεσονύπ-
τιον (9 p.m.-12) 5 ἀλεκτοροφωνία (12-3
a.m.); πρωὶ (3 a.m.-6 a.m.), used in the
Gospels (Mk 13°, Mt 142, Mk 648).
The Supper with the Twelve,
ὀψίας δὲ yevoutvas (Mt 2629,
Mk 1417). The washing of
oq) feet after Supper (δείσνου δὲ
ἐκ ας γενομένου) or during it, see
a wn is v.l. γινομένου (Jn 132). De-
ques parture of Judas. Institu-
ΡῈ tion of Lord’s Supper.
Upper Room Discourses
(13%1-145}), Departure
from Upper Room (1491).
Parable of Vine (Jn 15).
Promise of the Holy Spirit
(16). Prayer for disciples
(17). Gethsemane (181, Mt
2637-46, Mk 1433-38, Lk
2241-46), Agony, ‘one hour’
{ (Mik 1427).
Arrival of Judas, Arrest of
Jesus (Jn 18212). Preli-
minary trial before Annas
(1813). Peter’sdenial; ἀλ-
μεσονίπτιον
ἀλεπκτορ ixzwp ἐδώνησε (1821). Jesus
Gavia sent to Caiaphas (184).
12-3 a.m. Trial before Sanhedrin ὡς
ἐγένετο ἡμέρα (Lk 2266),
πρωίας δὲ yevouevys (Mt 271
loosely), ivi τὸ σρωΐ to-
wards the morning watch
(Mik 151 more precisely).
Led to Pilate =fas (Jn 1838),
from Pilate to Herod (Lk
237), back to Pilate (2312),
ΠΡΟΣ OF ‘Behold, the man!’ (Jn
3 de x: 195). * And it was the pre-
6am paration of the Passover,
and about the sixth hour’
(1914). Delivered to be
crucified (1916).
(B) The third, sixth, and ninth hours of
the morning, which were wont to be
proclaimed by an officer of the Praetor
(Smith's Dict. Ant. s.v. ‘dies’), marked
similar divisions of the day which for
the Jews ended in the evening.
Preparation for Crucifixion.
Ὁ a.m -9 a.m.—‘ And it was the third
hour (i.e. 3rd after the Jast watch of the
night [3-6 a.m.], or 9 a.m.); and they
crucified him’ (Mk 152°).
{There is no need to suggest a corrup-
tion of F for Τ᾽ or vice versa to explain the
difference of Mk 1529 and Jn 1944, as the
former hour marks the crucifixion and
the latter the hour of sentence, between
which some interval must have elapsed. ]
9 a.m.-12.—Jesus on the Cross.
VOL. I1.—2
s
12-3 p.m.—‘ And when the sixth hour (12)
was come there was darkness over the
whole land until the ninth hour (3 p.m.)
. .. and at the ninth hour Jesus cried
with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi,
lama sabachthani?’ (Mk 1059. 34),
Between the evenings [ΞΡ ΤΠ 13 Ex 126], as the Paschal
lambs were being sacrificed in the Temple, Jesus gave up the
ghost. The Removal from the Cross ensues, Pilate marvelling
if He were already dead (Mk 1544), ἤδη ὀψίας γενομένης (after 3
p.m.), the women following to the sepulchre and returning
to prepare spices and ointment (Lk 23° 8),
The Passover, also the Weekly Prepara-
tion, ἡ παρασκευή, Or τὸ προσάββατον (Mk
1542),
First Day of Unleavened Bread, coincided
with weekly Sabbath. ‘The day of that
(ἐκείνου) Sabbath was an high day’ (Jn
1991), or ‘ that (ze) day of the weck was
a high day.’ ‘And (the women) rested
the Sabbath day according to the com-
mandment’ (Lk 2356). “This was a day
of holy convocation in which no servile
work should be done. Visit of Sanhe-
drin to Pilate, τῇ δὲ ἐπαύριον i715 ἐστὶ μετὰ
τὴν παρασκευήν (Mt 2102). In the Grave.
After the Sabbath (δια γενομένου τοῦ σαβ-
βάτον), Mary Magdalene, Mary the
mother of James, and Salome, brought
spices for the anointing (Mik 161).
It was still dark, σκοτίας ovcys (Ju 201), in
early dawn, ὄρθρου βαθέος (Li 241, cf. Mt
281), very early after sunrise (Mk 102),
when they came to the sepulchre, bring-
ing the spices they had prepared (Lk
241). Jesus rose carly, ἀναστὰ: πρωΐ (Mk
109). The first-fruits of them that slept,
ἀπωρχὴ τῶν κεκοιμημένων (1 Co 15%),
Vision of angels to the women (Mk 16°7).
Visit of Peter and John to the Sepulchre
(Jn 203-10), . Appearance of Jesus to
Mary Magdalene (20-18); appearance
to St. Peter (Lk 24:3).
4-6 p.m.—Appearance to two disciples,
who would not have left Jerusalem
until after evening prayer (cf. Ac 3),
on way to Emmaus (Lk 24185.),
8 p.m. (cirea).—Appearance of Jesus to
the Eleven and those with them (Lk
2435), Inthe accountof interview with
disciples (Jn 2019f-), Thomas absent.
§Jesus appeared to the disciples, Thomas
Friday, Nisan 15
(March 18).
Nisan 16, Saturday. τ
Nisan 17, Sunday.
The First Day of
Week and Second
of Feast of Mazzéth,
on which sheaf of
new corn was pre-
sented as first-/
fruits, σρώτη σαβ-
βάτον (ΜΚ 109), τῇ
δε μιᾷ τῶν σαβθάτων
(Jn 201, Lk 241), τῆς
μιᾷς σαββάτων (Mk
162), εἰς μίαν σαβ-
βάτων (Mt 281).
Sunday Week,
Nisan 24. ( being present (Jn 2026f),
Further appearances recorded by Evangelists :—To seven
Apostles on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias (Jn 21). To the
Eleven Apostles on a mountain in Galilee (Mt 2816 20), To the
Apostles in Jerusalem (St. Luke in Ac 14). Ascension from
Bethany forty days after Passion and ten days before Pentecost
(Lk 2450, Ac 16-12),
LITERATURE.—Josephus, Ant. and BJ; Irenxus, adv. ITer. ;
Clement of Alexandria, Strom. ; Hippolytus, Com. on Dan., and
Paschal Cycle; Origen, Com. on St. John; Ideler, Handb. der
Chronol. ; Wieseler, Chronol. Synops. der Evang. ; Salmon in
Iermathena, No. 18; Farrar, Life of Christ ; Westcott, ‘Gospel
of St. John’ (Speaker's Com.), and Introduction to the Gospels ;
Sanday, Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth
Gospel, and art. ‘Jesus Christ’ in Hastings’ DB; Hitchcock,
Studies in Our Lord’s Last Mission; Westcott and Hort, Greck
Testament ; artt. ‘Chronology,’ ‘Fasts and Feasts,’ ‘ Passover,’
‘Pentecost’ in Hastings’ Db.
F. R. Monrcomery H1ircHcock.
DAUGHTER (évydr7p).—The word ‘daughter’ is
used in various senses in the Gospcls: (1) in the
literal sense, Mt 9:8 10%, Mk 5° 67 759, Lk 815.
(9) as aterm of kind address, Mt 9°, Mk 5%, Lk
$8; (3) collectively for the inhabitants of a city,
Mt 215, Jn 12" (cf. Zee 9°); (4) as a term of address
to the female inhabitants of a city, Lk 9958; (5) in
the Hebrew sense of descendant, Lk 1° 1510,
The diminutive θυγάτριον is found twice in the
Gospel of Mark (5° 7:5). Like all diminutives, it
is a term of endearment.
Henry E. DOosker.
DAUGHTER-IN-LAW (viu¢7).—The Greek word
is presumably derived from the lost root γύβω,
Lat. nubo, ‘to cover,’ inasmuch as the bride was
brought veiled to her bridegroom. Although the
word applies to married women in general, its
associated idea is that of youth. Hence its an-
tithesis with πενθερά, the mother-in-law (Mt 16°,
Lk 1253). The son usually brought his bride to his
father’s house, where she was subject to the
father’s wife, as was the son to the father and the
daughter to the mother (Mt 10”, Ws 12*):
HENRY E. DOSKER. ,
DAVID.—
For the student of the Gospels the most important OT passage
concerning David is2S 7. David expressed to Nathan a strong
418 DAY
desire to build a temple for Jehovah in his new capital, a wish
indicative of worldly wisdom as well as piety on the part of the
king. Jehovah denies David’s request, but promises to build
for him an everlasting house, a dynasty without end. Dayid’s
throne is to stand for ever. Pss 2 and 110 are founded on this
notable promise, and the author of Ps 89 in a far later time,
when David’s throne had been overturned by the heathen,
reminds Jchovah of His ancient promise, and pleads earnestly
for the speedy passing of His wrath. The carly prophets,
Amos (911), Hosea (3°), Isaiah (97 16° 37%), unite with the author
of Kings (1 K 249 612 etc.) in the expectation that the promise
made to David in 2S 7 will not fail. The prophetic hopes for
the future of Israel spring from Nathan’s message as branches
from the trunk that gives them life. Jeremiah (25°f 3315f-.)
carries forward the work of his predecessors of the 8th cent.
B.c., asserting the perpetuity of Dayvid’s dynasty in most em-
pnatic terms. Ezekiel (34°3% 3724) cheers the discouraged
exiles with the picture of a glorious restoration of the throne of
David. The great ruler of the future will be a second David.
In the period after the return from Babylon, the author of the
last section of Zechariah (127-131) describes the glories of the
coming time in connexion with the Davidic dynasty : ‘The house
of David shall be as God, as the angel of Jehovah before them.’
The Messianic hope in the inter-Liblical period, like that of the
OT, attached itself to David. The author of Ecclesiasticus (471)
reminds his readers that the Lord exalted David’s horn for ever,
entering into a covenant and promising him a throne of glory in
Israel. Abouta century later the author of 1 Mac. (2°7) says,
‘David for being merciful inherited the throne of a kingdom for
ever and ever.’ Most important for the student of the Gospel
history is Ps 17 of the Psalms of Solomon, a collection of
patriotic hymns belonging to the period immediately following
Pompey’s capture of Jerusalem (63-48 B.c.). Ps 17 is a notable
Messianic prophecy, prayer and prediction being freely inter-
mingled after the fashion of the OT prophets and pocts. The
Messianic King is to be David’s son (17+: 51). Jehovah Himself is
Isracl’s King for ever and ever (171. 45); but the Son of David is
Ilis chos2n to overthrow the heathen, and institute a righteous
reign in Isracl (1190. 426),
The four Evangelists unite in the view that the
Messiah was to come from the seed of David (Mt
Mk A077, LE 2) Ini). “the Son of Dayid"
Was synonymous in the time of our Lord’s earthly
ministry with ‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ.’ Both the
scribes and the common people held this view.
When the children cried in the temple, ‘ Hosanna
to the Son of David’ (Mt 21"), both the rulers and
the multitude looked upon the words as a distinct
recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus. The
Epistles (Ro 15, 2 Ti 28) and the Revelation (5° 9910)
concur in calling attention to the Davidie origin of
Jesus. The interest of NT writers in David is
confined almost exclusively to his relation to our
Lord Jesus as His ancestor and type.
Jesus refers to one incident in the life of David
in reply to the accusation of His enemies as to His
observance of the Sabbath (Mk 2”, cf. 1S 211-5),
This incident is said to have taken place ‘when
Abiathar was high priest.’ [On the difficulties
created by this statement see art. ABIATHAR. ]
During the week preceding our Lord’s crucifixion,
perhaps on Tuesday, He asked the Pharisees a
question which put them to silence and confusion.
Having drawn from them a statement of their
belief that the Christ would be the son of David,
He at once quoted David’s words in Ps 110! to show
that the Messiah would also be David’s Lord
(Mt 22"||). Jesus wished to show His foes and the
multitude that the orthodox view of the time
overlooked the exalted dignity of the Messiah.
He was to be far greater than David, for He was
his Lord. Sce, further, Broadus on Mt. ad loc.,
and, for the meaning of ‘David’ and ‘ Moses’ in
our Lord’s citations from the OT, art. Moses.
LITERATURE.—Gore, BL 196 Ὁ; Gould, ‘St. Mark,’ and Plum-
mer, “St. Luke,’ in Internat. Crit. Com. in loc. ; Expos. Times,
111. [1892] 202 ff., viii. [1807] 565 f8.; Expositor, ν. iii. [1390] 445 ff.
Joun R. SAMPEY.
DAY.—14. Litcral.—'The length of the ‘day’
among the ancients was reckoned in various ways :
thus, from morning to morning (Babylonians),
from sunset to sunset (Athenians), from noon to
noon (Umbrians), from midnight to midnicht
(Egyptians), and from dawn to dark by the com-
mon people, ordinarily (see Plin. WN ii. 79). The
early Israelites seem to have regarded the morning
DAR
as the beginning of the day (cf. Gn 1% 5"), but
they likewise (due to the influence of the now
moon) reckoned it from ‘even unto even’ (Ly
237). In Lk 22% also the new day began after
sunset (cf. 4%). In the NT ἡμέρα was employed to
express: (1) the period of light in opposition to
night (Lk 6% ‘and when it was day,’—a frequent
phrase in St. Luke’s writings, ef. 44 229 Ac 1918
NG 915. 0 759: 905. 9. mises ohn Oe, 2 (Or) Ws) 2 (2) whe
natural day, including the periods both of light and
darkness (Mt 28! ἐπιφωσκούσῃ, cf. Lk 22°); (3) an
indefinite period of tine (Lik 1” ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις
ταύταις, ‘in those days’; St. Luke is fond of this
expression, it is not found in Jn., and occurs but
four times in Mt. and the same number of times
in Mis. ; cf. Lk 2! 45. Ac 28 3% 74! etc., also Mt 9
31, Mk 1° 8! 13!7- 24 in true Hebraistic style).
Except the Sabbath, the days of the weck were
numbered by the Israelites, not named. Nor had
the Hebrews any precise subdivision of the day,
for they had no word for ‘hour’; even the Aramaic
ayy, which occurs in Dn 416 5°, has no exact connota-
tion. Like the Greeks, they seem to have Icarned
from the Babylonians how to divide the day into
12 hours,—a division first met with in the NT:
‘Are there not twelve hours in the day?’ (Jn 11%,
ef. Ac 2%, Mt 202° 27-46 cte.). The leneth of the
hour, however, was for a long time a variable
quantity, depending, as it did, upon the season of
the year, for it was always reckoned as the twelfth
part of the light period. It therefore ranged from
forty-nine to seventy-one minutes, according to
the calendar. The more common divisions of
the day among the Hebrews were morning, noon-
day, and evening (Ps 55!"); but they frequently
spoke of ‘sunrise’ and ‘dawn’ (Mk 167, Jn 20],
Ttev 221%), ‘the heat of the day’ (Mt 20%), ‘noon’
(Gn 4316 Dt 28”), ‘the cool of the day’ (Gn 95)»
and ‘between the two evenings,’ ὅ.6. towards even-
ine (Ex 126 1G!) cf, Aci 3) 3 ΟΣ Dhextimenon
incense, and of cock-crowing (wh. see) was in the
morning (Mk 14°, Lk 1); the time of the
‘meal-ofiering’ was in the middle of the afternoon
(1 Ix 18*9-**) ; while ‘the time that women go out
to draw water’ was towards evening (Gn 24"),
2. Figurative.—Vigurative and metaphorical uses
of the word ‘day’ are also frequent in the NT:
e.g. the day of Christ’s appearance, 7.6. of His
apocalypse, or self-revelation (Lk 17° ‘in the day
that the Son of Man is revealed,’ ἀποταλύπτεται, ἃ,
technical expression : ef. Lk 1774, Jn 8.5 1430 16> *,
Ro 13", 1 Co 17-8, 2'Th 1%, 1 P 11:5 45)eeethevaen,
of his Parowsia’ (Mt 722 9436 Mk 13° 14, Lk 21%,
2 Th 1”, 2 Ti 118. He 10); the days of His death
and departure (Lk 5” ἐλεύσονται δὲ ἡμέραι, ‘ Dub
the days will come,’ 1.6. days very difierent from
the joyous days of wedding testivity) ; the Last, or
Judgment day (Jn 6 11% 12%, Mt 1123 ima
1 Th 52, 2 Ti 3}, Ja 5°, and by contrast 1 Co 4° ὑπὸ
ἀνθρωπίνης ἡμέρας, Which describes human judgment
as opposed to Christ’s day of final account, ἡμέρα
τοῦ κυρίου) ; His day of the offer of salvation (2 Co
05, Jn 94 11°); ‘the day of Christ’ (Ph 1”); ‘the
day of the Lord’ (2 Th 95, Ro 916. 2 Co 14, Rev 6%) ;
‘the day of God’ (2 P 3%); ‘the Lord’s day,’ ἢ
κυριακὴ ἡμέρα (tev 1°); the day of the gift of the
Spirit (Jn 14°); the day of completed salvation
(Ito 13"); ‘the evil day,’ of trial and temptation
(Eph 6!) ; ‘as children of the day,’ 1.6. as sons who
abstain from doing evil (1 Th 5% 8, Ro 13") ; a day
of fuller knowledge (2 P 1); and, lastly, the
somewhat enigmatical passage, ‘Give us this day
(σήμερον) our daily (τὸν ἐπιούσιον) bread’ (Mt 64, Lk
115) ; the latter expression (see art. LORD’S PRAYER)
is not found in classical Greek, and seems to have
been specially coined by the Evangelists to convey
in this single context the idea of ‘needful’ or ‘the
coming day’s’; the Vulgate has supersubstantialem
DAY OF ATONEMENT
(ef. Amer. ItVm). Sec, further, artt. DAY oF
CurisT, DAy (THAT), DAy Cr JUDGMENT.
LivERATURE.—Art. ‘Day,’ by H. A. White in Tastings’ DB,
by Karl Marti in Hneyc. Bibl., and by F. W. Farrar in Smith’s
DB; also ‘Tag’ in Riehm’s HWLD; esp. Swete’s Com. on St.
Mark, and Plummer’s Com. on St. Luke, ad loc.; and cf. the
artt. TimE, Nieut, ESCHATOLOGY.
GEORGE L. Robinson.
DAY OF ATONEMENT (27220 ci [2722], ἡμέρα
[τοῦ] ἐξιλασμοῦ).-- ΤΠ 6 chief OT passages bearing on
it are Lv 16. 23°°-%?, but some further details are
given in Ex 8010, Lv 25°, Nu 297. An earlier and
simpler form of the ceremony is prescribed in Ezk
4510. The day is not mentioned in the Gospels,
but it is referred to as ἡ νηστεία in Ac 27° (also Ep.
Barn. 7°°4, Jos. Ant. XVII. vi. 4).
4. It is not necessary in the present article to
describe fully the ritual and worship of the day ;
only the salient features are here touched upon
which offer some analogy with the Christian
Atonement. The more important parts of the
ceremony were, briefly, as follows :—
(a) The high priest procured and brought before
the Tent a bullock as a sin-offering for himself,
and two goats upon which lots were cast, one
being destined as a sin-offering for the people, and
the other to be ‘for Azazel.’ He sacrificed the
bullock, and carried its blood into the Holy of
Holies, where, after enveloping the mercy-seat
with a cloud of burning incense, he sprinkled the
blood before it. He then came out and sacrificed
the goat for the people, and, re-entering the Holy
of Holies, sprinkled its blood before the mercy-seat.
He next sprinkled the blood of each animal on the
altar of incense in the Holy Place; and, lastly,
he sprinkled the mingled blood of bullock and goat
on the brazen altar in the outer court. Thus the
blood (the life) of the animals, representing the
life of priest and people, was offered before God ;
and they, and the three parts of the Tent polluted
by their presence during the preceding year, were
cleansed, and atonement was made for them.
(ὁ) The goat for Azazel was then brought near.
The sins of the people were confessed over it, and
it was led into the wilderness. The two goats
were intended figuratively to represent one and the
same being, who, though sacrificed, was yet living,
and able to carry away the sins of ihe people. In
the Mishna (Yémd vi. 1, cf. Ep. Barn. 7°) this
thought was afterwards emphasized by the regula-
tion that the goats must resemble each other as
closely as possible.
(c) The high priest offered two rams as a burnt-
offering for himself and the people, signifying the
complete offering up of the wo1shippers’ lives and
persons to God.
(d) The skin, flesh, and dung of the bullock and
the goat, whose blood had made atonement, were
burnt outside the camp.
2. The great spiritual truths typified by this
ceremony are to a certain extent drawn out in
He 901-15. 21-23 1019-22,
(a) The high priest entered ‘into the second
[part of the Tent] once a year’ (ἅπαξ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ,
z.¢. on one day in the year), 95. Dut Christ entered
into ‘the Holies’ once for all (ἐφάπαξ, v.!") ; and
see v.24f ]QUE.
before God.
(5) The earthly ‘ holies’ are ‘ made with hands,’
‘types corresponding to the real ones’ (ἀντίτυπα
τῶν ἀληθινῶν). But Christ entered into ‘ heaven
itself,’ 924,
(c) The high priest entered ‘in the blood of
another’ (97°)—‘ with the accompaniment of [by
means of, διά] the blood of goats and ecalyes :
Christ, with His own blood, 91, And the Tent,
Thus His blood—i.c. His life freed |
for eternal uses by death—is perpetually presented |
“the copies (ὑποδείγματα) of the things in the! were not a mere opus operatum, the magic of a
DAY OF ATONEMENT
419
heavens,’ must be purified with the former: but
the heavenly things with better sacrifices than
these, 9%. With regard to the meaning of this,
Westcott says: ‘It may be said that even
‘heavenly things,” so far as they embody the
conditions of man’s future life, contracted by the
Fall something which required cleansing. Man
is, according to the revelation in Seripture, so
bound up with the whole finite order, that the
consequences of his actions extend through erca-
tion in some way which we are unable to define.’
(ad) The sacrifices of the Day of Atonement (and
other sacrifices—‘the ashes of en heifer,’ see Nu
19) can effect only the purifying of the flesh ; 1.6.
outward ceremonial cleansing. Dut if they can
efiect that, ὦ fortiori the blood of Christ can
purify our consciences from the defiling contact
of dead works, 9155.
(6) The high priest entered alone ; which fact
signified that while the first Tent continued to
have a standing among men (ἐχούσης στάσιν), the
way for all men into ‘the Holies’ was not yet
manifested, 97. But now ‘we have confidence
which leads us to enter into the Holics in the
blood of Jesus by a new and living way which
He inaugurated for us, through the veil, that is
to say [the way] of His flesh,’ 10,
The main truths, then, at which the writer of
the Epistle arrives by direct reference to the Day
of Atonement are: that Christ is both Priest and
Victim ; that His sacrifice is eternally eflicacious,
and that it is being eternally presented by Him in
Heaven; that its efiects are not ceremonial but
spiritual ; and that we now have free access to the
lather.
3. But other points of analogy and contrast
suggest themselves, some of which are partially
supplied by the Ep. to the Hebrews.
(a) The high priest offered a bullock for the
atonement of his own sins. ‘The law appoints as
high priests men possessed of weakness,’ He 7-5 51°,
But tho Son was ‘such an high priest as was
fitting for us, holy, guileless, undefiled,’ 7°°. And
the sinfulness of the high priest appears to have
been the reason of his causing a cloud of burning
incense to hide the mercy-seat from his sight.
He was unfit, until atonement had been made for
his sins, to look upon the place of God’s Presence.
But now that Christ has ‘procured eternal salva-
tion for us,’ not only our High Priest but we our-
selves may ‘ come boldly unto the throne of grace.’
(6) An obvious contrast between the Jewish and
Christian Atonement is afiorded by the fact that
the former was possible only in the case of un-
witting ot.ences (ὠγνοήματα, He 97), sins committed
ime ἀπ ΟΥΑΙ cess {|| τ΄ 1725 278 Naa 52422 conmnast
Nu 15). If Christ's Atonement were thus limited,
our faith were vain, we should be yet in our sins.
(ὦ) Itisimportant to notice that the Jewish sacri-
fice was very different from those of the heathen.
Its purpose was not to appease—to buy the good-
will of—a cruel and capricious deity. The offerings
did not originate with men; they are represented
as commanded and appointed by God Himself.
They were due to His own loving initiative; He
showed the way by which men, who were hostile
by reason of their sins, might be reconciled to Him.
So likewise ‘God so loved the world that he gave
his only-begotten Son’ (Jn 3!°). Nay more; Christ
the Victim voluntarily ofiered Himself (Jn 1017, Mt
2078 || Mik 16%). Seripture nowhere speaks of God
being reconciled to man; see Ro δ᾽) 11, 2 Co
51-9, God is not hostile to us, although by His
very rature He must be angry with sin and
punish it; bat we are hostile to God (Lk 1957,
hess 0 0115 dag):
(ὦ) The ceremonies performed by the high priest
420 DAY OF ATONEMENT
medicine man. The whole
morally to take an active part.
congregation had
The Day of
Atonement was to be a day of cessation from
work, like a Sabbath, and a day when every man
must afflict (43y) his soul—z.c. render his soul con-
trite and penitent by means of fasting, self-humilia-
tion, and confession of sins. It is true that Is 58*7
denounces the outward expressions of this ‘ afflic-
tion of the soul’ when they are unaccompanied by
the necessary moral fruits, 2s Christ Himself does
(Mt Ὁ); but Lv 23°52, Nu 2971! clearly imply
that real penitence is necessary for atonement.
The Mishna also recognizes that, while the: cere-
monics of the day are effectual for Israel as a
whole, individuals must appropriate the results by
repentance. ‘ If amansays, ‘‘I will sin and (then)
repent, I will sin and (then) repent,” Heaven does
not give him the means of practising repentance ;
and if he says, ‘‘ I will sin, and the Day of Atone-
ment will bring atonement,” the Day of Atone-
ment will bring no atonement’ (Ydémd viii. 8, 9).
And similarly a Christian’s faith in the atoning
death of Christ is not merely an intellectual ac-
ceptance of the fact that He died for each and all.
Faith, as the Nit teaches it, involves a conscious
co-operation with Christ’s work. That work was
not accomplished to free us from the necessity of
doing anything. The atoning work of the God-
Man is in living union with. the longings and
strivings of men for atonement, and thereby makes
them effectual. But if a man does not repent,—
docs not wish to be free from sin,—for him the
Atonement brings no atonement. The results of
Christ’s death are ‘a power of God, leading to
salvation’ (Ro 11°); but the energy remains poten-
tial and useless until the human will renders it
kinetic by deliberate appropriation.
(c) And this truth was foreshadowed in the
Jewish atonement not only by the fasting of the
people, but in the ceremony which formed the
centre and kernel of it all. The killing of an
animal and the shedding of its blood contained a
meaning which far transcended that of mere death.
The body is ‘the expression of life in terms of its
environment’; the blood represents the life set
frec from its limiting environment for higher uses
(Ly 111. When Christ, therefore, entered heaven
‘with his own blood’ (He 913), ‘to appear in the
presence of God for us’ (v.44), He began ‘the
eternal presentation of a life which eternally is
‘the life that died.”’ But ‘we reckon thet one
died on behalf of all; in that case all died’ (2 Co
54); andas the high priest offered the blood of the
goat which symbolized the life of the whole people,
so ‘the life that died’ is our life, in complete union
with Christ’s (He 10). The same truth is ex-
pressed in another form in Ile 10%! Christ’s
voluntary self-offering consisted in absolute obedi-
ence to the Father’s will, an obedience having its
seat in a body prepared for Him. ‘In which will
we have been sanctified through the body of Jesus
Christ once for all.’ But that is rendered possible
only because of His living union with us which
makes us part of His body. ‘The Church is the
extension of the Incarnation.’ And this vital union
is strengthened and perpetuated by the faithful ap-
propriation of it in the Sacrament of His body and
blood.
(f) It has been said above that the goat ‘for
Azazel’ (AV ‘scape-goat’) was considered figura-
tively to be the same animal as the goat that was
sacrificed. Its blood was shed for the atonement
of the people, and, at te same time, it took upon
itself the burden of their sins in order to carry it
away. There is no distinct reference to the seape-
goat in Hebrews, but a possible allusion occurs ia
9°8, where the writer quotes Is 53 ©, Christ was
‘once offered to bear (ἀνενεγκεῖν) the sins of many.’
DAY OF CHRIST
The verb seems to contain the double thought of
‘offering up’ and ‘taking up upon oneself’ as a
burden ; ef. Jn 199.
(g) After the atonement was completed and the
sins carried away, there followed the sacrifice of
the rams as a burnt-offering. It is peculiarly
significant that in Ly 16 the high priest is bidden
to ‘offer his burnt-offering and the burnt-offering
of the people, and make an atonement for himself
and for the people.’ The great atonement in the
sanctuary, though complete, was only an initial
act which needed the continued burnt-offering to
render its effects permanent. This symbolizes the
sequel and corollary of the truth which formed the
subject of (d) and (c). Our own life having been
offered upon Calvary in union with Christ’s, we ‘died
with him,’ and we are ‘ alive unto God’ through
Him. That being so, we are bound to make an
active appropriation of our part in His eternal
presentation of the offering in heaven; we are
bound to render permanent the effects of the great
Atonement by yielding up our whole spirit and
soul and body asa perpetual burnt-ofiering. See
RoWl2 iP 2) Hens!
4. The above suggestions are those dealing with
the more fundamental points, but they are, of
course, far from being exhaustive of the analogies
which may be drawn. The isolation of the high
priest when he entered the sanctuary suggests a
comparison of He 97 (μόνος) with 77° (κεχωρισμένοΞ).
His double entrance, first for himself and then for
the people, seems to foreshadow the two entrances
of Christ into the Unseen, once when He entered
it at death, from which He returned victorious,
and again when He entered it by His resurrection
and ascension ‘ to appear before the face of God on
our behalf’ (He 95). Again, the return of the
high priest to the people in the outer court at the
close of the ceremony recalls the words of He 9°,
‘a second time without sin shall he appear to them
that wait for him.’ And, finally, the burning of
the sacrifice outside the gate is used as yet another
type of Christ (He 13%).
LITERATURE.—1. On the ceremonies of the day: Comm. on Ly
16, esp. Dillmann; Mishna, Yoma (ed. Surenhusius, with Lat.
tr. and notes, 1699) ; Maimonides’ account of the ceremonies (tr.
by Delitzsch at the end of his Com. on Hebrews); Jos. Ant. 11,
x. 3; art. in Hastings’ DB, vol. i. p. 199 ff.
2. On the significance of the ceremonies: Sheringham’s
Yomé 2, to which is added (p. 105 ff.) an elaborate comparison by
Rhenferd of the work of the high priest with that of Christ;
Comm. on Hebrews, esp. Westcott, with the Add. Notes on
chs. 8-10; Milligan, Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood.
3. On the doctrine of the Atonement : M‘Leod Campbell, On
the Nature of the Atonement ; R. W. Dale, The Doctrine of the
Atonement; H. N. Oxenham, The Catholic Doctrine of the
Atonement; F. Ὁ. Maurice, The Doctrine of Sacrifice ; B. Τὶ
Westcott, The Victory of the Cross ; Dorner, System of Christian
Doctrine ; esp.iv. 1-124. Intimately connected with the subject
are treatises on the Incarnation. A. H. M‘NEILE.
DAY OF CHRIST.—This is the general expres-
sion used by certain of the NT writers to indicate
that moment in time in which Jesus the Christ
shall reappear to establish His Messianic kingdom.
It marks the beginning of that new age which
Jews and Christians expected would follow the
present evil one. The term thus lacks the precise
reference of the Day of Judgment (wh. see), and is
also more general than the term Parousia; but
all three of these terms refer to the same point in
time, and represent different phases of the same
event. It is spoken of indiscriminately as the
‘day of Christ’ (Ph 1"), ‘day of the Lord’ (1 Th 5?),
‘day of Jesus Christ’ (Ph 15), ‘day of our Lord
Jesus Christ’ (1 Co 18), and ‘day of our Lord Jesus’
(2 Co 14). It is generally thought of in connexion
with the great assize which is to be established by
the reappearing Christ (1 Th 52, Ph 10:10). It was
then that the process of sanctification was to reach
its real completion (Ph 1°) and salvation be con-
DAY OF JUDGMENT
summated (1 Co 5’). It was to come unexpectedly
(1 Th δ", 2 P 3"), but was to be preceded by cer-
tain premonitory conditions which had not been
fulfilled at the time of the writing of 2 Thessa-
lonians (2 Th 21.3)Ξ. There is no reference in the
NT to an identification of the Fall of Jerusalem
with this day, and all such interpretations must be
read into it. In order to grasp its real significance,
it is necessary to remember that the early Chris-
tians did not believe that Jesus had done strictly
Messianic work during His earthly career, and
that they looked forward to His return as the time
when He would take up the work of the Messiah
ictured in the apocalypses. This work was to be
inaugurated with the resurrection of the dead, the
establishing of judgment, and the conquest of His
enemies. In the Apocalypse (Rev 6? 154: 16 1911. 18)
this period of conquest 1s prominent, but not in
other portions of the NT. Here also there is to be
noticed a distinction drawn between the ‘day of
Christ’ and that ‘ great day of God’ which follows
the one thousand years’ reign of Christ on earth.
Such a view, however, is not clearly presented in
other portions of the NT, the nearest approach
being 1 Co 1555: *4, in which Jesus is spoken of as
giving over the kingdom to God the Father. See,
further, DAY OF JUDGMENT, PAROUSIA.
SHAILER MATHEWS.
DAY OF JUDGMENT.—i. IN THE TEACHING OF
JESus.—1. The Day of Judgment is one of the
concepts inherited by Jesus. Its origin is to be
sought in the religious belief, common to practi-
cally all primitive peoples, in a tribal deity who
would punish the enemies of the tribe. This
elemental concept gained varied forms in the de-
velopment of different peoples. In some cases it
was never carried over into the field of individual
ethics, and in others it shared in the moral growth
of its possessors. In the case of the Hebrews it is
to be seen in the ‘ Day of Jahweh,’ which formed
so large and important an element of the prophetic
message. In its earliest forms the expectation of
this day involved simply the punishment of the
enemies of Israel by Jahweh the God of the nation.
As the moral content of prophetism developed,
however, this punishment inflicted by Jahweh was
foretold to include the punishment of the Hebrew
nation. Amos and the great prophets who suc-
ceeded him warned a luxurious nation that it had
grown guilty aud degenerate, and would be de-
stroyed as an indication of Jahweh’s righteousness
(Ami 255 3°21 510-13 01:8). After Amos the Day of
Jahweh never lost its religious colouring, but its use
was extended until it included in its scope not only
wicked Israel but a wicked world (Zeph 1°18 2%
3% 4-20), Ezekiel conceived of it as a day of battle
in which Jahweh would conquer Israel’s foes (Ezk
8055. 3415 398"-) ; but Malachi foretold the fearful
punishment of all the wicked, Jews and Gentiles
alike. It was this extension of punishment, and
the increase in the number of the condemned, that
gave particular force to the idea of the remnant
which was to be saved.
Obviously the formal concept here is that of the
Oriental monarch who establishes a court of jus-
tice, and decrees rewards and punishment. Jahweh
Was never conceived of by the prophets in terms
of natural law, bui always in terms of this analogy.
In fact it would be probably truer to say that the
monarchical coneept of God was not an ΒπῈ. ΕΥ̓
but something more. It was this concept whic
conditioned teaching as to punishment throughout
the entire Biblical period. Subsequent to the pro-
phetic era, under the influence of Persian dualism,
there was a marked tendency to extend the range
of judgment to nature as well as to men, and the
God who sat upon the throne was more than a
mere national deity judging the enemy of ἃ par-
DAY OF JUDGMENT 421
ticular people. This extension of the idea is to be
found in ‘the apocalypses, which in so many ways
lie behind the Judaism current in the time of
Jesus. In these apocalypses the Day of Judgment
became one of the most essential elements in the
Messianic scheme. The Day of Judgment of
Messianism is the prophet’s Day of Jahweh given
new content by the appropriation of certain ele-
ments from the cosmic myths of Babylon, and
new colour because of the new literary vehicle,
the apocalypse. As a part of the more highly
developed Messianism, it sometimes ceased to
represent a single judicial act on the part of the
sovereign Deity, and with something like a recur-
rence to the picture of Ezekiel, came to stand for
the period of struggle in which the Messiah was to
overcome and punish the enemies of a righteous
nation. In its new form the thought of the day
became increasingly transcendental, and joined to
itself the idea of hell newly derived from the older
belief in Sheol. In fact it would be difficult to
understand the full force of the Day of Judgment,
as it appeared both in Jewish and Christian htera-
ture, without reference to the fate of the dead.
In the place of a penalty consisting of national
punishment, there grew up during the Greek period
of Jewish history a tolerably elaborate belief as to
punishment inflicted upon individuals after death.
It is difficult to know just when this idea of hell as
a place of punishment, as over against Sheol as the
abode of the disembodied dead, was first brought
into relation with the Day of Judgment, but by
the time of the apocalyptists we find the correla-
tion complete (Eth. Enoch 272: " 489 541-2 62). 15
9056. 5, In fact the punishment inflicted upon men
is distinctly recognized as adjusted to the condi-
tions of their life in Eth. Enoch 22),
Thus the Day of Judgment as a form of the Day
of Jahweh became the central point in Messianic
eschatology and the nomistice morality of Judaism.
Different teachers elaborated its details in different
ways, but, by the time Judaism was fairly de-
veloped, the Day of Judgment was conceived of as
involving the examination of the records of each
individual (Dn 7’). More or less literally, books
were believed to be kept in heaven, generally by
one of the seven angels, in which the deeds of men
were recorded (Eth. Enoch 89° 90!4-*7, Ascens.
Isaiah 974). In the final assize these books were
opened and balanced, and the future of the indi-
vidual was determined according to the preponder-
ance of his good or evil deeds (Eth. Enoch 51° 4
80618. 9017-20" Pirke Abcth 374, Ascens. Isaiah 9” ;
ef. Lk 109, Rev 3° 138 178 20! 21°"), The difficulty
in such a mechanical basis of judgment was to
some degree mitigated by the introduction of some-
thing approaching the later doctrine of super-
erogation, by which the merit of the patriarchs
could be transferred to the Jews. This particular
doctrine, however, it is difficult to trace distinctly
in the days of Jesus, although later the transfer of
merits from the patriarchs is distinctly recognized.
From this idea of the assize, in which sentences
were formally passed by the judge, arose the two
opposing concepts of condemnation and acquittal.
These two concepts are the two foci of much of the
NT teaching concerning the outcome of conduct.
While Jesus opposed the mercantile conception
of rewards and punishment, the Day of Judgment
occupied a central position in His teaching. With
Him as with all men of the prophetic type, the
Judgment stretched across the horizon of human
destiny. No action in life was morally neutral.
A man would give account at the Judgment for
the very words which he spoke (Mt 12°). It was
through the outcomes of life that Jesus estimated
conduct, and these outcomes converged into what
the Gospels designate the consummation of the
422 DAY OF JUDGMENT
age; that is, the great catastrophe in which the
resent evil age comes to a close and the new
essianic age begins.
2. The terms which the Gospels represent Jesus
as using to indicate the Day of Judgment are
varlous.
(a) Sometimes the great event which would determine the
final destinies of men is called expressly ‘the day of judgment’
(Mt 1015 1122. 24 1236), or more simply ‘the judgment’ (Mt 521. 22
1241-44), These two terms are essentially the same.
(b) In one instance (Mt 1122: 23) the ‘judgment of Gehenna’
is mentioned, but this refers not so much to the Judgment-day
itself as to the punishment inflicted upon hypocrites and
sinners (cf. 522).
(c) Parallel with these terms is ‘that day’ (Mt 722, Mk 1332,
cf. Mt 2442 2629, Lk 1012). It is in this term that the day is
described in the apocalypse of Mark (cf. Mk 1249), for the
Second Gospel does not use the term ‘the day of judgment.’
Possibly the same reference is to be found in the sayings of
Jesus recorded in Jn 1623-26, See Day (TMA).
(d) ‘The day of the Son of Man’ as a precise expression is
found only in Lk 172430, where the thought of Judgment is
immediately related to the eschatological reappearance of
Jesus as Christ. A similar, although not a precise, reference is
to be found in other passages speaking of the Parousia, notably
Mk 1326 1462 and their parallels.
(6) ‘The last day’ is a favourite expression of the Fourth
Gospel, to denote the day on which men were to be raised from
the dead (Jn 639- 44.54 1174), That this day of resurrection is to
be identified with the Day of Judgment appears not only from
the entire drift of the Messianic expectation current in the time
of Jesus, but also expressly in Jn 1248,
3. The time of the Day of Judgment was not
precisely fixed by Jesus, and in fact He is said to
be ignorant concerning it (Mk 15%); but the
Gospels represent Him as announcing its coming
before His contemporaries die (Mk 13% 01}, Mt 1059,
οἵ. Jn 21%"), and this was the expectation of the
Apostolic Church in general. Notwithstanding
the indefiniteness of its coming, the day is one for
which all should be watching (Mk 13%: 95. 7 1405,
Lk 12°8 2156), and its nearness can be argued from
the signs of the times (Mt 16°) as well as from
various portents described in the phraseology of
prophecy and apocalyptic.
Whether Jesus Himself regarded the Judgment-day as in-
volving the fall of Jerusalem, or whether He regarded the
inevitable destruction of the Jewish State as one of the fore-
runners of the Judgment, will remain a matter of dispute until
the critical composition of Mk 13 is more precisely fixed. On
the whole, however, in view of Jesus’ forecast of the punish-
ment to come upon the Jewish people both in Galilee and in
Jerusalem, it seems probable that He did in some precise way
correlate the fall of Jerusalem with the eschatological Judg-
ment. But it would be a serious mistake to regard that
destruction of Jerusalem as exhausting the content of [lis
expectation of His Parousia. The punishment inflicted was to
be universal, not Jewish. Had the disciples regarded the fall of
Jerusalem as in any true sense the Judgment of the Parousia, it
is inconceivable that the Fourth Gospel and the other portions of
the NT written subsequent to 4.D. 70 should have given no hint
of such interpretation. In them as in the Synoptics the Judg-
ment is not a process but a single event, future, eschatological.
At the same time it is to be borne in mind that the Fourth
Gospel appreciates the truth to which attention must be
presently called, namely, that while the Judgment is eschato-
logical (Jn 522. 27. 29.30 168), a man does not need to wait until
that event to fix his destiny. That is already determined by
the acceptance or rejection of Jesus (Jn 318-19 1231), Such
passages as contain the teaching are, however, not to be inter-
preted as indicating a loss of belief in the coming of the Judg-
ment-day as a point in time, but rather as the Johannine
eq ivalent and supplement of the Apostolic doctrine of justifi-
cation by faith.
4, The Judge is apparently to be Jesus Himself
in His Messianic capacity (Mt 139° 245° 2512-19-31),
At the same time, in the Synoptics God is also
referred to as Judge (Mt 18* 208 224 Lk 187).
This double conception is to be found also in the
apocalyptic literature, and is easily understood by
reference to the representative character of the
Messian. In Lk 22%° the Apostles are also re-
garded as judges in the case of the twelve tribes
of Israel. This is a form of the bclief in the
judicial prerogatives of the saints which seems to
have been current in the early Church (ef. 1 Co
6°: °), and may be inferred also from the request of
the sons of Zebedee to occupy seats on the right
and left of Jesus when He came in His kingdom
DAY OF JUDGMENT
(Mt 207} || Mk 10%). The Fourth Gospel represents
Jesus as expressly denying (Jn 8 1247), and also
as affirming that He is the Judge (Jn δ55 *7- 80 816),
But such inconsistency can be resolved either by
considering that Jesus at one time is thinking of
His historical and at another of His eschatological
duties, or by a reference to the general position of
the Evangelist that the mission of the Christ in
His historical ministry was for the purpose of
salvation rather than for condemnation (Jn 31°),
5. The subjects of the Judgment are men at
large, with particular reference to those who have
come in contact with the historical Jesus, includ-
ing His disciples. The question as to whether
those who never heard of Jesus are to be subject
to this Judgment is not distinctly raised or settled
in the Gospels, but the universality of the Judg-
ment seems inevitable from Christ’s warnings,
notably in the parable of the Tares (Mt 1374-3
36-45. 47-00) These passages further indicate that at
the Day of Judgment mankind will be gathered
together before the Judgment-throne by the angels
a further utilization by Jesus of a conventional
Messianic expectation.
6. The awards of the Judement-day are: (a) for
those who have accepted Him as Christ, eternal
life, including the resurrection (Mk 9% 1017 12°,
Met 1059. 249548, Jn 579 6°. 40- 44.24) (6) For the wicked
the Judgment-day fixes the destiny of misery,
which is described in a variety of figures, such as
the Gehenna fire (Mk 9%, Mt 57%), destruction
(Mt 1078-29, Mk 8536.) The terror of the day is
also forecast in the various portents with which it
is to be ushered in, drawn from the figures of
prophecy and apocalypse (Mt 24° δ. #, Mk 8).
7. There is a eritical question as to whether
many of these sayings concerning a Messianic
Judgment-day may not be a reflexion of the
Apostolic hope rather than the express teaching
of Jesus. This is particularly true in the case of
all passages quoted from Mt 254°, It is not
possible, however, so to explain all the teaching
contained in the Gospels. Objective criticism must
decide that many, if not a great majority, of these
sayings come from Jesus Himself. The only
eround upon which they can be rejected as genuine
logia is the dogmatic presupposition that Jesus
was superior to, and independent of, current Messi-
anism. Such a position is difficult, however, in
view of the relation of Jesus to His times, and His
undoubted expectation that He would return with
completed Messianic dignity. It is an unsafe
method of eriticism which determines first what:
Jesus could or could not have said, and then makes
this determination the critical criterion by which
to decide His relation to the current of develop-
ing Messianism. His superiority to the apocalyptic
expectation of His contemporaries is no more
marked than His use of certain elements of their
hope for the coming of the eschatological Messianic
era. Yet it is to be borne in mind constantly that
here, as in so much of the teaching of Jesus, a new
content is given by Him to current vocabularics
and concepts. The standards of judgment are no
longer those of the apocalyptic writers. Ethnic
prerogatives are swept away. A man’s destiny is
to be settled not by his relation to Abraham, but
by his relation to God. Not even those who calicd
Him ‘Lord,’ but those who did God’s will, were to
enter the kingdom of heaven. Care bestowed upon
a poor disciple was an assurance of the bliss of
heaven. Such a change of moral values carries
Jesus over into something other than a mechanical
doctrine of rewards and punishments and of statu-
tory merit. Instead of a balancing of good deeds
and bad, it is evident from both the Synoptics and
the Fourth Gospel that He reeognized in eternal
life the summum bonum, which is quite other than
DAY OF JUDGMENT
the sensuous joys of Enoch and some of the Rabbis.
Eternal life with Jesus is not an artificial reward,
but rather the consummation of personality which
is determined by faith and relationship with God,
and includes the resurrection of the body. The
Day of Judgment, however else it may be used by
Jesus, is primarily a pedagogical point of contact
with morals and religion. It is an integral point
of His teaching, not in the sense that it was an
opportunity for God to wreak vengeance upon the
enemies of the Jews, but in that it expressed the
outcome of life, which is always to be lived in view
of an impending eternity. The imagery with which
He clothes this fundamental idea is Jewish, and
must be treated in the same method as all pro-
phetic imagery. But in such treatment it is im-
possible to deny that Jesus distinctly teaches that
the final destiny of mankind is a matter that lies
beyond death, and is conditioned by one’s life before
death. Any constructive use of the concept of the
Day of Judgment, as it is described in the Gospels,
is accordingly subject to the general considerations
which must obtain in the constructive use of the
entire Messianic scheme of Judaism as it appears
inthe NT. So far as Jesus Himself is concerned,
this is one of the inevitable problems of His position
as a reveiation of God in terms of a historically
conditioned individuality. The truth of Chiristi-
anity in this, as in others of its phases, docs not
rise and fall with the finality of its expository and
pateogical concepts. Within the concept of the
ay of Judgment lies the profound recognition on
the part of Jesus of the fact that a man’s ultimate
destiny will be fixed in accordance with the im-
mutable laws of God. To be saved is something
more than to win tlic blessings of an acquittal at
the Judgment-day of Judaism. It is rather to
possess a quality of life due to the soul’s relation
with God through faith, which will eventuate in
‘those blessed results which are pictured by the
Gospels in terms of the apocalypse.
li. IN THE TEACHING OF THE APOSTLES.—In the
teaching of the Apostles the Day of Judgment has
a position quite as central as in the teaching of
Jesus. But even more important is it in what
may be called their system of teaching. With
them as with Jesus, the chief end of faith is the
achievement of salvation, that is, eternal life; but
their thought is more formally concentrated on the
events of the great day. St. Paul draws out the
logical relations of these elements more elaborately
than any of the other NT writers, but it is easy
to see that there is no radical difference at this
point between him and them. ΑἸ] alike held that
there was no escaping the Judgment of God
ioe cr. He 057 Gal 1% 26:9. 166).
1. The term ‘day of judgment’ does not occur
in the Pauline teaching, and in fact only in 2 Peter
and 1 John. The day is commonly denominated
‘the judgment,’ and even more frequently is re-
ferred to in specific phrases as ‘that day’ or ‘the
day’ (1 Co 3"). With this must be identified also
the ‘day of Christ,’ although the term has a some-
what wider connotation (see DAY OF CHRIST) (1 Co
1° 5°, 2 Co 14, Ph 1619 916), or ‘day of the Lord’
(1 Th 55. In one or two instances also it is
called ‘the great day’ (Jude®, Rev 6"). The belief
in the same great assize is to be seen lying behind
the idea of condemnation (κρίμα) which is so fre-
quently met with in the NT.
2. It is around this Day of Judgment, as one of
the elements in the establishing of the Messianic
era, that the ‘judgment’ of the Apostles continually
circles. ΑἹ] of them referred to it as one of the
things to be assumed as believed in by all Chris-
tians (He 6%, xpiua). It might seem strange to
the heathen (Ac 17*!), but it was ene of the elc-
mentary expectations of all Jews and proselytes.
DAY OF JUDGMENT 423
It was to come within the lifetime of men living
during the first age, and its awards would be final
for the eternity which then began. Its subjects
were to be all mankind, as St. Paul elaborately
argues in the opening chapters of Romans. They
were to be both the living and the dead. This, of
course, implies the bringing of the dead from Sheol,
and therefore accounts for the exceptional expres-
sions which speak of the ‘resurrection of judgment’
(Jn 5%, ef. Ac 10”, Rev 203%), Such a resurree-
tion of the dead must be treated as something other
than the acquisition of the body of the resurrection,
which was to be a part of the great reward of
the believer. In accordance with the apocalyptic
literature, angels were also to be judged, and
that, too, by the saints (1 Co 67°).
3. This universalfty of the Judgment lay at the
bottom of much of the discussion concerning justi-
fication by faith. The Christians believed that
they, as well as others, were to stand before the
Judgment-seat of Christ to give an account of the
deeds done in the body. The conditions of ac-
quittal at the Judgment were conceived by the
Jerusalem Church as including participation in the
blessings promised exclusively to Jews as sons of
Abraham. In the ease of the party of the cireum-
cision, at least, it was the beiief of the Jerusalem
Church that believing Jews and proselytes alone
were to be acquitted in the Day of Judgment.
The Pauline position, that any one who had accepted
Jesus as Christ was to be acquitted, was exposed
to certain misapprehensions. On tlre one hand, St.
Paul insisted that it was not necessary. for those
who believed in Jesus as Christ to be subject to the
Law as a statutory enactment ; on the other hand,
he was aware that the Christian life was far enough
from being in absolute conformity with the will of
God. How then could believers hope to be ac-
quitted? His reply is that they “now they are to
be acquitted because they have the Holy Spirit,
the first instalment of the heritage of salvation.
His answer to the consequent question why a man
who no longer feared condemnation at the Judg-
ment of God should be good, constitutes one of the
most vital of his cthical teachings. It amounts to
this: Realize in conduct the moral possibilities
of the regenerate self. His answer to the more
particular question as to what should happen to
erring Christians at the Judgment is equally pro-
found. In 1 Co 3 he argues that the foundation
of faith in Jesus Christ must always abide, but
that the building which each believer erects upon
this foundation may be worthless. His figure
clearly teaches that the Christian is subject to the
Judgment as truly as any one else, and that al-
though he will be given the body of the resurrection
and the other blessings of salvation, he will also
sufier certain losses. At this point, therefore,
there is to be seen the rudiments of a logical
doctrine as to rewards and punishment which is
far enough from the mechanical expectation of the
apocalypses. And, further, it must be added that
the early Church believed that it was possible even
for those who, so far as could Le judged by ordinary
standards, had accepted Jesus as Christ, to fall
away and be ultimately lost. Christians were
always in danger of committing sins which at the
Judgment would shut them out of the kingdom
of God (Ὁ Ὁ Ὑ Co) 09: 10 low 19: 8 } ἘΞ ΠΡ τα
clear, therefore, from such teaching, that St. Paul
moved over into the moral as distinct from the
purely formal field. The Judgment-day is some-
thing other than the time of registering the arbi-
trary decrees of God, and becomes the time when
the ultimate destinies of men are determined by
their actual moral conditions, these conditions in-
cluding, rather than being supplanted by, faith in
Jesus.
DAY OF JUDGMENT
Δ, The details of the day are not clearly worked
out by the Apostles. In their case, as in that of
Jesus, there is the double expectation that both
God and Jesus will be the Judge. In the Apostolic
thought, however, the recognition of Jesus as
Judge (assisted, as has already been pointed out, by
the saints, 1 Co 6?) is very distinct. He is to sit
upon the throne, and mankind is to stand before
Him, and bow to Him, and be subject to Him. At
the same time the correlation between His position
and that of God is distinctly made (Ro 21°), He is
to be God’s agent, and at ‘the end’ is to give over
the kingdom to the Father (1 Co 15%).
5, In the Apocalypse there are two Judgment-
days spoken of. The first, which is established at
the appearance of Jesus, is confined to the worldly
powers, and Satan is then bound and shut up in
the abyss (Rev 20'*). Then follows the reign of
Christ on earth for a thousand years, which is
ushered in by the resurrection of the martyrs
(204), At the end of this period of one thousand
years the great day of God (1013) comes, in which
all those believers who survive and the members
-of the one thousand years’ kingdom are carried up
to heaven, and all the dead are raised to stand
before the Judgment-seat of God (20! 1). Here
again there must be a distinction drawn between
the idea of the ascension from Sheol and the acqui-
sition of the body of the resurrection. At this
final Judgment the evil are sent to the lake of
fire (218), where they continue in endless misery.
In this last Judgment it may be noticed also that
one’s future is determined by the records in the
books of the Judge (20! 15).
6. As in the case of the teaching of Jesus, the
award at the Day of Judgment for the wicked is
eternal condemnation, which is described in a
variety of ways, chief among which are ‘ destruc-
tion,’ ‘fire,’ and ‘death,’ the general term for
such misery being the antnropomorphic expression
‘wrath of God.’ For believers there is, on the
other hand, salvation which, in the resurrection of
the body, marks the completion of that eternal life
already begun in the earthly life of the believer
through the presence of the Spirit in the believer’s
heart.
7. It isimprobable that the Church of the NT
times ever ceased to think of the Day of Judgment
as a distinct point in time, and of the coming of
Christ as a definite event of the future (Ac 24", Ro
23), See PAROUSIA. Such late books as Jude and
2 Peter are particularly emphatic as to His coming,
although the writer of 2 Peter is obviously per-
plexed at the delay in the return of Jesus (2 P 3+).
8. It is at this point, however, that one realizes
more clearly than ever the impossibility of treat-
ing any one of the particular elements of the
Christian eschatological Messianic hope apart from
the others. The reason for this lies in the origin
of the hope. In so far as it is not the outcome of
the historical facts of Jesus’ life, death, and resur-
rection, it is the bequest of Judaism to the Chris-
tian Church. As such, its component elements
are really phases of one hope, and are so inextric-
ably combined as to make it almost impossible to
separate them. The Parousia, the Day of Christ,
the Day of Judgment, the resurrection of the
dead, are all alike different aspects of the same
great event toward which the whole creation
moves. They all embody the fundamental ex-
pectation of early Christianity, that the Christ who
had been crucified would shortly return to estab-
lish His Messianic kingdom. In such an estab-
lishment there was involved the punishment of all
those who were the enemies of God and of His
Christ, as well as the rewarding of those who were
His loyal subjects. Its terrors were as far as pos-
sible from being figurative to the carly Christians.
DAY (THAT)
From the time of Pentecost onwards men were first
warned of the approach of the Judgment which all
Jews expected, and were then told how by faith in
Jesus as Christ and Lord they might gain acquittal
in that Judgment. It is further noteworthy that
in all matters relating to the future condition of
mankind and the method of escaping punishment
and winning salvation at the Day of Judgment,
all the Christian writers are essentially at one.
Differences in emphasis and methods of presenta-
tion should not be permitted to obscure this identity
in elementals.
Such an expectation embodies both permanent
and transitory elements. Those are transitory
which depend upon an impossible cosmology and a
literal monarchical conception of God’s relation
to the world. Those are permanent which em-
body the immutable laws of the moral world and
the facts of the historical Jesus (including His
resurrection). To distinguish between these two
groups of elements is not difficult for the historical
student, and will result in a larger appreciation of
the fundamental truth of an apocalyptically con-
ceived Judgment-day. See also ESCHATOLOGY.
LITERATURE.—This is voluminous, but it is often dogmatic
and apologetic in character. The unhistorical method of treat-
ment will be found set forth in all the old treatises on theology.
On the Day of Jahweh see J. M. P. Smith, ‘The Day of Yahweh,’
AJTh, 1901, p. 501f. Views of Judaism may be found in
Bousset, Relig. des Judentums, 245, 248; Weber, Jud. Theol.2
§ 88; Charles, Crit. Hist. of Eschatology; Volz, Jud. Eschat-
ologie. For general treatment see Wendt, Teaching of Jesus,
ii. 274 f., 360f.; Mathews, Messianic Hope in the NT’; Muirhead,
Eschatology of Jesus; Haupt, Eschatol. Aussagen. J. Weiss
(Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes), Wernle (Beginnings of
Christianity), Fiebig (Der Menschensohn, Lect. 1v.), and Balden-
sperger (Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu) treat the subject from the
point of view of Judaism, and of Jesus’ teaching concerning His
relation to the Kingdom of God. -Teichmann (Die Paulin. Vor-
stellungen von Auferstehung und Gericht), Kennedy (St. Pari’s
Conceptions of the Last Things), Kabisch (Zschatol. des Paulus)
discuss the teaching of St.;Paul on the subject. In general see
Biblical Theologies, esp. those of Beyschlag and Weiss, and art.
‘Parousia’ in Hastings’ DB. SHAILER MATHEWS.
DAY (THAT).—It was ncar the close of His
ministry that the Lord began to speak especially
of the Last Things. At an early stage we find a
reference to ‘that day’ (Mt 7**). The hypocrites
will plead in vain, in that day, how they had pro-
fessed Christ. The day is the Day of Judgment,
the day of the sealing of citizenship in the King-
dom of heaven. There is also a reference to ‘that
day’ in the Commission to the Apostles. It will
be more tolerable for Sodom in that day than for a
city that will not receive them (Lk 1015. Here
the parallel denunciation in the First Gospel gives:
‘in the day of judgment’ (Mt 10%). Thus ‘that
day’ is a phrase to denote the terrible day which
is ever imminent, the day of Christ’s coming to
judge the world and inaugurate His universal
reien. But among His last words the Lord in-
cluded warnings of the fate of Jerusalem as well
as of the doom of the world. These messages
about the end of the city and the end of the world
are intertwined in the Synoptic records of the close
of His ministry. Reasonable care should not fail
to disentangle the threads. The expression ‘in
that day’ is used, for instance, to refer quite
plainly to the fall of Jerusalem (Lk 17°'; in Mk.
and Mt. ‘those days’). But then the phrase has
its usual significant euphemistic use for the day of
Christ’s coming in judgment in all three Gospels
where they recount the Lord’s solemn warnings to
be ready (Mt 2435, Mk 1353, Lk 21%). ‘That day’
is in the foreknowledge of God alone ; it will come
on the whole world as ὦ snare to the unready. It
may be immediate in its coming (Lk 12%), and it
will be quick as lightning when it does come (Mt
24°7), Kvidently ‘that day’ is an epoch; not an
era, but the beginning of one era and the end of
another. ‘That day’ of the revelation of the Son
ian
DAYSPRING
of Man will be as sudden and final as the experi-
ences of Woah and Lot appeared to each (Lk 17°).
As the end of this present age is the beginning of
the reign in glory of Christ and His redeemed, the
allusion to ‘that day’ at the Last Supper may
be understood in the same sense as hitherto. In
‘that day’ the Kingdom shall be established, and
all things shall be new, and the King will drink
the new wine first again in ‘that day’ (Mk 14”,
Mt 267°). On this pathetic promise of the Saviour
on the eve of His crucifixion Irenzeus comments :
“promisit . . . ostendens, et hareditatem terre in
qua bibitur nova generatio vitis, et carnalem re-
surrectionem discipulorum Ejus’ (Vv. Xxxiii. 1).
St. John’s references to ‘that day’ are to an era,
however, rather than to an epoch (Jn 147° 16%: 6).
‘In that day’ the disciples shall recognize their
Lord’s Divinity, and pray to the Father in His
name. In the lourth Gospel, therefore, the phrase
describes the era which had its beginning at
Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was bestowed so
fully upon the Church.
Literature.—Cremer, Bibl.-Theol. Lex. s.v. juipe ; Wastings’
DB, art. ‘Eschatology of the NT’; Beyschlag, NZ Theol. i.
190 ff. W. B. FRANKLAND.
DAYSPRING.—The dawn or beginning of the
day ; cf. for the word 1 8 9°, Job 38"; in NT only
Lk 118 (ἀνατολή), but cf. the prophecy quoted Mt
16 (φῶς ἀνέτειλεν αὐτοῖς). Zacharias saw, in the re-
markable events taking place, the coming of the
new day and the dawning of hope for Israel: ‘the
Lord, the God of Israel, hath visited and wrought
redemption for his people’ (v.%); ‘the dayspring
from on high shall visit us’ (RV fut. NDB). “Ava-
τέλλειν is often used for the rising of the sun (Mt
13°, Mk 162, Ja 1") and stars (Nu 241 2 P 1%), and
ἀνατολή, either in sing. or plur. form, for the East
(Mt 21-.3 etc.). In Rev 7? 1013 ἡλίου is added, .and
there RV substitutes ‘sunrising’ for AV ‘cast.’
In LXX ἀνατολή occurs for the rising of the moon
(Is 60"). Light frequently stands for salvation and
deliverance (Is 5810 60!, Mal 4°, Lk 2°), and was
specially applied to the Messiah, cf. Jn 1° etc., Eph
54 (see Edersheim, Life and Times, ii. 100). For
ἀνατολὴ ἐξ ὕψους in Lk 178 Vulg. has oriens ex alto.
ἜΣ ὕψους, ‘from on high,’ presents some difliculty,
as dawn does not come from on high; perhaps the
ref. to a bright shining star is more in keeping
(Meyer); ‘He is the Daystar from on high, bring-
ing anew morning to those who sit in the darkness
and death-shadows of the world’ (Liddon, Lamp.
Lect.8 p. 248). Godet would connect these words
with ἐπισκέψεται (‘it is from the bosom of Divine
mercy that this star comes down, and it does not
rise upon humanity until after it has descended
and has been made man’), but this seems hardly
necessary; ἐξ ὕψους represents ‘from God,’ and
ἀνατολὴ ἐξ ὕψους is simply ‘ God’s Messiah’ (Dalman,
The Words of Jesus, pp. 223, 224).
A different translation is based on the fact that ἀνατολή in
LXX stands several times for My, a ‘ shoot’ or ‘ branch,’ one of
the prophetic names of the Messiah (Jer 23°, Zec 38 612; cf.
Jer 40[33]}!5 Theod.). So Edersheim: ‘Although almost all
modern authorities are against me, I cannot persuade myself
that the expression rendered ‘‘dayspring” is not here the
equivalent of the Heb. nDxs Branch’ (op. cit. i. 158n.). But it
Seems a fatal objection that none of the other expressions in
the passage correspond (‘to shine upon’ ἐτιφῶναι, ‘to guide’
zarsviives); and ἐξ ὄψου; causes much greater difficulty (cf. Is
111). Bleek wishes to combine the two meanings by supposing
a play of words on the sprouting branch and the rising star ;
no Hebrew word will bear the double meaning, but LXX comes
near identifying this Messianic name with the appearance of
light when it renders Is 42(‘in that day shall the branch(n3) of
the Lord be beautiful and glorious’) by ἐτιλάμεψ ει ὁ θεὸς ἐν βουλῇ
μετὰ δόξης. If the source of Lk. be Aramaic, ἀνατολή may stand
for some other word; cf. its use for 733 ‘ brightness’ (Is 6019),
and in one MS, Qms, for ΠῚ] ‘rising’ (Is 60%}. See the Comm. of
Godet and Plummer, in Joc. W. H. DuNDAS.
DEAD, THE
425
DEAD, THE (οἱ vexpoi).—41. The reverence and
regard due from the living to the dead, according
to the ideas which the Jews shared with other
nations, are clearly illustrated in the Gospels. All
honour is paid to the corpse in preparation for
burial: it is anointed with spices and unguents
(Mk 16!, Lk 23° Jn 19°; cf. what Jesus says in
Mk 145), and wrapped in fitting cerements (Mk
15* ete.). Reverent burial is given, the funeral
train following the body borne uncoffined upon a
bier (Lk 715), The omission of any mention of
burial in the case of Lazarus in the parable (Lk
1033), as contrasted with the case of the rich man,
who ‘had a funeral,’ bespeaks a poor abject. The
dead are bewailed by kinsfolk (Jn 11°"), by
sympathetic neighbours, and by hired mourners
(Mk 5°85, Mt 959). Jesus in the noteworthy saying
in Lk 9° (=Mt 8*), ‘Let the dead bury their
dead,’ overrides a chief charge on filial affection,
the burial of a father, as He emphasizes the para-
mount claims of discipleship. Such observances
are not only the expression of natural grief; they
involve belief in the continued existence of the
dead, as is also the case with other forms of duty
to the dead such as are insisted on in the Talmud.
ii.g. their wishes are to be respected and fulfilled
(Git. 140), they are free from all obligation (Shab.
30a), it is unlawful to speak evil of them (Berakh.
19a)—cef. the familiar proverb, De mortwis nil nist
bonumn.
2. The teaching of Jcsus concerning the dead.—
Whatever may be gathered from the words of
Jesus touching the state of the dead is to be
regarded in the light of the current Jewish beliefs
of His day, to see how far He sanctions such
beliefs, and in what respects He corrects and
modifies them. The tenets of the Sadducees,
denying the resurrection, future retribution, and
indeed any continuance of personal being after
death, constituted a sectarian opinion from the
standpoint of later Judaism. The Sadducees, it is
true, seemed to adhere to the older teaching of the
OT, wherein for the most part nothing is allowed
concerning the dead (réph@im) but a thin, shadowy
existence in Sheol. They were, however, influenced
in this respect by Hellenism and their affectation
of culture rather than by zeal for the earlier Jewish
faith (Schiirer, H/JP τι. i. 38f.). The common
belief, illustrated in the later hterature of Judaism,
was virtually that of the Pharisees, who held that
the soul is imperishable, that rewards and punish-
ments follow this life under the earth (ef. Lat.
infert), that for the wicked there is an eternal im-
prisonment, but for the righteous a resurrection to
eternal life (Jos. BJ ii. 8; Ané. xvili. 1). This
resurrection is connected with the glory of the
Messianic kingdom.
Jesus definitely repudiates the Sadducean view
(Mk 12*4-*7), and endorses, as to its substance, that
of the Pharisees. (lor a different view, cf. E.
White, Life in Christ, ch. 16). In His dealing
with the Sadducees and their catch-question on
this subject (Mk 12!**7 and parallels), He teaches
that the dead are really alive and in a state of
consciousness. So also in the parable of the Rich
Man and Lazarus (Lk 161*-), with a sharp distine-
tion between experiences of misery and bliss as
entered upon by souls after death. This parable
also favours the belief in the soul’s direct and
immediate entrance upon this new conscious state,
as do our Lord’s words in Lk 23 ‘To-day shalt
thou be with me in paradise.’ We are not,
however, to allow a literal interpretation of His
language in this connexion to dominate our appre-
ciation of what the Gospels afford as regards belief
concerning the state of the dead. The expression
‘ Abraham’s bosom,’ ¢.g., is of no dogmatic value to
us, though suitable and significant to the men of
426
DEAD, THE
our Lord’s day. Similarly with the other pictorial
elements ; they are only of the same order as the
imagery with which other faiths have invested
ideas concerning the hereafter. The matter of
abiding importance here is the teaching that at
death a judgment already takes effect, the portion
of the soul in the after life being determined with
direct reference to the life lived in the present
world, with results that may be in startling con-
trast to the estimates of a man and his condition
formed by his fellow-men here. This conception
seems to find expression in a symbol found on early
Christian tombs in Phrygia, viz. an open book or
set of tabelle, which Ramsay explains as ‘ indicat-
ing death and the judgment of God after death;
the tablets are open to indicate that the process of
judgement has begun’ (see art. in Lxpositor, March
1905, p. 223).
Such a representation of the condition of the
dead in Hades is not, however, to be understood
as excluding a remoter crisis in the soui’s history,
such as is suggested by the prominent NT concep-
tion of ‘the judgment’ and ‘the day of judgment.’
As Weiss says, the retribution thus set forth as
befalling a soul in Hades ‘does not exclude an
ultimate decision as to its final fate’ (Theol. of
NT’, i. p. 156 note, Eng. tr.). ‘Abraham’s bosom’
or ‘ Paradise,’ moreover, does not denote a final
and ‘perfect consummation and bliss,’ in the eschia-
tological views of the Jews in the time of Christ.
The resurrection lies beyond. Jesus in His en-
counter with the Sadducees uses the language of
His time, and speaks of the résurrection as a
transition and crisis aavaiting the dead (Mk 1955,
Mt 22°), The wording of the Lukan account
(20) is particularly noticeable—oi δὲ καταξιωθέντες
τοῦ αἰῶνος ἐκείνου τυχεῖν K. τῆς ἀναστάσεως τῆς ἐκ
νεκρῶν. There is an ‘age to come’ (rather than
world,’ see Dalman, Worte Jesu, Eng. tr. p. 153),
which is to be attained by those that shall have
been deemed worthy of it, an age evidently to be
thought of as ushered in by the resurrection from
among the dead. That age (=‘the kingdom’
elsewhere), embodying the highest hopes of the
Jews for the hereafter, answers to all the highest
conceptions as to human destiny found amongst
people of other faiths. And evidently it is not
immediately attained at death, according to the
language of Jesus. If, then, an accumulation of
weighty considerations seems to some to support
the doctrine of an intermediate state for those who
have passed from this life—a doctrine already
familiar to the Jews in our Lord’s time (see Sal-
mond, Chr. Doct. of Immortality, p. 345f.)—the
teaching of the Gospels offers no definite opposi-
tion. <A state, ¢.c., not simply of vague gloom or
attenuated being, but of vivid consciousness ; for
the blessed dead ‘a condition in fellowship with
God, containing in itself the germ of an everlasting
heavenly life towards which it tends’ (Wendt, Lehre
Jesu, Eng. tr. i. p. 223), with progress and growth
from more to more; and in the case of others, a
state affording room for the hope that there a
solution is to be found for a multitude of otherwise
inscrutable life problems in regard to man’s salva-
tion. Such comfortable words as Jn 143:3 1734 do
not conflict with this conception as regards the
state of the blessed dead, and they are to be
thought of as being ‘with Christ’ in a manner
which is ‘very far better’ (Ph 1%) than what may
be known in the present life.
Salmond (op. cit. ch. 5), arguing on the whole against the
doctrine of an intermediate state, relies mainly on the fact that
no positive doctrine of this kind is found in Christ’s words, and
observes that towards this subject ‘His attitude is one of
significant reserve’; but this argumentum e silentio of itself
tells just as much one way as the other. Those who maintain
that death brings irrevocable doom to all and admits imme-
diately to full and final destiny, are hard pressed by manifold
DEAF AND DUMB
difficulties. What cxpedients they are driven to in order to
mitigate these are illustrated, ¢.g., in Randles’ After Death.
The author eagerly urges how much is possible in the way of
repentance and pardon even in articulo mortis: ‘After all
intercourse between the dying and their friends has ceased, a
saving work of God proceeds’; ‘repentance and faith, pardon
and sanctification, may proceed with speed and power such as
were never evinced in previous years’ (p. 250f.). Greatly to
the credit of his heart, in anxiously maintaining his position he
also advances considerations which lead, he thinks, to the con-
clusion that ‘the proportion of the finally lost to the saved will
be about as the proportion of the criminal part of England’s
population to all the rest’ (p. 244f.)! The consideration of the
solemn subject of final destiny lies beyond the scope of this
article.
3. Christ's figurative use of the term ‘dead.’?—
The use of the term as descriptive of a certain
spiritual condition, unperceiving, unresponsive, is
illustrated in the saying of Lk 9°, quoted above.
In Lk 15“ it occurs as tantamount to ‘lost.’ The
dead spoken of in Jn 57-*5, to whom the Son gives
eternal life, are so described in virtue of their con-
dition prior to their believing on Him.
Literatuns. —Artt. ‘Eschatology’ and ‘Resurrection’ in
Hastings’ DL; ‘Eschatology’ and ‘Dead’ in Encye. Bibl. ;
“Duty to the Dead’ in Jewish Eneye.; Schiirer, H/JP (as
quoted); Weiss, Bib. Theol. of NT, Eng. tr. in the relative $$;
Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, Eng. tr. in the relative δὲ ; Stevens,
Theol. of NT, p. 165; Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Lmmor-
tality; Drummond, The Jewish Messiah ; Stanton, The Jewish
and the Christian Messiah ; Luckock, After Death; Randles,
After Death; Beet, Last Things; White, Life in Christ.
᾿ J.S. CLEMENS.
DEAF AND DUMB.—41. Link between deafness
and dumbness.—(a) It appears impossible to sepa-
rate these two maladies of deafness and dumbness,
whether one approaches them from the standpoint
either of the scientist or of the student. The
consequence of the former disease is that the sense
of hearing is diminished or abolished ; the conse-
quence of the latter is that the power of articulat-
ing sounds is defective or impossible. There is,
indeed, no physiological connexion between the
maladies ; but the acute stage of either leaves the
patient now with a correspondent incapacity of
hearing, now with a correspondent incapacity for
speaking. The acutest form of these maladies is
seen when congenital; then the link is observed at
its closest: the maladies, so to speak, draw into
one, and the remedies which surgery or treatment,
and the artificial aids of hand, or lip, or sign
language can afford, are invariably applied as if
these maladies had some common source and a
unity of their own.
(ὁ) This conception of an inherent unity between
deafness and dumbness is curiously illustrated by
the Greek adjective with which this article is
chiefly concerned. κωῴφύς is derived from the root
kom, ἴ.6. that which is smitten, crushed, or blunted,
opposed to ὀξύς, ‘sharp,’ ‘keen.’ Thus κωφός is
used in Homer of a blunt weapon,* of the dumb
earth + [ep. Lat. bruta tellus], and, with a wonder-
ful picturesqueness, of the noiselessness of a wave
before it crashes upon the shingle.t It is thus
only by a slight metaphorical turn that the adjec-
tive stands to describe the impairment or loss of
powers of the mind or body; and so of vision, of
hearing, and articulating.
2. Lcferences in the Gospels.—In the Gospels
κωφός (the word is not found outside them in the
NT) is applied only to the two maladies under
discussion, ¢.¢c. to describe the dwarfed and blunted
powers of the deaf and dumb. Indeed, as it fur-
nishes a common description of both maladies, a
less careful student would be in danger, at least in
the chief characteristic passage (Mk 7*!-*7), of mis-
rendering, or rather misapplying, the adjective,
which plainly signifies ‘deaf.’ But later in the
same Gospel (955) κωφός probably means ‘dumb.’
This free transference of the adjective by the same
writer, as descriptive now of the one malady and
now of the other, is clearly not due to any scientific
OTT exis) 500: t 11. xxiv. 44. 2 11. xiv. 16.
intelligible to those around.
The other miracle, also recorded by St. Mark
g4"9), is upon one whose dumbness was linked
with demoniacal possession. An examination of
DEAF AND DUMB
knowledge of the Second Evangelist ; it was enough
for him that it connoted the crushing, maiming char-
acter of both diseases. It is curious to note that
even St. Luke the physician, in the three passages
in which the word occurs, uses κωφός in this double
application (1° 114 of dumbness, 7°2 of deafness).
St. Matthew again uses the expression indifferently
as applicable to deafness (11°) or dumbness (9**).
It is, of course, mainly on our Lord’s works of
healing that the interest of the question turns. A
glance will be sufficient at the striking passage in
the opening of St. Luke’s Gospel (15:3) in which
the announcement of the birth of the Baptist wa:
made to the aged Zacharias. It is significant to
observe that Zacharias was on this occasion the
victim not merely of lack of faith in the angel’s
message, but of real alarm at the vision. The
penalty for this lack of faith was temporary
speechlessness. Its infliction was indeed pro-
nounced by Gabriel, but it may well be supposed
that it was brought about by natural causes.
There are many instances in which sudden
emotion has brought on deafness or dumbness,
and, strangely enough, there are instances on
record in which a sudden emotion, like terror, has
led to the restoration of lost powers of this char-
acter. The medical faculty always regard hope-
fully patients who have become suddenly deaf or
dumb from these instantaneous causes, and it may
be assumed that neither Zacharias himself nor his
fricnds regarded the visitation as permanent, apart
from Gabriel’s consoling limitation of its conse-
quences,
Two miracles recorded by St. Mark have sug-
gestions about the deaf and dumb which are full of
interest, and to which only inadequate commentary
is possible within the space of this article. The
former is that wrought by the Lord, on the edge of
the Holy Land, upon an unnamed sufierer (Mk
771-37), He is described as deaf, and as having an
impediment in his speech. The strange term * here
employed (v.**), which does not occur elsewhere
in NT and is found only once in LXX (Is 35°), indi-
cates at once the closeness of link between the two
meladies which has been already emphasized, and
also declares that the man was not so dumb as he
was deaf. He spoke, but only with difficulty ; a
trial, no doubt, to others as to himself. In this
narrative, given by St. Mark with such extra-
ordinary vividness of detail,|—the taking aside,
the mysterious remedies applicd, the sigh, the word
spoken, not of magie but of power,t—in all these
we see the Divine fieure of tlie Son of Man as
traced by St. Mark, in His compassion for suffer-
ing humanity, in His teaching as significant by
action as by word, in His sublime confidence that
He had that to give, for which He looked not
in vain from heaven. St. Mark puts in simple,
unscientific terms the record of the cure. The
sufferer’s ears were opened, his tongue was no
longer a prisoner, speech came back orderly and
the passage shows how the case had_ baflled
Christ's disciples. The father of the possessed
felt that he had in the Great Teacher his final
resort. Our Lord’s question elicited the reply
that the malady, aggravated by demoniacal sug-
gestion, was congenital. The man’s dumbness
was of the acutest form. The narrative of the
ἢ μογιλάλος; there is no English equivalent. The French
word lalbutiant approaches its meaning closely.
t See present writer’s article in Expositor (v. iv. [1590] p.
380) on ‘ He took him aside.”
t The Aram. Ephphatha (v."4) applies not only to the man’s
hearing but to his speech; to the open ear, but also as by a
frequent Hebraism to the open lip.
DEATH 427
miracle is not out of line with the experience of
the medical faculty. It is not only that deafness
and dumbness are allied, but the patient at his
worst and unhappiest suffers some form of de-
mentia or idiocy. With the former instance, which
lacked the distressing epileptic symptoms, our
Lord dealt directly. In the latter He faecs an
evil, hostile power, ‘Thou speec!:lcss * and dumb
spirit, come out of him, and entcr no more into
him.’ The former cure was calmly, quietly
brought about. This was accompanicd by awful
convulsions. But the issue in both was the same,
neither physical defects nor demoniacal agency
resisted the word of pity and of power.
It is to be observed that none of our Lord’s
miracles excited such interest or won such ad-
miration as those wrought upon the deaf and
dumb. This would answer to common experience.
The restoration of sight to the blind, for it is none
other than this which special treatment in Germany
seems now and again to have brought about, and
of which one marvellous instance is known to the
present writer, would not cause such astonishment
as the recovery of a deaf or dumb friend. Blind-
ness does not interrupt personal relationship as
deafness and dumbness do, and, the moment hear-
ing and speech are recovered, the results and
consequences are communicable to others. It is
no wonder, therefore, that the astonishment of the
multitude passed into praise. Its verdict was,
‘He hath done all things well’ (Mk 7°’).
3. Spiritual applications of deafness and dumb-
ness.— The senses of which these human bodies of
ours stand possessed are so wondrous in their
character and operations, that one would expect
to find in Holy Scripture lessons drawn from
them of great spiritual import. And so it is.
The open eye, clear, candid, trustful, is a figure
of faith throughout both Testaments (Ps 11918 1211,
Pr 20", Mk 818, Jn 12, Ro 118). With equal force
the open ear is significant of obedience. Students
of the Psalter and of the Prophets will bear in
mind the denunciations poured, both for spiritual
deafness and dumbness, upon a people which re-
fused to listen to the voice of Jehovah, and which
was silent when the Divine Name and His praise
were concerned (Ps 81" ete., Is 6!°). On the other
hand, again, through both Testaments, from
Samuel to St John the Divine, a commendation
and blessing has ever attended the ear willing to
receive, the lips open to prayer and to praise. It
is in and through the combination of these that
the message of the Gospel can be disseminated (Ro
10-17), And so of all the spiritual gifts, most
dear to Apostolic men was παρρησία (Eph 67),
born of the courage of conviction, and marking a
mind and temper capable of standing at the last
before the Son of Man. B. WHITEroonp.
DEATH.—It belongs to the profoundly spiritual
character of our Lerd’s thinking that He says com-
paratively little on the subject of physical death.
His attitude towards it is indicated in the words,
‘She is not dead but slecpeth’ (Mt 9°=Mk δ,
Lk 8°). He recognized that man’s true being was
something apart from the mere bodily existence,
and death thus resolved itself into a natural inci-
dent, analogous to sleep, which broke the con-
tinuity of life only in seeming. The idea is
presented more definitely in the caarge to the
disciples, ‘Fear not them that kill the body, and
after that have no more that they can do,’ ete.
(Lk 124=Mt 10%), where it is expressly declared
that life resides in the soul, over which God alone
has power. The accident of death, of the separa-
tion of the soul from its material body, can make
little difference to the essential man.
* The rarer word ἄλαλον is used in yy. 17. 29,
498
DEATH
The three recorded miracles of raising from the
dead are, in the last resort, concrete illustrations
of this side of our Lord’s teaching. The Johannine
account of the raising of Lazarus is indeed bound
up with a more complex theological doctrine ; but
the Synoptic miracles, in so far as they are more
than works of compassion or exhibitions of Divine
power, are indicative of the transient nature of
death. Jesus awakens the daughter of Jairus and
the youth of Nain as if from ordinary sleep. The
life which to outward appearance had ceased, had
only been withdrawn from the body, and could be
reunited with it at the Divine word.
Attempts have been made to connect these
miracles and the whole conception of death as
sleep, with the contemporary Jewish belief that
for three days the soul still lingered in the neigh-
bourhood of the dead body. The earliest stage of
death might therefore be regarded as a condition
of trance or slumber from which the spirit could
yet be recalled. It is in view, probably, of this
belief that St. John emphasizes the ‘four days’
that had elapsed since the death of Lazarus, whose
soul must thus have finally departed from his body
when Jesus revived him. But we have no indica-
tion that our Lord Himself took any account of
the popular superstition, much less that He was
influenced by it. His conception of death as a
passing sleep was derived solely from His certainty
that man, being a child of God, was destined to an
immortal life. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob cannot
be permanently dead, for God is not the God of
the dead but of the living (Mt 22°!=Mk 12%), In
virtue of their relation to God they must have
passed into a more perfect life through apparent
death.
The traditional view of death as something evil
and unnatural had therefore no place in the
thought of Jesus. He nowhere suggests the idea
which St. Paul took over from the OT and elabor-
ated in his theology, that death is the punishment
of sin. This prevailing Jewish belief is indeed ex-
pressly contradicted in the words concerning the
‘slaughtered Galileans and the cighteen on whom
the tower of Siloam fell (Lk 1314). Jesus there
insists that death, even when it comes prema-
turely and violently, is not to be regarded as a
Divine judgment. Sin is punished, not by physical
death in this world, but by a spiritual death here-
after. This is doubtless the true interpretation of
the warning, ‘Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise
perish.’ Destruction is in store for a/l sinners;
and the punishment cannot therefore consist in
death by violence, which falls on few. Much less
can it consist in natural death, from which the
“good can escape no more than the wicked.
While thus regarding death as nothing but one
of the incidents in man’s earthly existence, our
Lord anticipates a time when it will be done away.
In the perfected Messianic kingdom ‘they cannot
die any more’ (Lk 20%), Those who survive until
the Son of man returns in glory ‘will not taste of
death’ (Mt 1038), since they will have entered on
the new age in which it is abolished. Even in such
passages, however, it is not suggested that death
is anevil. The idea is rather that it forms part of
a lower, imperfect order of things, and that this
will give place entirely to a higher. Those who
inherit the kingdom cannot die, ‘ because they
are equal unto the angels’ (Lk 20°), and have so
entered on another condition, governed by different
laws. The cessation of death is conjoined with
that of marriage (vv.% 8), Ag the marriage rela-
tion is natural and necessary to man’s earthly
state, but has no place in the life of higher spirits,
so with death.
Jesus, it is thus evident, has broken away from
the Jewish conception, according to which the
DEATH
death of the body possessed a religious significanee
as the effect of sin. His own idea of its spiritual
import is of an altogether different nature, and can
be gathered with sutlicient clearness from certain
explicit sayings. (1) The willingness to endure
death for His sake is the supreme test of faith (ef.
‘Can ye drink of the cup that I shall drink of?’ ete.
[Alt 202=Mk 10%]; ‘If a man hate not... his
own life also,’ ete. [Lk 14°]). (2) Death is the fixed
limit appointed by God to all earthly pleasures
and activities. The thought of it ought therefore
to guard us against over-anxiety about the things
of this world, and to keep us always watehful, and
mindful of the true issues of life (‘This night thy
soul shall be required of thee’ [Lk 12°]; parable
of Rich Man and Lazarus [Lk 16?°"-]). (3) Above
all, death marks the beginning of the true and
eternal life with God. This higher life can be
obtained only by sacrificing the lower, and sur-
rendering it altogether, if need be, at the call of
Christ (‘He that loseth his life for my sake shall
find it’ [Mt 10°°=16%, Mk 885, Lk 924):
In several Synoptic passages Jesus speaks of a
death which is spiritual rather than physical. He
recognizes that the mass of men are in a condition
of moral apathy and estrangement from God, and
out of this ‘death’ He seeks to deliver them. His
message to John the Baptist, ‘The dead are raised
up’ (Mt 115=Lk 733), would seem, in the light of
the context, to bear this reference, as also the
charge to the disciples, ‘ Raise the dead’ (Mt 108).
The same thought is expressed more unmistakably
in the saying, ‘Let the dead bury their dead’ (Mt
87!— Lk 9°°), and in the words of the parable, ‘This
my son was dead and is alive again’ (Lk 1652.
Such allusions are not to be explained as simply
figurative. As ‘life,’ to the mind of Jesus, consists
in moral obedience and communion with God, so
in the opposite condition He perceives the true
death. It involves that ‘destruction both of soul
and body’ which is far more to be feared than .
mere bodily death.
The view represented by the Fourth Gospel
gives a further development to this aspect of our
Lord’s teaching. Death as conceived by St. John
is something wholly spiritual. The idea is en-
forced in its full extent that physical death is only
a ‘taking rest in sleep,’ and in no wise afiects the
real life (Jn 115 1:1. Lazarus, although he has
lain four days in the tomb, has never truly died ;
for ‘he that believeth in me, when he is dead, con-
tinues to live’ (11*-**). The miracle by which he
is ‘awakened out of sleep’ is meant to show forth,
under the forms of sense, the inward and spiritual
work of Jesus. He is ‘the resurrection and the
life.” He has come to raise men out of the state of
death in which they find themselves, and to make
them inheritors, even now, of the life of God.
To understand the Evangelist’s conception, we
have to remember that here as elsewhere he
converts into present reality what is future and
apocalyptic in the Synoptic teaching. Jesus had
spoken of life as a reward laid up in ‘the world to
come,’ and had contrasted it with the ‘casting
out’ or ‘destruction’ (ἀπώλεια) which is reserved
for the wicked. These ideas reappear in the
Fourth Gospel, divested of their pictorial, eschato-
logical form. Life is a spiritual possession here
and now, and has its counterpart in ‘death,’ which
is likewise realized in the present world. St. John,
indeed, contemplates a future in which the life,
and by implication the death, will become com-
plete and final (6° +4); but they will continue
the same in essence as they already are on earth.
Death is thus regarded not as a single incident
but as a condition, in which the soul remains until,
through the power of Christ, it passes into the
opposite condition of life. It is not, however, a
DEATH OF CHRIST
DEATH OF CHRIST 429
state of moral apathy and disobedience, or at
least does not primarily bear this ethical character.
Life, in the view of St. John, is the absolute,
Divine life, in which man, as a creature of earth,
does not participate (see LIFE). His natural state
is one of ‘death,’ not because of his moral sinful-
ness, but because he belongs to a Jower world, and
the life he possesses is therefore relative and un-
real. It is life only in a physical sense, and is
more properly described as ‘death.’ The work of
Christ is to deliver men from the state of priva-
tion in which they are involved by their carthly
nature (3°), As the Word made flesh, He com-
municates to them His own higher essence, and
makes possible for them the mysterious transition
“from death unto life’ (5**).
In this Johannine doctrine Greek-philosophical
ideas, transmitted through Philo, have blended
with the original teaching of Jesus as recorded in
the Synoptics. The simple ethical distinction has
become a distinction of two kinds of being,—
earthly and spiritual, phenomenal and real. Jesus
‘raises the dead’ in the sense that He effects a
miraculous change in the very constitution of man’s
nature. At the same time the ethical idea, while
not directly emphasized, is everywhere implied.
It is assumed that the state of exclusion from the
true life is also a state of moral darkness, into
which men have fallen ‘because their deeds are
evil’ (315). The ‘freedom’ which Jesus promises is
described in one passage (in which, however, the
borrowed Pauline ideas are imperfectly assimilated)
as freedom from sin (δ5 5). In the great verse,
‘God so loved the world,’ ete. (316), the ethical
conception almost completely overpowers the theo-
logical. Men were ‘perishing’ through their
estrangement from God, and from this death God
sought to deliver them by His love revealed in
Christ.
For the teaching of Jesus in regard to the
significance of His own death see the following
article.
Litrrature.—Cremer, Lex. 8.0. θώνατος: ; Titius, Die neutest.
Lehre von der Seligkeit (1895-1900), esp. i. 57-87, iii. 17-31;
Fries, ‘Jesu Vorstellungen von der Auferstehung der Toten,’
ZNTW (Dee. 1900); Schrenck, Die johanneische Ansch. vom
Leben (1898). See also the literature mentioned in art. Lire.
E. F. Scort.
DEATH OF CHRIST.—I. IN THE GOSPELS.—
The aim of the present article is to examine the
place of the death of Christ in the moral order
of the world. What is the moral order of the
world? The question may be answered as follows :
—The will and purpose of God are in the way
of coming to realization in the individual and
social life and destiny of humanity. They are still
very far from having attained to universal realiza-
tion, but they are destined to reach it in the per-
fected kingdom of God. This is what is here
understood as the moral order of the world. It
began to exist and to be evolved on the earth
with man’s appearance as a being with a moral
nature and created for a moral destiny. Its evolu-
tion is still very incomplete, but it is certainly
though slowly making for a predestined end in
which*all men in Christ shall be morally perfect as
God is; and in the moral relations of God to men,
and of men to God and to one another, an order of
perfect moral unity and universality shall reign
for ever.
In this order of things, then, and its evolution,
the death of Christ occupies a place of the highest
importance and value. It is only from the point
of view of this moral order of things and its evolu-
tion that the essential merits of His death can be
properly understood. A consideration of it from
the same point of view is called for by the methods
of modern thought and inquiry. And it is only
thus that the cultured Christian conscience can
find true, adequate, abiding moral satisfaction.
But it is necessary, in order to prevent confusion
of ideas, to mark the important distinction that
exists in the nature of things as they now are in
man’s moral history, between the moral order of
the world and the moral course of the world. The
moral order of the world as just defined is only one
of the constituent factors of the world’s moral
course. Besides it there are two more. There is,
on the one hand, the factor which consists of all
those facts or phenomena in the individual and
social life and history of mankind which fall under
the designation of sin or moral evil; and, on the
other, the moral government of God, which pre-
sides immanently, persistently, and universally
over the relations between sin and the moral ordcr
of things or the order of righteousness. These three
factors constitute that actual moral course that
the world is ever following ; and the predestined
end of their relation to one another will be realized
in the complete and eternal victory and triumph of
righteousness over sin, through the unerring and
all-sufficient administrative judgments of God’s
moral government of the world (Mt 13445, 1 Co
15-28). It is the moral course of the world as so
understood that explains the nature and methods
of the historical revelation, contained in the Bible,
of God’s will and purpose in their relation to man’s
moral life and destiny. The course of the world
as so understood occupied a determinative place in
our Lord’s conceptions of man’s moral life and
destiny (see ProGreEss). And it was from the
point of view of Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment
that He contemplated the fullest and profoundest
significance of His obedience unto death. It was
on the place of His death in the moral order of the
world, and as therein related to man’s sin and God’s
governmental judgment, that He depended for the
victory and triumph of Righteousness over Sin in
the dispensation of the Spirit (Jn 177). From the
point of view here raised His death may be con-
sidered in various aspects.
1. He was put to death on the Cross. How did
this happen? What were His leading thoughts
about it as so viewed? He lived and died without
sin. He fulfilled all righteousness in the course of
His obedience unto death, freely and perfectly
uniting Himself and all the activities of His will
and life with the will and purpose of God, and
with Him His Father was well pleased. This
means that although He appeared and lived and
died in the moral course of the world, He was not
of the world, had absolutely no fellowship with it
in so far as it was under the domination of sin.
He loved sinners in their character as moral beings
with perfect love. But sin He hated with perfect
hatred ; and He lived and died to save men and
the moral course of the world from it. His life of
perfect union with His Father’s will and purpose
in all things implied not only that He lived en-
tirely on the side and in the interests of the moral
order of the world, but also that the latter found in
Him, for the first time on earth, the One Individual
moral Being in whom it had secured its perfect
form of manifest realization, in so far as this was
possible in one life in human form. It was this
tact, on the one hand, and the hatred of the men
over whom the world’s sin had gained complete
domination on the other, that determined His way
to His destiny on Calvary. This conjunction of
righteousness and sin, and their creative influence
on His earthly history and experience, affected
Him in three ways, each of which should have a
regulative effect on every one’s thoughts as to the
meaning and value of His death.
(1) He regarded the existence of the sin that
arose and developed in increasing antagonism
430 DEATH OF CHRIST
against Himself and His mission, in the course
of His ministry, as a thing that ought not to be.
Saying after saying of His, bearing on this point,
seems almost to convey the impression that He
must have regarded this sinful and guilty opposi-
tion, without which He would not have heen put
to death, as not required by the interests and
objects of the moral task which He had come into
the world to accomplish (Mt 23%-%, Lk 13% 2373-27,
Jn 729 971-59 1517-27 1010. 11). (2) Then, again, His
own words show that the inward ‘moral’ struggles
and agonies of His life arose out of the prospect
and contemplation of the development of the mani-
festations of the world’s sin and unbelief against
Him and against His claim to be entirely identified
with His Father’s will and purpose in all His
words and deeds. His experience of inward crush-
ing sorrow, arising from the cause alluded to,
reached its culmination in the Garden of Gethse-
mane. But before the hour which He spent there
in anguish and bloody sweat, He had foretastes of
the terrible bitterness of the Passion which He
knew was awaiting Him as His destiny (Mt 2053
2636-45, Jn 1277). (3) In spite of these two facts as
to our Lord’s thought and experience in connexion
with His death, He always cherished perfectly
optimistie confidence and hope as to the issues of
the latter. Through the discipline of experience
and through prayer He became strong enough
to be obedient even unto death. He had perfect
faith in His Father as the Lord of heaven and
earth. He knew that all the future interests and
ol jects of His mission and work on earth were
absolutely safe in His hands. He knew before He
died that His death could not hinder, but would be
made to further these objects and interests (Jn
1952. 95 16711), and the first word He spoke about
His death after He had risen from the dead was,
‘Ought not Christ to have suffered these things,
and to enter into his glory?’ (Lk 2450),
2. The question now arises as to the nature,
meaning, and value of our Lord’s unique achieve-
ment on earth, which reached its perfect accom-
plishment in His death on the cross. This
achievement from beginning to end was made by
Him in His position as internally related to the
moral order of the world, and through it to the
world in its character, aspirations, and activitics
as under the domination of sm. His achievement,
as so viewed, consisted in the perfect realization
of His Father’s will and purpose in His unique
moral Individuality, and in all the manifestations
of the latter in His relations with God and with
men. It is to be cbserved, then, for one thing of
highest importance, that this achievement of His,
in its nature, meaning, and value, was purely,
entirely, exclusively moral. There are two con-
siderations which place this fact in the region of
absolute certainty.
In the first place, the fact has its validity in the
established nature of the moral order of the world
and in Christ’s own place in this order. This is an
order of things which has its foundations in the
moral nature of God; in the moral nature of man
as made in the image of God as a Moral Being;
in the fact and in the nature of the moral relations
between God and men and between man and man ;
and also in the fact that Christ as the Son of God
came into the world to qualify Himsclf for oceupy-
ing His momentous position of mediation within
the sphere of the moral relations of God to men
and of men to God. These are all indisputable
facts, and they make it certain that the essential
xature and objects of our Lord’s earthly achieve-
ment, which culminated in the manner in which
He met His death on the cross, were absolutely
and exclusively moral. That it was so in our
Lord’s own way of conceiving of the nature, mean-
DEATH OF CHRIST
ing, and value of His life of obedience unto death,
is manifest from His own words, ¢.g., in Jn 1671.
But, secondly, the same conclusion follows from
His attitude of resistance to the whole system of
legalism which He found Judaism had developed
and set up, as an order of fixed and unchangeable
conditions, in the relations between Ged and men
— between Him and them as individuals, and
between Him and the Jewish nation at large as
His own peculiar covenant people. The eficct of
this system, as being both theoretically and ad-
ministratively legal, was conceived and opposed by
our Lord as subversive of that moral order of
things in which inward, direct, universal, and
eternal relations are established between God and
men (Mk 7}-**). And it is a fact written broadly
and deeply in all the Gospels, that if there was any-
thing that He ever attempted more manifestl;,
strenuously, uncompromisingly, and more pcr-
sistently than another, it was this, viz.: to ovcr-
throw completely and for ever the entire order of
ideas which rested upon the stupendous error that
the direct relations between God and men are legal,
that they are founded on legal conditions, that
they are to be maintained, administered, and
mediated by legal means, and that, therefore,
they are not inward but external (Mt 5-7. 15+? 23,
11: 1952 Trae 0. 1, Stas Beh ΟΡ Ὁ. ΠΟ) What eben
does His attitude of unreserved and bold antago-
nism to the legal system of Judaism imply in the
point of view here considered? (1) It implics that
in His position in the moral order of the world He
stood on the eternal fact and truth that the direct
relations between God as a Moral Being and men
as moral beings are inward and therefore essenti-
ally moral. (2) It implies, again, that He stood
upon the predestined fact and truth that His
position and work of mediation within the domain
of these relations were also essentially moral and
therefore anti-legal.
3. But, further, it follows from the nature of
our Lord’s earthly task that the achievement of it
in the manner in which He lived and dicd was a
moral wnity. His personality or moral individu-
ality was a unity. His will was a moral unity,
and the entire series of the manifold inward and
outward free moral activities of His life until His
last moment on the cross, were related to one
another as a perfectly consistent order of moral
unity. He came into the world, as He Himself
always represented, on onc entirely homogeneous
moral undertaking; and when this undertaking
was fulfilled, He spoke of it in terms which show
that He regarded the finished task as one homo-
goncous moral result (Jn 174 19°5). In other words,
our Lord’s obedience in His manner of living and
dying followed the law of moral continuity. His
obedience unto death was regulated, on His part,
by one determinative moral principle; but there
was diversity of incidental moral significance and
value in the various positions in which His morsl
vocation summoned Him to act, and to be faithful
and loyal to this principle.
(1) What was the principle which constituted
the perfect moral unity of His obedience unto
death? It was perfect love, manifesting itself in
perfect self-sacrifice and service, and, in doing this,
ever paying perfectly wise and loyal regard to the
moral requirements of human life and destiny
on the one hand, and to the moral requirements
of God’s holy will and purpose in relation to those
human requirements on the other (Mt 2078 26°, Mk
TKO, Jn 7017. 18 131-.1 318-21 451 511-44 239. 50. 54. δῦ 171-7
25.26) yom such sayings of our Lord’s as are here
referred to, it is obvious that the principle which
regulated all the moral activities of His life was,
in effect, of the nature and compass just defined.
Thore are no words of His reported in any of the
DEATH OF CHRIST
Gospels which justify the making of any essential
distinction between the nature of His obedience
or moral achievement during the time of the
Passion, and the nature of it prior to the hour
when He allowed Himself to fall into the power of
His enemies. The period of His Passion was indeed
unique in two things as regards His own part in
it. From the moment that He began to pray in
Gethsemane till the moment when He said ‘It is
finished,’ on the cross, He endured unspeakable
suffering, physical and moral, altogether un-
paralleled in His antecedent experience. Again,
it was precisely during this period of His extremest
suffering that all His powers of moral activity
were subjected to their severest strain, and that
they, under this strain, reached the highest pos-
sible point of their morally victorious, triumphant
achievement. But these two facts, so distinctive
of His Passion, made no real breach in the moral
continuity and unity of the moral achievement of
His life as a whole. His moral suffering did not
begin with the last tragic hours of His life. There
was an element of moral sufiering in the com-
passion with which He was so often moved. He
had looked forward to His predestined ‘hour’ ;
and His words, ‘I have a baptism to be baptized
with; and how am 1 straitened till it be accom-
plished !’ (Lk 12°), suggest that, in anticipation of
His cross, He may have spent many an hour in
painful moral wrestling, in view of His destiny,
Fine before His anticipations began actually to be
realized. In any case, it may be taken as certain
that there was no form of inward moral activity
called forth in Him during the hours of His
Passion, which had not been evoked many times
over in previous situations of His life. But on the
cross these moral activities of His, in the superla-
tive degree of their strenuousness and in the tran-
scendent magnitude of their victory over sin and
temptation, celipsed all the moral achievements of
His past life. And yet in reality He died, in the
sense of all that was essentially moral, as He had
lived. He lived and died determined by the same
moral principle, in the same spirit of love and self-
sacrifice and service, and in the same spirit of per-
fectly wise and loyal regard to all the demands of
God’s will and purpose on Him, and to all the
demands on Him of the world’s moral needs.
This view of the moral unity of the achievement
of Christ’s earthly activities is the truth as it
was in His own thought. His thought was this:
‘Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay
down my life (ἐγὼ τίθημι τὴν ψυχήν μου), that 1 might
take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I
lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it
down, and I have power to take it again. This
commanament have I received of my Father’ (Jn
1017- -§), Now there is absolutely nothing in these
words to justify any theologian in limiting the
application of them to what our Lord did during
the hours of His Passion. What He did then,
in the exercise of His powers of moral activity, was
to submit, in a way perfectly pleasing to God,
to the sort of death predestined for Him. Again,
for Him who was in God, and who had God in
Him, ‘it was not death to die.’ He never was
more alive, in the highest and deepest sense of the
word as applied to a perfect moral being, than in
the very moment on the cross when He cried with
a loud voice, saying, ‘Father, into thy hands I
commend my spirit’ (Lk 234°). He did indeed lay
down His life in submitting to His death, which
He indisputably contemplated in the same way as
St. Peter did in the words, ‘Him... ye have
taken, and by wicked hands have erucified and
slain’ (Ac 275, cf. Mt 1031, Jn 719 887). But how did
it come to pass that He was able to lay down His
life in dying, doing so in such a manner that His
DEATH OF CHRIST 431
Father loved Him in the doing of it and for the
doing of it? It so came to pass because He had
never done anything else but lay down His life
(ψυχή) in living. All the moral powers of holy
love, self-sacrilice, and service that were individ-
ualized in Him as the incarnate Son of Ged and
man’s Redeemer,—these powers, which were //is
life, He laid down, consecrated, employed, every
moment and in every situation of His life of free
activity, in order perfectly to fulfil His life’s voca-
tion as determined for Him by His Father’s will
and purpose, and by the moral necessities of the
world which He had come to save. And it was
because He did all this in living that He was able
so successfully and triumphantly to do it all in
dying. And the efiect of this truth is neither to
dim the moral splendour nor to detract from the
moral value of our Lord’s death, but rather to
reveal how great was the moral splendour and
value of all the activities, words, and deeds of
His life.
(2) But if His life prepared Him for dying, His
death on the cross raised the moral splendour and
value of His whole life to its highest powers of
revelation and efiect in the human soul and in the
moral history of the world. The supreme distine-
tion of the cross, as our Lord Himself understood
it and trusted and hoped in it, as related to man’s
redemption, was the unique, stupendous, tragic con-
junction of sin and righteousness and judgment, a
moral tragedy of which the cross was but the out-
ward visible symbol. The complex event for which
the cross stands is the most momentous and the
most creative moral event in the history of the
world’s moral course. In the tragie moral truth
of this event God and Christ and man, God’s
righteousness and love in Christ, man’s sin and
salvation, and eternal judgment, were and are all
directly coneerned in the highest degree. The fact
of Christ’s death is thus pregnant with all the
inexhaustible powers necessary for the moral re-
generation of the individual human soul and of the
humanrace. Out of this fact springs the inspiration
necessary to illuminate the human conscience with
divinest moral ideas, and to make it live in the
divinest power of moral sentiment. And it is in
this internal moral renewal and its manifestations
that the soul finds its true redemption and its
highest life; so Christ Himself evidently thought
(ImilGe"):
4, It now remains to note, from the standpoint
of the moral order of the world, some features of
our Lord’s place and work therein, as the Mediator
between God and men. His work of mediation in
the flesh ended with His death on the cross, and it
was preliminary to His mediation in the Spirit (Jn
14!>-*8 167), His mediation in-the Spirit, which
will be ecntinued until the Kingdom of God is per-
fected, is dependent for its existence and efficiency
on the moral and historical conditions provided in
His earthly life of obedience unto death, and in
the revelation of sin, righteousness, and judgment
in which the completion of His work in the flesh
issued. What, then, are the nature, the objects,
and the methods of our Lord’s mediation ?
(1) Its general object is to save individuals from
their sin by reconciling them to God, to perfect
them as individuals in their moral nature and life,
and to unite all who are thus saved in a life of
eternal oneness with God, and with one another in
Him.—(2) The sphere within which the mediation
of Christ is carried on with a view to that end is
that of the inward and immediate moral relations of
God as a moral Being to men, and of men as moral
beings to God. It was so even during the time of
His earthly life and ministry in so far as His media-
tion took real saving effect in the moral nature
and life of any of His disciples. It is so still in
432
DEATH OF CHRIST
the current dispensation of the Spirit by whose
agency His mediation is brought to saving effect
in souls. All the methods of the Spirit’s work and
all the moral effects that result from it imply the
existence of internal, direct, living, moral relations
between the soul and God in Christ.—(3) The
mediation of Christ, as brought to effect by the
Spirit’s work, is in every case a relation of His
mediation to the individual. For the Spirit can-
not work in any number of individuals as a body
unless in so far as He works in the moral nature
and life of each. —(4) The mediation of Christ
operates through the Spirit’s agency by means of
moral illumination and power—and moral illumina-
tion is always moral power.—(5) The moral means
in question consist in the revelation of the holy
gracious love or righteousness of God as realized
by Christ, and manifested in His life and death of
perfect self-sacrifice for the world’s salvation. The
best name for all this is ‘ grace ’—the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ, or the grace of God in Christ,
which was and is no other thing than the sum of
the living activities of God as holy love, evoked by
men’s need of salvation from sin—men as moral
beings. And this grace of God in Christ is moral.
It is the highest and grandest form of the self-
manifestation of God as a perfect moral Being.—
(6) Hence it is only by means of appropriate moral
conditions, existing in the individual’s own moral
nature and inner life, that he can enter into and
abide in a saying relation to the grace of God
as mediated by Christ through the work of His
Spirit. And these internal moral conditions are
repentance, faith, and the spirit of free and loyal
obedience to Christ or to God, all of which are
essentially related to one another, in every one of
which the whole of the individual’s moral nature
comes to forms of manifestation in harmony with
the will of God, and all together have the effect
of uniting the individual directly and inwardly
with God in Christ.—(7) This internal, immediate
union of the individual with Christ, and therefore
with God, is the true way of salvation and life for
man (Jn 14°). This secures not only forgiveness,
but every moral or spiritual blessing that the indi-
vidual needs for this world and the next, every
blessing that God has to give or that it is possible
for Him to bestow in Christ and through the work
of His Spirit in the heart. The inward, direct
union of the individual with Christ through re-
pentance, faith, and the spirit of obedience, means
that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
has made him free from the law of sin and death
(Ro 8'4), This law of the Spirit of life in Christ is
the law of eternal rightcousness. Thus the moral
regeneration of the individual through his entrance
into a state of union with Christ, and with God in
Him, is a new life, which carries in it the whole
principle of eternal righteousness; and his union
with Christ, his dependence on Christ, his fellow-
ship with Him in the love that is of God, are
guarantees that the law of righteousness will eventu-
ally receive complete fulfilment through his walk-
ing not after the flesh, but after the Spirit: And
what is the law of the Spirit of life and righteous-
ness in Christ but the law of that moral order,
through which Christ Jesus, by means of His media-
tion, first in the flesh and then in the Spirit, is
establishing and perfecting all the moral relations
of individual men to God and to one another in
Him? This is the new creation that Christ is
evolving in the moral course of the world by means
of His mediation, And, having made peace by the
blood of His cross, He will continue His mediation
until He has reconciled all things in heaven and on
earth unto Himself, and therefore to God (Col 1°).
LITERATURE.—Dale, Atonement7, Christian Doctrine, chs.
x.-xli.; Bruce, Training of the Twelve, chs. xii., xvii., xviii.,
DEATH OF CHRIST
xxii., Humiliation of Christ, 317-400; Lux Mundi, ch. vii.;
Denney, Death of Christ, Atonement and Modern Mind ; Weiss,
Bib. Theol. of NT, i. 419-452 ; Beyschlag, N7' Theol. ii. 133-164 5
Kaftan, Dogmatik, p. 446 ff. W. D. THOMSON.
Il. IN THE EpiIsTLEs.—In keeping with the
amount of space devoted in the Gospels to the
story of Christ’s Passion is the place assigned to
our Lord’s death in the Epistles, and the signifi-
cance evidently attached to it. The material is
so abundant that it is impossible to give it in full
detail. All that can be attempted is a brief sketch
covering the chief epistolary groups, in which,
however, the Apocalypse may be included, as con-
taining the ‘ Letters to the Seven Churches,’ and
forming an important part of the Johannine cycle.
Two distinct features come before us: (1) the place
given in the Epp. to the death of Christ; (2) the
meaning assigned to it.
1. The place given to the death of Christ.—
Beginning with 7 Peter, we see the prominence
which the subject occupied in the Apostle’s mind
when we find him in his very first sentence speak-
ing of ‘the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ’
(1%), and thereafter referring repeatedly to those
sufferings of Christ on our behalf (115 271 318 41)
of which he himself had been a witness (5!).
Coming to δέ, Paul, we have not only the fact,
apparent to every reader, that he set Christ’s
death in the forefront of all his teaching, but his
testimony that in doing so he was following the
example of the earlier Apostles and the primitive
Church. ‘I delivered unto you first of all,’ he
writes, ‘that which also I received, how that
Christ died for our sins according to the Scrip-
tures’ (1 Co 15. And St. Paul’s preoccupation
with the death of Christ was not a passing phase
of his religious experience. We find him speaking
of it in the first and last chapters of his earliest
Epistle (1 Th 1° 510), In the great Epistles of his
middle period it is his dominating thought. The
Ep. to the Galatians is a passionate apologia for
the gospel which he preached (15*-), a gospel whose
snbstance he sums up in the words ‘Jesus Christ
. crucified’ (3!), and with regard to which he
exclaims, ‘God forbid that I should glory save in
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (64). In ] Cor.
he declares that when he came to Corinth he
determined not to know anything there save Jesus
Christ and Him crucified (2°) ; and further assures
his converts, in a passage already referred to, that
in proclaiming Christ’s death ‘first of all’? he was
only maintaining the Christian tradition as he had
received it (15%). In this same Epistle he hands on
(1139) the special tradition of the institution of the
Lord’s Supper, refers to that rite as the central
purpose for which the members of the Church
came together (cf. v.18 with v.“°"), and says that in
the observance of this great solemnity of the Chris-
tian faith we ‘proclaim the Lord’s death till he
come’ (v.75). 2Cor., besides many other refer-
ences, contains the great classical passage in which
Christ’s death is set forth as the convincing proof
of His love and the basis of the ministry of re-
conciliation (54*-), In Romans the expressions
‘Christ died’ and ‘his death’ occur more fre-
quently than in all the rest of St. Paul’s Epistles
put together. ‘Christ died for the ungodly,’ we
read (5°); ‘while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us’ (v.68); ‘he died unto sins once’ (6!°); ‘it is
Christ Jesus that died, yea rather that was raised
from the dead’ (85). Similarly, the Apostle writes,
‘We were reconciled to God through the death of
his Son’ (5!°); ‘we were baptized into his death’
... ‘buried with him... into death,’ ‘ united with
him by the likeness of his death’ (6% 4°). And
when we pass to the last group of the Pauline
writings, although we find that in two of them,
Colossians and Ephesians, the writer has a larger
=
DEATH OF CHRIST
outlook than before, and thinks of Christ’s work
now as having a cosmic and not merely a human
significance (Col 1158. Eph 12° 307.) he still exalts
Christ’s death as the very core of the work He did.
It is ‘ the firstborn from the dead’ (Col 118) who is
‘the firstborn of every creature’ (v.%). ‘He is
before all things, and by him all things consist,’
(v.17); but it is ‘through death’ (v.*), ‘through
his blood’ (v.4), ‘through the blood of his cross’
(v.2°), that He brings peace and redemption and
reconciliation (cf., further, Eph 12% 2° with 915. 16
52 25),
Very different views have been taken of the
relation in the mind of the author of Hebrews
between the incarnation and the death of Christ.
But in any case it is agreed that it is upon the
latter subject that the writer's attention is especi-
ally fastened. It is in what he has to say about
the death of Christ and its purpose that we find the
real message of the work. It is to elucidate and
illustrate this great theme that the author draws
so freely upon his intimate acquaintance with the
sacrificial rites and ministering priesthood of the
Or Church (18 99. 14 720 0128. 2086, 1010. 19f. 29 12°. 24 1519}
With regard to the Apocalypse, it is noteworthy
that at the very beginning of the book Jesus Christ
is introduced to us as ‘the firstborn of the dead,’
and that the ascription immediately follows, ‘ Unto
him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by
his blood’ (1°). And very-significant surely is the
constant recurrence, throughout the book, of the
figure of the Lamb, a figure the meaning of which
is made clear when the Lamb is described as ‘ the
Lamb that was slain,’ the Lamb by whose blood
men of every nation have been ‘ purchased unto
God* (see esp. 56. 5.15 714 12), 1 Jn. is a treatise
not on the death of Christ but on the ‘word of
life’ (1. Jesus is conceived of as the manifested
life (1?), and union with Him through faith as the
source of eternal life to men (5%). And yet the
condition of our transition from death to life is
the fact that Christ ‘laid down his life for us’
(314 16). and a Christian life which can be described
as a ‘walk in the light’ is secured only by the fact
that Jesus Christ the righteous is ‘the propitiation
for our sins,’ and that His blood ‘ cleanseth us from
all sin’ (17 21. 2),
2. The meaning assigned to the death of Christ.
—Having established the place given in the Epp.
to Christ’s death, we must now consider the mean-
ing which is assigned to it. (1) The fundamental
thought in all the groups is that the death of Christ
is ὦ manifestation of the love of God. ‘God com-
mendeth his own love toward us,’ says St. Paul,
‘in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for
us’ (Ro 5°). This Pauline keynote is one that is
constantly struck. In 1 Peter ‘the sprinkling of
the blood of Jesus Christ’ is brought into immedi-
ate connexion with ‘the foreknowledge of God the
Father’ (1°)—a view of the Father’s relation to the
death of Jesus which must not be lost sight of
when the Apostle exclaims in the next verse,
‘ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us
again unto a living hope by the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead’ (y.*). The author of
Hebrews declares that it was by the grace of God
that Jesus tasted death for every man (2°), and that
it was by the will of God that we were ‘sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ
once for all’ (101°), In 1 Jn. we have the great
utterance, ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God,
but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the
propitiation for our sins’ (42").
In all these writers, then, the grace of the
Heavenly Father is the source of the redemption
which is bound up with the death of Christ. In
the case of St. Paul the attempt is frequently made
VOL. 1.—28
DEATH OF CHRIST 433
to show that his teaching on the subject of Christ’s
death as a necessary sacrifice for sin is inconsistent
with the utterances of Jesus Himself (e.g. in the
parable of the Prodigal Son, Lk 15*°*-) with regard
to the Father’s spontaneous love for sinners. But
whatever St. Paul said as to the propitiatory
character of the death of Christ, it is evident that
he never felt that he was compromising the love of
Godin any way. On the contrary, he saw in God’s
love the original motive of Christ’s sacrifice (2 Co
515), and in that sacrifice the commendation of the
Father’s love (Ro 5°).
(2) Further, the death of Christ is uniformly repre-
sented as the suprene capression of the love of Christ
Himself. With St. Paul this is a central and con-
stantly recurring thought. ‘The love of Christ
constraineth us,’ he exclaims in one of his greatest
passages, ‘because we thus judge, that one died tor
all’ (2 Co’54). ‘Christ also,’ says St. Peter,
‘suffered for sins once, the righteous for the un-
righteous, that he might bring us to God’ (1 P 318).
In the view of the author of Hebrews, Jesus ‘ offered
himself’ (through His death, viz., as the preceding
phrase, ‘the blood of Christ,’ shows) to purge the
human conscience (01), And St. John writes, ‘He’
(t.e. Christ) ‘laid down his life for us’ (1 Jn 31°).
The Father and the Son are thus represented as
working together in Christ’s death for man’s salva-
tion, and working together from motives of love.
As St. Paul expresses it, ‘God was in Christ recon-
ciling the world unto himself’ (2 Co 5). But
Christ is not the involuntary instrument of the
TFather’s love for men; He is Himself a willing
sacrifice. He is the ‘ Lamb of God,’ indeed, as the
Baptist said (Jn 159: °°); but He is not ‘ brought as
a lamb to the slaughter,’ as in the dim figure of
the OT prophet. Rather, as in the conception of
the writer of Hebrews, He is the High Priest who
makes the offering, even more than the Lamb that
is laid on the altar (91-4), St. Paul sums up the
matter apart from the imagery of the Tabernacle
and the Temple, and in the simple dialect of the
heart, when he says, ‘The Son of God loved me,
and gave himself up for me’ (Gal 2”).
(3) But while springing from the Divine love, the
death of Christ is represented in the Epp. not less
clearly as a propitiation for sin. According to St.
Paul, as we have seen, it was the initial article of
the primitive tradition that ‘Christ died for our
sins according to the Scriptures’ (1 Co 15°). And
this part of the primary deposit of Apostolic testi-
mony reappears in the witness of all the different
epistolary groups. It reappears so constantly that
ΤῸ reader of the NT will challenge the statement
that Christ’s death is invariably associated with
the putting away of sin (cf. 1 P 1° 274 318, Gal 14
33 64, 2 Co 54, Ro 32) 688. He 926° 1 Jn 172? 410),
The discussion of the precise nature of the relation
between these two magnitudes—the death of
Christ and the sin of man—belongs properly to the
doctrine of the Atonement (see ATONEMENT, RAN-
SOM, RECONCILIATION, REDEMPTION). But this
at least may be said, that however the matter may
appear to those who deal with it from the point
of view of a philosophy of the Atonement, any
interpretation of the mass of NT evidence seems
difficult and forced which does not recognize
that, in the view of these writers, Christ’s death
was really our death in a vicarious and propitiatory
sense—that Jesus Christ died on our behalf that
death which is the fruit of sin, taking upon
Himself the Divine condemnation of sin, so that
there might be no condemnation to those who are
found in Him. That this is the Pauline teach-
ing is generally admitted (see Ro 37% 425 566. gt
and passin). But it seems not less the teaching
of the other Epistles, if we take the language
of the writers in its general connexion and natural
434
DEATH OF CHRIST
sense. Is not this what St. Peter means when
he says, ‘Who his own self bare our sins in his
body on the tree, that we, having died unto sins,
might live unto righteousness’ (1 P 2*); and when
he says again, ‘Because Christ also suffered for
sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that
he might bring us to God’ (3!8)? Is it not the
meaning of the author of Hebrews when he finds
in the sacrifices of the Old Covenant types and
shadows of the sacrifice of Christ, and speaks of
Him as ‘having been once offered to bear the sins
of many’ (9%)? And is it not the Johannine view
also, seeing that we find ‘Jesus Christ the right-
eous’ described as ‘the propitiation for our sins,
and not for ours only, but also for the whole world’
(1 Jn 22, ef. 4! ; see also Rev 1° δῦ: ὃ: 12)?
(4) Once more, the death of Christ is set forth in
the Ερρ. 85 a death from which there springs a life
of holiness. These writers relate the death of
Christ to the power as well as to the guilt of sin ;
they conceive of it not only on the side of its pro-
pitiatory effect, but as bringing a mighty regene-
rating influence into the life of man. St. Peter
connects the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ
with sanctification of the Spirit and obedience (1 P
1°), and His death upon the tree with our living
unto righteousness (25). The author of Hebrews,
who says that Christ offered up sacrifice for sins
‘once for all, when he offered up himself’ (737), also
says that the blood of Christ, by cleansing the
conscience from dead works, sets us free ‘to serve
the living God’ (94). St. John, writing of those
who are already Christians, declares that the blood
of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth them from all
sin (1 Jn 1’). Butit is above all in the Epistles of
St. Paul that we find a full treatment of this idea
of Christ’s death as the secret spring of a new life
in the Christian himself, of a crucifixion with
Christ whereby the very life of the Son of God
flows into the heart (Gal 2°); of a burial with
Christ which leads to a walk in newness of life,
and a union with Him by a likeness to His death
which carries with it the promise and the potency
of a likeness to His resurrection (Ro 6* 5).
There are some modern writers who insist that
there is a duality in St. Paul’s view when he ap-
proaches the subject of Chirist’s death in its rela-
tion to sin, and who distinguish between what they
eall his juridical and his ethico-mystical doctrines
of reconciliation. The former is sometimes repre-
sented as nothing more than the precipitate of the
Jewish theology in which the Apostle had been
trained, while the latter is accepted as the genuine
and immediate product of his personal experience
(Holtzmann, NY Theologie, ii. 117f.). The com-
mon tendency among such writers is to hold that
the Apostle had two quite distinct theories, which
lay side by side in his mind in an entirely un-
related fashion. He set himself, it is supposed, to
the high argument of showing how God and man
could be reconciled, but never took the trouble to
attempt to reconcile his own thoughts about the
efficacy of Christ’s death. This, however, seems
less than just to St. Paul. His theology as a whole
hardly warrants the conclusion that he had no gift
of systematic thinking, or that he would be con-
tent to allow his ideas on justification and regenera-
tion respectively to lie together in his mind with-
out concerning himself as to any possible connexion
between them. It seems in every way more reason-
able to think, for example, that in Ro 6!" the
Apostle is not suddenly introducing a set of entirely
new conceptions, connected with the sacrament of
baptism, about a mystical fellowship with Christ
in His death, considered as an archetypal dying
unto sin, which conceptions stand in no sort of rela-
tion to all that has been said in 32 about justifi-
cation through faith in the propitiating blood of
———— ee
DEBT, DEBTOR
Christ. Rather it appears natural to hold, in Pro-
fessor Denney’s words, that the justifying faith of
which St. Paul speaks in the earlier passage ‘is a
faith which has a death to sin in it’ (Lapositor, 6th
ser. iv. [1901] p. 306), so that when by faith we make
Christ’s death our own, sin becomes to us what it
is to the Sinless One Himself—we died to it as He
died, and in dying to sin become alive unto God.
LITERATURE.—Denney, Death of Christ, Studies in Theol. chs.
y., Vi., Hapositor, vi. iv. [1901] 299 ff.; Stevens, Chr. Doct. of
Salvation, pt. i. chs. iv.-vii.; Seeberg, Der Tod Christi ; Weinel,
St. Paul, ch. xx.; Weiss, Bib. Theol. of NT, i. 419-452; Kaftan,
Dogmatik, p. 446 ff.; Hapos. Times, xiv. [1903] 169.
J. C. LAMBERT.
DEBT, DEBTOR.—The Jews, being an inland
people, and not directly interested in the world’s
trade, were slow to gain touch with the credit-
systems of more commercial communities. but
Ly Christ’s day their business ideas, modified
already in part by the Pheenicians, are seen over-
laid and radically affected by Roman domination.
The people, on the one hand, as they listened to
the reading of the Law in public, had the OT ideal
before them, which was one of notable mildness,
backed by humanitarian ordinances. Debt in
their old national life had been regarded as a
passing misfortune, rather than a basal element
in trading conditions. In the popular mind it was
associated with poverty (Ex 22”), a thing that
came upon the husbandman, for instance, in bad
seasons (Neh δ᾽). Being thus exceptional, and a
subject for pity, little or no interest was to be
exacted (Ex 22°); and a strict tariff excluded many
things from the list of articles to be taken in pledge
(Dt 24° 27, Job 248, Am 2°, etec.), while in the Seventh
or Fallow year (Ex 231%, Ly .25'"), and\ again
amid the joys of Jubilee (Ly 25°), the poor debtor
had ample reason to rejoice. There was harshness
in the tone, on the other hand, of the Roman
methods, which were developed more on the lines
of modern commerce. Often the more impover-
ished the debtor, the greater the exaction, as
Horace expressly puts it (Sa#¢. I. 2. 14), 5 per cent.
a month (60 per cent. per annum) being cited by
him as a rate of interest not unknown.
In the Gospels we have suggestions of the
money-customs of the day at Mt 9115. Mk 111778,
Lk 19*-8, and Jn 2°37. There-are pictures of
indebtedness in the parables of the Two Debtors
(Lk 741-32), the Talents (Mt 254*°), and the Pounds
(Lk 19-27), Lending and repaying are seen in
practice at Lk 6%; also a credit system at Lk 16°%,
if the reference there be to merchants, and not
simply to those who paid rents in kind. Imprison-
ment for debt appears in Mt 5”-°8; and in un-
mitigated form in the story of the Two Creditors
(Mt 18?!%), with selling into slavery, accompanied
by the horror of ‘tormentors’ (v.*4), although the
whole passage is to be interpreted with caution,
because Jesus in the fancied features of His tale
may be reflecting, not the manners of His own
land, but the doings of some distant and barbaric
potentate. Enough that in the time of Christ
there was seizure of the debtor’s person, and the
general treatment of him was cruel.
But whatever the law and custom, it was not
the manner of Jesus to attack it. The civil code
was left to change to higher forms in days to
come. The exhibition of a certain spirit in face
of it was what His heart craved, a spirit which
should do justice to the best instincts of a true
humanity. We can transcend in loving ways the
nether aims even of bad laws; and it was the
evasion of clear duty in this respect, by those in
the high places of the religious world, which moved
Jesus most. He was the champion of the merciful
essence of the old enactments (Mt 5!7), while others
around Him, prating of orthodoxy the while, were
DEBT, DEBTOR
harsh to those unfortunately in their power (Mt
93'4), all in the name of an ancient law whose real
inwardness they missed. The Sadducees, whose
love of money was whetted by enjoyment of the
Temple dues, were not the men to show mercy to a
debtor, nor were the Pharisees behind them, more
Puritanic in zeal, and rigidly enforcing the letter
of their writs. ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth’ (Mt 5%), as an old catchword, would
infect the spirit in which, in the name of ‘righteous-
ness,’ they complacently sued. Jesus lays down.
no outward rules such as might bear upon the
modern business world. There fair and square
dealing must be a first postulate ; but, in the light
of His gospel, men should be keener than they are
to note hardships, and their hearts warmer towards
cases of distress. In the spirit of the Golden Rule
(Mt 7”, Lk 691-56) merciful dealings will show them-
selves in undefined ways ; and the love of brother-
men should counteract the love of money which
prompts to stern exactions in every case alike.
The soul saved by Christian feeling from sordid
views of life adds to its true treasure by making
the circumstances of unfortunate ones an exercise-
ground for tender, pitying grace. The metaphors
of Jesus in Mt 5°? are exceeding bold, and the
generous treatment there inculcated may sound
almost incredible, not to say subversive of social
order ; but the enlightened heart will recognize at
once the kindly and sacrificing spirit meant to be
strongly emphasized. The dynamic in the whole
matter, with Jesus, is the remembrance of the
pitiful nature of our own plight before God, to
whom on the strict requirements of law we are
indebted in countless ways. The more this inward
situation is brcught home to us, the more we shall
outwardly be compassionate in turn. Here comes
in the moral grandeur of the Beatitude on mercy
(Mt 5‘), a principle which melts into prayer when
we connect it with the tender breathing of the
Petition on forgiveness (Mt 613). The humble and
the contrite heart holds the key to magnanimity.
See, further, art. ‘Debt’ in Hastings’ DB.
Debtor.—There remains tle question of debt as
the emblem of moral short-coming (ὀφείλημα, Mt
6. See Lorp’s PRAYER), and the Supreme
Creditor’s way with men in this regard, especially
as depicted in certain well-known parables. The
image is natural which pictures the Deity sitting
like a civil judge, to try men for defaults ; and
while some think more of the majesty of the law,
and what must be exacted to satisfy the interests
of order, others love to dwell on the prerogative of
merey, and favour judgments which are ameli-
orative as well as punitive. No reader of the
Gospels can fail to see the latter characteristic
strong in the teaching of the Master. Pardon
befits the royal clemency, and God is known in
the kingdom for sovereign displays of grace. Yet
due weight is given to the other aspect of the
image also—the satisfaction of the law ; for Jesus
teaches that it is only the pure in heart who see
God (Mt δ᾽); the holiness that avails must be
inward, not that of the legalist (v.*°), and only
they who are merciful obtain mercy (v.7). But
what is characteristic in the Gospel treatment of
the subject is not any dwelling upon absolute
judgments — these are left to the Searcher of
Hearts; rather we are taken by Jesus to the
sphere of proximate evidence, and shown that in
the individual life the presence or absence of the
forgiving spirit is sure token of the presence or
<bsence of the Divine condescension as regards the
Ferson himself.
covered in the relations of men with each other
are a fortiori valid for their relationship to God
(Mt θ᾽),
The elder brother of the Prodigal (Lk 1035:-.2)
In other words, principles dis- |
DECAPOLIS 435
illustrates the point; representing as he does the
Pharisaic type of mind—common in all ages and
pronouncedly so in the time of Jesus—which com-
placently fancies itself well within the Kingdom,
but shows by its harsh attitude to fellow-mortals
that it is inwardly not right with God. The elder
brether is pictured, not without point, as remain-
ing outside the banquet-hall, so long as he con-
tinued in his implacable mood.
The story of the Two Debtors (Lk 736-99) shows
the-vital contrast of the matter in the persons of
the Woman who was a Sinner—truly gracious in
her doings, because full now of penitence and faith
and love—and Simon, hide-bound and censorious
like his class, with no disciplined sense of having
been humbled like her before God. The latter,
like the debtor of the trivial fifty pence, had little
reaction of wholesome feeling in his mind; the
former had manifestly much, like the man over-
joyed to find himself relieved from a finantial peril
ten times greater. This is a concrete instance
of the method of the Master. Certain visible acts
of the woman at the banquet bespoke the inward
action of God’s Spirit, and argued a state of recon-
ciliation with Him. From the scanty gracious-
ness of Simon, on the other hand, one inferred
just as truly a heart imperfectly attuned to good-
ness, and knowing little of the joy of pardon. ‘To
whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little’
(v.47). As to which is the root and which the
fruit, rival systems of theology may battle; buat
the fact is, the two graces are eternal cc-relatives,
and either may be first in the order of thought
when neither is entitled to absolute precedence in
fact. -See FORGIVENESS.
The parable of the Two Creditors (Mt 18*-*)
shows the other side of the shield from the
Woman’s case, in a person of downright in-
humanity concerning whom it is equally clear
that he had no saving experience of God’s mercy
himself. The story, as a story, is remarkable for
simple force ; we feel the horror of the implacable
attitude of the servant forgiven for a great in-
debtedness, who failed to show goodwill in twin
to a subordinate for a default infinitely less.
Nemesis descends (v.*4) when he finds he is not
forgiven after all—he loses that which he had
seemed to have (ν."). ‘So likewise shall my
Heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from
your hearts forgive not every one his_ brother
their trespasses’ (v.*°).
Jesus saw many around Him glorying in fancied
privilege and very zealous for the Law, yet omitting
its essential matters—justice, mercy, faith. To
such especially this Gospel message was addressed ;
broadening out in what for Him was the supreme
truth, that love to God is seen and tested in love
toman. ‘To be sympathetic, sacrificing, generous,
is not only the pier from which the heavenward
arch springs, but the pier to which it returns.
The forgiving God cannot possibly be seen in those
who hide themselves from their own flesh (Lk 6°").
LITERATURE.—Besides art. ‘ Debt’ in Hastings’ DB, the Comm.
on the passages referred to, and the standard works on the
Parables, the following may be consulted :—Edersheim, Life
and Times, ii. p. 268ff.; Schtrer, JP τι. i. 805 ἢ. ; Expositor,
I. Vi. [1877] p. 214 ff. ; Ker, Serm. 1st ser. p. 16 fi.
GEORGE MURRAY.
DECAPOLIS.—A league of ten Greek cities (ἡ
AexdroXs) in eastern Palestine, which was pro-
bably formed at the time of Pompey’s invasion of
Palestine, 64-63 B.c. By the Greek cities Pompey
was hailed as a deliverer from the Jewish yoke,
and many towns elevated Pompey’s campaign to
the dignity of an era. The coins of Gadara,
Canatha, Pella, Dion, and Philadelphia use the
Pompeian era. At first the league must have
comprised just ten cities. According to Pliny
480 DECAPOLIS
DECEIT, DECEPTION, GUILE
(HN y. 18), these were Scythopolis (Bevsén), Hippos
(Susich), Gadara (Unm Keis), Pella (Fahil), Phila-
delphia (‘Amman), Gerasa (Jerdsh), Dion, Canatha
(Kanawat), Damascus, and Raphana. The forma-
tion of a confederation of Greek cities in the midst
of a Semitic population was necessary for the pre-
servation of Hellenic civilization and culture.
From the days of Alexander the Great, who sought
to Hellenize the Orient by founding Greek cities
throughout the conquered lands, there were Greek
cities in Palestine. The Seleucid kings of Antioch
and the Ptolemies encouraged the immigration of
Greeks into this region. Among the cities occu-
pied before 198 B.c. by the incoming Greeks were
Pella, Dion, Philadelphia, Gadara, and Abila in
the region east of the Jordan. Hippos and Gerasa
are first named in the early part of the Ist cent.
B.C. (Jos. BJ I. iv. 8). Among the cities liberated
by Pompey from the Jewish yoke, Hippos, Seytho-
polis, and Pella are expressly named ; and Gadara,
which had been destroyed by the Jews, was rebuilt
(‘BJ τ. vil. 7). Pompey afinexed these cities to
the province of Syria, but conferred upon them
municipal freedom. All the cities of the Decapolis
had in the Roman period the rights of coinage and
asylum, and were allowed to maintain a league for
defence against their common foes.
The first references in literature to the Decapolis
are found in the Gospels. On our Lord’s first
journey through all Galilee, He was attended by
crowds from all parts of Palestine, among whom
avere persons from Decapolis (Mt 455). Most likely
these were Jews, who formed a considerable part
of the population even in Greek cities. The fierce
Gerasene demoniac, whom our Lord healed, pub-
lished in the Decapolis what things Jesus had done
for him (Mk 5”). The presence of two thousand
swine on the eastern shores of the Lake of Galilee
would of itself suggest the presence of a Gentile
population in that vicinity. When our Lord re-
turned from Tyre and Sidon to the Sea of Galilee,
He crossed the upper Jordan and passed south
through the district governed by the tetrarch
Philip to the eastern shore of the Lake. In order
to reach the Sea of Galilee, He went ‘through the
midst of the borders of Decapolis’ (Mk 75. Hippos
lay just east of the Lake, Gadara a few miles to
the south-east, and in full view from the southern
end; Pella and Seythopolis were not far to the
south ; while the other cities of the Decapolis lay
to the north-east, east, and south-east of the Lake.
Our Lord visited the Jewish population of Persea
in His later ministry, but He seems never to have
made a tour to the great cities of the Decapolis.
His rebuff in connexion with the destruction of the
herd of swine was rather discouraging (Mk 517)
Two famous writers of the latter part of the 1st
cent. A.D. speak of the Decapolis. Pliny not only
preseiyes the names of the ten cities (HN v. 18),
but also praises the small olives of the region (15?).
Josephus refers to Decapolis repeatedly. In the
2nd cent. A.D. Ptolemy (V. xv. 22) names eighteen
towns as belonging to the league of Decapolis.
He omits Raphana trom Pliny’s list, and adds nine,
most of the new members of the confederation be-
longing to the district just south of Damascus. In
his day Hellenic civilization and commerce in the
region beyond the Jordan were at their zenith.
The modern traveller, wandering over the ruins of
temples, theatres, and baths at Gerasa, Phila-
delphia, and Gadara, is impressed with the glories
of the Grecian life in Palestine during the period of
our Lord’s earthly ministry and for some centuries
afterwards,
LITERATURE.—Schiirer, HJP i. i. 94ff.; G. A. Smith, HGHL
593 ff.; G. Holscher, Paldstina in der pers. u. hellen. Zeit ;
Schumacher, Across the Jordan; Merrill, East of the Jordan.
JOHN R. SAMPEY.
DECEIT, DECEPTION, GUILE.
1. Words and_references.—Mk 722, Jn 147 (δόλος, ‘bait,’
‘stratagem,’ ‘guile,’ ‘craft,’ ‘treachery’; cf. Ro 129, 2 Co 1113
1216, 1 Th 23, 1 P 21.22, Rev 145); Mt 1822 (ἀτάτη, ‘trick,’ ‘fraud,’
‘deceit’; cf. Eph. 422, Col 28, He 313); Mt 244, Jn 712 (τλαν ζω,
‘lead astray,’ ‘deceive’; πλάνος, ‘deceiver’; πλάνη, a ‘leading
astray,’ ‘cheating’; cf. 1 Th 23, 1 Jn 18).
2. Pfleiderer in Early Christian Conception of
Christ (1905) devotes a chapter to the subject of
Christ as the Conqueror of Satan—‘that old ser-
pent, called the Devil, which decciveth the whole
world’ (Rev 125). His aim is to find parallels to
Christ in various nature myths and heathen re-
ligions, and by so doing to explain the Gospel story
as only a special embodiment of a universal ten-
dency. While rejecting Pfleiderer’s theory, we
admit that one of the most suggestive aspects
under which the life of our Lord may be considered
is to regard it as a deadly conflict between the
Divine Representative of the Truth, and the
instruments and agents of the spirit of deception
and guile. Such a conflict was inevitable. The
coming of One who had the right to say, ‘I am the
light of the world,’ ‘I am the truth’; ‘every one
that is of the truth heareth my voice’ (Jn 8!" 14° 18*7),
was bound to stir into bitter hostility all the forces
of untruth and craft. The antagonism is set forth
in universal terms in Jn 9155 At every stage of
the Divine drama we see that those ‘who loved
darkness rather than light’—the men of perverted
mind and crooked ways—turned from Jesus with
aversion and sought His destruction. The whole
significance of the struggle may be said to have
been summed up and symbolized in our Lord’s
conflict with the Pharisees. Their hostility to
Him began in self-deception. Wedded to their
own ideas and standard of character and duty,
they resented His teaching. They could not con-
ceive the possibility of a revision of life in the
light of a larger and nobler ideal of righteousness.
But the vision of moral beauty must either capti-
vate or blind. Before long the Pharisees brought
down on themselves the severest denunciations for
their moral obtuseness, duplicity, and hypocrisy
(Mt 23, Jn 813-88). The estrangement was com-
plete. To destroy Jesus they now ‘plumed up
their wills in double knavery’ (Iago). In almost
every glimpse we get of them they are moving in
a murky atmosphere of craft, intrigue, and hate.
They do not hesitate to resort to every artifice and
stratagem which unscrupulous cunning could sug-
gest. They endeavour, by subtle questions, to
entangle Him in His talk (Mt 22)°); they een
to deceive the people as to His true character (Mk
37790, Jn 944); they plot together as to how He
may be put to death (Jn 11°); they enter into a
covenant with Judas to betray Him (Mt 264-15) ;
they set up false witnesses, and pervert and mis-
represent His teaching (Mt 26°-®, Lk 931), It was
by deceit and guile that they obtained Pilate’s
permission to crucify Him (Jn 1915).
8. We gain a heightened impression of their
character and conduct by contrast. While thie
men of deception and guile hated the Light, we
see another class attracted by it. From the be-
ginning of His ministry, Jesus drew to Himself the
sincere, the childlike, the men of ‘honest and good
heart’ (Lk 8"). The first Apostles of the Lord
were by no means exempt from serious faults and
frailties of character ; but, with the exception cf
Judas, they were singularly honest and upright
men ; men with a genuine enthusiasm for goodness.
One of them drew from Jesus on His first approach
the suggestive exclamation, ‘Behold an Israelite
indeed, in whom is no guile’ (Jn 147). In the
teaching and training of these first Apostles and
disciples, our Lord especially emphasized the neces-
sity of those virtues of character in which the
— |
DECREE
Pharisees were so singularly deficient (Mt 58 71-4
1010 11% 188, Lk 121°). In this connexion it is of
vital importance to bear in mind Mt 6 25, There
are various degrees and stages of deception and
guile, beginning with over-intellectual refinement,
and passing finally into deliberate fraud and
treachery. But in every case it means the lack
of the ‘single eye, of perfect sincerity, and
simplicity of nature. And, therefore, if Christian
men and women are to keep themselves free, not
merely from ‘fleshly lusts,’ but also from the more
subtle forms of ‘spiritual wickedness,’ they must
be continually testing and reviewing their ideals
and conceptions of character and conduct in the
light of their Master’s life and teaching. Unless
they do this, the light that is in them will turn to
darkness.
‘There is, I believe,’ says Bishop Gore, ‘nothing to which in
our time attention needs to be called more than to the fact that
conscience is only a faculty for knowing God and His will. It
is certain, unless it is educated, to give wrong information.
And the way to educate it is to put it to school with the ‘* Light
of the world.” Alas! there must be multitudes of respectable
and self-enlightened people of whom it is true that the light
which is in them is darkness’(T’he Sermon on the Mount, p.
147). The testimony of the late Dr. Dale is not less emphatic.
‘I doubt whether most of those who have been formed by the
faith and traditions of the Evangelical movement are sufficiently
impressed by the necessity of educating the conscience... .
This partly explains how it is that some Christian people are
worse men—morally—than some who are not Christians. The
faculty of conscience requires a great deal of education if we
are to distinguish between the right and the wrong in all the
details of life’ (The Evangelical Revival, p. 98).
LITERATURE.—In addition to the books already referred to,
the reader may consult Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics;
Prof. Knight, Vhe Christian Ethic; F. D. Maurice, The Con-
science and Social Morality; J. QB. lingworth, Christian
Character; H. Wace, Christianity and Morality; R. W.
Church, Discipline of the Christian Character.
ARTHUR JENKINSON.
DECREE (Gr. δόγμα, Lk 2').—In the Gospel of
Luke, the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem is traced to
the fact that a census of the people of Israel was
being taken, which made it necessary that Joseph
and Mary, who were both of Davidie descent,
should go up from their home at Nazareth to the
City of David. This census was brought about by
the issue of a decree of Ceesar Augustus, that the
Roman world should be taxed or registered. His-
torians find much to question here as to St. Luke’s
accuracy. Was it likely that Herod’s independent
kingdom would be ineluded in such a decree? Is
there any evidence that such an order on so
great a scale was then issued? As to Cyrenius
[Quirinius], in whose governorship of Syria this
census is said to have taken place, can it be
proved that he was twice governor of Syria? He
was governor, some 10 years later, when the cen-
sus took place, which caused the rebellion under
Judas of Galilee, in 760 A.U.c. The researches
of Wieseler, Zumpt, and W. M. Ramsay (Was
Christ bern at Bethlehem?) have shown, however,
that St. Luke’s statement is capable of a good
defence, and may turn out to have full corrobora-
tion. Such a plain historical note, put in, with
evident intention, by St. Luke, we should be slow
to reject from one who is generally so well in-
formed, See AUGUSTUS, BIRTH OF CHRIST, QUIR-
INIUS. Davip M. W. Latrp.
DEDICATION, FEAST OF (τὰ éyxaiva).—This
Feast was kept by the Jews on 25 Chislevy and
throughout the week following. The dedication
commemorated in it was the dedication of a new
altar by Judas Maccabzeus in B.c. 164 (1 Mac
ae 2 Mae 10'S, Jos. Ant. XII. vii. 6,7): The
old altar of Zerubbabel’s temple had been defiled
in B.C. 167, when ‘an abomination of desolation’
was erected upon it (1 Mac 153), and the climax
was reached on 25 Chislevy, when sacrifices were
offered upon this idol-altar standing on the altar of
DELIVERANCE 437
God (y.*). For three years this state of profana-
tion had continued, but when the third anniversary
of the desecration came round, the heroic efiorts of
Judas Maceabzeus and his companions had reached
such success that they were able to cleanse the
Holy Place and to set up a new altar in place of
that which had been defiled, spending a week in
special services for its dedication; and, in order
to commemorate this, Judas Maccabzeus ordained
‘that the days of the dedication of the altar should
be kept in their seasons from year to year by the
space of eight days, from the five and twentieth
day of the month Chislev, with gladness and joy’
(1 Mac 4°).
The Feast is mentioned once in the Gospels (Jn
10°) as the occasion of a collision between our
Lord and the Jews in the temple, when He made
the claim, “1 and the Father are one,’ and the Jews
took up stones to stone Him. The occasion of the
incident is full of significance. When the Holy
Place was being cleansed in B.c. 164, the question
had arisen as to how the old altar ought to be
treated, seeing that it had suffered from heathen
pollution, and the conclusion reached was that it
should not be used any more, but a new one dedi-
eated in its place, and that the old one should be
pulled down and its stones stored in a convenient
place ‘until there should come a prophet to give
an answer concerning them’ (1 Mac 4:18), On the
anniversary of this event, some two centuries later,
there stood Christ in the temple courts, and in
effect, though not in so many words, the question
was actually put to Him whether He was the
prophet foretold. ‘ How long dost thou hold us in
suspense ?,’ they asked, ‘ If thou art the Christ, tell
us plainly’ (Jn 10%). It was, indeed, a fitting
occasion on which to raise the question, since the
whole Festival breathed hopes connected with the
national deliverance of Maccabiean times, looking
forward to another deliverance in the future such
as would come with the Messiah. Unhappily the
questioners were not sincere, and would not receive
the testimony of our Lord, not even when He re-
ferred them to His works as proving His claims ;
and so the matter ended where it began. Had
they listened, they would have found the Deliverer
whom they were expecting, and incidentally also
they would have learned the solution of the old
difficulty about the stones of the desecrated altar—
that these might le where they were, being needed
no more, for there was being dedicated another
Temple to supersede the old (cf. Jn 21).
It is not quite clear how much of St. John’s nar-
rative belongs to Dedication, whether the incidents
of Jn 91107 happened then, or whether they
belong to the Feast of Tabernacles (77). These two
Feasts had much in common; in fact, it appears
that Dedication was to some extent modelled on
Tabernacles (2 Mac 10°, cf. 1°). In particular, the
ritual of both included a special illumination, which
was so marked at Dedication that, according to
Josephus (Ané. XIL. vii. 7), the Festival was actually
called ‘Lights.’ In either case, therefore, there is
special point in our Lord’s announcement in Jn 9°
‘Tam the light of the world,’ in which He pointed
to the brilliant illuminations of the Temple and
Jerusalem generally, whether at Tabernacles or
Dedication, and claimed that, while these lamps
and candles made the city full of light, He Himself
was giving light to the whole world.
LITERATURE. — Art. ‘Dedication’ in Hastings’ DB and in
Encyc. Bibl. ; Schurer, HJP 1. i. 2171.3; Edersheim, Life and
Times of Jesus the Messiah, ii. 226, The Temple, 333 ff.
C. E. GARRAD.
DEFILEMENT.—See PURIFICATION.
DELIVERANCE (é¢eo1s),—The English word does
not occur in the Gospels, except in a quotation
438 DELIVERANCE
DEMON, DEMONIACS
from the OT (see below), but the Gr. word is found
© times (in Mt 267, Mk 14, Lk 3? 1” 24% it 15
rendered ‘remission’ [of sins]; in Mk 83:9 ‘ forgive-
ness’; in Lk 418%s (a) ‘deliverance’ [AV], ‘release’
[RV], (ὁ) [to set] ‘at liberty’); while the fact of
deliverance underlies all that is recorded of Jesus,
and has coloured the entire thought of Christianity.
To think of Christ is to think of Him as Saviour.
In such utterances as ‘The Son of Man is come to
save that which was lost’ (Mt 18"), and ‘the Son
of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to
save them’ (Lk 955), we have the keynote of Christ's
mission. He sounds it in the beginning when,
preaching in the Nazareth synagogue (Lk 418), He
declares His work to be, in the words of Is 611, ‘ to
preach deliverance to captives.’ His days are
passed in saving men from every slavery that
binds them to the transient. This is at the root
of all His acts of deliverance—even the healings.
When He gives physical renewal to the lame, the
diseased, the dumb, the blind, the paralyzed, it is
always that they may the easier find spiritual
perfection. Moral and spiritual deliverance are
often associated with a bodily purification—greatly
to the confusion of contemporary traditionalists.
They are astonished that He should say to the one
sick of the palsy, ‘ Thy sins be forgiven thee’ (Mk
2°), or to the leper, ‘Thy faith hath made thee
whole’ (Lk 1715). In the typical prayer taught to
His disciples there is no word about life’s miseries,
poverty, or pain: the petition is simply ‘ Deliver
us from evil’ (Mt 01", Lk 114): the soul’s need being
eternal outweighs the need of mind and _ body.
And we can hardly doubt that, as He looked upon
that long and sad procession of the bodily wrecks
that came to Him ‘at even’ (Mk 1°), the heart of
the Missioner in Christ was kindled by the vision
of souls that would be set free to fulfil better their
purpose of life when the numbed or tortured body
was given rest and cure. Conscious of the neces-
sities of daily life, He, better than all others,
knows how temporary they are, and lifts His voice
continually against the soul’s voluntary bondage
to things material. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of
God? (Lk 12°!) ; ‘Lay up treasure in heaven’ (Mt
05); ‘Beware, and keep yourselves from covetous-
ness’ (Lk 1215); ‘If thou wouldst be perfect, go,
sell that thou hast, and give to the poor... and
come, follow me’ (Mt 19%)—such phrases indicate
the deliverance from the world and its anxieties
which culminates in the invitation of Jesus—‘ Come
untome... and 1 will give you rest’ (Mt 11°).
The highest of the self-chosen titles ring with
deliverance. Jesus calls Himself the Good Shep-
herd, who will even give His life for the sheep (Jn
10"); He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (14°),
leading from earth and time to heaven and cter-
nity ; He is the Light of the World (813), to bring
all wanderers safely from darkness and danger to
light and safety. The Christian Church has
always read in His titles, His words, and His
actions this moral and spiritual -sienificance.
Christ has been, and is, thle Saviour of men from
sin and evil rather than from pain and suffering.
See FORGIVENESS, E. DAPLYN.
DEMON, DEMONIACAL POSSESSION, DEMO-
NIACS.—1. The demonology of the Gospels is based
upon beliefs which were current among the Jews
previous to the time of Christ; these beliefs arose
gradually, and were ultimately stereotyped in the
Talmud, Tor the proper understanding of Gospel
demonology some insight into these Jewish beliefs
is indispensable. But the demonology of the Jews
was profoundly influenced and coloured, at differ-
ent times, by Babylonian, Eeyptian, Persian, and
Greek teaching on the subject, while the beliefs of
these highly cultured peoples were developments of |
the much earlier conceptions of man ina very much
lower stage of civilization, —conceptions which
are practically universally prevalent among savage
races at the present day. To deal with the subject,
therefore, in all its bearings would be impossible
here; it must suflice to give references to a few of
the many works which deal with the difierent
branches of this vast subject. Details of Jewish
demonology must, however, be given, for it will Le
seen that they are necessary for a proper under-
standing of Gospel demonology ; added to these
will be found some few references to the earlier
beliefs upon which they are based.
For the beliefs of primitive man—
Maury, La Magqie et l Astrologie dans Vantiquité et aw moyen-
dge, Paris, 1857; Frazer, I'he Golden Bough2, ch. iii. passin.
London, 1900; Lang, V’he Making of Religion 2, ch. yii., London,
1900; Tylor, Primitive Culture, ch. xiv. ete., but the whole
work should be studied. Cf. Reville’s Hist. of Meligions, chs.
lii.-vi., London, 1884.* _
For Assyro-Babylonian beliefs—
Budge, Assyrian Incantations to Fire and Water, London,
1883; Hommel, Gesch. Bab. und Ass. pp. 237-269, 388 ff., Berlin,
1885; Jastrow, Die Rel. Bab. und Ass. ch. xvi., Giessen, 1902 ff.
{this is enlarged from the Eng. tr.]; A. Jeremias, Das A7' inv
Lichte des alten Orients, pp. 218 ff., 330, 340 ff., Leipzig, 1904;
hing, Babylonian Magic and Sorcery, London, 1896, Babylonian
Religion and Mytholoay, p. 200ff., London, 1899 ; Lenormant,
La Magie chez les Chaldéens et les origines accadiennes, Paris,
1875 ; Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, v., London, 1887 ; Sttibe, Jtidisch-
babylonische Zaubertexte, Halle, 1895. Many indirect points of
importance will be found in Ball’s Light from the East, London,
1899; Morgenstern, ‘Doctr. of Sin in the Bab. Rel.’ in IMittheil.
der vorderasiat. Gesellsch. iii., 1905; Weber, ‘Damonenbesch-
worung bei den Bab. und Assyr.’ in Der Alte Orient, vii. 4,
Leipzig, 1906.
For Egyptian beliefs—
Budge, LKgyptian Magic, ch. vii., London, 1899; Ed. Meyer,
Gesch. des alten Aegyptens, ch. iii., Berlin, 1887; Wiedemann,
‘Magie und Zauberei im alten Aegypten,’ in Der alte Orient,
vi. 4, Leipzig, 1905, cf. also, by same author, and in same series,
ill. 4, ‘Die Unterhaltungslit. der alten Aegypter.’
For Persian beliefs—
Darmesteter, The Zend-A vesta (Part i. ‘The Vendidad’), Far-
gard xix., xxi. 3 Geiger, Ostiranische Kultur im Alterthain, § 38,
Erlangen, 1882; Haug, Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings
and leligion of the Parsis% (tr. by E. H. West), London, 1884 ;
Spiegel, Lranische Alterthumskunde, vol. ii., Leipzig, 1871-1878 ;
Stave, Ueber den Einfluss des Parsismus auf das Judenthuin,
Haarlem, 1898 [see especially the third division, $§4, 5. A most
helpful book on this particular branch of the subject] ; Windisch-
mann, Zoroastrische Studien, pp. 138-148, Berlin, 1863.
For Greek beliefs—
Gruppe, Die Griechischen Culte und Mythen .. ., i. pp. 184-
196, Leipzig, 1887; Maury, Hist. des Religions de la Gréce
antique, i. pp. 565-581, ii. pp. 91-93, iii. pp. 419-443, Paris, 1857 ;
Preller, Griechische Mythologie4, under ‘Daemonen,’ Berlin,
1887; Roscher, Lexikon der Gr. und Rim. Mythologie, art.
‘Daimon’ [where full literature on the subject is given], Leipzig,
1884, ete. See also Lobeck, Agloapkamus, pp. 695, 696, 1092,
Berlin, 1829.
For a 7ésumé of Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, and Greek
influence on Jewish demonology, see the remarkably able series
of articles by I’. C. Conybeare in JQ viii. ix. (1896, 1897). See
also Encyc. Bibl. art. ‘Demons,’ $$ 7, 11.
2. THe OLD TESTAMENT.—The demonology of
the OT is probably somewhat more complex than
is sometimes assumed.{ The analogy of other
races would prima facie support the inference that
the Israelites also had their beliefs in demons (see
Literature below). Much weight cannot be laid
on the (not frequent) occurrence of δαίμων and da-
μόνιον in the LXX, as they stand for varying words
in the original ; but there are a number of Hebrew
expressions which must be connected with demons,
at all events as far as the popular imagination was
concerned ; these are: ΠῚ ΠΥῚ ‘evil spirit, Jg 9:5,
1S 164; oy oo ‘spirit of perverseness,’ Is 101};
ow ‘demons,’ Dt 5917, Ps 10677; ovyy ‘satyrs,’ Lv
177, Is 137! 8414... ayp ‘destruction,’ conceived of as
due to demoniae power, see the whole verse, Is
916; apby ‘female blood-sucker,’ Pr 8015: my)
‘night-hag,’ Is 341-4; DINIY, Ly 1088. ς Azazel,’ a
desert spirit. This last instance clearly shews
* There are a number of works on Comparative Religion in
which the beliefs in demons and the like are incidentally dcalt
with ; but a detailed list of these would be inappropriate here.
t ‘It is singular that the OT is so free from demonology,
hardly containing more than one or two examples thereof’
(&. C. Conybeare, loc. cit. above).
DEMON, DEMONIACS
how firmly embedded in popular imagination was
this belief in evil powers of the solitude.* It is
true that Babylonian influence during and after
the Exile was responsible for much of this ;{ but
that the Israelites from the earliest times, like
every other race, peopled the world with innumer-
able unseen powers, cannot admit of doubt. Ac-
cording to OT conceptions, the evil spirits are not
the subjects of some supreme ruler; in the earlier
books they are represented as fulfilling the com-
mands of Jehovah in doing harm tomen, but later
on they seem to enjoy complete independence,
though even here the conceptions are not con-
sistent (cf. Job 1612. When we come to the
Apocrypha, we find that an immense development
has taken place ;*see, c.g., To 3° ® 67-17 65. Bar 47-3,
Wis 2°4, Sir 21-7; cf. as regards other late literature
the Book of Enoch 15. 16. 19. 53. The more im-
portant literature bearing on this branch of the
subject is as follows :—
W. R. Smith, RS?, p. 120ff.; Wellhausen, Reste Arab.
Heident.2 p. 148 ff. ; Doughty, Arabia Deserta, ii. p. 188 fi. ;
Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day, pp. 68, 184, ete. ;
Nowack, Heb. Arch. ii. p. 186 ff.; Sayce, Hibbert Lectures,
1887, p. 146, etc. ; Hastings’ DB, the Eicyc. Bibl., and the
Jewish Encyc. under artt. ‘Demons,’ ‘ Lilith,’ ‘ Azazel’; Ham-
burger’s Ieal.-Encyc., Riehm’s ΓΔΑ, Herzog’s PRE® under
artt. ‘Geister,’ ‘ Feldgeister,’ ‘Damonen,’ etc. Other works
that should be consulted are: Baudissin, Studien zur Sci.
Volksrelig.; Lagrange, Etudes sur les rel. Semit.2; Frazer,
Golden Bough 3, ii.
8. LATER JUDAISM.t— The following are the
Talmudic words for demons; nia ΣΝ, aban oryd>,
nin (πνεύματα), ANT 17 (πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον), ΠῚ ΠΤ
(πνεῦμα πονηρόν), WW O37 (πνεῦμα δαίμονος). See further
below. While it is abundantly clear that external
influences have left their marks on Jewish demon-
ology, it is certain that much of the latter was of
indigenous growth; the whole system, so immense,
so intricate, and in many respects so puerile, is
stamped too plainly with the Judaic genius for
this to be questioned. Only a very brief summary
of the main points can be here indicated. ὃ
(a) Origin of demons.—As has not infrequently
been found to be the case with Jewish tradition,
there are varying accounts; in this case two dis-
tinct traditions exist. According to the one, it is
said that the demons were created|| by God before
the world was made; Satan,{/ who is identical with
the serpent, is the chief of the demons. They were
of both sexes, and their species was propagated
through cohabitation with Adam and Eve during
a period of 130 years after the Creation. The
other tradition is based on Gn 61. (ef. 2 P 2*°);
two angels, Assael and Shemachsai, loved the
daughters of men, and, forsaking their allegiance
to God, descended from heaven to earth; one of
these angels returned to heaven and did not sin,
but the other accomplished his desire, and his off-
spring became demons.
(ὁ) The nature of demons.—The general name for
all demons is mazzikin (j}p'22), and this indicates their
nature, p32=‘one who does harm.’ ** The head of
: ee Whitehouse in Hastings’ DB i. 591°.
_ + By this is meant the period during which the Talmud was
In process of formation; it was not completed until abou*
A.D. 500, but the traditions concerning demons and the general
teaching on the subject (even in the latest portions) embody
conceptions of much earlier date.
§ The details here given have been gathered from a large
number of sources which cannot be individually specified ; see
the Literature at the end of this article.
" It is their supposed creation on a Friday which makes this
day one of ill-omen.
4] Satan, according to another account, was created at the
Same time as Eve; Cain was their ofispring (cf. Gn 41 where
the Heb. ΠῈΡ is not the usual word for begetting). ‘ Baal-zebul’
is also regarded, in the Talmud, as a prince among demons, and
is looked upon as the most evil of all evil spirits.
** This is illustrated in Jn 8#7.41-44° Ye seck to kill me...
ye do the works of your father... ye are of your father the
devil.’
! unclean.
DEMON, DEMONIACS 439
them is Satan (jpyn=‘ the adversary’); it is his aim
to mislead men into evil, and then to accuse them
before God, hence the further name 7:»p2 (κατή-
yopos)= ‘accuser’ (cf. Zee 3'). He is at liberty to
enter the Divine presence at all times (ef. Job 1°)
and accuse men before God; only on the Day of
Atonement is he refused admittance. As the
angel of death, he is identical with Sammael,
who is known also as ‘the head of all the Satans.’
The kingdom of Satan (cf. Mk 3598.) consists of
himself, as head, and an innumerable horde of
angels or messengers (2°28°2) who do his will;* this
is the exact antithesis of the kingdom of God Ὁ (see,
further, SATAN). These constitute the first grade
of demons, those who were created before the world
was made ; these were originally in the service of
God, but rebelled against Him (cf. Lk 10").
There are also demons of a lower grade, those,
namely, who came into being during the 130 years
after the Creation, and who are semi-human ;t
they occupied a position between God and man.§
They have the names (besides those given above)
of shédim,\| lilin§| and riuihin (Aramaic; Heb.
ruhéth**); the first of these is their commonest
name. The head of these lower-grade demons is
Asmedai tt (Asmodzeus, To 3°, ef. 6/4 8°) ; they have
the power of becoming visible or invisible at will;
they have wings, and fly all over the world 1 for
the purpose of harming men; in three respects
they resemble man, for they eat and drink, they
are able to propagate their species, and are subject
to death; they also have the power of assuming
various forms, but they usually choose that of
men, though with the difference that their feet
are hens’ feet, and they are without shadows ;
they are very numerous (cf. Mk 5°)—74 millions is
said to be the number of them, while elsewhere it
is stated that every man has ten thousand on his
right hand, and a thousand on his left (cf. Ps 91°).
They live mostly in desert places (cf. Lk 859), where
their yells ean be heard (cf. Dt 8210 ‘howling wil-
derness’); also in unclean places, where their
power is great, ¢.g. in the xo27 m2; in waterless
places (ef. Lk 1153), for water is the means of elcans-
ing ;§$ and among tombs'|\|| (ef. Mk 5°), dead bodics
being unclean ; “Ὁ they are most dangerous to the
traveller, more especially if he travels alone; they
tend to congregate together (ef. Lk 11°° 8%); at
certain times they are more dangerous than at
others, viz. at mid-day, when the heat is intense, and
from sunset to cock-crowing (ef. Ps 915: ® Mk 147,
Jn 1377-8), after which they return to their abode.
Unlike angels, who understand only Hebrew (the
* The very term ‘the angel of Satan’ is used, cf. ἀγγελος
Σατανᾶ, 2Co 127.
+ Cf. the dualistic system of the Persians, which has influenced
Judaism here.
1 Among the Greeks the demons stand between men and
gods, and all the elements of mythology that were derogatory
to the character of the national dcities were referred to the
demons. Greek influence, therefore, stimulated the growth
of Hebrew angelology and demonology (Hastings’ DB, art.
* Demons’).
§ According to another tradition, these semi-human demons
originated thus: God had created their souls, but before He had
time to create their bodies the Sabbath dawned ; they were thus
neither men nor angels, and became demons.
| A loan-word from Assyr.-Bab. $idu=‘ good or evil genius.’
“1 The Assyr.-Bab. dilitu, ‘ Lilith.’
** They are also known under the general term ᾿Ξ ΚΠ
(τνεύματα πονηρά); Blau holds that originally the ΠῚ ΠΥ were the
spirits of the departed, see Das altjiidische Zauberwesen, p. 14.
+t This is one of the chief signs of Persian influence ; Asmedai
is borrowed from the Persian demon of lust, Aeshma daeva.
tt Cf. ‘the prince of the power of the air’ (Eph 25 012). It
was a Persian belief.
§§ Drinking water at night is especially dangerous, presumably
because the wrath of the demon would be aroused by the use of
water during his privileged period of activity, the night-time.
|| ‘Cemeteries were regarded with awe by the ancient
Egyptians, because of the spirits of the dead who dwelt in
them’ (Budge, Egyptian Magic, p. 219).
«5 Even at the present day a cohen who looks upon a corpse is
440 DEMON, DEMONIACS
‘holy tongue’ w77 jv), demons can understand
all languages, for they are active among the Gen-
tiles as well as among the Jews, whereas angels
restrict their activity among men to the children
of Abraham. The power for harm of the demons
is greatest among the sick, among women in child-
birth, among brides and bridegrooms, mourners,
and those who are about to become teachers;
further, those who travel by night, and children
who are out after dark are specially subject to
their attacks. There is one demon, Shabriri, who
makes people blind (cf. Mt 1259), and there is a
special demon of leprosy, and a demon of heart-
disease. As emissaries of the angel of death, Sam-
mael (the ‘full of eyes,’ cf. the Greek Argus), men
ere in constant dread of them (cf. He 21%), It
was also believed that demons were able to trans-
fer some of their powers to men, and especially
to women; so, for example, the secret of magic
drinks, which could harm people in various ways
(ct. Mk 1638), and change them into animals; they
could also endow men with the faculty of exercis-
ing the ‘evil eye’ (cf. Mk 7*, see also Sir 31°, and
οἵ. 148-10, To 416), by means of which the good
fortune of others conld be turned to evil; there is
a special formula for use‘against the ‘evil eye.’ ἢ
There are certain animals in league with the
demons (cf. Lk 8*),-such as serpents (οἵ, Mlk 1678,
Ac 28*°), bulls, + donkeys,t and mosquitoes. The
shédim are male demons; female demons are called
lilin, ‘night-spirits,’ from the queen of the demons,
Lilith (cf. Is 344); they have long flowing hair,
and are the enemies of children, for which reason
special angels have charge of children (cf. Mt 18?°,
He ΤΣ
(c) Safeguards against demons.§—God is the
only ultimate protector against demons; but He
sends His angels to counteract their deeds, and to
help men to withstand their attacks (cf. Mt 187°,
Mk 119). At the same time, God has given to man
various means whereby to nullify the machinations
of demons. First among these is the saying of the
Shema (i.e. the Jewish profession of faith contained
in Dt 64), because the holy name occurs in it;
then, prayer to God (cf. Mk 9°). There are also
special formulas which are effective, either for
warding off an attack or for throwing off the
demoniacal influence, e.g. ‘The Lord rebuke thee,
Satan’ (ef. Zee 32, Jude); Ps 91 is recommended
for recitation before going to sleep; a demon
may be chased away by repeatedly calling out his
name, but uttering one syllable less each time ; ||
obedience to certain commands is also a safe-
guard, ¢.g. fixing the mézuzah,| and wearing the
* The superstition of the ‘evil eye,’ the possession of which is
regarded as being due to the indwelling of an evil spirit, both
in animals and in human beings, is still universally prevalent
among the peasantry of all European countries: the writer has
personally met with some curious instances in the country
districts of Lower Austria.
+ This is due to Assyro-Bab. influence: Satan is believed to
dance between the bull’s horns.
{ This is due to Egyptian (Typhon-worship) influence;
according to Plutarch the ass was considered demoniac (da:-
μμονιπόν) in Egypt, because of its resemblance to Typhon (de Js.
et Os. 30).
§ In the Talmud there is no word for ‘ possession’; it is true
that an ‘evil spirit’ is once spoken of as ‘dwelling’ in a person,
but this is the same word as is used for the Shekinah ‘taking up
its abode with’ someone ; Shekinah, however, in the Talmud is
not a personality, but rather an inspiration. A demon, or evil
spirit, is said to take hold of a man, to injure him, or to speak
to him; there may be one or two possible exceptions, but,
generally speaking, demoniacal action is all external to those
who are under its influence. This is in striking contrast to the
Gospel accounts.
See the use of a ‘name’ in Stiibe, Jiid.-bab. Zaubertexte,
p. 25, and many further details in Blau, Das altjiid. Zauber-
wesen, pp. 61 ff., 156 ff. ; cf. To 619 8°, Exorcism of demons, to
whom all sickness was ascribed, was very ancient in Egypt.
“ΓΑ small glass or metal case, containing Dt 46. 9. 13. 21 written
on parchment, which is fixed upon the right-hand post of the
door of the house and of each room. It was done in obedience
to the command in Dt 1129,
hs
DEMON, DEMONIACS
téphillin ;* to eat salt (cf. ‘salt of the covenant,’
Ly 215, see Mk 9518) at and after meals, and to
drink water is also efficacious. Demons love the
darkness and hate the light (οἵ. Lk 22°, Eph 6%,
Col 115), hence a lighted torch sends them away, but
the light of the moon is most potent in scaring them.
On Passover night the demens have no power.
4, THE GOSPELS.—Demons are designated by
various names in the Gospels, viz. δαιμόνιον Mt 108
(δαίμων is sometimes found, it would imply more
definite personality), πνεῦμα Lk 9, πνεῦμα ἀκά-
θαρτον Mt 10! (τὸ ἀκάθαρτον πνεῦμα Mt 12%), πνεῦμα
πονηρόν Lk 732], πνεῦμα δαιμονίου ἀκαθάρτου Lk 433,
πνεῦμα ἄλαλον Mk 917, In Matthew δαιμόνιον is
almost always used; in Mark both δαιμόνιον and
πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον occur frequently, though the latter
predominates; in Luke there is a more varied use;
in John the few references to a demon (the plural
does not occur) are always in relation to Christ,
and the word used is always δαιμόνιον. In the vast
majority of cases these expressions are used in the
plural form.
(a) Origin of demons.—The existence of demons is
taken for granted in the Gospels, and nothing is
said directly concerning their origin ; however, as
is shown below, Satan, Beelzebub, and the ‘ prince
of the demons’ are one and the same, and Christ
speaks of His having seen Satan falling ‘as light-
ning from heaven’ (Lk 1018). This last passage
would seem to imply that Satan was in existence
before the world was made, which would agree
with the one rational tradition on the subject pre-
served in the Talmud. There are, moreover, also
one or two indications in other NT books which
support this, e.g. 1 Jn 3° ‘the devil sinneth from
the beginning,’ Rev 20? ‘the old serpent which is
the Devil.’
(ὁ) The nature of demons.—That possession often
takes the form of a purely physical disorder is
clear ; yet from the expressions used to designate
demons, given above, they were undoubtedly re-
garded as being morally evil. On the one hand,
possession is frequently mentioned in the same
category as ordinary sickness (e.g. Mt 101), dumb-
ness is said to be due to possession (Mt 955, Lk 1114),
so too epilepsy (Mt 1715) and blindness (Mt 12) ;
demons are spoken of as taking up their abode in
aman without his having, apparently, any choice
in the matter (Mk 5155); it is, moreover, note-
worthy, that the wicked (1.6. Pharisees, publicans,
and sinners) are never spoken of as being possessed
(e.g. Lk 11°" 151), and the possessed are permitted
to enter the synagogue (Mk 1%, Lk 4°), which
would hardly have been the case had they been
regarded as notoriously evil; another fact which
should be taken into consideration in this con-
nexion is our Lord’s words to the demons (see
below). On the other hand, the evidence is still
stronger for possession having been regarded as a
moral as well as a physical disorder. Demons are
directly referred to as evil (Lk 77! 87); there are
degrees of badness among them (Mt 12%), some
are merely malignant, some do more physical harm
than others (Mt 1553, where κακῶς δαιμονίζεται im-
plies some specially virulent form of possession),
some are referred to as being morally as well as
physically harmful (Lk 8? πνευμάτων πονηρῶν, 11°) 3+
In one case a demon is such that it can only be ex-
pelled by prayer (Mk 9*),{ which implies that in
* *Head-ornaments’: small leathern cases, containing Ex
131-10 111-6, Dt 649 1113.14 written on parchment; these are
bound round the head and left arm by means of long leather
straps. This was done in obedience to the command in Dt 1118,
The Greek name (φυλακτήρια) shows that they were regarded as
safeguards, 1.6. against demons (cf. Mt 235), Both this and the
custom just mentioned are observed by all orthodox Jews at
the present day. ᾿
+ Cf. also the distinction in Lk 1332 ἐκβάλλω δαιμονία καὶ ἰάσεις
ἀποτελῶ.
1 The addition of καὶ νυστεία is not well attested.
DEMON, DEMONIACS
DEMON, DEMONIACS 441
the generality of cases this was not necessary, and,
indeed, we find this to be the case, since in every
other recorded instance the word was sutlicient.
Then, again, Beelzebub, the prince of the demons, is
identified with Satan (Mt 1274-9, Mk 322°, Lk 1135-1,
cf. Rev 1013), and Satan himself is by name reckoned
among the demons in Lk 10'7-*9; and he is the
originator of sin in man, as shown by the Tempta-
tion, the parable of the Tares (Mt 13™*-), and the
sin of Judas (see especially Lk 22%). The demons
are intangible, incorporeal,* and (if one excepts
those passages in which Satan is represented as
having been seen, e.g. Lk 1018 458.) invisible; ‘the
NT writers believed that the physical constitution
of a spirit, whether holy or impure, was akin to
vapour.’ The demon enters (εἰσέρχεται) a man at
will, and he goes out (ἐξέρχεται) at will (Lk 1153),
but in most cases he goes out only on compulsion
(ἐκβάλλειν) ; he is also able to take possession of
animals (Mk 615); there are good grounds for the
supposition that a storm-fiend was believed in, as
will be seen by comparing the phraseology of the
two following passages: Mk 4°9 ἐπετίμησεν τῷ ἀνέμῳ
καὶ εἷπεν TH θαλάσσῃ Σιώπα, πεφίμωσο; Mk 1” ἐπετί-
pnoev αὐτῷ δ᾽ Ἰησοῦς λέγων Φιμώθητι. .. .t Desolate
places, such as the desert (Lk 859), or mountainous
regions (Mk 5°), or among tombs} (Mk 5°), and
waterless places (Lk 1153), z.c. places to which men
come only in small numbers or singly, are those
for which demons have a preference. They are
represented as congregating together (Mk 5°, Lk
850), sometimes in sevens§ (Lk 8? 1156. cf. Rev 12) ;
for this reason the plural form is usually employed.
In Mk 5” the demons beseech Christ not to send
them out of the country; they are thus able to
speak, or, at all events, so to overmaster their
victim as to make his faculties their own (Mk 155).
Nothing is said in the Gospels, directly, as_ to
where the permanent home of the demons is, || but
the ‘abyss’ is spoken of as, apparently, a place
whence they could not return if once banished
there; this would, at all events, account for their
entreaty not to be banished thither in Lk 851: 4%
they clearly realized that a time of torment was in
store for them (Mt 8”), and that this torment might
take place before the appointed time (Mk 5’, Lk 855),
and so the sight of Christ filled them with dread.
There is nothing in the Gospels to show that
demons were believed to be the unquiet spirits of
the wicked departed, and the belief that they were
heathen gods is equally absent (cf., on the other
hand, 1Co 1014-22-25),
(c) Demoniacal possession, demoniacs.—The usual
term for this is δαιμονιζόμενος (e.g. Mt 4°), but a
number of other expressions for it are found in
the Gospels, viz. δαιμονισθείς (Mk 518, Lk 856), ἄνθρω-
mos ἐν πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ (Mk 1° δ“ év=‘in the
power of’), ἔχων δαιμόνια (Lk 857), ἄνθρωπος ἔχων
πνεῦμα δαιμονίου ἀκαθάρτου (Lk 435), ἐνοχλούμενος ὑπὸ
πνευμάτων ἀκαθάρτων (Lk 618), ἐλαυνόμενος ἀπὸ τοῦ
δαίμονος (Lk 839), σεληνιάζεσθαι (Mt 45)..
With but few exceptions those who are said to
be possessed are grown-up men; the exceptions
* Cf. Ignatius (ad Smyrn. iii. 2), who tells us that Christ
said to His disciples after His resurrection: οὐκ εἰμὶ δαιμονίον
ἀσώματον.
t Cf. Conybeare in JQR ix. 460; see also an example of a
poet edldressed to the storm-god in Sayce’s Hibbert Lectures,
p. 317.
_t Cf. the highly interesting inscription, the text of which is
given in Deissmann’s Bibelstudien, p. 26 ff.
_§ Companies of seven evil spirits are not infrequently men-
tioned in Assyr.-Bab. incantations, e.g. ‘there are seven wicked
sons of the abyss,’ which occurs in an incantation to fire; see
Budge’s Assyrian Incantations to Fire and Water; cf. also the
Pa ae spirits’ in ancient Babylonian belief (Sayce, op.
cit. iii.)
|| The ‘eternal fire’ is, according to Mt 2541, reserved for the
devil and his angels; but there is no mention of these in Lk
1623ff., where the flame in Hades is spoken of.
ἍΜ In the parallel passages there is no mention of the abyss
(cf. Mt 801, Mk 510),
are: certain women who had been healed of evil
spirits, and Mary Magdalene (Lk 8?) ; the woman
who had been bound by Satan for eighteen years
(Lk 131+ 1%); Peter’s wife’s mother (see below, Lk
459) ; a boy (Lk 9539); and the little daughter of the
Syro-Pheenician woman (Mk 7”). It is, however,
probable that others, besides men, are included in
such passages as Mk 1°, Lk 1, The signs of
possession may be thus summarized: dumbness
(Mt 955, Mk 915), dumbness and deafness (Mk 955),
blindness and dumbness (Mt 1955), savage fierce-
ness (Mt 8°, Mk 54, Lk 8539), abnormal strength
(Mk 5, Lk 8539), falling into the fire and water
(Mt 173°), convulsions (Mk 156 950. Li 435), raving
(Mk 5°), grinding the teeth (Mk 918), foaming at
the mouth (Lk 9%), These are all signs of
epilepsy (σεληνιάζεσθαι) ; in Mt 453 the σεληνιαζόμενοι
are distinguished from the δαιμονιζόμενοι. Ὁ Fever
would also appear to have been regarded as a sign
of possession, for Christ is said to ‘rebuke’ (ἐπετί-
μησεν)ὴ the fever, the identical word which is fre-
quently used by Him when addressing demons,
e.g. in the next verse but one to the passage in
question (Lk 4"). One other sign of possession
must be noted, a man who is ‘mad,’ in the modern
sense of being out of his mind, is said to have a
demon; this is said of John the Baptist (Mt 11'S),
and cf Christ (Jn 10’).
A demoniac is spoken of as the dwelling-place of
a demon (Mt 12%), and a number of demons can
dwell in one person (Mt 12%, Mk 5°, Lk 83). Some-
times the demon is differentiated from the man
possessed (Mk 1*4), at other times the two are
identified (Mk 3"); striking in this respect is the
passage Mk 5'°°;+ differentiation is strongly
marked when an expression such as that in Lk 618
is used: of ἐνοχλούμενοι ἀπὸ πνευμάτων ἀκαθάρτων.
Lastly, the same outward signs are at one time
spoken of as possession, at another as ordinary
sickness (cf. Mt 455 17? etc.).
(d) Christ and the demons.—One of Christ’s chief
works on earth was to annihilate the power of
demons; the demons themselves realize this (Mk
14, Lk 453, and cf. 1 Jn 3°); the destruction of their
kingdom was necessary for the establishment of
the Kingdom of God. Christ’s attitude towards
demons may be briefly summed up as follows :—
With two exceptions (viz. the case of the woman
‘pound by Satan’ for eighteen years, Lk 1312: }6,
and that of Peter’s wifes mother, Lk 4°’) no in-
stance is recorded of His laying His hands upon,
or in any way coming in direct contact with one
who is possessed by ademon. On the other hand,
His words are never severe when addressing the
possessed ; very remarkable, moreover, is the fact
that even when He speaks to the demon itself,
Christ’s words are never angry; He ‘rebukes’ the
demon (Mk 1°, Lk 455), but the words of rebuke
are simply: ‘ Hold thy peace and come out of him,’
or a command that He should not be made known Ἐ
(Mk 8:35, but ef. Lk 8°) ; on one oceasion the request
of demons is granted (Mt 8°-?=Mk 5%8=Lk
853), The power which Christ has over demons is
absolute, they are wholly subject unto Him, and
are compelled to yield Him obedience (Mk 157, Lk
441); that it is an unwilling obedience is obvious,
and this is graphically brought out, 6.4. when it is
said of a demon that before coming out of a man
it threw him down in the midst (Lk 4°°).§ The
recognition of Christ by demons is of a kind which
* See, further, Delitzsch, System der bibl. Psychologie, ὃ 16.
+ ‘What in the demoniac strikes us most is the strange con-
fusion of the physical and the psychical, each intruding into
the proper domain of the other’? (Trench, Miracles, ad loc.).
t For the reason of Christ’s not wishing to be made known
see Sanday in JTASt, ν. p. 321 ff., and Wrede, ‘Zur Messiaser-~
kenntnis der Damonen bei Markus,’ in ZNT'W ν. [1904] p. 169 ff.
§ Cf. also, in the preceding verse, the exclamation of dis-
{ pleasure,” Ex (=).
442 DEMON, DEMONIACS
is very striking, for He is not only recognized as
Jesus of Nazareth, i.c. as one born of men, but is
also addressed as the ‘Holy One of God’ (Lk 4°4),
and as the ‘Son of God’ (Lk 4"), i.e. as one of
Divine nature, and this latter title is emphasized
by their knowledge of His power to cast them into
the abyss (Lk 85), which also accounts for their
fear of Him. The power of Christ over demons is
recarded as something new * (διδαχὴ καινή, Mk 157);
this was lLeeause the method of exorcism which
was familiar to the Jews hitherto was the pro-
nouncing of a magical formula over the possessed.
In the Gospels, as a rule, the casting out of a
demon is stated without specifying by what means
it was done (Mk 1%, Lk 77! 85), but we learn this
from a number of other passages: λόγῳ (Mt 8°),
ἐν πνεύματι θεοῦ (Mt 127%), ἐν δακτύλῳ θεοῦ (Lk 11°"),
ἐπετίμησεν (Mt 17:8), ὑπάγετε (Mt 8353), ἔξελθε (Mk 53,
Lk 4°); on one oceasion the words are addressed
to the mother of a child who is possessed : γενηθήτω
σοι ws θέλεις (Mt 1533, Mk 739), the possessed child
not being in His presence (Mk 7), so that His
power did not depend on His visible personality.
Christ transfers this power of casting out demons
(Mt 101, Mk 3"); when His disciples cast them
out it is by virtue of His namet (τῷ o@ dvipare
δαιμόνια ἐξεβάλομεν, Mt 7:5, Lk 10"), but they are
not able to do this without faith (Mt 17°"); we
read, however, in Mk 958:.99 of one who was not a
follower of Christ, but who was, nevertheless, able
to cast out demons in His name (cf. Mt 12:0,
Lk 11°). In Mk 3” the scribes say of Christ
that ‘he hath Beelzebub,’ and in 3” occur the
words, ‘because they said, He hath an unclean
spirit.? That Beelzebub the ‘ prince of the demons’
and ‘unclean spirit’ are synonymous with ‘demon’
cannot be disputed. Christ is thus declared to be
possessed ;§ nevertheless, it is not this which calls
forth His words, ‘whosoever shall sin against the
Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness’ (v.*’), but the
fact that He was accused of being in league with
Beelzebub ; this is important, as it would seem to
support the theory, which is elsewhere adumbrated
in the Gospels, that possession was not necessarily,
per se, amoral disorder ; there is also reason to be-
lieve that at least some forms of possession were
regarded as mental derangement: Christ speaks
of John the Baptist having been looked upon as
possessed (Mt 1118, Lk 7°); he was so revarded,
because there seemed to be something eccentric
about his behaviour ; in Jn 77° Christ is said to be
possessed by a demon, because He said they sought
to kill Him; Jn 825: 4, where it is said: ‘Thou art
a Samaritan and hast a demon,’ points te the fact
that a man who was possessed was despised because
he spoke what was deemed nonsense 5 also, the
supposed connexion between possession and mental
derangement is pointedly brought out in Jn 10°
‘He hath a demon and is mad.’ While fully
realizing that the Fourth Gospel stands by itself,
it must be conceded that it contributes one very
important consideration, especially as the idea of
possession found there is not without parallel in
the Synoptic Gospels, as shown above. The belief
that possession wasa species of mental derange-
ment, wholly unconnected with the question of
morality, is what the Fourth Gospel teaches ; but
then it must be remembered that ‘the devil’ and
‘Satan,’ who are identified || (as in the Synoptic
_ * The method was new ; cf., as regards Christ’s general teach-
ing, Mt 723.29 ‘They were astonished at his teaching; for he
taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.’
t Cf. the case ot grievous bodily sickness also cured, though
Christ was not present (Lk 72-),
_ tCf. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 302ff.; Conybeare in JQR
ix. 583 ff.
§ In the parallel passages (Mt 934 12°4ff | Lk 1114f-) there is no
mention of Christ being possessed, the accusation is that He cast
out demons by Beelzebub.
|| Cf. Jn 132 ὁ δια βολος with 13°7 ὁ Seravas.
DEMON, DEMONIACS
Gospels), are differentiated from ‘demon’; whereas,
according to the Synoptics, all belong te the same
category, Satan being the chief (Mt 12-4). The
passage Jn 103 receives additional significance
in the light of the Heb. equivalent, compared,
ὁ... With Hos 97‘the man that hath the spirit is
mad’ (m7 wx yivp). Delitzsch (NZ in Hed.
renders Jn 10% δαιμόνιον ἔχει καὶ μαίνεται, by 12 τῷ
nia yiwns, the last words of which should be com-
pared with the rendering of the Pesh. ἸΔ α'οο
Gospel demonology may, therefore, be briefly
summed up thus :—
(1) Demons are under a head, Satan; they form
a kingdom. (2) They are incorporeal, and gener-
ally, though not necessarily, invisible. (3) They
inhabit certain places which they prefer to others.
(4) They tend to live in groups. (5) They have
names, and are sometimes identified with their
victims, at other times differentiated from them.
(6) They are the cause of mental and physical
disease to men, women, and children. (7) They
can pass in and out of men, and even animals. (8)
More than one can take possession of a man at the
same time. (9) Christ made it one of His chief
aims to overthrow this kingdom, and set up His
own in its place. (10) He cast out demons through
His own name, or by His word. (11) He could
delegate this power, which was regarded as some-
thing new. (12) He never treats the possessed
as wilful sinners, which is in strong contrast
to His words to the scribes and Pharisees, (13)
Only on the rarest occasions does He come into
direct contact with the possessed. (14) His
Divine and human natures are recognized by
demons. (15) At His second coming the mem-
bers of this kingdom are to be condemned to
eternal fire.
5. In endeavouring to reach some definite con-
clusions on this difficult subject of Gospel demon-
ology, it is well to place certain considerations
in juxtaposition. On the one hand, the history
of mankind. shows that a superstitious belief in
evil-disposed demons, to whom every imaginable
untoward circumstance is attributed, is universal ;
theré is a remarkable similarity, in essence, in the
demonology of all times; it stretches, from the
earliest times to the present day, like a great
chain along the course of human history. The
demonology of the Gospels shows itself, in many
respects, unmistakably akin to this universal
superstition. It is impossible to ignore the fact
that, in its broad outlines, Gospel demonology is
in accordance with the current Jewish beliefs of
the time. It will, moreover, have been noticed,
from the details given above, that the data in the
Gospels themselves are inconsistent. Again, the
way in which in the Gospels much is attributed to
the action of demons (deafness, dumbness, etc.),
looks naive to modern eyes. There is also this
further consideration which conspires in discredit-
ing the Gospel accounts on the subject, viz. that
those who at the present day believe*in the con-
tinued activity of demons are almost invariably
such as are on a low stage of civilization, or they
are peasants in country districts who have but rare
opportunities of coming into contact with cultured
people. And, lastly, account must be taken of the
fact that very few could be found nowadays who
would claim to point to any instance in their ex-
perience of the existence of demoniacal possession ;
thus the only parallels to Gospel demonology would
have to be sought among the acknowledged super-
* The Syro-Hex., following the LXX, has a doublet, but the
idea of madness is brought out in both.
DEMON, DEMONIACS
DEN 443
stitions of the Middle Ages, and the like. These
considerations tend to the conclusion that the
Gospel accounts of demons cannot be regarded as
essentialiy different from the innumerable accounts
from other sources.
But there is a second set of considerations, and
to ignore these would be most unscientific. When
the whole chain of demonology, from primitive
times to the present day, is considered, it is quite
impossible for an unbiassed mind to be blind to
the fact that, in spite of many points of similarity
and even of essential identity, the demonology of
the Gospels ofiers something sui generis; one be-
comes conscious of the fact that this link in the
long chain is very different from all the other
links. Another thing that strikes the student of
the subject. as very remarkable is, that Gospel
demonology and the current Jewish belief are not
more alike than is the case ; they agree in so many
respects, that one feels that only the existence
of some extraordinary factor prevents their being
wholly identical. But more than this, the dis-
similarity between the two is just as striking as
their points of similarity: in the one there is
nothing eccentric, nothing done for effect, or for
self-glorification,* there is no casting out of demons
for the sake of exhibiting power, there is none of
the ‘wonder-working’ which characterizes other
systems ; one object, and one only, runs through
the whole of the accounts of the casting out of
demons, namely, the alleviation of human sufier-
ing. To give in any detail the points of difierence
between the general subject of demonology and
Gospel demonology would be impossible here, but,
when the great mass of facts has been studied, the
contrast between the two can be compared only
to the contrast between folly and seriousness.
Another conviction to which one is compelled in
contemplating Gospel demonology in its broad out-
lines is that it is connected in the closest possible
manner with the subject of sin; the symptoms of
the ‘possessed’ in the Gospels are such as are
common to humanity, and nobody doubts the
accuracy with which these are described ; the real
crux arises when their cause has to be determined ;
this is ascribed by the compilers of the Gospels to
the action of demons, 1.6. to an evil agency ; nowa-
days the same symptoms are ascribed to different
canses—broadly speaking,’ to ‘natural causes’ ;
but may it not be that behind both theories there
lics a deeper cause, the principle of Evil, oceupy-
ing a vacant place in individuals which they them-
selves have provided by the abandonment of their
self-control ἢ There are cases in the Gospels to
which this would not apply, but it is worth taking
into consideration in contemplating the subject as
a whole. It is well also to remember that the ad-
vance of Modern Science, especially in the domain
of Psychology, has revealed problems whose most
important result is to show how extremely little
we know about such things as ‘secondary pcr-
sonality,’ the ‘ subliminal self,’ ‘ change of control,’
ete. ete.—in a word, how hidden still are the secrets
of the region of the supersensuous.
Upon a subject that bristles with so many diffi-
culties nobody would wish to dogmatize ; no con-
clusion that has been reached is.free from serious
objections, and the same is the case with that here
offered :—
Christ saw in the case of every ‘ possessed’
victim a result of sin, not necessarily through the
co-operation of the victims ;+ sin He saw em-
bodied in ‘Satan,’ who is identified with ‘demon’
(see above) ; he was the personification of the prin-
ciple of Evil, which was manifested in men in a
* Cf. Christ’s rebuke to His disciples in Lk 1029,
t It. is necessary to read Ro 177-39 and 1 Co 1014-22 1117-62, esp.
vy.°0. 82, in this connexion.
variety of ways. When Christ ‘exorcized’ a
‘demon,’ He, by His Divine power, drove the evil
out, and at the same time obliterated the visille
results of sin. When the words and acts of Christ
came to be written down, they were not always
understood ;* they were, no doubt, in their broad
outlines, correctly reproduced ; but what more
natural than that they should be told in accord-
ance with the ideas then current? Not the essence
but the form differed from the actuality.
LITERATUKE. — Blau, Das altjtidische Zauberwesen, Strass-
burg, 1898 [most interesting and useful]; Brecher, Dus T'ran-
scendentale, Magie und inagische Heilarten im Talmud, Vienna,
1850 [for gaining an insight into the connexion between demons
and magic, according to Rabbinical notions, this book is indis-
pensable]; Franz Delitzsch, System der biblischen Psychologic,
Leipzig, 1855; Edersheim, V’he Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah5, chs. xiv. xxv., London, 1890; Eisenmenger, Entdecktes
Judenthwin, Dresden, 1893; Kohut, in Alhandiungen 7 die
Kunde des Morgeniandes, vol. iv., issued by the ZDMG, Leip-
zig, 1859, ete.; Schubert, Die Krankheiten und Storungen der
menschlichen Seele; Stube, Jiidisch-babylonische Zauberteate
Halle, 1895; Trench, Notes on the Miracles14, pp. 161-175;
Weber, Jiidische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und ver-
wandter Schriften? (esp. ὃ 54), Leipzig, 1897 [this most im-
portant work is an improved edition of the earlier System
der altsynagogalen palustinischen Theologie]}; Wrede, * Zur
Messiaserkenntnis der Dimonen bei Markus,’ in ZNT7'W,
July 1904; Winer, Diblisches Icalworterbuch, Riehm, HWDBA,
Hastings’ DB, the Ency. Bibl., under ‘ Demon,’ etc.
For the subsequent beliefs and superstitions about demons
prevalent during the Middle Ages, and even up to the present
day, afew references may be given out of a large number of
works dealing with the subject :-—
In the arts. in JQR by Mr. Conybeare, already referred to,
there is an admirable survey of the beliefs of the Church Fathers
(viii. pp. 594-008, ix. pp. 59-72). Another work of M. Maury,
who is one of the chief authorities on.the subject, is his Croy-
ances et légendes dw moyen-dge, Paris, 1896. Andrew Lang
deals with the psychology of the subject in his Making of Le-
ligion, mentioned above; so too Delitzsch, System .. ., also
referred to above. '[wo other books are, Nevins’ Deion Pos-
session and allied Themes, New York, 1895; and Wall’s Devils,
a popular sketch of demons in ecclesiastical art, with good
illustrations (London, 1904).
W. O. E. OFSTERLEY.
DEN (Mt 212°5=Mk 11"=Lk 19% σπήλαιον,
[λῃστῶν] ; elsewhere in the Gospels only Jn 11° to
describe the tomb of Lazarus, ἣν δὲ σπήλαιον).--- ἢ
estimating the meaning of our Lord’s declaration
that the Temple had been made aden or cave of
robbers, the immediate occasion of the words must
be kept in view. It was the feast of the Passover,
and the Temple courts were crowded by those who
sold sheep, oxen, and pigeons,.while the money-
changers also carried on their trade. As no trace
is found in the OT of such a market existing, it
may be supposed it sprang up some time after the
Captivity. It would plead for justification the
needs of the new condition of the nation. Toreign
Jews would thus be able to obtain on the spot both
the Temple half-shekel required by the Law (Ex
3013), and also animals necessary for sacrifice, pro-
bably with the additional advantage that the latter
would have an official guarantee of Levitical fitness
for sacrifice, which must be obtained for any animal
purchased elsewhere.
The profits from these sources were cncrmous.
It has been calculated that the annual income de-
rived from money-changing can hardly have been
less than £8000-£9000, while the sale of pigeons is
specially referred to as furnishing alone a large
annual income. These profits appear to have been
largely, if not entirely, appropriated by the priests.
Certain booths are frequently mentioned as belong-
ing to the ‘sons of Hanan’ (Annas), and appear to
have existed until about three years betore the
destruction of Jerusalem, when they were de-
stroyed. Besides the mere fact that the Temple
was made a house of merchandise (Jn 9210), many
passages in the Rabbinical writings appear to indi-
cate that the Temple market was notorious for
dishonest dealings, upon which passages it has been
* This was often the case during Christ’s lifetime (see Mk
821 982, Lk 94°, Jn 310 ete. etc.).
444
DENARIUS
remarked (Speaker's Com. in loc.) that the spaces
in the court were probably let out to trafiickers
at an exorbitant rate. The remembrance of this
state of things gives new force to the quotation
from Jer 7!! here used by our Lord.
Josephus (c. Apion. ii. 24) writes: ‘The Temple ought to be
common to all men, because He is the common God of all’ ; but,
far from its being thus, it had become the possession of a few.
‘Ye gather together here money and animals, as robbers collect
their booty in their den’ (Fritzsche, quoted by Lange).
Those who ought to have been the first to teach
others the sacredness of the place had seized upon
1t, as robbers would seize some den or cave in the
mountains, in which they might maintain their
unity for the purpose of spoil. See, further, art.
TEMPLE in vol. ii.
LITERATURE. — Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah, also The Temple, etc. ; Farrar, Life of Christ ; Deren-
bourg, Hist. de Pal. ; and the Comm. ad loc.
J. B. BRISTOW.
DENARIUS.
DENIAL.—The verb ἀρνεῖσθαι, ‘to deny,’ is used
in contrast with ὁμολογεῖν, ‘to confess’ (Mt 109:
|| Lk 12°, where ἀπαρνεῖσθαι is also employed ; cf.
2 Ti 2”, where ἀρνεῖσθαι is used specially of the
verbal denial of Christ, due to fear of suffering). As
confession of Christ (wh. see) is the outward expres-
sion of personal faith in Him, so denial of Him is
(1) the withholding, (2) refusing, or (3) withdrawing
such confession. In the first of these categories
are included those who, like some members of the
Sanhedrin (Jn 12"), believed on Christ, but did
not confess Him; in the second, those who did not
believe on Him, and as a natural result did not
confess Him; and, in the third, those who have
confessed Him, but, through fear of men, deny
Him in times of persecution. It is the third class
to which reference is made in Mt 10% ‘ Whosoever
shall deny me before men, him will I also deny
before my Father which is in heaven.’ Open dis-
avowal of faith in Christ (‘before men’) is taken
as a clear indication of the offender’s attitude
towards Him, and eventuates in his exclusion from
the blessings of the perfected kingdom in heaven.
Such disavowal must be deliberate and persistent,
and is to be distinguished from a momentary lapse
of personal weakness, like that of Simon Peter,
which by timely repentance became the means of
strengthening his character, and enabling him to
strengthen others (Lk 22°). In the narrower and
stricter sense, therefore, denial means public apos-
tasy from faith in Christ, the guilt of which is
visited with a punishment in exact correspondence
with it.
4. The discourse in which the great warning
against denial is found (Mt 10!7-*°), and which was
addressed to the Twelve in view of their Apostolic
mission after the Resurrection, evidences its lateness
by the serious situation depicted, in which exposure
to the severest forms of persecution is contem-
plated, including punishment in the synagogues,
arraignment before Gentile tribunals, and death
itself. It must belong at earliest to the period of
growing opposition, and has been assigned to as
late a date as the close of the ministry. The
Second Evangelist places a portion of it in the
eschatological discourse spoken on Olivet to the
four disciples on the Wednesday or Thursday of
Passion-week (Mk 13°), Christ no doubt fore-
told aimost from the outset of His ministry that
His disciples would be exposed to reproach and
obloquy (Mt 5™*-), but the first intimation of serious
opposition synchronizes with the first plain intima-
tion of His own death (Mk 835). Tt was in prospect
of the undisguised hostility awaiting them in con-
nexion with their Apostolic mission that Christ
cautioned His disciples against the danger of denial.
See MONEY.
DENIAL
If He suffered death for claiming to be the Messiah
(Mk 14®!-64), it is evident that those who afterwards
proclaimed Him as such must run the risk of sharing
a fate like His.
2. Due stress must be laid on the fact that the
object of denial is the person of Christ, not simply
His message or His words, which in any case derive
their ultimate authority from His person. It is
admitted that ‘ His earlier demand that men should
fulfil the condition of participation in the Kingdom
of God by repentance and trust in the message of
salvation, became narrowed down afterwards to the
demand that men should unite themselves to Him
as the Messiah, and cleave fast to Him in trust’
(Wendt, Teaching, ii. 308). But the force of the con-
cession is quite destroyed by the further represen-
tation that ‘union to the person of the Messiah is
nothing else than adherence to the message of the
Kingdom of God brought by Him’ (p. 310.) This
is to reduce the person ot the Messiah to a compendi-
ous formula for His teachings, and ignores the fact
that, after the great confession at Cxesarea Philippi,
Christ grounded on His Messiahship a claim to
absolute self-surrender and self-sacrifice (Mk 84),
Devotion to Himself is henceforward made the
supreme test of discipleship, and the withdrawal of
such devotion seals the doom of the ofiender here-
after. We are in aregion where personal relations
and obligations are everything ; where the injury
done by denial is not measured by the rejection of
a message merely, but by the wound inflicted on
One who has rendered unparalleled services.
3. It is the rupture, though but for a moment,
and without deliberate intention, of tender, inti-
mate, personal ties by the act of the disciple, that
renders the great denial of the chief Apostle so
affecting an incident (Mt 269%, Mk 1454 6-72) Tk
Dea ἼΠ ἘΘ15 ἰδ: 22st) stalls) ὑπ6 τοῦδ ΞΙΤῚΣ
prising by reason of Christ’s clear announcement
of it beforehand, and Peter’s strong protestations
of fidelity (Mt 26% || Mk 149%, Lk 2256, ef. Jn
13°-), Deep as the fall was, however, care must
be taken not to exaggerate its criminality. That
the thrice-repeated denial was due to want of
faith or devotion on the Apostle’s part, there is
nothing to show. It was indeed ardent attach-
ment to Christ that led him, after his hasty re-
treat, to follow at a distance, and seek admission
to the house of Annas, before whom the prelimin-
ary examination of Christ took place. He was
determined to keep near his Master, and it was
doubtless this very determination that betrayed
him into sin. When challenged in the porch by the
maid who kept the door, he gave an evasive reply
(Jn 18", Mk 14°), fearing that to own his disciple-
ship would lead to his exclusion from the premises.
When taunted later on with being a disciple by the
rough servants gathered round the fire in the court-
yard (Jn 188-35), he denied it in more categorical
fashion, hoping thereby to evade further remarks,
and avoid the summary ejection which would have
followed the detection of his previous falsehood.
Having travelled so far on the downward path, it
became well-nigh impossible to turn back, and on
being charged by one of the kinsmen of Malchus
with having been with Christ in the garden at the
moment of the arrest, overcome by fear that he
might be called to account for his rash act, he
denied his Master for the third time, and backed
up his denial with oaths and curses (Jn 187°, cf.
Mt 26%). It has been suggested that his falsehoods
would sit lightly on his conscience, on the ground
that he felt justified in giving no kind of infor-
mation about himself or his Master which might
compromise a movement which he imagined was
but temporarily arrested. He probably experi-
enced no scruples in deceiving his Master’s enemies,
especially as this seemed the only way of carrying
DEPENDENCE
out his purpose to keep as near to Christ as possible
without risk of detection. But when all due allow-
ance is made for the excellency of his motives, his
conduct is utterly indefensible. When he affirmed
so confidently that he was ready to go to death,
what he thought of was a public testimony to
Christ, for whom he counted no sacrifice too great.
‘A great deed of heroism is often easier than loyalty
in small things,’ and Peter, who had courage enough
to defend his Master at the cost of his life, displayed
lamentable weakness in a minor emergency. The
sound of cock-crow, announcing the approach of
dawn, was a painful reminder that he had proved
lacking in genuine fidelity, and false to the pledges
so recently given. But that his love to Christ still
remained the same, was abundantly evidenced by
his subsequent act of sincere contrition.
W. S. MONTGOMERY.
DEPENDENCE.—1. The feeling which impels
men to look up to, and depend upon, a Power higher
and. other than themselves is essentially human,
universal, and, in the position which it oceupies in
their lives, most prominent. It supplies them
with an intuitive hope, which is quickened by
their sense of need and helplessness, that this
Power will supply their wants, and fill the mysteri-
ously void places of their being. This hope finds
expression in the universal desire for communion
with that Power by prayer, worship, sacrifice, and
so on. Some of the most beautiful aspirations
which breathe out of the Psalms of the Jewish
Church are the outcome of men’s longing after
and dependence upon God (οἴ. Ps 42. 732-°8 108.
139, etc.) ; and when the Psalmist sings ‘ My soul
cleaveth (3923, LX-X ἐκολλήθη) after thec’ (Ps 635), he
is putting into words, suited to his own individual
experience, the same idea which St. Paul says,
in his address. to the assembled Athenians, 15
universally human (ζητεῖν τὸν θεόν, Ac 1777). A
direct relationship, which is personal, is cvery-
where in the OT postulated (cf. c.g. Gn 5°" 6°,
Mal 2°, Am 3°) as existing between Jehovah and
His people. On the one side is the Supreme Per-
sonal Will which projects Itself into a world of
created intelligences, either in the form of law
objectively revealed (Dt 5°, cf. the prophetic for-
mula, ‘Thus saith the Lord’), or in that form
which, in the words of the writer of the Fourth
Gospel, ‘coming into the world lightens every
man’ (Jn 1°, cf. Ro 2, Jer 3139. On the other,
there is the being made in ‘His own image’ (Gn
ower, | Co 117: Ja 39, Sir -173 Wis 2%),
whose life, touching His life at all points, owes its
existence to the continued exercise of His will (ef.
Ac 118).
We have here, not the antithesis of eternal and
temporal, finite and infinite, so much as an em-
opel synthesis effected by a close personal re-
lationship, in which we may say consists all that
Is essentially true in religion. The error into
which Schleiermacher, for example, fell when he
made religion consist in a feeling of dependence
(Abhangigkeit) on a Higher Power is obviously an
error of defect, as it leaves out of account the
element of Personality just referred to (see his
Christliche Glaubc). At the same time it would
be a mistake no less fatal to eliminate this feeling
from the domain of man’s spiritual life ; for it is
one of the ultimate realities of our being, finding
c::pression in a variety of ways according to the
individual life which is lived.
2. The sense of dependence upon God is seen most
clearly and fully in the life of Jesus Christ. It is
focussed, as it were, in the story of the Incarnation,
and in the circumstances in which the Incarnate |
life was passed from childhood onwards. In this,
as in other resjects, that life is the epitome of all |
that is true in the life of man. The time when
DEPENDENCE
445
the foreordained ‘mystery of God’ (1 Co 2!, ef. Eph
3° 6, Col 1°) should be revealed, depended on
the wisdom and will of the Father (Gal 44, ef. Mk
115). The manner of its revelation was conditioned
by the laws of motherhood (‘made of a woman,
made under law,’ Gal 4", ef. Lk 2°, where the
natural law of parturition is referred to explicitly),
and the safety of the Divine Child’s life depended
on the vigilance of Joseph (Mt 215-15) no less than
on the maternal tenderness and love of His mother.
His education was that of a Jewish child in a
pious Jewish home, where the language spoken was
the current ‘ Hebrew’ or Palestinian Aramaic (sce
a very useful article, ‘The Dialects of Palestine in
the time of Christ,’ by Ad. Neubauer in Studia
Biblica, vol. i. pp. 39-73 [Oxford]; with this we
may compare a similar discussion by J. B. Mayor
in his Epistle of St. James), which was Jcsus’
mother-tongue (cf. Mk 811 54! 734 14° 15+, Jn 1%,
Mt 5%). In point.of fact, it is not too much to
say that He was governed in His earthly life,
physical and intellectual, by the ordinary laws
of nature. If He violated these laws, even in
the interests of His work, He had to pay the
penalty which nature inexorably demands (cf.
Mt 4=Lk 4, Mk 11P=Met 2178)" Jn 46 19-25 and
Mt 8*4).
In the moral sphere we observe the same pheno-
menon, which finds a prominent place in the
Christological teaching of the Epistle to the
Hebrews. Even as we are, so is He, ‘compassed
with infirmity’ (57). Like ourselves in all things,
‘apart from sin,’ He suffered from the assaults of
temptation (4:5, cf. 218)... He had, as we have, to
learn slowly and with pain the moral virtue of
obedience, notwithstanding the unique character of
His Sonship (5°). In Him also the law, by which
alone ‘progress ‘is assured, exacted implicit sub-
mission, although the lesson was hard (2, ef. 5°,
7°). That Jesus was fully conscious of the neces-
sity of this bitter experience is seen from His own
saying, in which He defies the threatened persecu-
tion of Herod, and which contains the same verb
as is used in Hebrews, to denote the final cause of
His sufferings (τελειοῦμαι, Lk 1353).
Even in the sphere of His mental life we find
Him depending on the laws which govern intel-
lectual growth universally. Side by side with His
physical growth, as the Lukan narrative tells us,
there was a corresponding expansion of His intel-
lectual and spiritual faculties (Ἰησοῦς προέκοπτεν
τῇ σοφίᾳ καὶ ἡλικίᾳ καὶ χάριτι x.7.A., Lk 2, with
which we may compare the words in ν. ἡ, where
the participle πληρούμενον in conjunctic a with σοφία
is a distinct assertion of continuous and-gradual
development). Nor have we any just reason to
suppose that the operation of this law ceased at
any given stage in His life. On the score of eredi-
bility it will be found as difficult to believe that
eradual growth along these lines ever found a
place in Jesus’ life, as to believe that it entered so
completely into the warp and woof of His expcri-
ence that it accompanied Him all through His
life, even to the very end (cf. art. ‘The Baptism,
Temptation, and Transfiguration: A Study,’ in
Ch. Quart. Rev., July 1901). There is no pericd in
the life of Jesus when we can say, ‘at this point
He ceased to learn, or to advance towards per-
fection’ (τελείωσις, cf. ‘ Additional Note’ on He 2°?
in Westcott’s The Epistle to the Hebrews). His
lesson was only finally ‘learned’ in its entirety
when, yielding Himself unreservedly into His
Father’s hands, He became ‘obedient unto death,
yea, the death of the cross’ (Ph 2°), and ‘the
author (αἴτιος) of eternal salvation’ (He 5°) to all
| who are so far partakers of His Life that they too
learn the meaning of perfect obedience (ὑπακοὴ).
See art. ACCOMMODATION, p. 15.
446
DEPENDENCE
In close connexion with what we have been saying is the
repeated disavowal by Jesus of all intention to assert His own
will (cf. τὸ θέλημκα τὸ Ewov, Jn 530 638, see also Mt 2639. 42= Mk 1426
=Lk 2242), His complete dependence on the will of His Father
may, perhaps, suggest fewer difficulties to the student of Jesus’
life than His continuous insistence in setting that will, as it
were, over against and above His own. At the same time we
must remember that by this differentiation He deliberately
reminds us, again and again, how complete His subordination,
in the sphere of His human existence, has become, not only in
word and deed, but also in His inner life of thought and inten-
tion. He has laid aside the power of doing anything ‘ of himself’
(Jn 530), because the will of His Father is for Him the object of
thought and loving service (071... ζητῶ. .. τὸ θέλημα τοῦ
πέμψαντός με). The accomplishing of the work (493) which that
will has put before Him is the nourishing sustenance (ἐμὸν
βρῶμα) which is necessary for the building up of His life. ‘The
will of God’ (τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ) is the sovereign objective of
Jesus’ life, and perfect conformity to it in every point is the
goal of His life’s work. Looking over the uses of the word
U:Ayue in the NT, we find that it is almost universally used of
the carrying out by others of the purposes of God, the accom-
plishment in the world of that which the Divine will ordains for
execution (for other usages of this word, see Jn 113, Lk 2329,
etc.). Τῦ 15 in this sense pre-eminently that the word is used in
connexion with Jesus’ work (cf. Jn 649f, where the will of God,
in the redemption of humanity, is the object of the Incarnation,
and furnishes the work which Jesus avowedly sets Himself to
accomplish). We are thus not surprised at the transference of
the words of Ps 40 to the work of Christ by the writer of the
Epistle to the Hebrews (Ἰδοὺ ἥκω τοῦ ποιήσαι τὸ UiAnue cov, He
109), who sees in this passage the aptest illustration of the
object of Jesus’ life.
3. This protracted and willing subordination on
the part of Jesus had its final reward in that perfect
harmony between His own and His Father’s will,
which left no room, in the sphere of His human
activity, for anything but the most complete com-
munity of interests. Looking at this side of
His life, we can appreciate the element in His
teaching, so constantly emphasized, which in-
sists'on the lowliest and most complete self-sur-
render in others. He, the Man Jesus, succeeded in
bringing His human will into absolute conformity
with that of His Father, and so He teaches men to
pray, ‘May thy will be done... on earth’ (Mt
010. cf. 26%=Lk 22”). Our right to participate in
the privileges of that family relationship which
Jesus is not ashamed to own (He 2") depends on
the fidelity with which we enter, by our actions,
into the spirit guiding His own work (see Mt 12%).
This is the touchstone by which men shall be
ultimately tested, and by which their right of
entry into the Kingdom of heaven shall be decided
(Mt 772).
4, Nor must we forget that this phenomenon is
observable in Jesus’ relation to His fellow-men.
And here it is significant to note that, although
always willing to exercise the prerogatives of His
Divine Sonship in favour of the distressed, yet He
never works a miracle on His own behalf. If He
is hungry or thirsty, He trusts to the kindness and
goodwill of others (Jn 47 19%, Mt 21!8f 42% Mk
1-81). The lack of sympathy has a marked effect
on the power of His ministrations (‘And he could
there do no mighty work,’ Mk 6°), and He recog-
nizes that, in certain cases at least, the exercise of
His power of miraculous healing may be marred
or promoted by the absence or presence of a sym-
pathetic trust on the part of those with whom He
is dealing (‘All things are possible to him that
believeth,’ Mk 9%, see Mt 958 with which we
may also compare a remarkable extension, in the
application of this rule to the sufferer whose friends
stand sponsor, as it were, for his faith and trust
[τὴν πίστιν αὐτῶν, Mt 9°}). Indeed, the presence of
a captious spirit in His hearers moved Him, on
more than one occasion, to indignation or erief
(cf. wer ὀργῆς, Mk 85; ἐμβριμώμενος, Jn 11°), feelings
which were also aroused in His breast by any
action tending to stifle in others the expression of
their trust in, and sympathy with, His work and
Person (cf. the emphatic verb ἠγανάκτησεν, Mk 1014)
Closely allied to this is the impatience which Jesus shows
with the spiritual dulness of His disciples (Mk 919, Jn 149 2029,
1
DEPENDENCE
Mt 2610, Mk 817.21 etc.). It appears sometimes as if, in His
eagerness to discover the smallest germs of spiritual reciprocity,
He would gaze into their very hearts. In all the four Gospels
the word βλέπειν (with compounds) is used to denote this
anxiety on the part of Jesus (cf. e.g. ἐκβλεψας αὐτῶ, Mk 102!;
ἐμβλέψας euros, Mk 1027, Mt 1926; see also Jn 142 and the
pathetic use of the same verb in Mk 2261 (ἐνεβλεψεν τῶ Πετρω).
For the use of the verb περιβλέτεσθαι, which is almost confined
to St. Mark, compare Mk 39=Lk 610, Mk 3841023, Even when
dealing with the question of the profound, vital union of Him-
self with those who believe in Him, Jesus is fully conscious that
His work is conditioned by their attitude to Him. The im-
perative clause ‘abide in me’ (Jn 154) is supplemented by
another clause, which may be interpreted as containing a con-
tingent promise, ‘I will on that condition abide in you,’ or,
more probably, as a complementary imperative, ‘permit me to
abide in you.’ In either case it is true to say that Jesus here
recognizes and teaches the doctrine that ‘the freedom of man’s
will is such that on his action depends that of Christ’ (sce
Plummer’s ‘St. John’ in Cambridge Greek Testament, in loc.).
5. Not the least remarkable feature in the teach-
ing of Jesus is that on which the writer of thie
Fourth Gospel lays particular stress. The union
between Him and the Father is so complete, that
He describes it as a mutual indwelling or co-
existence (Jn 1098. 141°), He derives from the
Father, as the ultimate source of each (Jn 16),
both the terms of the message He delivers (Jn 8:8
718 ἡ ἐμὴ διδαχή, 12°) and the power which renders
His work ‘ coincident and coexistent with that of
the Father’ (Jn 5%, see Westcott’s Gospel of St.
John, in loc.). Jesus refuses to claim the right or
even the ability to act separately from the Father,
and the character of His works is determined by
the fact that it is not He Himself who is the
author of them, but the Father dwelling in, speak-
ing and acting through Him. (ef. Jn 5* 14). Τὸ is
quite true, in a very real sense, to say with West-
cott that ‘Christ places His work as co-ordinate
with that of the Father, and not as dependent on
it’; at the same time it is true in a sense no less
real that ‘the very idea of Sonship involves. . .
that of dependence,’ as will be seen if we refer to
such phrases as am’ ἐμαυτοῦ (5°), ἐξ ἐμαυτοῦ (12%),
What this phraseology implied, in the mind at
least of the writer of the Fourth Gospel, will per-
haps be better understood by observing his use of
it in other connexions (cf. e.g. Jn 11°!, where the
‘prophecy’ of Caiaphas is made to depend for its
validity on the χάρισμα inherent in the high priestly
office ; see also 154 1015, where the deeds done and
the words spoken are relegated to a higher source
than to the energy possessed by the actors).
6. Another side of Jesus’ self-revelation as to the
condition of dependence in which His spiritual life
on earth was lived, is to be found in His doc-
trine of our dependence upon Him. Just as He
can do nothing ‘of himself,’ but traces the source
of His manifold activities to the mutual indwell-
ing of the Father and Himself, so He tells His
disciples they are powerless for good if they are
‘apart from’ Him (χωρὶς ἐμοῦ οὐ δύνασθε ποιεῖν οὐδέν,
Jn 155. He is the derived source of their vital
energy in the same sense that the tree is the
source of the fruit-bearing life of its branch. It is
significant that this writer uses the same verb and
preposition (μένειν ἐν) to express the nature of the
union of the Father and Jesus, and that of Jesus
and those who believe in Him (cf. 142 15% etc.).
The words of St. Paul to the Athenians, ‘In him
we live and move and have our being’ (Ac 1738), are
as true of Jesus as they are of all the children of
men, ‘for both he that sanctifieth and they that
are sanctified are all of one’ (ἐξ ἑνός, He 21, It is
this very likeness (ὁμοίωμα, Ph 27, ef. He 2!) of
nature which makes interdependence, in the sphere
of active work, between Christ and believers a pro-
minent feature in all sound Christologies (cf. Mk
16-°, 1 Co 3°, 2 Co 6). The well-known Pauline
ἐν Χριστῷ (cf. 2 Co 51", 1 Co 15”, Col 155 ete.) is
balanced by the no less Pauline Χριστὸς ἐν ὑμῖν (Ro
S10 Conle et ΒΡ 91) 3 228):
DEPENDENCE
DERELICTION 447
Life in Christ is the normal condition of re-
deemed humanity (1 Co 15**). As the head is the
seat of the vital functions in the human body, and
without the head the body is helpless and lifeless,
so Christ is the source of the Church’s life and
enerey (Eph 4, Col 118 2” οἷς). Her capacity
for development springs directly from Him, con-
sidered in relation to His place in her constitution
(Eph 2), and it is impossible even to conceive of
the Church apart from this relationship (1 Co 3").
‘The Head,’ ‘the chief corner-stone,’ ‘the founda-
tion,’ are the principal Pauline formule used by
the Apostle to picture the mysterious nature of a
union upon which the very existence of the Church
depends. The symbol of the marriage relation-
ship, with all the consequences involved, is not only
found in the Johannine idcalism (Rev 197 21* °),
but discovers itself underlying St. Paul’s ideas as
to the nature of the tie which binds the Church to
Christ, in its aspect both of loving equality (Eph
58!) and of dependent subordination (Eph 57+ **),
Relative to what we have been saying, it may not be amiss to
recall the difficult words of St. Paul, which emphasize this side
of a mysterious truth—‘Now I... fill up on my part that
which is lacking of the afilictions of Christ in my fiesh for His
body’s sake, which is the Church’ (Col 1°4, cf. the strange trans-
lation of this sentence in Moffatt’s The listorical New Testa-
ment2). It is as if the Apostle said that Christ is still, in a
certain sense, subject to His Father’s disciplinary control (cf.
Ac 94, Jn 181), where the Father, as the husbandman, prunes
the branches, and consequently the tree out of which the
branches grow. The tribulations and disappointments which
the Church experiences from age to age are manifestations of
the same spirit of unbelief .and opposition encountered by
Jesus during His work on*earth (Jn 1518-21 171416), Nor ought
we to be surprised if we observe this continued display of
hostility in one form or another, because Jesus Himself knew
that it would be so, and that He was the object of opposition.
He said that the world would hate to accept the directing
influence of that body which professes to derive its life directly
from His Life (cf. Li 622 2117, Mt 1022 249, 1 P 271 4198).
The other side of the same truth is not forgotten by Jesus,
who taught that the conscious recognition of His claims over
the lives of His followers, and the consequent acts of goodwill
towards the latter, will not cscape His notice (cf. ἐν ὀνόματι ὅτι
Χριστοῦ ἐστέ, Mk 941, and εἰς oven μαθητοῦ, Mt 1042). See also
Mt 2540.45, where, in His solemn portraiture of the Judgment
Day, Jesus emphasizes the great truth of His self-identification
with all who have their lives grounded in Him (cf. τούτων τῶν
ἀδελφῶν μου τῶν ἐλαχίστων, V.40),
7. We must not close our consideration of this
subject without referring to a feature of the Chris-
tian life which is supplementary to and dependent
upon the foregoing. The life of the believer is not
bounded by his own immediate interests, although
as an individual that life is immeasurably enriched
and ennobled by its personal contact with, and
share in, the Incarnate Life of Jesus Christ. In
the parables of the Vine and the Good Shepherd
He leads to the conclusion that all His disciples
stand in a relationship to each other of the closest
kind. There is an interdependence between them
which springs out of their common relationship to
Christ their Head. This truth is especially dwelt
on by St. Paul in his reasoning on the varicty of
work but unity of purpose which charactcrizes the
lives of professing Christians considercd in their
corporate capacity, and as constituent parts of a
great whole. No individual life can be considered
as self-centred in the sense of its being indepen-
dent of the lives of its fellows. However uncon-
scious one may be of the fact, it nevertheless
remains true that no single member of ‘ the body
of Christ’ (σῶμα Χριστοῦ) is unaffected by the
fortunes of its brethren. Various as are the func-
tions of the parts, vital as is the dependence of
each on Him in whom their common life has its
roots, it is still the truth that the fulness of the
life of every individual is affected by the joy or
the sorrow, the strength or the weakness, of every
other (cf. 1 Co 12!2°, Gal 32+, Col 34, Eph 3%).
The recognition of this common share in the one
higher life is necessary as affording scope for
the exercise of the greatest of all human virtues
(ἡ ἀγάπη, 1 Co 137°).
The ineapability of fully appreciating this fea-
ture of Jesus’ teaching, which is ultimately bound
up with His ideals and aspirations, will largely
account for the signal failure of Christendom to
realize that spiritual as well as visible unity of life
and purpose to which He looked forward in the
later stages of His ministry. Oneness is just the
characteristic which cannot be predicated of the
Christian community. More especially is this the
case if we consider the nature of the oneness
aspired after by Jesus for His followers—a oneness
which has its roots in the Divine life, and ‘in
which each constituent being is a conscious ele-
ment in the being of a vast whole’ (iva ὦσιν τετελειω-
pévor εἰς Ev, In 177, ef. vv:1!-2!- 22, Ro 125, 1 Co. 12”;
see also Westcott’s Gospel of St. John, p.246f.).
The opening years of the twentieth century give
promise of a profounder realization of this Divine
idea; and the craving after unity, in some sense
at least, may issue in a truer conception of the
inter-relations of Christian people, in a real syn-
thesis of the individual’s freedom and his subordina-
tion and dependence as a member of that which is
essentially one whole (cf. ὅτι εἷς ἄρτος, ἕν σῶμα οἱ
πολλοί ἐσμεν, 1 Co 10"). Perhaps it is not without
significance that, in recording the prayer of Jesus
for His Church, St. John uses the present tense of
the verbs πιστεύω and γινώσκω (Jn 17778), which
points to the ultimate, albeit gradual, acquirement
by ‘the-world’ of that faith and knowledge which
the spectacle of a union so vital and so profound
is calculated to impart ;
LITERATURE.—W. R. Harper’s Religion and the Higher Life
will be found very useful in connexion with this subject; as
will also A. Dorner’s Grundprobleme der Ieligionsphilosophic,
especially Lecture 11. in that volume. Westcott’s Gospel of St.
John and The Epistle to the Hebrews will be found in places
very helpful; as also his Christus Consumimator, The Incarna-
tion and Common Life, and Christian Aspects of Life; cf. G. B.
Stevens, The Theology of the New Testament ; B. Weiss, Biblical
Theology of the NT ; Liddon, Some Elements of Religion ; Wendt,
Lehre Jesu, Eng. tr. (Τ᾿ &T. Clark); Hall, 16 Kenotie Theory ;
Bruce, The Hwiniliation of Christ; Gore, Dissertations on Sub-
jects connected with the Incarnation, The Church and the
Ministry, The Body of Christ; Seeley, Eece Homo. Sce also
articles in Hastings’ DB: ‘Communion’ (J. Armitage Robin-
son), ‘Church’ (ὃ. C. Gayford), ‘Kingdom of God’ (J. Orr;
with which may be studicd articles ‘Messiah’ and ‘ Eschato-
logy’ [especially $$ 82, 101] in the Encye, Bibl.), ‘Jesus Christ’
(Sanday ; which might be studied in conjunction with Edcrs-
heim’s The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, B. Weiss, The
Life of Christ, O. Holtzmann, The Life of Jesus).
J. RK. WILLIs.
DERELICTION.— Mt 27°°= Mk 1555, About three
o'clock in the afternoon, when Jesus had hung for
six hours on the cross, the bystanders were startled
by a loud ery from the meek Sufierer: Li, Eli,
lama ‘dzabhtani,* ‘My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me?’ It was a sentence from that
psalm which, says Tertullian, } ‘ contains the whole
Passion of Christ.” What was it that wrung from
His lips that exceeding bitter cry? The Evangel-
ists have not drawn the veil aside and revealed
what was passing in the Redeemer’s soul, and it
becomes us to refrain from curious speculation,
and recognize that there is here an impenetrable
mystery. Yet it is right that we should scek to
enter into it so far as we may, if only that we
may ‘realize its greatness and be delivered from
belittling thoughts.
An explanation has been sought mainly along
two lines. (1) Jesus was standing in the room cf
sinners and enduring vicariously the wrath of
God. This opinion is at once unscripturel and
irrational. It was indeed possible for God to inflict
27 by by. For “iy Mt. gives Aram. ‘37227
(cceBeex Dever), D [ἀἸζαφθανεῖ, being a reminiscence of the original.
Mk. further aramaicizes ὋΝ into "πον. Cf. Dalman, Words
of Jesus, p. 53f. 5
t adv. Mare. iii. 19.
* Pg 291 -3n2Iy TD
448
DERELICTION:
DESIRE
upon Jesus the punishment which is due to
sinners; but it is inconceivable that He should
have transferred His wrath from them to Him—
as it were saying, ‘I will be angry with Him
instead of them.’ Jesus never endured the wrath
of God. ‘We do not suggest,’ says Calvin,* ‘that
God was ever His adversary or angry with Him.
For how should He be angry with His beloved
Son in whom His mind rested?’ At every step
of His progress through the world He was the
beloved Son, and He was never so well pleasing
to the Father as in that hour when He hung a
willing victim on the cross, ‘obedient even unto
death’ (Ph 28). His sacrifice for the sin of the
world was not merely His death ; it was His entire
life of unspotted holiness and vicarious love (cf.
He 94). His death was not the whole of His
sacrifice, but the consummation of it. He bore
the sin of the world from Nazareth to Calvary,
and, if God was angry with Him at the last, He
must have been angry with Him all along.
(2) Jesus was not really forsaken by Ged, but
His soul was clouded by the anguish of His flesh
and spirit, and His faith, hitherto victorious, gave
way. ‘We have here,’ says Meyer, ‘the purely
human feeling that arises from a natural but
momentary quailing béfore the agonies of death,
in every respect similar to that which had been
experienced by the author of the psalm.’ It was
a ‘subjective feeling,’ and there was no ‘actual
objective desertion on the part of God.’ This
explanation is very inadequate. At the ninth
hour the worst was over, and the end was at hand.
It is incredible that He should have faltered then
after enduring the sharpest pangs with steadfast
fortitude. Whatever His dereliction may have
meant, it was no mere subjective feeling, but an
objective reality, and it came from God.
According to the Wolfenb. F'ragm., the cry of Jesus was a
despairing confession that His cause was lost: God had failed
Him. But He had foreseen the cross allalong. See CRUCIFIXION.
According to Renan, it was wrung from His lips by the ingrati-
tude of men: ‘He repented suffering for a worthless race.’ The
Zogion is indubitably authentic ; it is one of Schmiedel’s ‘ abso-
lutely credible passages’ (Encyc. Bibl. art. ‘Gospels,’ καὶ 159).
If Jesus was indeed the eternal Son of God,
‘bearing our sins in his body on the tree’ (1 P 252),
it is in no wise strange that His experience at that
awful crisis should 116 beyond our ken; but some
light is shed upon the mystery by the profound
truth, so often reiterated in the NT, that it was
necessary for Him, in order that Ile might redeem
the children of men, to be identified with them in
every particular of their sorrowful condition. That
He might ‘redeem us from the eurse of the law’
it was necessary that He should be ‘imade a curse
for us’ (Gal 3%); ‘it behoved him in every
respect to be made like unto his brethren, that
he might prove a merciful and faithful High
Priest’; and it is beeause ‘he hath himself
suffered, having been tempted,’ that ‘he is able
to succour them that are being tempted’ (He
2-18) The uttermost strait in human experience
is the passage through the valley of the shadow
of death, and nothing but the sense of God’s
presence can relieve its horror (ef. Ps 234). Had
Jesus enjoyed the consciousness that God was
with Him in that dread extremity, He would have
been exempted from the most awful experience of
the children of men, and His sympathy would
have failed us precisely where it is most needed.
And therefore the sense of the Father’s presence
was withheld from Him in that awful hour.
It was not necessary to this end that the Father
should be angry with Him. When the eternal
Son of God became man, He was made in every
respect like unto His brethren; and what differ-
cntiated Him from them was the closeness of His
* Instit. ii. 16. ὃ 11.
intimacy with God and the singular graces where-
with God endowed Him. He had a unique ac-
quaintance with the Father’s purposes, but He
had this because the Father showed Him all things
which He did (Jn 5*°) ; He had marvellous wisdom,
but it was the Tather’s gift (7!*2"): ‘the word
which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s that
sent me’ (14*4) ; He wrought miracles, but of Him-
self He could do nothing (5°): ‘the Father abiding
in me doeth his works’ (14). ‘God,’ says St.
Peter, ‘anointed him with the Holy Spirit and
with power,’ and ‘he went about doing good, and
healing all that were under the tyranny of the
devil; because God was with him’ (Ac 1038), Had
the Father at any moment refrained from His
ministration and left Him alone, Jesus would have
been even as the rest of the children of men.
And thus is revealed something of the mystery of
the Dereliction. That He might be one with the
children of men in their uttermost strait, the
communion of God was withheld from His beloved
Son, and He passed through the valley of the
shadow of death alone, without that presence
which had hitherto cheered and supported Him
(cf. Jn 1033).
LITERATURE.—Druce, Humiliation of Christ, Lect. vii. ; Dale,
Atonement, Note G; Wendt, Lehre Jesw (Eng. tr. ii. p. 249 1.1;
Meyer on Mt 2746; Expos. Times, iv. [1893] 511ff.; Fairbairn,
Studies in the Life of Christ, ‘The Crucifixion’ ; Mrs. Browning,
Cowper's Grave. DAVID SMITIL.
DESERT.—See WILDERNESS.
DESIRE.—‘ Our nature corresponds to our ex-
ternal condition. Without this correspondence
there would be no possibility of any such thing as
human life and human happiness: which life and
happiness are, therefore, a result from our nature
and condition jointly : meaning by human life, not
living in the literal sense, but the whole complex
notion commonly understood by these words’
(Butler’s Analogy, pt. i. ch. 5, § 1). This is one
of the observations of Bishop Butler in which he
anticipates the conclusions of modern science.
The nature of man corresponds to external nature ;
organ and environment, faculty and its sphere of
operation are in correspondence. Man is in rela-
tion to the world in which he lives, and his whole
life isa process of adaptation to the life of the Uni-
verse. ΑἹ] the endowments of his nature, whether
intellectual, emotional, or volitional, whether they
are bodily or mental, may fruitfully be looked at
as teleological, as a means towards the great end
of living. The teleological relation begins in the
individual ere consciousness awakens in him, and
he is so constituted that he acts in relation to the
environment ere he can consciously adapt himself
to it. Even consciousness may be looked at as
part of a process of adaptation. Bishop Butler
also remmanks that ‘the several external objects
of the appetites, passions, and affections, being
present to the senses, or offering themselves to the
mind, excite emotions suitable to their nature’
(1.65. ch. 4, § 1). In his view there is not only a
general correspondence between man and his en-
vironment, but a special adaptation between the
several aspects of nature and the particular char-
acteristics of man. Appetites have their objects,
and these objects excite emotions in man suitable
to their nature. Passions and affections have also
their objects and their suitable emotions. Every
external object makes its own appeal, and the in-
ward nature of man makes a response in _corre-
spondence with the appeal. Nor does the Bishop
limit the meaning of the word ‘object’ to those
things which appeal to man directly through his
senses, and which are presented to him, as it were,
ready made. That there are such objects it is not
DESIRE
necessary to affirm. But the objects which appeal
to man are not limited to those which nature pre-
sents to him. Within the range of his interests
are included not only the world as it is presented
to perception, but the world as it has been trans-
formed by human reflexion, as it is filled with the
achievement of the ages, and pervaded by the life,
the imagination, and the reflexion of man. Objects
are not merely what is presented to the senses,
but what is presented to man as constituted by
the experience of the race, by the education of the
individual, by the results of art, science, poetry,
philosophy, and theology,—in short, by all the
wide interest with which man has invested the
world of his experience. Appetites have their re-
spective objects, though even the appetite of a
rational being has something which transcends
sense, and even into appetite may enter that ele-
ment of infinity with which a rational being invests
all his objects.
Coming more closely to the subject, we take a
description of Desire from Professor Mackenzie :
“Tn the case of what is strictly called desire, there
is not merely the consciousness of an object, with
an accompanying feeling of pleasure and pain, but
also a recognition of the object as a good, or as
an element in a more or less clearly detined end’
(Manual of Ethics*, p. 46). Three elements appear
in this description. There is, first, the conscious-
ness of an object; there is, second, the feeling of
pleasure and of pain ; and there is, third, the recog-
nition of the object as a good, or as an element in
a defined end. If all these elements are involved
in Desire, then Desire can be experienced only by
beings who live a reflective life. They must be
conscious beings ; they must have the consciousness
of an object, and be able to associate that object
with pleasure and pain; and they must be able to
reflect on the object, and judge it to be a good, or
an element in a defined end. It may be well to
have a term the meaning of which is such as has
been defined by Professor Mackenzie ; but is Desire
such aterm? Isit so in the ordinary use of lan-
guage, or is it so in the accepted use of psycho-
logical writers? What of those writers who define
the good in terms of pleasure and of pain? If we
were to accept the definition of the term Desire as
it is set forth by Professor Mackenzie, we should
be constrained to say that the presence of Desire
always involves the action of reflective judgment,
the presence of ideas or trains of ideas to conscious-
ness, and a comparison of possible processes which
might lead to the accomplishment of a wished-for
end. Asa consequence, weshould be compelled to
shut out from the region of Desire not only all the
lower forms of life, but also all those people who
do not live a reflective life. It seems, then, that
the definition of Desire given by Professor Mac-
kenzie is an ideal one. It describes Desire as it is
felt by a fully developed, reflective consciousness,
a consciousness in possession of trains of ideas, and
of the world as built up of such mental attain-
ments and experiences. Along the whole course
of mental growth, from the first beginnings of
conscious life up to the complete attainment of
self-mastery, Desire may be considered to be pre-
sent, and to afford a ground of action. As a defini-
tion of life must include all living things, so a
definition of Desire must include every feeling
which in common language can Jay claim to be a
desire. There is an element of desire in every case
in which there is subjective selection, or rejection
of one object and the preference of another. In
the simplest mental experience, even in those in
which the living being reacts against the environ-
ment, whether it means the avoidance of pain or
the attainment of pleasure, there is the germ of |
desire. Movements that result in pleasure attract
VOL. I.—29
DESIRE 449
attention. Movements which procure the removal
of pain, and become inseparably associated with
that result, are elements in the making of a world,
and that world grows into the world of Desire. It
may be that reactions against the environment
correspond to stages in the growth of mind, so
that we might properly ascribe Desire to movements
for the attainment of objects of which the organism
is aware through the senses; but it is not neces-
sary for us to enter into the discussion of that
topic. As Dr. Ward says, ‘ Provided the cravings
of appetite are felt, any signs of the presence of
pleasurable objects prompt to movements for their
enjoyment or appropriation. In these last cases
we have action determined by perceptions. The
cases in which the subject is incited to action by
ideas as distinct from perceptions, require a more
detailed consideration ; such are the facts mainly
covered by the term ‘“‘desire”’ (art. ‘ Psychology,’
Encye. Brit.’ vol. xx. p. 73f.).
Without entering on the question as to whether
action can be determined by perceptions, or the
further question as to whether there can be per-
ceptions apart from something like ideation, we
are disposed to contend that where there is aware-
ness of an object, and a movement towards the
appropriation of it, there must be the rudiments of
Desire. It isnot necessary, however, to discuss the
matter, for it is not to be questioned that by ideas,
and trains of ideas, and ideas, as Dr. Ward points
out, ‘sufiiciently self-sustaining to form trains that
are not wholly shaped by the circumstances of the
present—entirely new possibilities of action are
opened up’ (p. 74). Ideas and trains of ideas form
elements in shaping a world of desire. It is not
possible to mark off the area where these properly
begin, any more than we can delimit the sphere
of intellection, and say where it begins. But for
our purpose it is sufficient that the presence of
reflective thought does mark a terminus; on one
side there is mental action of a simpler sort, and
on the other side the fulness of a reflective life.
But apparently there is desire on both sides.
Taking the definition of Professor Mackenzie as
a goal and an ideal, we ask, In what ways have
thinkers looked at Desire in the past, and what is
the view they take of it in the present hour? To
set this forth with fulness would be a great task.
For Desire, the analysis of it, and the place assigned
to it, mark off the schools of philosophy from each
other, and, according as they view it, it gives the
keynote to different systems of ethics. From the
time of the beginnings of Greek thought down to
the present time, the attempt to find a sufficient
definition of Desire has ever been renewed, and at
present the cld controversy between Plato and the
Sophists has its counterpart in the controversy
between Green and his supporters on the one
hand, and Sidgwick and the various supporters of
Hedonism on the other. Both the theory of know-
ledge and the theory of conduct are involved in the
discussion of the question.
One of the many debts which the world owes to
Socrates is the introduction of the conception of a
supreme end of life. That there is one end which
all men seek, and that every action must be judged
by reference to that end, brought unity into man’s
conception of human life. Up to the time of
Socrates men had thought of conduct as obedience
to certain practical rules, useful from the point of
view of prudence. ButSocrates showed that men’s
thoughts and actions must be guided by their
desire for something which they regarded as desir-
able. Rules were simply the ways by which the
desirable end could be obtained. Illustrations of
this principle abound in the statements ascribed
to Socrates. A religious man desires to win the
approbation of the gods; a just man is persuaded
450
DESIRE
that the practice of justice will bring satisfaction ;
a man seeks knowledge because it is a satisfaction
to know. Thus, in all departments of life there
is some desirable end, and the thought of a desir-
able end actually defines Desire as it appears to
Socrates.
Whilea great advance was made when the thonght
of a supreme end of life dawned on the human
mind, yet the question arose as to the nature of
the end, and it received different answers. Is the
end pleasure, or a pleasurable state of feeling? Is
it the avoidance of pain, or is it indifference to,
or superiority over, both pleasure and pain? Is
pleasure—pain, or indifference to pleasure —pain, or
any other description of the end of life something
to be referred to and determined by the individual
man, or must we bring the thought of common life
to bear on the solution of the problem? If we
refer to the individual man the power of deciding
what is the end of life and what is desirable as a
means to that end, are we to think of the end in
terms of pleasure as it appears to the cultured
man, aman who is familiar with ideas and trains
of ideas, or are we to think of pleasure as it
appears to the natural man? All these questions
were keenly debated in the schools of Greece, and
all of them have a bearing on the definition of
Desire.
Nor is it easy to say what are the views of the
great masters of Greek thought on the question of
desire. It is perhaps comparatively easy to say
what were the views of Aristippus or of Epieurus,
but not so easy to say what were the views of Plato
or of Aristotle. Still a brief description may be
useful. We quote from Dr. Jowett. ‘Plato, speak-
ing in the person of Socrates, passes into a more
ideal point of view, and expressly repudiates the
notion that the exchange of a less pleasure for a
greater can be the exchange of virtue. Such virtue
is the virtue of ordinary men who live in the
world of appearance ; they are temperate only that
they may enjoy the pleasure of intemperance, and
courageous from fear of danger. Whereas the
philosopher is seeking after wisdom and not after
pleasure, whether near or distant : he is the mystic,
the initiated, who has learned to despise the body,
and is yearning all his life long for a truth which
will hereafter be revealed to him. In the Republic
(ix. 582) the pleasures of knowledge are affirmed to
be superior to other pleasures, because the philo-
sopher so estimates them; and he alone has had
experience of both kinds. In the Philebus, Plato,
although he regards the enemies of pleasure with
complacency, still further modifies the transcendent-
alism of the Phado. For he is compelled to confess,
rather reluctantly, perhaps, that some pleasures,
i.e. those which have no antecedent pains, ‘claim a
place in the scale of goods’ (Jowett’s Plato, vol. iv.
p. 29f.). Plato rejects the view that pleasure is
necessarily preceded by pain. ‘True pleasures are
those which are given by beauty of colour and
form, and most of those which arise from smells ;
those of sound, again, and in general those of
which the want is painless and unconscious, and
the gratification afforded by them palpable to
sense and unalloyed with pain’ (Philebus, 51 A,
Jowett’s tr.). He prepared the way for the fuller
analysis of pleasure and desire which we owe to
Aristotle, for he showed that pleasures which
accompany the active discharge of function are
pleasant in themselves; the pleasures which are
truly desirable are the pleasures of the wise, all
others are a shadow only (Rep. 583.B). Thus Plato
rejects the earlier theories of movement and re-
plenishment, distinguishes pleasures that are pre-
ceded by pain and want as pleasant only by con-
trast, and as it were by accident, from’ those
pleasures which accompany active discharge of
΄
DESIRE
function ; and he sets forth as the only true pleasure
the pleasure of the good man. Pleasure, according
to Plato, is always a process towards the normal
condition of a subject, and is never in itself an end.
The absence of finality from pleasure proves that
pleasure taken by itself could never be the end of
life. The treatment of pleasure and pain is con-
ducted by Plato always from a moral point of view.
While Aristotle builds so far on the results of
the analysis of Plato, yet he is dissatisfied with
the argument that pleasure cannot be the swmmaum
bonum because it is a mere process towards an end.
Pleasure, he contends, is an ἐνέργεια ; it arises from
the unimpeded operation of our faculties ; it arises
when an organ which acts perfectly comes into
contact with its appropriate object, just as pain is
the outcome of thwarted action on the part of
either a sensitive or an intellectual faculty (ἐλ.
Nic. vii. 12, 1153. 13). The moral value of the
feelings of pleasure and pain arises, says Aristotle,
out of the fact that by means of them man passes
from a state of a merely cognitive and intellectual
being, and becomes a moral and active being. ‘It
is when the sense perceives something as pleasant
or painful that the mind affirms or denies it, pur-
sues or avoids it’ (iii. 7. 2, 431. 8). Aristotle has
ever before him the unity and wholeness of human
nature. He is never merely intellectual, and is
never wholly practical. He always lays stress on
the correspondence between the speculative and the
practical sides of human nature. Truth and error
in the intellectual sphere become good and evil in
the moral sphere. What tle mind affirms as truth
and error in the intellectual sphere becomes pursuit
and avoidance in the practical sphere. In both
spheres the mind is active. Impressions in the
cognitive sphere become, through the activity of
the subject, objects of cognition ; feelings of pleasure
and pain, through a similar activity of the subject,
are translated into objects of desire or aversion ;
become motives to action.
Two main factors, according to Aristotle, enter
into the conative nature of man. It is difficult
within our limits to expound this fully. But, briefly,
it is that Desire and Reason must co-operate in
order that a moral conclusion may be carried into
effect. Moral choice or προαίρεσις may be described
as νοῦς ὀρεκτικός, reason stimulated by desire, or
ὄρεξις διανοητική, desire guided by understanding.
The significant part of the view is that both the
irrational and the rational elements must act to-
gether ; desire and reason are constant elements in
distinctive moral action. For the merely logical
understanding never leads to action. Reason, as
mere reasoning, is powerless to shape the will, and
mere appetite is quite as powerless. In order to
cause action, pleasure and pain must be translated
into the higher forms of Good and Evil. Desire
must always have an object (ὀρεκτικὸν δὲ οὐκ ἄνευ
φαντασίας (433°. 28)); but the object of desire deter-
mines conduct only when thought has marked it
out, defined it, and in a word constituted it (τὸ
ὀρεκτικὸν κινεῖ οὐ νοηθῆναι ἢ φαντασθῆναι (433. 12)).
‘The true object of consciousness in this union of desire and
reason is not two objects,—one of desire, another of reason,—it 15
one single common force which finally becomes the principle of
action. And when we ask how this object of our final wish is
framed, the answer must be, that it is so through the agency of
reason. Ultimately, and transcendently in fact, there is no
difference between the object of thought and the object of wish;
the βουλητὸν and the νοητόν are merely different aspects of one and
the same great generality. Even in our own experience it 15
thought which determines desire : and the principle and starting-
point of conduct turns out to be an exercise of reason. And when
Aristotle proceeds to state more definitely what is this object of
perfect wish which thus determines and regulates our natural
desires, he becomes still more of an idealist. For while the
object of wish to any individual is but the apparent and relative
good, still to a perfect man it is the absolute ideal good: and
the aim of life comes to be an attempt to make our practical
views in life elevate themselves to the full height of the absolute
ideal of goodness. . . . The same writer who reproduces Plato's
DESIRE
idea of good as the constructive reason which gives both know-
ledge and reality to things, now finds the determining aim of con-
duct in an absolute ideal which constitutes the pattern to which
morality must raise itself’ (Aristotle's Psychology in Greek and
English, with Introduction and Notes, by Edwin Wallace, M.A.,
Introduction, p. exxiiif.).
We quote from Mr. Wallace, whose work represents the high-
water mark of Aristotelian exposition, as it sets forth in brief
space an interpretation of Aristotle which deserves study. It
may be that Mr. Wallace has read Hegel into Aristotle, but in
the present case he is right in saying that for Aristotle the world
of desire is a rational world, and that the ground of conduct is
the union of desire and reason. In short, the view of Aristotle
corresponds to the definition of desire set forth by Professor
Mackenzie. ‘It is then,’ says Aristotle, ‘on good grounds that
people have viewed as springs of action these two faculties of
desire and practical intellect : for the faculty of desire has itself
a motive force, and the intellect excites to action just in so far
as the object of desire supplies it with a starting-point: just
as, similarly, imagination when it moves to action does not do
so independently of desire. The spring of action thus resolves
itself into one single thing, viz. the object of desire’ (Wallace’s
tr. p. 179).
As to the question whether animals can have
desires, Aristotle decides that ‘no animal can have
the faculty of desire unless it have imaginative
power’ (Wallace, p. 183); but then, as imaginative
power is connected with the reason or the senses,
so animals may have the imaginative power con-
nected with the senses, and thus have what can
be designated desires. But they do not possess the
kind of desire which forms itself as the conclusion
of syllogism, so that their desire is destitute of
any faculty of deliberation. ‘In the case of men,
however, sometimes the images of sense overcome
and move the rational volition ; sometimes, as in
incontinence, two things overcome and stir up one
another, desire thus following on desire, much as
a ball that players toss about ; but the normal and
natural course is always that in which the superior
course of reason is the more supreme and stimulates
to action’ (pp. 184-185). Desire thus, according
to Aristotle, implies deliberation, choice, the use
of means towards an end. Ina significant passage
in the Nicomachean Ethics he says (we quote the
paraphrase of Sir A. Grant): ‘If the object of
purpose is that which, being in our power, we
desire after deliberation, purpose will be a desire
of things in our power. Aiter deliberating we
decide, and form a desire in accordance with our
deliberation’ (Grant’s Aristotle's Ethics, vol. ii.
Ρ. 23). Desire ranges, according to Aristotle,
through all life. Wherever life is in presence of
an object there is rudimentary desire. The animal
world feels it in presence of an object present to its
senses. A self-conscious being feels desire in pro-
portion to its realization of self, and to its realiza-
tion of the objects as existing in an ordered world.
It is possible to regard the teaching of Aristotle as
containing in itself the fuller analysis of desire
as that analysis has been conducted by English
Hedonists and by the English Neo-Hegelians.
Were there space, it would be instructive to
trace the analysis of desire, or rather the descrip-
tion of desire, in subsequent philosophical specu-
lation. But that would far exceed our limits.
Nor is it necessary, for there is not much to be
added to the result won by Aristotle until we come
to the Utilitarian school of England. Some valu-
able remarks occur in Spinoza’s Ethics, but the
current of modern speculation on the topic was
set agoing by Hobbes. For the history of the
process, readers may be referred to Professor
Watson’s (Kingston, Canada) Hedonistic Theories,
5 : . . ΄
and to Dr. Albee’s (Cornell University) A History
of English Utilitarianism. In addition to the
account of the main ethical theory known as
Utilitarianism, and a criticism of it, there will be
found in these able books a particular account of
that doctrine we have immediately in hand. In
the posthumous work of Professor Green, Prolego-
mena to Ethies, there is a lengthened and incisive
analysis of Desire ; and in the posthumous work of
DESIRE 451
Professor Sidgwick, The Ethics of T. H. Green,
Herbert Spencer, and J. Martineau, as also in the
various editions of the Methods of Ethics, we find
a criticism of Green. These two works represent
the most recent, as they also represent the most
searching, accounts of Desire which can be found in
the-whole range of philosophical speculation.
In the analysis oi Desire, as in the analysis of
Knowledge, the work of Locke was cpoch-making.
He stated the problem in a form which occupied
the thoughts of all his successors in England.
Berkeley, Hume, Hartley, Tucker, Stuart Mill,
and Spencer are in the succession, and all of them
attack the problem of the will from the point of
view of pleasure and desire. We take the state-
ment ot Locke’s position from the admirable
work of Professor Watson, Hedonistic Theories
(p: 1111:
“Why does the same man will differently on different occasions?
The reason is to be sought in the character of Desire as the
imagination of pleasure. To different persons, or to the same
person under different circumstances, one pleasure presents
itself in his imagination as preferable to another. Under the
impulse for knowledge one man will forget his bodily wants
until hunger drives him to his ‘meals; another man will neglect
study, and live for the pleasures of sense, unless he is driven to
change his course by the stronger impulse of shame. But as
each man’s desire is determined not by him but for him, and
the desire determines the will, what he prefers in any case is
that which alone he can prefer, and freedom is a word without
meaning.’
This, then, is the problem which the majority of
English ethical thinkers had before them. A man’s
desires are determined for him not by him, and the
desire determines the will. Nor is much added to
the solution of the problem from the time of Locke
to that of Stuart Mill. Hume had tried to prove
the utilitarian doctrine of the particular virtues,
and Stuart Mill, using the same argument, sought
to prove the general principle of Utility.
‘The sole evidence, I apprehend, it is possible to produce that
anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If
the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were
not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end,
nothing could eyer convince any person that it was so. No
reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable,
except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable,
desires his own- happiness’ (Utilitarianism, ch. iv.). Farther
on in the same chapter he identifies pleasure and desire.
‘Desiring a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and
finding it painful, are phenomena entirely unseparable, or
rather two parts of the same phenomena.’ Thus Mill would tind
it necessary to show that people never do desire anything save
pleasure or happiness. On this Sidgwick remarks : ‘ As a matter
of fact, it appears to me that throughout the whole scale of my
impulses, sensual, emotional, and intellectual alike, I can. dis-
tinguish desires the object of which is something other than my
own pleasure’ (Methods of Ethics, p. 45).
In truth, the Hedonistic account of Desire, from
Locke to Mill, and including Sidgwick in some
measure, is inadequate, because it is too exclusively
psychological. Psychology, as it is usually con-
ceived, cannot vive a full account of Desire. For
psychology deliberately limits itself to a description
of mental processes, events, and occurrences, taken
in abstraction from the self whose the mental states
are,and fromthe outer world. Ananalysisof mental
states can never give a complete account of the
system to which the self belongs, and of the interests
and values which are such because they are referred
to the self. Thus the psychological account of
Desire, and its relation to will, set forth by English
Hedonism, is defective, not psychologically, but in
reality. It is the merit of Green, and specially of
those who with him have so fruitfully worked at
ethical problems under the inspiration of Kant and
Hegel, to point out that mental and moral values
cannot be appraised, and cannot be the objects of
desire, if we look at them in abstraction from the
self, and from the world-system. In the Prolego-
mena to Ethics and in the Introduction to Hume,
Green has brought the self in its conerete reality
within the vision of English thinkers, He has
DESIRE
DESIRE
been ably helped by such writers as Professor
Muirhead in his manual Zhe Elements of Ethics,
by Professor Watson in Hedonistic Theories, and
Professor Mackenzie in the Manual of Ethics.
Other writers might be mentioned, but these will
suflice to show the significance of the new de-
parture in Ethics, and of the introduction of the
self into English philosophy. Desire, according to
Green, involves consciousness of self and of an
object, and is to be distinguished from instinctive
impulse, which implies only the feeling of self. A
consciousness of self is something beyond self-feel-
ing, is really a transformation of self-feeling. Self-
consciousness being also a consciousness of objects,
is thus the basis of desire and of knowledge. Even
in the desire for food, what is desired is really
some ulterior object, not the mere pleasure of eat-
ing. But most of our desires are for objects which
are not directly dependent on animal susceptibility
at all, or which, even where so dependent, are
transformed by the addition of new elements de-
rived from self-consciousness itself. There is a
real unity in all our desires, only it is the unity of
the self, not the unity of desire.
‘There is one subject or spirit, which desires in all a man’s
experiences of desire, understands in all operations of his intelli-
gence, wills in all his acts of willing ; and the essential character
of his desires depends on their all being desires of one and the
same subject which also understands, the essential character of
his intelligence on its being an activity of one and the same
subject which also desires, the essential character of his acts of
will on their proceeding from one and the same subject which
also desires and understands’ (Prolegomena to Ethics4, p. 138).
It is well to have an emphatic statement of the
unity of the thinking, willing, feeling subject
placed on record ; for up to Green’s advent we were
allowed to see thinking, willing, feeling, but the
self was altogether out of sight. At the same
time, while Green lays stress on the unity of the
self in all its activities, and rightly so, there seems
to be a defect in his analysis. He seems to take
for granted that the self-conscious self, in its con-
scious apprehension of objects as desirable, will
always act wisely, prudently, and rightly. But
does not the self-conscious being, in making a
choice, sometimes choose unwisely and wrongly ?
As Sidgwick points out, ‘It seems to me to be
fundamentally important to distinguish between
choice (even deliberate choice) and judgment as to
choice-worthiness, since they may diverge’ (The
Ethics of T. H. Green, ete. p. 30). Are we to hold
that a man, following out what he thinks self-
interest, clearly seeing the end in view and choos-
ing appropriate means for its accomplishment, if
he acts self-consciously, is always acting rightly ?
For Green in his description of the self-conscious
subject does not seem to contemplate the possi-
bility of wrong or vicious action. He takes for
granted that the process of the self-conscious being
on his way towards the appropriate action, towards
the satisfaction he will feel when the object is
attained, will always be right. But may there not
be all the characteristics of the action of the self-
conscious being, as these are described by Green,
present in the course of conduct of a man who
wades through slaughter to a throne? In truth,
there isneeded a further analysis, leading us beyond
the mere processes of a self-conscious being, in
order to find a justification for man’s action. We
need a better description of the desirable than any
that can be found in Green. All that he sets forth
with regard to Desire and the self-conscious sub-
ject and its action may be true, and truly realized
in the case of the man who has an unworthy end
In view. He may identify himself with his object,
he may find satisfaction in the attainment of it,
and yet the choice may not be worthy.
It is the experience of mankind that a man may
make an unworthy choice, may form a wrong
ideal, may be mistaken, and yet may all the time
act as a self-conscious being. Soa further criterion
is needed in order to guide men in their choice, in
order that it may be a worthy choice. True, the
values of life lie in their relation to the self. And
the realization of the self is one of the great ends
of life. But the self has to grow in relation to
the ideal, and the ideal has to grow as well. How
shall a man learn to recognize the true ideal, and
to desire it? Here we ought to enter into the
religious experience of man to realize the fact that
man has formed wrong conceptions of life, has
worshipped false ideals, and desired unworthy
ends. One might pass into the sphere of that re-
ligious experiencé which has had its highest ex-
pression in the Scriptures. ‘There, too, we are in
a universe of desires, and the task of Seripture is
to teach man what to desire. Scripture recognizes
the possibility of wrong desire leading to wrong
action, and it also recognizes that towards the
making of desire all the faculties of man contri-
bute. What it teaches is largely the reversal of
human ideals: it puts last what men have put
first, and it places in the front place, as the best
and mightiest, what men have despised and ἴου-
gotten. The self-conscious being has to be taught
something which it would never have learnt
through the mere exercise of self-conscious activity.
It is not necessary to enter into an analysis of
Scripture terms, or to trace the history of the
term ‘desire’ through the Scriptures. For Serip-
ture proceeds on the fact that men have had wrong
desires, false ideals, and have pursued wrong
objects ; so it proceeds to teach them what is the
really good, the true ideal; and, further, to give
to men the power to recognize the good, the true,
and the beautiful, and to desire them. We need
this education, and the world of desire cannot be
really described until we bring in the revolutionary
power of religion, and learn to know that reversal
of human judgments inaugurated by Christ.
Here, too, the strongest influence in this educa-
tion is the commanding power of personality. It
is not without significance that in the last resort
Plato and Aristotle were driven back to the
concrete standard of the ‘good man.’ Through
the influence of personality men learn to recognize
ideals and to love them. Around personalities
cluster the thoughts, emotions, aspirations, tenden-
cies which help to form the world of desire. It is
so in the OT, where it is said of their devotion to
the living God of Israel : ‘ Whom have 1 in heaven
but thee? and there is none upon earth that 1
desire beside thee’ (Ps 7375); or, ‘To thy name and
to thy memorial is the desire of our soul’ (Is 26°).
It is recognized that there is a world of wrong
desires, objects which the self-conscious man may
desire, long for, strive after; and the story of the
Bible is the attempt to implant in these self-
conscious beings the power to free themselves
from that world of false desire. In the NT the
first step towards that freedom is to bring men
into contact with a living personality, in whom is
sphered all perfection, whose service is perfect
freedom, and through whom they may learn what
to desire and what to long for, and what to attain.
The laws of desire, as these are in human nature,
and as they are disclosed to us through research
and reflexion, rule in this sphere; but then they
have new material to illustrate their working.
Illustrations of the working of Desire abound
in religious experience. To enter into them would
occupy us too long. It need only be said that
attachment to a pure and holy Personality, love to
One who is the ideal of human life. purifies the
world of desire and intensifies the power of action.
Men who have felt the expulsive power of a new
affection and the intensive power of a holy love
DESIRE
are lifted into a new world, and those who love
Christ learn that the world of their desires 15
formed by Him; they learn to love what He ap-
proves, and to hate what He hates. The world in
which they live, the universe in which their desires
terminate, are constituted by the Person and by
the Love of Christ. See art. IDEAL.
LITERATURE.—Jowett’s Plato; Aristotle’s Ethics (Grant’s ed.),
and Psychology (ed. Edwin Wallace); Mackenzie, A Manual of
Ethics; Muirhead, Elements of Ethics; Watson, Hedonistic
Theories; Green, Prolegomena to Ethics; Sidgwick, Methods of
Ethics, and The Ethics of T. H. Green, etc. ; Shadworth Hodg-
son, The Metaphysic of Eaperience, esp. vol. iv.; Albee, A
History of English Utilitarianism; Douglas, Ethics of J. 5.
Mill; Ward, art. ‘Psychology’ in Eneye, Brit.9; James, Prin-
ciples of Psychology; Bowne, Introduction to Psychological
Theory, and Principles of Ethics. JAMES IVERACH.
Use of the term ‘desire’ in the Gospels.—In AV
of the Gospels the word ‘desire’ is of frequent
occurrence. As a noun it is found only once (Lk
2915) as the equivalent of ἐπιθυμία, but in the
verbal form it represents no fewer than 8 verbs in
the original :---ἐπιθυμέω (Mt 1517, Lk 167! 17°? 221),
θέλω (Mk 9°, Lk 039 $2 10%! 204), airéw (Mt 20”, Mk
1035 1174 15% 8, Lk 23°), ἐξαιτέω (Lk 2251), ἐρωτάω (Lk 7°
1433. Jn 1271), érepwraw (Mt 161), ἑητέω (Mt 12% 47,
Lk 9°), παρακαλέω (Mt 1833. Twice we have the
adj. ‘desirous’ (Lk 238, Jn 16"), but in both cases
the vb. θέλω is used in the Greek. In RV, however,
airéw, ἐξαιτέω, ἐρωτάω (except in Lk 758), and ἐπερωτάω
are rendered by ‘ask,’ ξητέω by ‘seek,’ and παρα-
καλέω by ‘beseech’; so that ἐπιθυμέω and θέλω are
left as the two verbs which in a more exact use of
language have the meaning of ‘desire.’ When we
distinguish between them, ἐπιθυμέω may be re-
garded as denoting the desire of the feelings (θυμό5),
θέλω the desire of the will. In the latter the
element of purpose and resolve is usually more
strongly present (cf. Jn 84 τὰς ἐπιθυμίας τοῦ πατρὸς
ὑμῶν θέλετε ποιεῖν). Sometimes, however, θέλω 15
used where a distinction from ἐπιθυμέω can hardly
be pressed (see the parallel passages Mt 13”,
Lk 10*).
In the language of Christ and the Gospels, desire
in itself is, properly speaking, neither good nor
bad, its quality depending altogether upon the
subject who experiences it or the object to which
it is directed. ‘The scribes ‘desire’ to walk in long
robes (Lk 20%) ; while many prophets and righteous
men have ‘desired’ to see Christ’s day (Mt 137 || Lk
10%). The Prodigal ‘desired’ (ére@iue, EV ‘ would
fain’) to fill his belly with the husks that fed the
swine (Lk 1516); and Jesus said, ‘With desire 1
have desired (ἐπιθυμίᾳ ἐπεθύμησα) to eat this pass-
over with you before I suffer’ (Lk 22”). But owing
to the corruption of the human heart, ‘desire’ tends
to have a predominantly bad meaning, and so
ἐπιθυμία comes to denote the sinful ‘lusting’ of a
sinful will. In Mk 499 (‘ the lusts of other things’)
the word is already passing over to this fixity of a
dark connotation ; the ‘other things’ may not be
evil in themselves, but as they are allowed to choke
the word and render it unfruitful, they have to be
classed as ‘thorns.’ In Mt 5*8 ἐπιθυμῆσαι expresses
‘Just’ in the specific sense in which it has come to
be used in modern speech, as unholy sexual desire.
In Jn 83 ἐπιθυμίας denotes the very ‘lusts’ of the
devil as they are seen reappearing in his children.
According to the teaching of Jesus, impure desire,
apart altogether from overt acts of sin, is itself a
transgression of the Divine law (Mt 5*). This is
the point at which Christ’s ethical teaching so
immeasurably transcends that of all other masters,
and specifically the ‘righteousness’ of the scribes
and Pharisees of His day. He taught that good-
ness and badness essentially lie not in the outward
conduct but in the will and the heart, and that it
is by the evil thoughts and feelings which issue
DESPISE 453
from within that a man is defiled (Mt 15). It is
this same teaching with regard to ἐπιθυμία, now
used definitely in the sense of ‘lust’ or sinful
desire, that we meet again in characteristic forms
in the writings of St. Paul and St. James. St.
James (115) in his powerful figure shows how a
man, seduced by his own ἐπιθυμία, begets the sin
which issues finally in death. St. Paul (Ro 75)
tells how the commandment Οὐκ ἐπτιθγλλήσεις
stirred up in his heart πᾶσαν ἐπιθυμίαν, and so forced
him at length to understand that nothing but the
law of the Spirit of life could set him free.
LITERATURE.—Moulton and Geden’s Concordance to the Greek
Testament, and the Lexicons of Grimm-Thayer and Cremer,
διῦυ. ἐπιθυμία, ἐπιθυμέω, θέλω; Miller, Christian Doct. of Sin,
i. 157 ff.; Martensen, Christian Ethics, ii. 85 ff.; Liddon, Ele-
ments of Religion, p. 148ff.; Dykes, Manifesto of the King
p. 245 ff.; Hapositor, 1v. iv. [1891] 42 ff.; Milton, Paradise Lost,
li. 681 ff. J. C. LAMBERT.
DESOLATION.—The history of Israel had given
to this word in the time of Christ a peculiar and
sinister significance. To nearly all the prophets
the idea of a wasted and depopulated land, such as
is given in the graphic description of Is 17%, is
familiar. When Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who most
frequently use the words, mention 4277 or πεν),
they always have one thing in their mind—the
vision of a once peaceful and flourishing place
which by fire and sword has been laid waste, and
is left uninhabited. Tew countries have sutlered
so much as Palestine from the havoe wrought by
civil war and foreign invasion. ΤῸ understand the
full force of the term ‘desolation,’ we have to add
to the features of war, as known to us, something
which was then the frequent accompaniment of
conquest—the carrying away of a whole population
captive. And to the bitter memory of bygone
devastation we have to add the apprehension of
what might at any time happen if the country
were swept by the Romans, of whose methods their
own historian wrote, ‘they make a solitude and
641] it peace’ (Tae. Agricola, 30). The word ‘ deso-
lation,’ then, understood in the sense in which it
was used when the AV was made (‘I desolate—I
make a countrey unhabyted,’ Palsgrave, A.D. 1530),
gives the exact sense of both the Hebrew and the
Greek (ἐρήμωσις). It is in this sense that the word
is used in the passage where Jesus pronounces
doom upon Jerusalem (Mt 238, Lk 13%). The
words, ‘ Your house is left unto you desolate,’ are
a reminiscence of Jer 22° (LX X—els ἐρήμωσιν ἔσται 6
οἶκος οὗτος), and it makes little difference whether
ἔρημος stand in the text or not; the general idea is
that the house (1.6. the city, not the temple) is
‘abandoned.’ There is not necessarily in this
passage any prediction of the fall of Jerusalem,
though the context may seem to suggest this.
The idea is rather that, the glory of Jerusalem
consisting in her being the city of the great King,
she loses all when He abandons her. If she rejects
Him, and He departs, she is a forsaken city (cf. the
vassage in Bunyan’s Holy War where Emmanuel
leaves Mansoul; also Jos. B.J. VI. v. 3). Grimin-
Thayer interprets ‘desolate’ here as ‘bereft of
Christ’s presence, instruction, and aid.’ Contrast
with this the promise to the disciples in Jn 14},
which the AV renders, ‘I will not leave you
desolate’ (éppavols).
In another passage (Mt 12%, Lk 1117), ‘Every
kingdom divided against itself is brought to
desolation,’ Jesus uses as a forcible illustration
that fatal tendency to faction and internal discord
which had so often brought His countrymen to
ruin (cf. e.g. Jos. Ant. XIV. iv. 2). See also art.
ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION.
J. Ross MurRAyY.
DESPISE.—1. ἀθετεῖν.---(1) The primary signifi-
cation of the word is to render or consider invalid
454 DESPISE
DESPONDENCY
(ἄθετον), to set aside something laid down (θετόν τι),
to bear oneself toward a thing as 17 it were not, to
ignore: Mk 7° a0. τ. ἐντολὴν τ. θεοῦ (AV and RV
‘reject ’), to set aside the command of God, replacing
it by tradition, and thus to deprive it of its force,
by teaching and practice (ct. Is 2416, Jude §).
Hence (2) to thwart the efficacy of anything: Lk
730 7, βουλὴν τ. θεοῦ (AV and RV ‘reject’), to set
at nought as superfluous and invalid (cf. Gal 251:
34, He 10%). Hence (3) of persons, to ignore, bear
oneself towards them as if they were not. or as of
they need not be regarded or honoured: Mk 05 αὐτήν
(AV and RV ‘reject’), break faith with, and then
disappoint (Field, Ot. Norv. in loc.; cf. Ps 14(15)4),
Lk 1015 (RV ‘ reject’), to ignore, to treat with con-
tempt as deserving no recognition (cf. 1 Th 45).
To ignore the messenger is to ignore the Son whose
message he bears, and this is to ignore the Father
who has sent the Son (Jn 12, AV and RV ‘ reject’).
To ignore Christ and refuse His word is not to
escape responsibility, or to disprove His claims.
Denial is not disproof. ‘The word cannot be
banished. It still clings to the hearer as his judge.
Spiritual judgment is a consequence involved in
the rejection of the revelation: it is self-fulfilled :
it cannot but be carried out.’ Though rejected
now, ‘the word of Christ must Justify itself’
(Westcott) ; cf. Is 331.
2. ἐξουθενεῖν (-δενεῖν, -δενοῦν [see WH, App. p.
106]), to hold or treat as of no account, despise
utterly, set at nought: Lk 189 (RV ‘set at nought’).
The Pharisees ‘invented the most high-flown de-
signations for each other, such as ‘‘ Light of Israel,”
“‘Glory of the Law,” etc., but they described the
vast mass of their fellow-countrymen as ‘‘ accursed ”
for not knowing the Law (Jn 733), and spoke of
them as empty cisterns’ (Farrar, in Joc., ef. Ro
14°- ©] Co 164, Gal 41: ete., Pr1”). The same word
tr. by both AV and RV ‘set at nought,’ is used of
the contempt and mockery with which Jesus was
treated by the rulers (Mk 9? iva ἐξουδενηθῃ ; Lk 23"
ἐξουθ. αὐτὸν ὁ Ἡρῴδης), where the special significance
of the word is that He was treated not even as a
criminal, deserving examination of his case and
righteous judgment, but as a mere cypher, to be
utterly despised; cf. Ac 4, Ps 21 (22)6, Is 53°
[Symm.], Ezk 228,
3. καταφρονεῖν, to look down upon from a position
of superiority, whether assumed or real, to think
lightly of, to neglect, to disdain, with more or less
actively hostile design (cf. Herod. i. 5. 66, viii. 10).
Mt 6* || Lk 16%: two masters, with opposing in-
terests, cannot be served by the same person, the
esteem in which they are held will vary according to
the reward offered ; one will be actively honoured
and diligently served, the other will be thought
lightly of and his interests will be neglected. Mt
18”: μικροί are not to be held in disdain. (1) They
are under the special care of God. Adopting the
current Jewish doctrine of angels as guardian
spirits, our Lord tells His hearers that children
have friends in the court of heaven, in close near-
ness to the King Himself, whose ‘ Face’ they always
see; there they are not thought lightly of, here
they must not be despised. (2) Accepting the order
of the verses, there is a close connexion between
‘despising’ and ‘offending.’ No hostile action
must be taken towards them, even unconsciously,
no carelessness as to conduct or example which
might hurt them ; ‘hindrances’ to the life of young
disciples, ‘despised’ because of their weakness, are
sims against His love to them. (3) If the connexion
with vy.'4 is original, the young are not to be
‘despised,’ because the childlike disposition is the
true way to eternal life; the humility which is
essential for entering into the Kinedom of heaven
has its symbol in the consciousness of weakness
and imperfection that belongs to children, who are
therefore not to be ‘despised’ but ‘ received’ (οἵ.
τ 15. πο.
The active hostility implied in the word is seen in Ro 24
τ. μαπκροϊυμίας καταφρονεῖς : GOd’s longsuffering not only treated
with contempt, but also opposed by being sinned against
(cf. 1 Ti 412). In He 122 αἰσχύνης zeragp., the simply passive
sense is given—enduring with the resignation that arises from
the disdain of real superiority. ‘What men count shame was
seen by Christ in another light. From His position, raised
infinitely above them, He could disregard their judgment’
(Westcott, i loc.).
ἀθετεῖν and ἐξουθενεῖν are not used by classical writers.
φρονεῖν is in constant use from Herodotus onwards.
R. MACPHERSON.
DESPONDENCY.—Despondency fills so frequent
and serious a place in human life that we could
hardly have felt that our Lord was ‘tempted in all
points like as we are’ (He 47°), if He had not ex-
perienced it. But the profound depression in the
garden of Gethsemane, even if it were alone, and
the memorable word, ‘My soul is exceeding sorrow-
ful, even unto death’ (Mt 2638} Mk 1453), testify
that He had such experience. What was the cause
of this depression in Gethsemane? Was it due to
bodily exhaustion, the body affecting the mind
and making it more sensitive to sad surround-
ings? Was it due to the mental strain of pub-
licity and opposition, or to loneliness and the pain
of failure? (‘He came unto his own, and his own
received him not,’ Jn 1"). All these were elements
in the despondency of Elijah when he sat under the
juniper tree, and requested for himsclf that he
might die (1 K 194). And we may not say that
such influences were wholly without effect on our
Lord ; but in His ease, as we learn from His own
words, the great cause of despondenecy was the
pressure on His spirit of what He saw near before
Him, His cress—that death in which He was (in
St. Peter’s language) to bear our sins in His own
body (1 P 2%), or (in St. Paul’s) to be made sin for
us (2 Co 571), and in which He was to endure that
sense of separation from God which was so new to
the experience of the well-beloved Son. But why
was the depression so great now in Gethsemane when
He had looked forward to this from the beginning
of His ministry, saying in an early stage of it,
‘The Son of man must be lifted up’ (Jn 3")?
Part of the answer to this question must be that
our Lord’s mind, being truly human, was liable to
those often mysterious alternations of feeling which,
in common men, we call changes of mood. As He
drew nearer the accomplishment of the great work
of atonement, we find Him sometimes hastening
eagerly towards it, full of great purpose, even of
joy, and at other times forcseeing the darkness of
the experience and shrinking from it. At one
of the stages of His approach to that event, and of
His own inward acceptance of it, namely after the
dismissal of Judas, this joyful anticipation was
expressed by Him in language even of exultation
—‘ Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is
glorified in him’ (Jn 13%). At another stage He
speaks in quite a different manner, ‘Now is my
soul troubled ; and what shall I say? Father, save
me from this hour’ (Jn 127).
Dr. Maclaren has finely illustrated this alternation of feeling.
‘Like some great pillar elevated on a mountain, when the
thunder-clouds fill the sky, it stands out grim and dark; and
then, in a moment, the strong wind sweeps these away, and the
sunlight smites it, and it shines out white and lustrous. With
such swift alternations . . . to Jesus Christ the Cross was dark
and the Cross was radiant’ (Last Sheaves, 27).
AT he
The Gethsemane experience was perhaps that in
which our Lord felt most profoundly the dark and
heavy pressure of the anticipation of the Cross.
How dark and heavy that was appears in the ‘sweat
as it were great drops of blood falling down upon
the ground’ (Lk 22), in the ‘strong crying and
tears’ (He 5”), and perhaps as much in these words
of, His prayer, ‘if it be possible’—in His seeking a
possibility of the cup passing from Him, although
DESTRUCTION
DEVOTION 455
He had said long before, ‘The Son of man must be
lifted up’ (Jn 3%), and was to say soon after, ‘ For
this cause came I unto this hour’ (127). See,
further, art. AGONY. J. ROBERTSON.
DESTRUCTION.—The AV and RV tr. of ἀπώλεια
in Mt 7. In Mt 268 and in the parallel passage
in Mk 144 ἀπώλεια is translated ‘waste’ in both
Versions, and in Jn 17”, the only other instance
where the word is used in the Gospels, both render
it ‘perdition. In Mt 7 our Lord speaks of
‘destruction’ as the opposite of life eternal. In
rofane authors ἀπώλεια invariably means, as its
erivation from ἀπόλλυμι implies, extinction, anni-
hilation ; and this fact has been largely used by
the advocates of the Conditional Immortality
theory in support of their contention. Still the
‘destruction’ spoken of by our Lord in Mt 7° has
been held by expositors with practical unaninity
from the first to mean a continued life, whether
endless or not, of misery after death. All the
same, it has been admitted generally, e.g. by
Cremer, that eternal misery as a meaning of
ἀπώλεια ‘is a signification peculiar to the NT, and
without analogy in classical Greek.’ There appears,
on the whole, to be general agreement that whether
‘destruction’ means a terminable or interminable
life of misery after death, it does, at any rate,
mean a prolongation of existence: it is exclusion
from salvation, whether final or not. Whether or
not there is a term to the duration of misery here-
after—presuming that there is a continuance of
life after death for those who go in the way of
destruction—does not enter into the scope of this
note (see ETERNAL PUNISHMENT), but it may be
remarked as significant that the ‘lost sheep’ are
spoken of by our Lord as being found again, and
that the word for ‘lost’ is the participle of ἀπόλλυμι.
This is one of the considerations that have made
many feel warranted in holding ‘the larger hope’
even for those who go meanwhile in ‘the way that
leadeth to destruction.’
J. CROMARTY SMITH.
DEVIL.—See DEMON and SATAN.
DEVOTION.—The word does not occur in the
Gospels, but the idea is present everywhere, as
marking the attitude of the man Jesus towards
God, and thus providing a standard for imitation
by every other man. Intrinsically the word denotes
the act of presenting solemnly some gift or service
to a deity, or to any one invested in thought for a
time with some of the qualities or claims of a
deity ; but its use has been extended to cover alike
such service itself, and even the psychological con-
dition from which the act springs. As such, a
correct analysis must find blended in devotion
each of the three elements—thought, emotion, and
volition—which are the mutually dependent frag-
ments of the unit of personality, expressing itself
as a whole in the exercises often called devotions.
The intellectual element is a recognition of the
dignity and patient grace of God, the sensitive a
feeling of gratitude and desire to please, the voli-
tional a strong resolve to carry out that desire ;
and these three pass together quickly into appro-
“Ὡς action, the whole man in the harmony of all
is powers indicating by praise or service the depth
of his loving regard.
In some definitions, too much prominence is given to the will,
and devotion is confused with religion generally, as in Aquinas,
Summa, 1.2 1xxxii. 1: ‘Devotio nihil aliud esse videtur, quam
voluntas quedam prompte tradendi se ad ea, que pertinent ad
Dei famulatum.’ In certain phrases the word is used as a
synonym for worship, or even for a form of worship, as when
devotion to the Sacred Heart is spoken of ; and in others, as
‘feasts of devotion,’ it acquires an entirely technical sense,
implying the absence of express obligation, with an appeal only
to the discretion and good feeling of the worshipper. But in
the better use internal devotion is contrasted with external
worship (Atterbury, Sermons, iv. 213), and may be resolved into
four principal constituents. The self-conscious determination
of the will towards God is followed by the actual exaltation of
the soul to God and its suffusion with the reverent sense of His
nearness and mercy. This is exhibited in various loving acts
and exercises, such as prayer and praise. And the whole is
effected in the heart under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
1. In the case of Christ each of these phases of
devotion is represented in the Gospels. (@) Though
but a mere lad, He indicates already a habitual
Godward set of His will (Lk 2”, He 10%); and
afterwards He speaks of His purpose, sometimes
with quiet assurance (Jn δὴ 6% 71%), sometimes
with a certain glow of satisfaction (4% 174). Hin-
drances and sore temptations, in which the play of
a natural and useful instinct may be traced, did
not divert Him (Lk 951 22). Glad, complete con-
formity with the will of God, such as is an inte-
grant of every right conception of heaven, is set
forth as on earth the aim of every disciple (Mt 6'°),
reached at once and maintained without defect,
though not without effort (cf. Harnack, What is
Christianity 2? 129f.), by Him alone who could
say, “1 and the Father are one’ (Jn 1050).
(2) Instances of the exaltation of His soul in the
calm sense of security because of the accord of His
will with that of the Father, occur in the impres-
sion His fearlessness made at the cleansing of the
Temple (2')—in His endowment with ‘honour
and glory’ at the Transfiguration (2 P 1%)—in the
strenethening ministry of angels after the Tempta-
tion (Mt 4"), and the Agony (Lk 22 RVm). The
joy of Mt 11% and Lk 107! is another instance, as
is also the outburst of triumphant relief at the
retirement of Judas (Jn 13%), Nor should His
perfect repose in the midst of peril (Mk 455), and
in the presence of angry or eager mobs (Lk 4”,
Jn 8°10" 616). be overlooked. Partial and auxiliary
explanations may be found in the exhaustion of
fatigue or the mastery of His nerves; but the real
cause was moral and not physical, and should be
sought in the self-consciousness of Jesus, in the
stable correlation of His will and God’s. The two
streams of volition, human and Divine, met and
merged in Him; and thus He becomes for men at
once an example of perfect devotion and a pledge
of perfect grace.
(c) The exercises appropriate to devotion, which,
however, so far from confining itself to them, en-
riches the entire nature and aflects every relation of
life, are praise and prayer (see sep. artt.), with the
addition of meditation, and occasionally of fasting
or some form of self-discipline. The prayer and
praise are not exactly such as accompany public
worship, but assume rather the character of com-
munion or reverent conversation, the element of
specific supplication being often, not always, absent.
In the case of Christ the praise is illustrated in such
passages as Lk 107, the practice of meditation
and prayer in the lonely night-watches and the
desert in Mk 6%, Lk 5, whilst the supplication
becomes more specific in Lk 6”, in Gethsemane,
and perhaps also on the Mount of Transfiguration.
Of actual fasting by Jesus as a definite process of
devotion, there is no certain case in the Gospels ;
but there is no reason to suppose that He did not
follow the usage of His country on the Day of
Atonement. Fasting, too, is associated with the
Temptation (Mt 43), of which one lesson is that a
pure conscience and an ideal conformity with God
can be attained or retained only by self-discipline
and hard steadfastness under testing. And even in
the Sermon on the Mount the practice is guarded
from abuse, and implicitly commended in Mt 61°" ;
and the supposition is warranted that our Lord was
prepared to exemplify in His own person what-
ever He recommended to His disciples. His life,
as well as His teaching, shows that fasting in
itself has no devotional or any other religious
456
DEVOTION
DEVOTION
value, but’ is serviceable only when and in so far
as it promotes the closeness of communion with
God. See FASTING.
(d) The plenary presence of the Holy Spirit with
Christ is an implication of the NT, which, how-
ever, is comparatively reticent as to the Spirit’s
influence in the interval from the Temptation to
the eve of the Passion. The action of the Spirit at
the Temptation is referred to by all the Synoptists
(Mt 41, Mk 1135, Lk 41), and His aid must be re-
garded as part of the explanation of Christ’s sin-
lessness on this and all subsequent occasions.
Not only were His miracles wrought in the power
of the Spirit (Mt 1238, Lk 4-18), but His oneness
with the Spirit made His life uninterrupted devo-
tion, and ‘through the eternal Spirit’ He ‘offered
himself without blemish unto God’ (He 94). The
rapture of His soul is attributed to the influence
of the Spirit in Lk 1051, though this particular is
omitted in the corresponding narrative of Mt 11°.
And the devotion of Christ is an example for man,
not only because it exhibits human triumph over
temptation and human fellowship with God, but
also because of the similarity of the means and
aids. His complete unction is the promise and
measure of the anointing available to every one.
2. In the case of man, devotion appears in the
Gospels as an act or state of the entire personality,
with all its powers harmoniously and intensely
engaged. Prominence is given to the same ele-
ments as are traceable in the devotion of Christ
Himself, whilst ample safeguards against error
and fanaticism are provided. The great rule of
Dt 6° is adopted by Christ, and applied in each of
the Synoptics (Mt 2297, Mk 12%, Lk 10”) with
little variations of phrase that add to the uncom-
promising vigour. In the Sermon on the Mount
the exclusiveness of devotion, as admitting no
rival claim and absorbing supreme affection, is
recognized in Mt 67!-74; so in another connexion
in Lk 16%, And in the closing discourses Christ
puts Himself forward as actually and solely central
to the life of His disciples (Jn 14°), the source of
all their strength, the right object of their trust
and love (15°! 16%), with the recurring refrain,
emphasized by its modifications, ‘Abide in me’
(153° οὐ al.). Fruitfulness in the graces of personal
character, and then secondarily in obedience and
service, results from the deliberate regarding of
Christ as ‘all in all,’ as so filling up the sphere of
thought and desire as to control everything else
therein. The last clause in Jn 15° means by im-
plication that possibilities to the disciple are pro-
portionate to the closeness of his devout union
with his Lord; and that union may, and should,
reach a stage of completeness, in which the in-
dwelling Christ becomes the unquestioned ruler of
all within the heart, and the whole life in the flesh
is lived ‘in faith, the faith which is in the Son of
God’ (Gal 239), It is the crown of Christian devo-
tion, not the joint sovereignty of Christ and the
ego, but the loving and eager retirement of the
ego that Christ may be substituted, appropriating
its functions and reigning in its stead. Thus
Christ Himself teaches in one of the most sacred
parts of Scripture: “1 in them’ (Jn 1723: 26) is the
final and fullest blessing and privilege conceivable
in that hour of vision for those whom He loved ‘to
the uttermost’ (13! RVm).
(4) Specifically, as might be expected before
Pentecost, the Gospels give more prominence to the
action of the human will as a condition of disciple-
ship than to its subsequent concentration as the
condition of progress and perfecting. But the
example of Christ Himself is, in this matter, a
sufficient safecuard and sanction, and is enforced
by teaching of at least two types. ‘If any man
willeth to do his will’ (Jn 7"), supplies the key not
only to the knowledge of the things of the King-
dom, but also to the fulfilment in personal charac-
ter of God’s purpose of sanctification, Bengel’s
suavis harmonia being both a cause and the ettect
of insatiable yearning. Again, glad consent, with
persistency of will, is an important element in our
Lord’s frequent exhortations to His disciples to
‘abide’ in Him or in His word (Jn 154 8*! οὐ al.).
One of the characteristics of the Johannine setting
of the Gospel, as of the prophecies of Jeremiah in
the OT, is the emphasis laid on the sustained
determination of the will towards God.
(6) The exaltation of spirit, accompanying and
enriched by this firmness of purpose, receives more
adequate expression in later times, but is far from
being left entirely without illustration. Such
passages as Jn 12! * speak of a magnetic influence
on the part of Christ, to which the response was
at the beginning more than that of admiration,
and soon deepened into supreme and rapturous
attachment. The Magnificat (Lk 1*-°) and the
Nune Dimittis (Lk 259-99) anticipate the exultation
of men, partly at the accomplished work of Christ,
partly at the abundance and the effect of His
grace to the individual ; and the self-forgetfulness
of grateful and passionate devotion is illustrated
in Lk 7°7-48, Mary’s ‘Rabboni’ (Jn 201) and
Thomas’ ‘My Lord’ (Jn 20%) express absorbed
attachment as well as conviction. In the parables
the joy is occasionally festal and general, but
sometimes becomes that of personal and assured
possession (Mt 13+ 4°), or is even lifted up into
likeness to the Saviour’s own joy, incapable of
dimness or of eclipse (Jn 15", Mt 2571). The dis-
ciple in his Lord’s bosom (Jn 13:9: 535) is a type and
guarantee.
(c) The loving acts and exercises in which the
devout spirit beneficially expresses itself are of
almost infinite variety in their character, and,
though their most ingenious exhibition is met with
subsequently, they are not left without trace or
starting-point in the Gospels. Beyond the ex-
ample of the Saviour, an encouragement to quiet
meditation may be found in Mk 6*!, a commenda-
tion of private prayer in Mt 06. Self-discipline,
as removing the occasions of sin and as aiding the
communion of the human spirit with God, is en-
joined in such passages as Mt 5*-*°, though in
others the object becomes the avoidance of conduct
that might offend or imperil the souls of the weak.
That self-discipline is in itself and apart from its motives
meritorious, is nowhere taught by Christ, and such a notion is
quite contrary to the genius of Christianity. Christ’s treatment
of fasting is an illustration. He evidently looked forward to
its practice by His disciples not only in their association and in
times of general calamity and mourning (Mt 914-15, Mk 218-20,
Lk 534-35), but individually under the prompting of personal
need and as a preparation for personal blessing. That an access
of spiritual power might thereby be secured is a legitimate in-
ference from Mt 1721 and Mk 929, though textual evidence is
against any specific reference to fasting in these verses, the
corruption of which may well have been due to the incorpora-
tion of a devotional gloss. In Mt 616-18 it is assumed that dis-
ciples will fast; injunctions are given with a view to secure
purity of intention, and the good effect is guaranteed in the
‘recompense’ of the Father. Hence private fasting as an ob-
servance is distinctly recognized by Christ. According to His
rule, invariable except in the case of prayer (where, moreover,
the prescription is that of a model rather than a form), He does
not prescribe forms. He puts in its right place of control the
object of pleasing the Father, who sees in secret, and knows the
whole heart and way of a man. And with this implicit injunc-
tion of fasting, and protection against its misuse and perils, He
leaves every disciple to determine for himself the best applica-
tion of the principle in the interest of the well-being and enrich-
ment of the soul.
_ (d) Before Pentecost the action of the Holy
Spirit in human devotion is, for the most part,
anticipatory and a matter of promise, but as such
is none the less important. His presence is that
which will prevent the disciples from becoming
‘desolate’ and without resource (Jn 1418) on the
departure of their Master; and, being present, He
DIDRACHM
DISCIPLE 457
will act in them as the Father’s Paraclete (Jn 1435 |
et al.), advocating the cause of God and promoting
all Godward impulse and desire.
will guide ‘into al the truth’ (Jn 16), bringing
the disciples into right relation, both intellectual |
and practical, with saving truth, and maintaining
within them a condition ot composure and serenity
(Lk 1”). The power to do ‘greater works’ is
associated with the return of Christ to His Father
mission of the Spirit; and if the complaint is
sometimes just that those greater works are not
being done, the cause is to be found not in the
inadequacy of opportunity or resource, but in the |
Its degree is |
commensurate with that of right volition on the |
defectiveness of personal devotion.
part of the disciple, and with that of possession
on the part of the Spirit ; and these two, again, are
mutually dependent. ‘In the Spirit’ by fixed and
abiding purpose, is the law on the one side; the |
Spirit in the disciple is the correlated privilege,
with the absolute harmony between Christ and the |
Spirit as the only limit of possible human experi-
ence, and as its inspiration and pledge.
LITERATURE.—Dykes, Manifesto of the King, 333-437 ; Stalker,
Imago Christi, ch. vii. R. W. Moss.
DIDRACHM.—See Money.
DIDYMUS.—The alternative name of the Apostle
Thomas, given in three passages in the Fourth |
Gospel (Jn 1116 205: 21° Θωμᾶς ὁ λεγόμενος Δίδυμος).
The adj. δίδυμος is regular Greek from Homer
onwards, with the meaning ‘twofold’; hence δίδυ-
μος as subs. =‘a twin.’ Δίδυμος is the translation,
as Θωμᾶς is the transliteration, of s28n=oxn ‘a
twin.’
Why St. John calls special attention to this
name 15 not clear.
may have been familiarly known in Asia Minor
among the Gentile Christians as Didynus. Jn 4°
(‘Messiah . . . which is called Christ’) shows that
Thomas was not called Didymus as an additional
name. See THOMAS. E. H. TrrcHMARSH.
DINNER (ἄριστον, Mt 224, Lk 1155 [RVm ‘ break-
fast ’] 14'*).—In the East there is no meal properly
corresponding to our breakfast. Even the guest
is allowed to depart in the morning without
‘bite or sup.’ Eating and drinking early in the
day are held to be marks of effeminacy and self-
indulgence, and are regarded as bad for the system. |
Many, especially when on a journey, are content
with one meal in the twenty-four hours, taken
after sunset. In general, however, a light meal is
eaten about the middle of the day, consisting of
bread, olives, fruit, eben (sour curded milk), cheese,
etc.; but the principal meal is in the evening. |
Eating at other times is quite casual and informal.
It is probably correct to say that in NT ἄριστον
and δεῖπνον correspond respectively to our luncheon
and dinner. See, further, art. MEALS.
W. EwING.
DISCIPLE.—1. In the NT ‘disciple’ (sing. and
plur.) occurs very frequently in the Gospels and
Acts, but not elsewhere in NT. In every case it
represents the Gr. μαθητής -- (1) ‘ learner,’ ‘ pupil,’ in
contrast to ‘teacher,’ as Mt 10%; and (2) ‘ad-
herent,’ one who is identified with a certain leader, |
or school, and adopts a corresponding line of con-
duct, as Mk 915 “Why do John’s disciples and the
disciples of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples
fast not?’ cf. Jn 9% ‘Thou art his disciple; but |
we are disciples of Moses.’ Our Lord Himself
points to and discourages a loose use of the term |
‘disciple,’ according to which it meant no more
than ‘hearer,’ when He says, ‘If ye abide in my
word, then are ye truly my disciples’ (Jn 851; ct.
Specitically, He |
Westcott suggests that Thomas |
His statement of the conditions of discipleship,
Lk 1456. 27. 33 and Jn 158). As used by the Evan-
gelists, ‘disciples’ has sometimes a broader and
sometimes a narrower significance. For the former,
see Lk 615: 1 ‘a great multitude of his disciples,’
| Ac 6? ‘And the twelve called the multitude of the
disciples unto them,’ cf. 453, It is evident that to
| St. Luke τῶν πιστευσάντων and τῶν μαθητῶν were
‘ist t | equivalent expressions.
(Jn 14), and therefore, by implication, with the |
Hence, when we read in
Ac 19+ of ‘certain disciples,’ who when they
‘believed’ heard nothing of the gift of the Holy
Ghost and were baptized ‘into John’s baptism,’
we must understand thereby Christian disciples,
though in an ‘immature stage of knowledge’ (see
Knowling’s note on the passage, Lapos. Gr. Test.).
For ‘disciples’ in the narrower sense=the inner
| eirele of the followers of Jesus, ‘ the Twelve,’ see
Mt 877111 14% 2618, and frequently. Thus, as ap-
plied to the followers of our Lord, ‘ disciples’ is a
term of varying content. It is of interest in pass-
ing to note the various appellations by which the
disciples address the Saviour, expressing divers
aspects of the relation which they held to sub-
sist between themselves and Him. He was to
them (1) Teacher (διδάσκαλος), Mk 458, Jn 131; (2)
Superintendent (ἐπιστάτης), only in Lk.: 5° 8% 9%
9” ; (3) Lord (κύριος ; from Lk 6*° we should gather
that this was the designation most usually adopted
by the disciples) ; (4) My Teacher (fa88i), Mt 26>,
Mk 9, Jn 4 118.
2. Restricting ourselves to the more limited
sense in which ‘disciples’ is used of the followers
of our Lord, we may note the composition of the
Twelve. ‘The Synoptics and Acts provide the fol-
lowing lists :—
Mt 102#., Mk 8168 Lk 614ff., Ac 118,
Simon. Simon. Simon. Peter.
Andrew. James. Andrew. John.
James. John. James. James.
John. Andrew. John. Andrew
Philip. Philip. Philip. Philip.
3artholomew. Bartholomew. Bartholomew. Thomas.
Thomas. Matthew. Matthew. Bartholomew.
Matthew. Thomas. Thomas. Matthew.
James of James of James of James of
Alpheus. Alpheus. Alpheus. Alpheus.
Thaddeus Thaddeus. Simon the Simon the
(Lebbeeus). Zealot. Zealot.
Simon the Simon the Judas of James. Judas of James.
Cananean. Cananean.
Judas Iscariot. Judas Iscariot. Judas Iscariot.
Comparing these lists, it is apparent that common
to them all is the division of the Twelve into groups
of four. The sequence of the groups is the same
in each list. Within the groups the order of the
names varies, save as regards the first name of each
of the three groups, which in all the lists is the
| same—the first, fitth, and ninth places being occu-
pied in all by Simon (Peter), Philip, and James of
Alphzeus respectively. See, further, art. APOSTLES,
ν. 103*f., and the separate articles on the above
names.
3. The calling of the Twelve.—lf this phrase be
taken quite strictly, there is no difficulty in deter-
mining when and under what circumstances the
call to which it refers was given. ‘The Synoptic
accounts are in virtual accord. They show that it
was not at the outset of His ministry that our
Lord increased the company of His immediate
followers until it numbered twelve. That increase
took place when the fame of His teaching and
words, as He went through the towns and villages
of Galilee, ‘preaching the gospel of the kingdom,
healing all manner of disease and all manner of
sickness’ (Mt 9935), both attracted to Him the atten-
tion of the populace, and so excited the resentment
of the scribes and Pharisees that they began to
take counsel with the Herodians ‘how they might
destroy him’ (Mk 3"). The need for more labourers
was evident, and not less evident to Jesus the
458 DISCIPLE
signs that the time for training such labourers
might be short. St. Matthew tells, immediately
before he records the calling of the Twelve, that
when Jesus ‘saw the multitudes he was moved
with compassion for them, because they were dis-
tressed and scattered, as sheep not having a
shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The
harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are
few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that he send forth labourers into his harvest’ (Mt
986), That summons to prayer becomes more
urgent and pressing in the light of St. Luke’s
record, that immediately prior to His choosing the
Apostles our Lord ‘went out into the mountain
to pray; and he continued all night in prayer to
God. And when it was day, he called his disciples,
and he chose from them twelve’ (Lk 6138), The
immediate purpose of the call is expressed by St.
Mark thus: ‘And he appointed twelve that they
might be with him, and that he might send them
forth to preach, and to have authority to cast out
devils’ (Mk 315). On the question whether some
of the Twelve had not received a previous call, or
perhaps more than one previous call, to be followers
of Jesus, and if so, in what relation these earlier
callings stand to the appointment of the Twelve,
see art. APOSTLES.
4. The training of the Twelve.—When St. Mark
tells us (315) that Jesus ‘ap .0inted twelve that they
might be with him, and that he might send them
forth to preach,’ he discloses the characteristic and
the all-important feature of the method of their
training. They were to see the works of the
Saviour and to hear His words, and in addition to
that they were to be constantly in contact with
His personality: they were to be with Hum (see
above, p. 107).
That ‘course of instruction,’ as Keim calls it,
which contact with Jesus secured to His disciples,
was maintained with very slight interruption from
the calling of the Twelve until the Betrayal. The
chief intermission, of which we have any word, of
the intercourse of Jesus with His chosen followers,
was occasioned by that mission on which the Twelve
were sent quite soon after their call (Mt 10°). The
interval occupied by the mission was probably not
more than a few days—‘at least a week’ (Latham,
Pastor Pastorum, Ὁ. 301). That mission was a
testing of the Apostles themselves, not less than
an act of service to those to whom they were sent ;
and the test was so endured that it needed not to
be repeated. The Twelve went forth under the
conditions which Jesus prescribed : they delivered
the message He bade them, and they used freely
the power to heal with which they were entrusted.
No similar service separated them again from their
Master,—unless, indeed, they had part in that
inission of the Seventy of which St. Luke tells
(10'"-). The time would yet come for them to
deliver their testimony and to fulfil their ministry.
Meanwhile the Saviour jealously guards for them
the precious opportunities which remain for free
intercourse with Himself. He leads them away
from the crowds, taking them now to ‘a desert
place’ (Mk 6*!), and again to the remote ‘parts
of Cwesarea Philippi’? (Mt 16%). We gain the
impression that as the brief spell of His own
earthly ministry neared its term, our Lord con-
centrated Himself increasingly upon the inner
band of His followers. Ewald is true to the in-
dication of the Gospel narratives when he says
that ‘the community of His friends’ was to our
Lord ‘during the last year and a half the main
object of His earthly labours’ (HJ, vol. vi. 417).
Should it be asked more particularly what was
the instruction of which the Twelve were the
recipients, a full answer would require a recapitu-
lation of all the teaching of Jesus.
This mueb |
DISCIPLE
may be said here, that the Twelve shared the
instruction given to ‘the multitude,’ with the
added advantage of the explanations which they
sought, and which our Lord freely accorded them,
‘when he was alone,’ ‘ privately.’ See Mk 4*, on
which Swete (Gospel according to St. Mark, p. 84)
comments: ‘Exposition now regularly followed
(ἐπέλυεν πάντα) the public teaching.’ Furthermore,
the Gospels contain records of discourses addressed
only to the inner circle of the disciples. Among
such discourses should be reckoned in all proba-
bility part at least of the group of addresses known
as the ‘Sermon on the Mount ’—notably the part
contained in Mt 5, which bears all the marks of a
discourse to more immediate followers. Not, how-
ever, that the more immediate followers are in this
particular connexion to be restricted to the Twelve,
since the discourse in Mt 5 must—in spite of the
position St. Luke gives to his version of it (6')—
be placed earlier than the calling of the Twelve ;
it ‘has throughout the character of an early and
opening discourse.’ None the less it is to be
accounted among our Lord’s less public utterances:
it is ‘Jesus’ address of welcome to His band of
disciples’ (Keim, op. cit. 286-290). Again, in Mt
10° we have what appears at first sight to be a
sustained address to the Twelve in reference to
their mission. But on a comparison with Mk 6*1!
and Lk 9° it seems likely that only vv.? were
spoken with direct reference to the mission, and
that vv. are grouped with them, though coming
from a later time, because they contained sayings
of Jesus in reference to a kindred topic — the
future missionary labours of the Apostles. Yet
further must be added to the discourses delivered
to the Twelve alone, the apocalyptic discourse
Mt 24 (cf. Mk 13 and Lk 21), with its parabolic
sequel in ch. 25; and the discourse in the upper
room on the night of the Betrayal (Jn 14-16).
And when we endeavour to tabulate the instruc-
tion imparted more privately to the Twelve, we
may not omit the signs, each so full of teaching for
them, of which they alone—and in one case but
three of their number—were the spectators. The
Walking on the Sea, the Transfiguration, the
Cursing of the Barren Fig-tree, the Feet-washing
in the Upper Room, the Miraculous Draught of
Fishes (Jn 214*),—these all surely formed part
of the lessons most indelibly impressed on the
Twelve.
Our Lord Himself has characterized for us the
purpose and the content of the teaching He im-
parted to His followers. It was that to them
might be given ‘the mystery of the kingdom of
God’ (Mk 41). ‘As given to the Apostles it was
still a secret, not yet to be divulged, nor even
except in a small degree intelligible to themselves’
(Swete, op. cit. p. 72). The Kingdom, the charac-
teristics of its subjects, its laws, its service, and,
finally, its Lord reigning through sutfering—such
in broad outline was the course of the instruction
imparted by Jesus to the Twelve. It moved on-
ward from the simpler to the more profound. ‘ At
first, sayings are given them to remember ; latterly,
they receive mysteries on which to meditate. In
the Sermon on the Mount men are told plainly
what it is desirable for them to know ; afterwards,
the teaching passes through parables and hard
sayings up to the mysteries conveyed by the Last
Supper’ (Latham, op. cit. 120). But no teaching,
not even the teaching of Jesus Himself, could over-
come the reluctance to believe that it behoved that
the Christ should suffer, or arouse anticipations of
the glories that should follow. The crucifixion
and death of our Lord found the Eleven un-
prepared, and ready to despair, though they still
held together in the bonds of a love they had
acquired in the school of Jesus. It needed the
DISCIPLESHIP
actual fact of the Resurrection, and converse with
the risen Saviour, and the illumination of the
Spirit, to bring them to a true understanding of
all that reiterated teaching concerning His death
and His rising from the dead which Jesus had
given ‘while He was yet with them.’ But once
that understanding was attained by the disciples,
the truth against which their minds had been
stubbornly closed became central in their pro-
clamation. There is abundant evidence that the
Apostles were slow learners—men with no special
quickness of insight, and with the hindrance of
strongly developed prejudice. It is also evident
that their slowness and prejudice have for us an
apologetic value (see esp. Bruce, Training of the
Twelve, p. 482: ‘They were stupid, slow-minded
persons; very honest, but very unapt to take in
new ideas. . . . Let us be thankful for the honest
stupidity of these men, it gives great value to
their testimony. We know that nothing but facts
could make such men believe that which nowa-
days they get credit for inventing’). It concerns
us yet more to recall the evidence which their
training affords of the patience and transforming
power of Him who now, not less truly than in the
days of His flesh, calls weak men to Himself that
they may be with Him, and that He may send
them forth to bear witness on His behalf, enduing
them -with His Spirit, that their testimony, like
that of the Apostles, may not be in vain, See also
art. APOSTLES.
LirerATuRE.—Bruce, The Training of the Twelve; Latham,
Pastor Pastoruwm; Neander, Life of Christ; Ewald, History of
Israel, Eng. tr. vol. vi.; Keim, Jesus of Nazara, Eng. tr.
vol. iii. ; Weiss, The Life of Christ ; Sanday, Outlines of the Life
of Christ [art. ‘ Jcesus Christ’ in Hastings’ DB]; Edersheim, The
Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah ; Greenhough, The Apostles
of Our Lord. GEORGE P. GOULD.
DISCIPLESHIP.—In the Gospels no word ex-
pressive of ‘discipleship’ occurs, although they are
full of the living reality which it expresses. This
is not surprising, for it is never God’s way to teach
abstract truth, but truth embodied in actual life.
From the concrete and the living facts it is left to
us, by the exercise of our natural faculties, to
abstract the generalization or induction which
resents the idea in its purity. Christ always
ollowed the Divine method; and, accordingly,
while He made disciples, and trained them in
discipleship, He hardly made any attempt to define
or describe what this involves; nor did He give
much instruction which represented with any
directness the ideal that He had in view. From
these negative facts themselves the primary truth
on this subject may be learnt: Discipleship, in the
Christian sense, is essentially a matter for living
realization rather than for psychological analysis
or formal compliance.
If for His followers later the making of disciples
began with preaching the gospel, for the Lord
Himself it commonly began with the authoritative
appeal, ‘Follow me.’ There were, of course, times
when this summons called a man literally to arise
and go with Jesus to some new place and duty ; as
when the first among the Twelve ‘left the nets and
followed him’ (Mk 1!8: 2°), But the same summons
was still employed by the Lord after His resurrec-
tion, when it could have no such literal signification
(Jn 21). And there is a group of instances (Mt
1058 16%, Jn 1276) in which ‘bearing the cross’ and
‘disowning oneself’ are conjoined with the call to
follow Him, where it is clear that ‘following’ has
wholly a spiritual sense. The fact that we speak
of ‘following an example’ too often leads to the
misinterpretation of this pregnant call to disciple-
ship which was so characteristic of the Lord Jesus.
It is no injunction to copy Him, though, of course,
DISCIPLESHIP 459
the imitation of Christ must enter into the aim of |
every disciple. That, however, belongs to a rather
later stage of discipleship, while the summons to
‘follow’ is its initiation. The choice of this word
rests upon the ancient metaphor of a ‘way of life’
which Christ adopted for Himself when He affirmed
‘Iam the Way,’ and which underlay and coloured
not a little of His language. So the call, ‘ Follow
me,’ is an appeal to trust His guidance, and venture
oneself along the track that He explores into the
unknown regions of life, with the need of ‘ bear-
ing the cross’ and ‘losing life to find it.’ ‘Come
on! Fear not to go through the valley of the
shadow of death with me in the quest of life.
‘* He that is near me is near the fire; he that is far
from me is far from the kingdom.”’ Thus at the
threshold of discipleship lies the requirement which
He always made of those to whom He rendered
service,—the requirement of courageous trust or
‘faith.’ And for such as are ready to obey this
first appeal to ‘follow’ He opens ‘a new and living
way through the veil’ which hides so much of the
realms of life from our eyes. And this way is
‘human to the red-ripe of the heart,’ and fit for
human feet to travel, for the way is ‘ His flesh,’
His mortal life, His human nature—what for us
men and for our salvation He came down to make
His own.
There are some few sayings in which the Lord
delineates the features of discipleship under one or
another of its aspects. H.g. ‘A disciple is not
above his master . . . it is enough for the disciple
that he be as his master. . . . If they have called
the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more
them of his household?’ (Mt 10:3). And in close
connexion with this stands the reiterated teaching,
‘Whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all
that he hath, he cannot be my disciple’ (Lk 14”).
Elsewhere He emphasizes not the outward lot, but
the inner character of discipleship: e.g. ‘Come
unto me all ye that labour... . Take my yoke
upon you, and learn of me; for T am gentle and
lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your
souls’ (Mt 1138). The same gentleness and lowli-
ness which are ever ready to render loving service
are again taught as characteristics of discipleship in
the action of washing the disciples’ feet on the last
evening, when, having sat down again, He said,
‘Perceive ye what I have done to you? Ye call
me Teacher and Lord: and ye say well; for so I
am. IfI then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed
your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.
For I gave you an example that ye also should do
as I have done to you’ (Jn 13", ef. also Lk 2274-6,
Mk 9°37, Mt 231°"). What the disciple must learn
is not mainly ‘teaching’; he must ‘learn Christ.’
‘Truth isin Jesus,—‘the Truth and the Life,’—
and the disciple must grow ‘in the knowledge and
love of God and of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.’
So love is what must be learnt above all else, and
affords the test of true discipleship. ‘ By this shall
all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have
love one to another’ (Jn 13°). And the Lord traces
discipleship down to its roots when He declares,
‘No man can come to me except the Father which
sent me draw him... . It is written. . . They
shall all be taught of God. Every one that hath
heard from the Father, and hath learned, cometh
unto me’ (Jn 644%),
A large proportion of the Lord’s teaching bears,
of course, upon the nature of discipleship and the
character of the disciple, even when it is not cast
in the form of dealing with this directly. £.g. the
Beatitudes (Mt 5°*-) are, under one aspect, all so
many facets of discipleship; metaphors like ‘the
salt of the earth,’ the ‘light of the world’ (Mt 5: 4),
‘a little flock’ (Lk 12°"), ‘the branches of the vine’
(Jn 15°), ‘every plant which my heavenly Father
hath not planted’ (Mt 1515), and many another, in-
460 DISCIPLINE
cluding tnose aevelope into parables,—all sketch
some features of discipleship, as do such sayings
as that one must be reborn, and much of the teach-
ing concerning the Kingdom.
The final charge which the Lord laid upon the
disciples whom He had trained and tested Himself
was, ‘Going forth, make’ ye disciples of all the
nations’ (μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, Mt 281).
Discipleship for all is thus set forth as His own
ultimate aim. In reading the words one must
carefully guard against the lamentable imperfec-
tion of rendering in the AY, and borrowed thence
in some of the language of the Book of Common
Prayer ; also against the faulty punctuation of the
sentence which is found alike in the AV and the
RV. ‘Teaching’ is no translation of μαθητεύσατε,
which means far more; while a colon ought to re-
place the comma after ‘nations,’ and only commas,
or at the most semicolons, should separate the suc-
ceeding clauses. Without attention to this, the
great importance of this passage must be missed.
Rightly read, it gives the Lord’s own interpretation
of how discipleship is constituted. The whole
commission is, ‘Make disciples of all’; and three
steps are then indicated in so doing, which answer
to three essential factors in discipleship—(1) Bap-
tizing into the Name; (2) teaching to observe all
commands; (3) the constant spiritual presence of
Christ. There is no complete discipleship without
these three elements. The first is the portal of
discipleship, the admission to a new destiny ; at
once the begetting of a new life on the part of God,
and the profession of a new hope and purpose on
the part of those whom He claims as His children.
The second is the training needed to make the
promise good ; for only in the course of life’s dis-
cipline can character be formed or resolutions
realized, —it is ‘in our endurance that we must win
our souls.’ The third is the pledge that none shall
ever be left to face the stress of life’s probation
alone, but that for every disciple union with Christ
is a support which may be securely trusted, the
Divine Incarnation working itself out for ever till
the goal shall be reached, when ‘God shall be all,
in all’ (1 Co 15%). The first disciples understood
the charge which had been given them, and acted
on the lines laid down from the earliest day on
which they began to ‘make disciples’ for their
Lord. So when, on the day of Pentecost, those
who had been touched by Peter’s preaching put
the inquiry, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?’ the
answer of the Apostle was explicit: ‘Repent ye
. . . be baptized . . . ye shall receive the gift of
the Holy Spirit’ (Ac 931. 988), Here are the same
three elements of discipleship; for ‘repentance’
(μετάνοια) is the form which ‘observing all things
commanded’ necessarily takes to start with in
those who are passing from walking in their own
ways to following the way of Christ ; while the Holy
Spirit is, of course, the Spirit of Christ present
permanently with those whom He unites to Him-
self. See also preceding article.
LITERATURE.—Seeley, Ecce Homo, ch. vii. :
Pastorum ; Expositor, τν. iv.,[1891] 286 ff. j
Ε΄ P. Boys-SMITH.
pee ee — The Gospels reveal a twofold
: Sa tap ana inet Οὐδ Himself experienced,
will be convenient t real Ae mim a NG
d€ venient to treat these separately.
1: The discipline to which Christ submitted.—
ee I Sart ry that even our Lord required
the SSneN eth Spree Πηθ διὰ order ‘to easume
ee seni Macy om. of the work for which He had
ecome incarnate. Such a τελείωσις consisted in
Latham, Pastor
His being brought ‘to the full moral perfection of
which carries with it the complete-
f po and dignity’ (Westeott); and its
necessity 15 recognized, not by the writer of the
His humanity,
ness of power
DISCIPLINE
Epistle to the Hebrews alone (He 210 7° ete.), but
also by Christ Himself (Lk 1553).
It is taught with equal clearness that our Lord
attained His ‘perfection’ through the discipline
which He voluntarily endured. This included
several elements. (1) Among the most important
was the discipline of temptation (Mk 1)*'° || He
218); and in this connexion it is important to
remember that His testing was not only search-
ing in its strength, but repeated in its assaults
(note plur. Lk 22%, and cf. Mk 14° ||, He 4%).
(2) A second element in His discipline was that
of delay. The incarnate Son, with His love
eager for the completion of His saving work, must
have exercised no ordinary self-restraint, as, amid
the opposition of foes and the misconception of
friends, the stages of its progress passed slowly
by (Lk 12°"; ef. the probable force of the tempta-
tion in Mt 48:9 and of ἐνεβριμήσατο τῷ πνεύματι In
Jn 11"; ef. also 2 Th 3°). (3) The discipline of
sorrow was also included in this ‘perfecting’ of
Christ. His experience of sorrow was limited to
no single kind. He felt the force of all the ills
that vex our human life. In a most suggestive
citation one sacred writer shows in how real and
litera! a sense He took our human sicknesses upon
Him (Mt 816: 17, cf. Mk 5°°). He knew no less the
pang of regret with which a pure man views
opportunities wasted by those for whom he has
cherished high ideals (Lk 19*!4—note ἔκλαυσε»).
His, too, were the tears shed over a family bereaved
and a ‘loved one lost’ (Jn 11°). (4) The last aspect
of Christ’s discipline of which mention must be
made was that of pain and suffering. Of this
there is no oceasion for offering detailed illustra-
tion. The story of His sufferings is the story of
His life (for a few examples see Mk 8% || 1453}
1516-59 ||, He 58; note the use of παιδεύω in Lk 2316 *),
The experience of this discipline, revealing itself
under different aspects and afiecting His human
nature at different points, was necessary to the
fulfilment of our Lord’s mission. It was in virtue
of His ‘perfection’ through sufiering that He
reached His absolute sympathy with humanity,
and in consequence His complete qualification to
be its Saviour (He 518 415. 16 53. See PERFECTION.
2. The discipline which Christ imposes upon His
followers.—Discipline is an essential part of the
Christian life, and the NT points out several forms
under which it is to be experienced. In some of
these it is restricted to a certain number of those
who call themselves by the name of Christ.
(1) There is, for example, a discipline to which
Christians are rendered liable by falling into error
(1 Co 112", esp. note παιδευόμεθα in v.**; see also
παιδεύω in Rev 319). (2) The discipline of persecu-
tion also does not of necessity come to all Chris-
tians. At the same time, as both record and
exhortation prove, it is no uncommon experience.
It certainly befell our Lord’s early followers (Mk
13°, Mt 102-23, Jn 1571 16%; οἵ. the Epp. passim,
and see esp. He 12478, where παιδεία is cited in this
reference), and He Himself attributed a special
blessedness to those who found a place in its
honoured succession (Mt δ19-3. (3) In ἃ third
aspect, however, discipline falls to the lot of every
Christian. Noman can bea true follower of Christ
who is not willing from the first to practise the dis-
cipline of self-renunciation. Such self-renuncia-
tion, indeed, is one of the conditions of entering His
service (Mk 8%" || Mt 1088). And there is to be no
limit to the sacrifice required. It must be endured
even to the severance of earth’s closest ties (Mt
10°7) and the loss of life itself (24°, Jn 16°). Few
things are more impressive than the manner In
which, from the very beginning of His ministry
(cf. Mk 17: 18). our Lord assumed His right to claim
from His followers that utter self-repudiation, and
DISCOURSE
DISCOURSE 461
confidently expected on their part a willing response
to His demand (Mt 9° 19?!),
One particular aspect of this Christian self-denial
calls for separate consideration. The Gospel teach-
ing aftords little support to those who have sought
to express self-renunciation in the form of morbid
asceticism. Christ’s own example, in suggestive
contrast with that of His forerunner, leads us to
the very opposite conception of religious discipline
(Mt 1128). Along the pathway of poverty (Mt 8”)
and persecution (Jn 715 8) to which He called His
disciples, He Himself walked; yet alike in His
own life and in His thought for them (Mt 9", ef.
1 Ti 5%) ascetic discipline received no prominence.
There appears to be just a hint of it in one of His
sayings (Mt 1913, οἵ. 1 Co 7°"-), but even there it is
distinctly stated less as a rule for the many than
as an ideal for some few to whom a special call
might come. In Christ’s view the ‘fasting’ con-
sequent upon real sorrow was so inevitable, that
any merely formal anticipation of it was to be
deprecated rather than approved (Mt 9"). See,
further, art. ASCETICISM.
For ecclesiastical ‘discipline’ see art. CHURCH.
H. BISSEKER.
DISCOURSE.—No attempt is here made to dis-
cuss in all its bearings the general theme of the
discourses of Jesus. His Teaching, Parables,
Sermon on the Mount, etc., receive attention
in special articles. All that is here undertaken
is to mention in some sort of classification all the
discourses, and to append a brief outline of their
principal characteristics.
i, CLASSIFICATION AND MENTION. —The diffi-
culties of any attempt at classifying the discourses
of our Lord are apparent at a glance. They arise
alike from the forms in which the discourses are
recorded and from their character and contents.
Considering the fact that our Lord did not write
anything, or even cause His discourses to be
exactly reported; considering, too, the great
variety of occasions which called forth His utter-
ances, and His own easy freedom and mastery of
method in dealing with these occasions ; consider-
ing, further, the differences in length, form, con-
tents, and yet the cross-similarities and repetitions
which the discourses exhibit, we see at once that
a scientific and satisfactory classification is impos-
sible. Yet there are obvious advantages for study
in mentioning the discourses in some sort of orderly
way. For our purpose it will not be necessary to
take account of critical questions concerning the
differences between the Fourth Gospel and_ the
Synopties, or between the Synoptics themselves,
or to pay attention to matters of harmony and
chronology, though under each grouping the com-
monly accepted order of events is followed. The
classification proposed runs upon the general prin-
ciple of audiences, and groups the discourses
according as they were delivered to (1) individuals,
(2) a select few, or (3) the public. Subdivisions
will be apparent under these general heads.
1. Interviews with individuals. —Leaving out
eolloquies with particular persons in presence of
others, there are to be mentioned under this head
only (1) the discourse with Nicodemus on Re-
generation (Jn 31:21), and (2) the discourse with the
woman of Samaria on Worship and Salvation (45:3).
2. Talks with a few.—These may be subdivided
as follows: (1) Discourses with others than the
disciples. At these we cannot be sure of the
absence of disciples, but their presence is not stated
or certainly implied, and the words were not
specially addressed to them. To this class belong:
the discourse on Forgiveness, with the parable of
the Two Debtors, given at the house of Simon the
Pharisee (Lk 7'*-°) ; the beginning of the discourse
on Tradition (eating with unwashen hands), though
later ‘he called the multitudes,’ ‘and the disciples
came unto him’ (Mt 15”, Mk 7}-*°); the De-
nunciation of the Pharisees and Lawyers at the
house of a chief Pharisee (Lk 11°7-°4) ; the discourse
at another Pharisee’s house, where He discussed
Modesty, Giving Feasts, and spoke the parable of
the Great Feast and Excuses (Lk 141-33); finally,
the discourse at the house of Zaccheus, with the
parable of the Pounds (Lk 19!**),
(2) Discourses with the disciples and others.
Here the audience consisted in part of the dis-
ciples and in part of others, the presence of both
classes being either distinctly stated or clearly
implied. As to the numbers present, the circum-
stances seem to restrict them somewhat, though it
is dificult to say just to what extent, and therefore
how far these should be regarded as properly public
discourses. To this class belong: the discourse on
Fasting (Mt 914-17, Mk 238-22, Lk 5°58) ; the response
to objectors on Sabbath Observance (Mt 12'*, Mk
28°28) Lk 6!) ; responses about Following Him (Mt
8155, Lk 9°*-°) ; response to the lawyer about Eternal
Life, and parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10°5-°7,
ef. v.**); en Divorce (Mt 193-15, Mk 105:13) ; response
to the Rich Young Ruler, with discourse on the
Perils of Wealth and on Forsaking All and Follow-
ing Ham (Mit 198-3) ΜΠ 10st Τὴς 815: 0} }}16
parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (Mt
worl6) ; response to the request of certain Greeks,
with remarks on His Death and Glory (Jn 12***),
Other discourses of the last Passover week seem to
have been given in presence of the crowd, though
directly addressed to smaller groups.
(3) Discourses with the disciples alone. These
contain some of the most notable of our Lord’s
utterances. In some cases others than the Twelve
were present, but usually the audience was all, or
a portion of, the Apostles. It will not be necessary
to observe this distinction in the enumeration.
This group of discourses may be subdivided into
two kinds. (a@) Short occasional discourses: the
explanation of the Parable of the Tares, with the
short parables that follow (Mt 13°); the caution
against Pharisaic Leaven (Mt 16+”, Mk 838?!) ;
remarks about His Church upon Peter’s confession
(Mt 16-29, Mk 877%, Lk 9}§-7!); the immediately
following discourse on His Death and on Selt-
Denial (Mt 1671°°8, Mk 851-01, Lk 955-31) » talk after
the Transfiguration (Mt 1798, Mk 99:15) ; a second
foretelling of His Death and Resurrection (Mt
1722. 23) Mk 9-82, Lk 94-45); discourses at the
Mission and Return of the Seventy (Lk 10!) ;
teaching as to Prayer, with parable of the Friend
at Midnight (Lk 111:13); parable of the Unjust
Steward (Lk 161-13); teaching as to Offences, Faith,
Service (Lk 17!!°); third prediction of His Death
and Resurrection (Mt 2017-9, Mk 10°?-*4, Lk 1891-3) ;
talk about Faith suggested by the Withered Fig-
tree (Mt 21722, Mk 11°-*6); talk following the
Washing of the Disciples’ Feet (Jn 13!*-*°) ; institu-
tion of the Lord’s Supper (Mt 20:9. Mk 147%,
Lk 2219. 30). after the resurrection, talk with the
Two Disciples on the way to Emmaus (Lk 24!7-*/) ;
with the Apostles, Thomas absent (Lk 24°, Jn
20-5) ; talk with some of the Apostles at the Sea
of Galilee (Jn 214%); the Great Commission (Mt
2816-19) __(6) Extended discourses. Probably some of
those mentioned in the preceding group were longer
in reality than in report. But of the longer dis-
courses with the chosen few we have the following :
the Mission and Instruction of the Twelve (Mt
10'-”, Mk 6718, Lk 91%); on Humility, Offences,
Forgiveness (Mt 181-95. Mk 985°, Lk 946-59); dis-
course on the Mount of Olives on His Second
Coming and the Final Judgment (Mt 24. 25, Mk 13,
Lk 211) ; the Farewell Discourse and Prayer (Jn
14-17).
3. Public addresses.—Of these we may again in
462 DISCOURSE
a general way distinguish three groups, according
to the extent either of the actual discourse or of
the form in which we have it. (1) Discourses
mentioned with some general description or re-
mark, but with little or no detail of contents.
Here we have: the beginning of His ministry (Mt
41 Mk 145, Lk 44-5); the sermon at Nazareth
(Lk 416-28) ; the first preaching tour in Galilee (Mt
433. 34. Mk 199, Lk 44); at Capernaum (Mk 213. 38,
Lk 51”); the second preaching tour in Galilee (Lk
81:3), at Nazareth again (Mt 13°4%, Mk 6'°); the
third preaching tour in Galilee (Mt 9555, Mk 65) ;
a tour alone after sending out the Twelve (Mt 11)) ;
teaching and journeying (Lk 13, cf. Mt 19},
Mk 10!); teaching in the Temple (Mk 11!*, Lk
1917. 48 9] 87. 98),
(2) Short occasional discourses. Of these there
are a great number and variety, spoken sometimes
to great multitudes, sometimes to groups, but
publicly : on Blasphemy (Mt 1955 τ Mk 319%); on
Signs (Mt 12°45); latter part of discourse on Eat-
ing with Unwashen Hands, and Traditions (Mt
15. Mk 73); cn. Signs Jacaime( Mt 16) Mis
8'- 12); on Demons and Signs again (Lk 114*°) ; on
Confession, Worldliness, Watchfulness (Lk 12);
on Repentance, with parable of the Barren Fig-
tree (Lk 131-39) ; on the Good Shepherd (Jn 10115) ;
on His Messiahship and Relations with the Father
(Jn 10728) ; Sabbath Healing, parables of Mustard
Seed and Leaven (Lk 13!°?!); on the Salvation of
the Elect (Lk 137-*°) ; Lament over Jerusalem (Lk
134%) ; on Counting the Cost of Following Him
(Lk 147-8) ; reproof of the Pharisees, with parable
of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Lk 164%!) ; on the
Coming of the Kingdom (Lk 177°); on Prayer,
with parables of the Importunate Widow, and of
the Pharisee and Publican (Lk 18!14); the col-
loquies with His critics in the Temple, on His
Authority, on the Tribute to Cesar, on the Resur-
rection, on the Great Commandment, on the Son
Ὁ David (ity 213523265 ΜΠ 1151 S237 Τὶς 0);
remarks on Belief and Unbelief (Jn 124-*°),
(3) Extended discourses. Only a few of the great
discourses of our Lord are reported in extenso: the
Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7, Lk 6!7-*")—in a sense
public, though addressed primarily to the disciples ;
discourse at the feast in Jerusalem on His Rela-
tions with the Father (Jn 5!-47); on John the
3aptist and suggested topics (Mt 117%, Lk 77+) ;
the first great group of parables, the Sower, ete.
(Mt 13153, Mk 41-34, Lk 848); discourse in the
synagogue at Capernaum on the Bread of Life (Jn
6°) ; colloquy in the Temple on His Mission (Jn
7. 8); second great group of parables, the Lost
Sheep, ete. (Lk 151-17'°); last public discourse,
Denunciation of the Pharisees (Mt 951-99. Mk 1298-40,
Lk 204-47),
ii. SOME CHARACTERISTICS.—-A survey of the
discourses of Jesus presents in a general way some
of their characteristics, which may be summarily
outlined as follows:
1. Their great variety.
(1) Of occasion. (2) Of
contents. (3) Of form.
2. Their wonderful charm. (1) Of personality
—even in the report: how.much more in His
presence! (2) Of sympathy.
3. Their authority.
(2) Self-assertion.
4 Their power.
demeanour, tone.
more.
(3) Of manner.
(1) Consciousness of God.
(1) ‘ Magnetism ’—personality,
(2) Thought—then and ever-
LITERATURE.—Broadus, Harmony of the Gospels, and Lectures
on Jesus of Nazareth; Clark, Harmony of the Gospels; Weiss,
Life of Christ; Stier, The Words of Jesus ; Wendt, The Teach-
tng of Jesus; Swete, Studies in the Teaching of our Lord;
Brown, Exposition of the Discourses and Sayings of our Lord ;
Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, The Galilean Gospel, With
Open Face; Nicoll, Life of Christ ; Stalker, Imago Christi.
E. C. DARGAN.
DISEASE
DISEASE.—
i. Current preconceptions prevalent in time of Christ.
ii. References to sickness and disease in the Gospels.
Diseases resulting in physical defect or incapacity.
lever and allied diseases.
. Cutaneous affections.
. Dropsy-.
. Nervous diseases.
Nervous and psychical disorders.
Literature.
1. CURRENT PRECONCEPTIONS IN TIME OF
Curist. —Two ideas respecting disease had a
powerful influence on conceptions current in our
Lord’s day: (1) The belief that all sickness and
physical disease and pain were penalties imposed
as the result of sin; (2) the idea that demonic
agency was concerned with all human suffering.
These kindred and allied ideas have been common
among ancient peoples, and weie strongly de-
veloped among the Babylonians, Persians, and
Greeks.
συ συ εν ὡς το τα
Sayce, in his Hibbert Lectures (310, 334-5), gives evidence of
the ancient Akkadian belief that disease aud sickness were
caused by specific malevolent spirits which possessed the person.
The demons had been eaten with the food, drunk with the water,
or inbreathed from the air; and until the evil power had been
expelled the victim had no chance of recovery. Exorcism was
effected by the sorcerer-priest, the intermediary between man-
kind and the spiritual world, using magic spells consisting of
the names of deities, the name signifying the personality of
the god, who was compelled by this use of the name to attend
to the exorcist.
Among the Semites any mysterious natural ob-
ject or occurrence appealing strongly to the im-
agination or exciting sentiments of awe and
reverence was readily taken as a manifestation
either of Divine or of demonic life (W. R. Smith,
S119 ff.). The demons, if offended, avenged them-
selves by sending various forms of disease. Indi-
cations are found in the Gospels that such ideas
were not extinct in the time of Christ. The old
Semitie strain of conception was modified and
quickened by contact with Babylonian, Persian,
and Grecian peoples, and prevailed with consider-
able force in the later Judaism. The NT reflects
the ideas of a time when the older conceptions
were breaking up, but had not yet disappeared.
Our Lord gives no sanction to any such thought
of disease, and when the disciples betrayed their
mode of thought (Jn 95) He took occasion to com-
bat the ancient superstition. Although He did
frequently mark sin as the cause of much physical
weakness and disease (see art. IMPOTENCE), yet
He denies that all sickness was penal in character.
Other ends were in the Divine purview besides the |
punishment of personal sin (Jn 90). In St. Luke’s
Gospel high fever seems to be attributed by impli-
cation to an evil agency, and Jesus is said to have
rebuked (ἐπετίμησεν) the fever (Lk 4°: %); but
probably this must be explained as a reflexion of
the current preconceptions. In Lk 1310 no refer-
ence is necessarily made to sin having given power
to Satan to afflict the woman. Demons were
associated with disordered conditions of human
life, as disease and infirmity: with dumbness (Mk
917, Lk 989), with deafness and dumbness (Mk 9”),
with blindness and dumbness (Mt 1255), and with
epilepsy (Mk 126 9°, Lk 9%). These physical de-
fects are not necessarily manifestations of demonic
influence, but are regarded as in close alliance
with them. In St. Luke’s Gospel, also, it is note-
worthy that a distinction is recorded as made by
Jesus between the exorcism of demons and ordin-
ary cures (ἐκβάλλω δαιμόνια καὶ ἰάσεις ἀποτελῶ, Lk
1333). See, further, art. DEMON.
* Hobart (Medical Language of St. Luke) and other writers
claim to trace in the writings of the Third Evangelist the
influence of a medical training. But the argument may be
easily pressed beyond the truth. St. Luke’s style and vocabulary
have many affinities with classical Greek, and many of the
medical expressions he uses occur in the LXX, and may have
DISEASE
DISEASE 463
ji. REFERENCES IN THE GOSPELS TO SICKNESS
AND DISEASE. —
The terms employed by the Evangelists to denote bodily
ailments are—
(1) ἀσθένεια, literally want of strength (« priv. and σθένος),
primarily denoting weakness, and usually ‘infirmity’ or ‘in-
firmities’; in Ac 289 tr. ‘diseases’ (ἔχοντες ἀσθενείας); in Mt 817
tr. ‘infirmities,’ and associated with vores; in Jn 114 AV and
RV ‘sickness’; elsewhere [Lk 516 82 1311.12, Jn 5°] ‘infirmity’ ;
associated with νόσος in Lk 449,
(2) καλαπκίωα (μαλάσσω, ‘soften’) denotes:
(a) softness or effeminacy, as well as sickness ; (Ὁ) periodic
and chronic sickness and consequent languor of body.
The word is used in Mt 429. 24 939 101, where it is associ-
ated with νόσος. The first named passage is one in
which the various ailments that our Lord healed are
enumerated and apparently discriminated (cf. AV and
RY).
(3) νέσος (from νη- ‘not,’ and σόος ‘sound’ [?]) is employed to in-
dicate more acute and violent seizures than μαλακίῳ 3 found in
Mt 423. 24 817 995 101, Mk 134 319, Lk 440 617 721 91. In the Markan
and Lukan (exc. Lk 44°) passages the diseased are distinguished
from the demonized.
(4) νόσημα, a disease or sickness, Jn 54 (only).
(5) τοὺς κακῶς ἔχοντας is a frequent expression for those that
were sick, and in Mk 194 we have the fuller expression πολλοὺς
κακῶς ἔχοντας ποικίλαις νόσοις.
Of the presence of specific diseases much fuller
indications are more or less distinctly given in the
OT than in the NT. Instances of these may be
understood as included in the miscellaneous cases
of sickness and disease which our Lord repeatedly
dealt with. Among them are various forms of
skin disease, which were and are very common in
the East; also of fever and allied disorders, ex-
tending to plague and pestilence ; diseases of the
digestive organs; infantile and senile diseases ;
affections of the brain or other parts of the
nervous system ; and disordered conditions of the
psychical side of human nature. ΑἸ] of these are
referred to in the OT with some amount of definite-
ness as to symptoms.
The diseases mentioned in the Gospels, and dealt
with in direct and Divine fashion by Jesus (see art.
Curss), include cases of physical defect; fevers
and kindred diseases ; skin diseases, notably that
of leprosy; a solitary case of dropsy; ailments
and infirmities that were nervous in character ;
and others which were a combination of nervous
and psychical disorder. These various afflictions
are not always to be certainly identified with par-
ticular forms of disease with which modern medical
science is familiar. The description of the cases
is, for the most part, far removed from being
scientific, but yet enables us to broadly distin-
guish them from one another and to classify them
with fair exactitude.
1. Diseases resulting in physical defect, or in-
capacity.—(1) Defect in the organs of speech.—The
case of the dumb man recorded in Mt 9%? was
associated with features of mental disturbance
leading the people to attribute the dumbness
to demonic possession. ‘When the demon was
cast out, the dumb spake,’ as though no physical
defect existed apart from the psychical disturb-
ance. Interesting cases are known in_ which
mental derangement has been manifested in an
inhibition of one of the senses. Ray (Factors of
an Unsound Mind) gives an instance in which the
vatient was unable to see the Column in the Place
endéme in Paris, and believed it to have been
removed. <A similar inhibition, resulting from
psychical rather than physical causes, might be
applied to the organs of speech.
(2) Defect in the organs of sense.— Among defects
notably common in the East is that of blindness
(see art. SIGHT, B). Deafness is usually accom-
come to the Evangelist from that source. The varied terms
applied to the lunatic (or epileptic) and the demonized, which
give a plausibility to the suggestion that the Evangelist dis-
tinguished between these ailments, are found not in Luke, but in
Matthew (see art. LUNATIC).
panied by dumbness, being indeed often the main
cause of it—the term deaf-mute thus accurately
describing the limitation. See DEAF AND DUMB.
(9) Defects in the organs both of sense and speech.
—In Mt 12”? blindness and dumbness are combined,
together with mental disturbance. In this case
the restoration is not spoken of as a casting out of
the demon, but as a healing (ἐθεράπευσεν), indicat-
ing that there was serious physical defect to be
remedied. Mt 174*209=Mk 9!*-—Lk 931-48 records
a case in which both deafness and dumbness were
found along with epilepsy and periodical mental
derangement. Mt. and Lk. do not give the
features of deafness and dumbness, but confine
themselves to the mental features, which they do
not describe so fully as Mark. Mk 1555] is a
peculiarly interesting instance of deafness com-
bined with incapacity of speech. The description
is κωφὸν καὶ μογιλάλον. The deafness might give
rise to the stammering, and the fact that total
dumbness had not resulted rather points to a com-
paratively early stage of the affliction. The signs
employed by Jesus in the healine are exactly
adapted to reach the intelligence of such a defect-
Lound soul (see art. CURES).
2. Fever and allied diseases.—Varions diseases
of a kindred nature to fever were common in
the East and from the earliest times, and were
probably not very rigorously distinguished from
each other: fever, ague, and a wastine disease re-
sembling Mediterranean fever. The NT speaks of
πυρετύς, ‘fever,’ in Lk 4°85 and Jn 4553, The term
in Mt 84 and Mk 1° is πυρέσσουσα ; while in Lk 4:8
the illness of Peter’s wife’s mother is spoken of
(possibly with a reference to the division made
by the Greeks into greater and lesser fevers) as
one in which the patient was συνεχομένη πυρετῷ
μεγάλῳ, indicating a continued and probably malig-
nant fever, rather than an intermittent feverish
attack such as characterizes ague. The super-
normal feature of the healing consisted in the
immediacy of the recovery without the regular
debility following the disease. The ailment de-
scribed in the Gospels was probably a form of
malarial fever which prevailed in the valleys of
Palestine and round the Sea of Galilee.
8. Skin diseases.—The OT bears witness to
the prevalence in Palestine of many forms of
cutaneous disease, and the writings of travellers
and eye-witnesses testify to the fact that these
are still fearfully common, being perhaps the most
characteristic malady of the East. These varieties
of skin disease are not referred to in the NT, the
only one in evidence there being that most dreaded
affection of the skin, which was also in the worse
forins aserious constitutional malady affecting the
whole organism, which bears the name leprosy
(wh. see).
4. A solitary case of dropsy is recorded in Lk
142, described as ὑδρωπικός. No account is given of
the trouble, the controversy with the Pharisees
regarding the right use of the Sabbath being the
main interest. No indication is given as to the
seat of the disease which caused the dropsy,
whether kidneys, heart, or liver.
5. Diseases of the nervous system. — Out
of 22 cases of healing wrought by Jesus upon
individuals, 8, and most probably 10, are to be
classed among nervous disorders, either with or
without the complication of psychical disturb-
ance. The general exorcisms which mark our
Lord’s career are of the same order, and among
the general healings of sickness and infirmity
which are recorded some may reasonably be
supposed to be of the same character, and possibly..
many of them were purely nervous or hysterical
afflictions. Disease of brain centres or of the nerve
may also account for some of the cases of blindness.
464
DISH
The attempt, however, to show (1) that our Lord’s
healings may be all reduced to cases of hysteria
and of temporary nervous disorder, such as readily
yield to treatment by known therapeutic remedies,
and (2) that these are the best attested of the
miracles, signally fails (see art. MIRACLES); and
yet it may be freely recognized that many of the
ailments cured by Jesus belonged to the nervous
category. It still remains that those who desire
to minimize to the fullest extent the super-normal
powers of Jesus are not helped by these facts, for
in order to deal effectively with these troubles He
must not only have removed the disturbing cause
in the psychical nature, but also brought a Divine
power to bear on the whole nervous system, dis-
persing in some cases organic defect and disease.
Under this head are included—
(1) Paralysis or Palsy (see art. PARALYSIS).
(2) Epilepsy. The cases in the NT of this dis-
tressing nervous malady are complicated with
forms of mental disturbance (see art. LUNATIC).
But it may be supposed that among those who
were regarded as possessed and whose restoration
was included under the general exorcisms, some
were cases of simple epilepsy (wh. sec).
(3) Probably the two cases of genzral impotence
must be included here—mentioned in Jn 579 and
Lk 13!" (see art. IMPOTENCE).
(4) In all likelihood also the man with the
withered hand was one nervously afilicted. The
case is recorded in Mt 12°, Mk 3!5, Lk 6°. The
incapacity and wasting might be due to (@) infantile
paralysis, the disease arresting the development
and growth of tissue, leaving the limb shrunk and
withered ; or (ὦ) it may have been congenital ; or
(c) it might be due to some direct injury to the
main nerve of the limb, preventing its proper
nutrition.
Among the halt and withered of Jn δ᾽ probably
there were cases of chronic rheumatism, joint
diseases, and other wasting ailments, in many
instances complicated with nervous exhaustion
and weakness, if not with positive disease.
6. Nervous and _ psychical diseases. — Cases
of lunacy, of epilepsy combined with insanity
and perhaps those allied with idiocy, and others
generally described as instances of demonic posses-
sion are given in the Gospels, and are to be recog-
nized as having a twofold causation, on the one
side physical, on the other psychical; and the
problem as to which of these is primary in any
particular case is not to be lightly determined. In
this connexion arises the outstanding question as
to the possibility of a genuine spiritual possession
(see art. LUNATIC), a matter which may well
remain with us for some time yet as a challenge
both to medical and to theological investigation.
The science of anthropology may throw much
light upon it, and possibly in the course of further
inquiry some of the conclusions of that science may
be found in need of serious modification.
_Lirerature.—For facts relating to the nature and spread of
disease in Oriental lands, and especially in Syria, consult Hirsch,
Handbook of Historical Pathology (Sydenham Soc. Tr.);
Macgowan in Jewish Intelligence and Journal of Missionary
Labours, 1846; Thomson, Land and Book, pp- 146-149, 356,
and, for leprosy, ch. 43; also consult generally ‘Krankheiten’
in Herzog’s PRE*®; Jahn, Archceologia Biblica, pt. 1. ch. xii. ;
J. Risdon Bennett, Diseases of Bible; Hobart, Medical Lan-
guage of St. Luke ; Mason Good, Study of Medicine; art. by
Macalister on‘ Medicine’ in Hastings’ DB. For Talmudic con-
ception of disease and medical treatment in vogue, see
Wunderbar, Biblisch-Talmudische Medicin.
T. H. WRIGHT.
DISH.—1. The only place in the NT (EV) where
this word is found is in the record of the betrayal
δ Jesus given by two of the Synoptists (Mt 9633,
Mk 14”), ;
The form of the Greek equivalent (τρύβλιον, Vulg. catinum
but in Mt 2623 Vulg. has paropsis, for which see
[Mk 1420],
DISH
below) is that of a diminutive, although there is no example of
a cognate or simpler form (see Liddell and Scott, s.v.). With it
we may compare the diminutive Yaxiov (Jn 1326.) in the latest
Apostolic account of the same period of Jesus’ life. The use of
this word, as well as of another (ἐμβάστειν) occurring in the
same context, by these two authors would seem to prove beyond
doubt a close literary relationship between their writings—not,
indeed, a relationship of direct inter-dependence (cf. Wright’s
Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek, p. 140), but rather one of
common dependence upon the same or kindred sources, oral or
written (cf. the ‘anonymous fragment’ μήτι ἐγώ εἰμι, ῥαββεί;
Mt 26-5).
A comparative study of the four records which
tell of Jesus’ reference to His impending betrayal
brings to light some not unimportant minor difier-
ences, and at the same time reveals the agreement
of all the writers in the belief that He knew of
the intentions of Judas, and warned the latter
against the dark deed. To the Markan account
which makes Jesus answer the anxious question of
His disciples (μήτι ἐγώ :) by the vague statement,
‘(it is) one of the twelve who is (now) dipping with
me in the dish,’ which is equivalent to the previous
6 ἐσθίων μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ (v.18; on this, however, cf. Gould’s
St. Mark, ad loc.), St. Matthew not only adds a
more distinct note by employing the aorist (ἐμβάψας)
instead of the present Middle (ἐμβαπτόμενος), by
which he evidently intended to convey the idea ef
time, but he also informs us that Jesus gave a
direct affirmative reply (σὺ εἶπας) to Judas’ ques-
tion. On the other hand, St. Luke agrees with St.
Mark in leaving out all reference to an indication
of the traitor beyond the statement that one of
those present at the meal (ἐπὲ τῆς τραπέζης, Lk 2951)
was guilty, while the author of the Fourth Gospel
agrees with St. Matthew in making Jesus, by a
sign (ἐκεῖνός ἐστιν ᾧ ἐγὼ βάψω τὸ ψωμίον καὶ δώσω
αὐτῷ, Jn 1355), point him out to his fellow-disciples.
One thing seems to emerge clearly from the
fourfold account, there was but one τρύβλιον on
the table, and each one dipped his bread into it
as he ate (see Ὁ. Holtzmann’s Leben Jesu, Eng.
tr. p. 458). This dish contained a sour-swect
sauce (nD7), which was composed of ‘a cake of
fruit beaten up and mingled with vinegar’ (see
Eincye. Bibl. art. ‘ Passover, § 17"; ef., however,
B. Weiss’ The Life of Christ, iii. p. 279). Into the
sauce pieces of unleavened bread and bitter herbs
were dipped and handed round by the chief person
of the-assembled party, which was evidently pre-
liminary to the general partaking of the dish (cf.
per’ ἐμοῦ, Mt 26% = Mk 1439. It seems that this
was a custom of late introduction into the Passover
rite, and that it was intended to enrich the mean-
ing of the feast by a symbolic reference to the
brick-making period of Israel’s Egyptian bondage
(see art. ‘Passover’ in Hastings’ DB iii. p. 691°).
Most scholars have sought to establish the rela-
tive positions of Jesus and Judas at this Passover
feast from the incidents referred to by all four
Evangelists (οἵ. Edersheim’s Life and Times of
Jesus the Messiah, ii. pp. 493-507 ; art. ‘ Apostle
John’ in Hastings’ DB ii. p. 681*; Farrar’s Life
of Christ, li. 284 ff ete.). The variety of conclu-
sions arrived at shows how impossible it is to settle
a question of the kind. If, indeed, opposite each
triclinvum at the table there had been a τρύβλιον,
then the answer of Jesus to His disciples’ questions
would show clearly that Judas reclined immedi-
ately on His left. This, however, as we have
already intimated, is not probable ; and the only
data by which an approximately correct impression
may be received lie in the words spoken by Jesus
to Judas himself, and recorded partly by St.
Matthew and partly by St. John (ct. Mt 26” and
Jn 13°78), It seems more than probable that the
traitor reclined somewhere in close proximity to
Jesus, that their hands met as both dipped together
into the dish (cf. the use of the Middle voice by St.
Mark ; see Bengel’s Gnomon of NT on Mk 145),
DISPERSION
and that in this way Jesus was able to convey
rivately to Judas the fact that He knew of the
atter’s intention. :
2. A very good example of the way in which
the didactic sayings of Jesus were caught up and
handed down by His different hearers is afforded
by the Matthzean and Lukan versions of the words
by which He denounced the legal quibblings and
Pharisaic hypocrisy of His day (Mt 231", Lk 11°"),
There is just sufficient identity both in language
and sense to guarantee the genuineness of the
teaching. At the same time there is a marked
variety in details as to locality, wording, and even
as to the particular objective of Jesus’ remarks.
According to St. Luke, Jesus denounces the
Pharisees, while a guest in the house of one of
their number, for their punctiliousness in keeping
the outside of their vessels clean, their own hearts
all the time being full of uncleanness. The con-
trast is between the outside of their utensils (76
ἔξωθεν. . . τοῦ πίνακος) and their own inner lives
or characters (τὸ δὲ ἔσωθεν ὑμῶν, Lk 11°). Here
we may notice that the word translated ‘platter’
is the word used to denote the flat dish (EV
‘charger’) on which (ἐπὶ πίνακι) the Baptist’s head
was sent to Herodias (Mt 14%?! = Mk 6”-78), On
the other hand, St. Matthew makes Jesus utter
this discourse to ‘the multitudes and to his
disciples’ in the Temple (Mt 231, οἵ. 241). The
denunciation is more sustained and rhetorical, as
becomes the situation. When the writer comes to
the contrast spoken of above, he makes Jesus
institute one between the outside of the dish and
its contents, looked on as the outcome of rapacity
and gluttony (ἐξ ἁρπαγῆς καὶ ἀκρασίας). This is
again more suitable to the word he employs, which
is the only place in the NT where it is found (τὸ
ἔξωθεν. . . τῆς Tapowidos stands opposite to ἔσωθεν
Ξξετὸ ἐντὸς. . . Τῆς παροψίδος, see Mt 23%; cf.,
however, WH’s text in Mt 23”).
The word σαροψίς was originally, in Attic Greek, used of
entrées or dainties (see Liddell and Scott, s.v.). It afterwards
came to be applied to the four-cornered (‘quadrangulum et
quadrilaterum vas,’ see art. ‘Meals’ in Encyec. Bibl. iii. 2998, n. 1)
dish in which they were served ; and, lastly, it became a name
for dishes generally used at table.
In both these cases of variation it is possible to
see the hand of the editor carefully compiling and
arranging his materials before their publication in
permanent form. J. R. WILLIS.
DISPERSION (d:ac7opd).—The word (RV of Jn
7%, Ja 11, 1 P 11) is a collective term denoting
either the Jews resident outside their native
country, or the lands in which they lived.
4. The Pharisees and chief priests sent officers to
arrest our Lord, and He told them that in a little
while He would go where they could not find Him
or be able to come to Him. The Jews who were
present asked where He could possibly go that
they could not find Him. Would He go to the
‘dispersion among the Greeks’ (els τὴν διασπορὰν
τῶν Ἑλλήνων) ἢ and teach the Greeks? i.e. would
He make the dispersed Jews a starting-point for
teaching the Greeks? Narrow-minded Jews, dis-
tinct from ‘the people’ (ὁ ὄχλος) of vv.*!: “Ὁ, they
would not dream of defiling themselves by going
out and mixing with Gentiles, and they sarcastic-
ally suggested that that was the only way in which
Jesus could escape them.
2. It is unnecessary in this article to deal fully
with the history and fortunes of the Dispersion ;
but a very brief sketch may be useful. In the
time of Christ the Jews of the Dispersion were to
be found in six main colonies: Babylonia, Egypt,
Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome.
(a) Babylonia.—The Jews in the far East were
* For the genitive, cf. 1 P 11.
VOL. I.—30
DISPERSION
465
the descendants of those who remained when small
bodies returned under Zerubbabel and Ezra. And
their numbers were aiterwards increased by a
transportation of Jews to Babylonia and Hyrcania
under Artaxerxes III. Ochus (358-338). Many
have thought that 1 P δ᾽" refers to a community
of Christians among the Jews in Babylon; but
this is improbable (see Hort, 1 Peter, pp. 5 f., 167-
170). From Babylon, Jews moved in many direc-
tions to Elam (cf. Is 11"), Persia, Media, Armenia,
and Cappadocia. The Babylonian Jews were the
only portion of the Diaspora which maintained its
Judaism more or less untouched by the Hellenism
which permeated the West. Their remoteness,
however, did not prevent the loyal payment of the
annual Temple-tax, which was collected at Ne-
hardea and Nisibis and sent to Jerusalem (see
below).
(6) Egypt.—Jews had migrated to Egypt as early
as 586, when Johanan son of Kareah conducted a
small body of them, including Jeremiah, to Tah-
panhes (Jer 42. 43). Jews also settled (Jer 44") in
Migdol, Noph (Memphis), and Pathros (Upper
Egypt). The great majority of the colonists in
Alexandria must have settled there early in the
period of the Ptolemies, in which case they may
have been among the earliest inhabitants of Alex-
ander’s new city ; and they undoubtedly received
special privileges (Jos. ὁ. Apion. li. 4; BJ τι.
xviii. 7f.). The kindness which they received in
Palestine from Ptolemy I. Soter induced numbers
of them to migrate to Egypt during his reign.
And many more may have been transported as
prisoners of war during the subsequent strugeles
between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. Philo
(in Flacc., ed. Mangey, ii. 525) less than ten years
after our Lord’s death says that two entire quarters
of Alexandria were known as ‘the Jewish,’ and
many more Jews were sprinkled over the rest of
the city. Another congregation of Jews was
formed at Leontopolis in the nome of Heliopolis
on the Eastern border of the Nile delta. The
high priest Onias, son of Simon the Just, was
granted permission by Ptolemy vi. Philometor to
settle there when he fled with some adherents in
173 or 170 from his enemies Antiochus Iv. Epi-
phanes and the sons of Tobias. He built a fort-
ress, and within it a temple where the worship of
Jehovah was carried on. This continued till A.D.
73, when the temple was destroyed by order of
Vespasian (Jos. Ant. XIII. iil, 2, XIV. ΗΠ be ΒΒ
I. ix. 4, VII. x. 2-4).
(c) Syria.—The Egyptian Diaspora had been
formed largely owing to the increased facilities
for travel and intercourse resulting from Alex-
ander’s conquests. And the same causes operated
in Syria. Damascus had received Israelite colon-
ists in very early times (1 Καὶ 20%). In Nero’s reign
there were, according to Josephus (BJ I. xx. 2), no
fewer than 10,000 Jews in the city. Antiochus Ivy.
Epiphanes conceded to the Jews the right of
free settlement in Antioch ; and, owing to the suc-
cesses and prestige of the Maccabees in Palestine,
the neighbouring provinces of Syria received a
larger admixture of Jews than any other country
(BJ Vil. iii. 3).
(d) Asia Minor.*—Through Syria Jews passed to
Asia Minor and the neighbouring islands, Cyprus,
Crete, ete., where from B.C. 130 and onwards they
flourished under Roman protection. See Hort,
1 Peter, Add. note, pp. 157-184, and Ac 13-20.
(6) Greece.—It is related in 1 Mac 12?! that the
Spartans sent a letter to the high priest Onias
saying ‘it hath been found in writing concerning
*It is convenient to use the term, although its first known
occurrence is in Orosius (Hist. i. 2. 26), A.v. 417. He speaks as
though it were his own coinage: ‘Asia regio vel, ut proprie
dicain, Asia minor.’
466 DISPERSION
DISPERSION
the Spartans and the Jews that they are brethren,
and that they are of the stock of Abraham.’ This,
though legendary, implies that there was at least
an acquaintance between members of the two
races. Jewish inscriptions, moreover, have been
found in Greece ; and there were firmly established
Jewish communities in Thessalonica, Berea, and
Corinth when St. Paul visited them (Ac 17. 18).
(f) Rome.—The first contact of the Jews with
Rome was in the time of the Maccabees ; embas-
sies were sent by Judas and Jonathan, and a formal
alliance was concluded by Simon in B.C. 140 (1 Mae
1424 151524), A few Jews probably reached Rome
as traders; but the first large settlement dates
from the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey, B.C. 63.
Julius and Augustus admitted them to a legal
standing throughout the Empire (see the series
of enactments in Jos. Ant. XIV. vill. 5, x. 1-8);
the latter allowed them to form a colony on the
further side of the Tiber ; but they soon gained a
footing within the city, and had synagogues of
their own. Tiberius in A.D. 19 banished 4000 to
Sardinia. In the early days of Claudius the Jewish
cause was upheld at court by the two Agrippas ;
but before 52 ‘Claudius had commanded all Jews
to depart from Rome’ (Ac 18?)—‘ impulsore Chresto
assidue tumultuantes’ (Suet. Claud. 25). Under
Nero the Jews in Rome once more gained ground.
3. The Jews dispersed in these various settle-
ments did not entirely cut themselves off from
their national centre, Jerusalem. Even the Jews
at Leontopolis, though their worship was strictly
speaking schismatical, did not allow their religi-
ous separateness to quench their national feeling.
They embraced Ceesar’s cause in Egypt, contrary
to their first impulse, because of the injunctions of
Hyreanus the high priest at Jerusalem, and Anti-
pater the Jewish general (Jos. Ané. XIV. viii. 1;
ΠΡΈΠΕΙ απ: As
There were two important links which bound
the Diaspora in all parts of the world to their
mother city.
(a) The annual payment of the Temple-tax (the
half-shekel or didrachm), and of other offerings.
One of the privileges which they enjoyed under
the Diadochi and afterwards under the Romans
was that of coining their own money for sacred
purposes. [It was this sacred coinage that foreign
Jews were obliged to get from the money-changers
in exchange for the ordinary civil money, when
they came to Jerusalem for the festivals, Mt 2122,
Mk 11, Jn 2", And it was this variety of coin-
age that enabled our Lord to give His absolutely
simple but unanswerable decision on what the Jews
thought was a dilemma; deep spiritual meaning,
no donbt, underlay His words, but their surface
mesning was sufficient to silence His opponents:
‘Render to Cesar the civil coin on which his
image is stamped, and render to God the sacred
coin which belongs to Him and His Temple wor-
ship,’ Mt 22?!) Mk 127, Lk 20%). The sacred
money was. collected at different centres (cf. Mt
17 οἱ τὰ δίδραχμα λαμβάνοντες) and carried under
safe escort to Jerusalem (Philo, de Monarch. ii. 3).
Josephus relates (Ant. XVI. vi.) that the Jews in
Asia and Cyrene were ill-treated, and that the
Greeks took from them their sacred money ; but
that decrees were issued by Augustus, Acrippa,
and two proconsuls to the effect that the sacred
money of the Jews was to be untouched, and that
they were to be given full liberty to send it to
Jerusalem. The Babylonian Jews made use of the
two strong cities Nehardea and Nisibis to store
their sacred money till the time came to send it to
Palestine. ‘The Jews, depending on the natural
strength of these places, deposited in them the
half-shekel which everyone, by the custom of our
country, offers to God, and as many other dedi-
catory offerings (ἀναθήματα) as there were; for
they made use of these cities as a treasury, whence
at the proper time they were transmitted to Jeru-
salem’ (Ant. XVII. ix. 1). Such priestly dues as
consisted of sacrificial flesh, which could not be
sent to Jerusalem, were paid to any priest if there
happened to be one at hand (Challa, iv. 7-9, 11;
Yadaim, iv. 3; Chullin, x. 1; Terumoth, ii. 4).
(6) The pilgrimages made to Jerusalem by im-
mense numbers of foreign Jews at the three annual
festivals—Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.
Josephus says that Cestius Gallus had a census
made during the Passover, and the priests reckoned
2,700,000 people (BJ VI. ix. 3), in round numbers
three millions (Τα. 11. xiv. 3).
In reading the Acts it is evident that, had there
been no foreign dispersion of the Jews, the rapid
progress of Christianity conld not have been what
it was. At the feast of Pentecost there were
gathered Jews from the four quarters of the Dia-
spora—the far and near East, Europe, and Africa ;
and soon afterwards Jews received Apostolic
teaching at many centres, and when converted
helped to spread it throughout the known world.
But it is important to remember that before that
time One greater than the Apostles came, more
than once, into immediate contact with the masses
of pilgrims who visited Jerusalem for the festivals.
As a boy of twelve He first met them (Lk 2”), and
He probably attended many festivals in the 18
years which intervened before His ministry (see
v.11). At a Passover He displayed to them His
Divine indignation at the desecration of God’s
sanctuary (Jn 2!!7), and many believed on Him
when they saw His miracles (v.**). It would seem
as though the longing seized Him to bring all these
thousands of foreigners to His allegiance at one
stroke, by revealing to them His true nature. If
we may say it reverently, it must have been a
temptation to Him to send them back over many
countries to tell all men that God had become
man. But His own Divine intuition restrained
Him (vv.*44). Immediately before another Passover
He saw the crowds moving along the road on their
way to Jerusalem; and they came to Him, and
He fed them (Jn 01. Here, again, the tempta-
tion offered itself in their wish to make Him king ;
but He resisted it, and was able to persuade them
to leave Him (011). At a feast of Pentecost (so
Westcott) He suddenly appeared in their midst
at Jerusalem, and many believed Him to be the
Messiah when they heard His preaching (Jn 7
20-31. 40f.) Ὑρὺ again at a Passover the crowds of
pilgrims gave Him another opportunity of be-
coming king (Mt 21°, Mk 1110 Lk 19%-%8, Jn
12!2*), but He chose rather to gain His kingdom
through death. It was for their benefit that the
inscription upon the cross was trilingual—Aramaie,
Greek, and Latin (Jn 192°), A Jew from Africa,
on his way into the city, was forced to perform an
office which few envied him at the time, but which
has never been forgotten by the Christian Church
(Mk 153. Thus time after time the accounts of
His miracles and preaching, and finally of His
patient suffering and His death, and perhaps also
reports of His resurrection, would be carried back
by wandering Jews into ‘every nation under
heaven.’
4 One colony of the Diaspora possesses a special
importance in connexion with Christianity. Among
the Alexandrian Jews originated the Greek trans-
lation of the OT—the version used by our Lord,
the Apostles, and the great majority of the early
Church. It remained in almost complete supre-
macy among Christians until it was superseded by
the Vulgate. See art. SEPTUAGINT. The import-
ance of Alexandria in connexion with the Fourth
Gospel would be enormous if the contention of some
DITCH
a
DIVINITY OF CHRIST 467
writers were true, that St. John derived his doc-
trine of the Logos from Alexandrian philosophy.
The doctrine, however, has affinities rather with
Jewish than with Alexandrian thought. The most
that can be said is that St. John may have em-
ployed the term because it already had a wide
currency among both Jews and Greeks (see West-
cott, Gospel of St. John, pp. xXv-xviil, and art.
‘Logos’ in Hastings’ DB).
LITERATURE.—Besides the authorities cited in the article, see
artt. ‘Diaspora’ in Hastings’ Db (Extra Vol.), ‘ Dispersion’ in
Encyc. Bibl. (with the literature there), and in Smith’s DB.
Much illustrative matter may be gathered from Jewish his-
tories, especially Schtrer, HJP. See also E. R. Bevan, The
House of Seleucus ; J. P. Mahafty, The Empire of the Ptoleimies.
A. H. M‘NEILE.
DITCH (βόθυνος, Mt 1514, Lk 655 ; rendered ‘pit’
Mt 12").--The parabolic language of our Lord in
the first two parallel passages is suggested by the
frequency of danger from unguarded wells, quarries,
and holes. Into these the blind easily fell; and
the risk increased if the leader of the blind were
himself blind. The metaphor has been interpreted
as referring to Gehenna: more probably it refers
simply to danger of hurt, or even ruin, from wilful
or careless perversion of the truth leading to moral
wandering and fall. For the idea, οἵ. Pr 19°
‘ Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth
to err,’ and St. Paul’s taunt of the Jew as ‘a guide
of the blind’ (Ro 215). R. MACPHERSON.
DIVES.—The Latin adjective for ‘rich,’ com-
monly employed as ἃ quasi-proper name for the
rich man in our Lord’s parable of the Rich Man
and Lazarus (Lk 16!*1). This use of the word
Dives, derived, no doubt, from the Vulgate, is
common in English literature, and can be traced
back at least to the time of Chaucer, who, in Zhe
Somnour’s Tale, lines 169, 170, says:
‘Lazar and Dives liveden diversly,
And divers guerdon hadden they ther-by.°
Compare also Piers the Plowman, passus xvi. lines
303, 304 :
‘And Dives in his deyntes lyuede- and in douce uye ;
And now he buyeth hit ful bitere - he is a beggere of helle.’
Although we are not concerned in this article
with the interpretation of the parable as a whole,
we may yet appropriately refer to the various
opinions which have been held as to who was in-
tended by our Lord under the figure of the rich
man.
The noticeable circumstances that in this alone
of all His parables our Lord names one of the
characters, i.c. Lazarus, while the other chief char-
acter, the rich man, is significantly nameless, and
that the parable has no prefatory introduction,
such as ‘He spake another parable,’ or the like,
have given rise to the conjecture that this is not a
parable pure and simple, but that it is either a
narrative of facts, or that persons more or less
known are alluded to in the story.
1. Some, as Tertullian and Schleiermacher, have
supposed that in Dives allusion was made to Herod
Antipas, and that Lazarus represents John the
Baptist, who is referred to in v.", ef. also v.38,
where our Lord speaks about adultery. This,
however, is surely an extravagant notion which
searcely needs refutation.
2. Another equally improbable suggestion, put
forward by Michaelis, is that Dives represents
Caiaphas, son-in-law of Annas, and that Lazarus
is Christ ; and so the five brethren of the rich man
are explained as the five sons of Annas (Jos. Ant.
ISS IS WE
3. Closely connected with this opinion is another
which has the support of Ambrose, Augustine,
Teelman (quoted by Trench, Parables), and others,
according to which, while Lazarus is Christ, Dives
is the Jewish people who despised and rejected
Him who for their sakes was poor and afflicted.
This, however, is an allegorizing of the parable
which, though attractive at first sight, will not
bear close examination.
4. Another interpretation, supported by Aph-
raates, Augustine (as an alternative), Gregory the
Great, and Theophylact, and widely held in all
sections of the Universal Church, is, that Dives
represents, as in the last case, the Jewish people,
but that Lazarus represents the Gentiles. Bleek,
Godet, and Alford reject this view, the two latter
saying that the very name Lazarus (2.c. a Jewish
name) is against it. Yet, though not the primary,
this may be a true application of the parable, and
is not lightly to be set aside. τος
5. According to a tradition alluded to by Theo-
phylact and Euthymius Zigabenus, Dives and
Lazarus were actual persons known at the time,
and our Lord, while honouring the poor man by
naming him, passes over the guilty rich man’s
name in merciful silence.
6. The interpretation which best suits all the
facts of the case is that the rich man is a typical
instance of the religious leaders of the people,
Pharisees and Sadducees, and that Lazarus is a
representative of the despised publicans, or of the
neglected ‘common people.’ If this is the primary
significance of Dives and Lazarus, then we can see,
as stated above, that interpretation 4 is not lightly
to be set aside; for if Pharisees and Sadducees
despised and neglected those of their own nation,
much more would they contemptuously overlook
‘sinners of the Gentiles.’ Under this head it has
been debated whether Dives is a typical Pharisee
or a Sadducee. Didon (Life of Christ), Mosheim,
and Wetstein hold that he is a Sadducee, since
the Pharisees were not characterized by luxurious
living or by unbelief ; but if, with the majority of
expositors, who say that the connexion of the
parable with what precedes requires it, we hold
him to be a Pharisee, he is at least a Pharisee
who, as Stier says, ‘lives as a Sadducee.’
As to the special sin of Dives, opinions have
differed. All, however, concur in pointing out
that he is not accused of any positive crime,—his
sin is negative. It may be, indeed, that our Lord
in the parable glances back at what is said in
vy.!3-16; yet Dives’ chief sin most evidently was
that he left undone the things which he ought to
have done. He is an instance, in fact, of one who
did not make to himself friends of the mammon
of unrighteousness. Doubtless the cause of this
was his virtual unbelief in a kingdom of God here
implying a brotherhood of all men, and a kingdom
of God hereafter implying a retribution.
Euthymius says that some asserted that, according to a
tradition, the rich man was called Ninevis; and Tischendorf
(Gr. Test. in loc.) quotes a scholion εὗρον δέ τινες καὶ τοῦ πλουσιου
ἔν τισιν ἀντιγράφοις Torvouc Νινεΐης λεγόμενον. Further, the Sahidic
Version adds to the mention of the rich man: ‘whose name
was Nineue.’ It has, however, been suggested (Rendel Harris,
Expositor, March 1900) that this name may have been evolved
from the words ‘hic dives,’ or ‘en dives,’ accompanying some
ancient pictorial representation of the parable. Harnack (7b.),
however, has thought that the word may be a corruption of
Φιν εἰς (Fineus in pseudo-Cyprian, de Pascha Computus, c. 1%),
and ‘that since in Nu 257 Phinehas is said to be the son of
Eleazar, an attempt has been made to suggest that the poor
man... was the rich man’s own father.’ See art. Lazarus.
ALBERT BONUS,
DIVINITY OF CHRIST.—
I. Preliminary considerations,
1. The mystery of Christ.
2. The movement ‘ Back to Christ.’
3. Certain results of the movement,
II. Bases of Christological belief.
1. Primarily a new experience.
2. Analysis of the experience.
(a) Christ’s Messianic character.
(b) His self-consciousness: («) His interior life,
(2) His method in teaching, (γ) His sinless-
ness, (5) His oneness with God,
468 DIVINITY OF CHRIST
(c) His appeal to deeper personality.
(d) His teaching and works.
3. Validity of the experience.
III. Beginnings of the doctrine of Christ’s Person in the NT.
1. General character of the doctrine.
2. Divine names applied to Christ.
3. Divine properties and acts attributed to Christ.
4. Divine relations as to God, man, the world.
TV. Subsequent development of NT ideas.
1. History of the doctrine.
(a) Patristic.
(6) Medieval.
(c) Modern.
2. Denial of the doctrine.
(ay Its history and motive.
(0) Its failure.
Literature.
I. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.—1. The mys-
tery of Christ.—The historic question of Jesus to
His disciples, ‘Who do men say that I the Son of
Man am?’ (Mt 16°, Mk 857, Lk 918), was put not to
confound, but to reveal, by awakening the desire
for knowledge. The intelligent answer to the
question preserves the precious truth, which is
nothing less than God’s age-long secret about Him-
self. The disciples had been nurtured on a religi-
ous literature in which the whole national and
individual future was seen blending in one antici-
pation, the coming of God to His people to deliver
and save. One like the Son of Man comes, and
there is given to Him dominion and glory and a
kingdom which shall not pass away. This was
the figure in which the Jewish imagination clothed
the Jewish hope. Modern criticism dwells upon
the factors in history which determined the form
in which this hope took shape. The Hebrew
religion, we are assured, was wrought out under
constant pressure of disaster. It was the religion
of a proud, brave people, who were constantly held
in subjection to foreign conquerors. Hence came
a quality of intense hostility to those tyrannous
foes, and also a constant appeal to the Divine
Power to declare itself. The hostility and the
appeal inspire the Messianic Hope. Was there
nothing more? Surely behind the history and the
imagination lay elemental forces of the soul.
What lend essential and abiding worth both to
the Hebrew hostility to Gentile oppression and
the Hebrew appeal to Jehovah’s righteous right
hand are a faith and a passion which, if quickened
into power by the vicissitudes of history, were
themselves underived from history, and native to
the spirit of the nation. Nor in this high conviec-
tion do the Hebrews stand alone. Everywhere,
wherever thought has advanced sufficiently near
its Object, it has come to a yearning, at times
poignant, for closer contact. The numerous idola-
tries of the lower religions are simply the objec-
tivation of this desire. The no less numerous
conceptions of Divinity in more cultured peoples
are due to the same stress. There has been a
ceaseless demand of the human race for an embodi-
ment of Deity. The demand is a product of the
hungry human heart for closer communion with
God and larger loyalty to Him.
The existence of an instinct so universal is the
guarantee of its fulfilment. The two considera-
tions, that the Hebrew race had worked out the
conception of the Messiah, and that the ethnic
peoples were quite familiar with Divine incarna-
tions, processes both present admittedly to the
mind of the Early Church, furnish no evidence to
the contrary. In themselves they prove nothing
against a true Incarnation historically manifested,
if it can be shown that its historical manifestation
is not wholly traceable to naturalistic origins in
the Hebrew and ethnie genius. The presence, in
particular, of many myths parallel to the Christian
story need not mean that the Christian story is
itself a myth. As has been well said, ‘If the
Christian God really made the human race, would |
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
not the human race tend to rumours and perver-
sions of the Christian God? If the centre of our
life is a certain fact, would not people far from the
centre have a muddled version of the fact? If we
are so made that a Son of God must deliver us, is
it odd that Patagonians (and others) should dream
of a Son of God?’ (Chesterton, Religious Doubts of
Democracy, p. 18). False beliefs live by the true
elements within them. <A _ persistent belief occur-
ring in many false forms is likely to be true, and
may reasonably be expected to occur in a true
form. Each redeemer of heathenism is a prophetic
anticipation of the satisfying of human desires in
Jesus Christ, precisely as the Messianic disclosures
of the OT were to the people of whom according
to the flesh He came. They are anticipations
only: since neither the pagan foregleams nor the
Hebrew forecasts offered sufficient data for a
complete or consistent delineation of an actual
Person.* The earlier experiences of men made the
gospel intelligible, but they had no power to pro-
duce it. It satisfies and crowns them, but does
not grow out of them. The Person, when He came,
did more than satisfy the old instinct by which
men had hope, He reinforced and extended it:
His advent not only accomplished the past pro-
mise, it gave earnest of greater things to come:
He thus represented human ideals indeed, but still
more Divine ideas. The highest prophecies of His
appearance reveal, amid the circumstantial details,
the element of mystery; that mystery is not
eliminated when the Life appears. It is the sin-
gular significance of Jesus Christ that both in the
anticipations of Him and in His actual appearance
the details always lead on to inquiry as to what is
not detailed, the facts to something beyond them-
selves; the Man and His words and works to the
question Who is He? and Whence is this Man ὃ
2. The movement ‘ Back to Christ.’-—The question
is prominently before the present age. The modern
mind asks it with revived interest. Modern know-
ledge in its several departments of philosophy,
history, science, has developed along lines and in
obedience to principles which appear able to dis-
pense with the old theistic axioms. God and
Conscience are not so vividly active. And yet, on
the other hand, the ancient instinct of the race for
communion with God is assertive as ever. It turns
for comfort almost exclusively to the Christian
tradition. The Christian tradition, however, it is
convinced, needs revision ; and here the central
necessity is the treatment and true understanding
of the Person of Christ. The cry is ‘Back to
Christ.’ It is a ery dear to all who desire a simpler
gospel than that set forth in the Creeds ; all who
are wearied with speculation on the elements of
Christian truth, or are distraught with the variety
of interpretation offered of it ; all who are eager to
embrace the ethics and as eager to abjure what
they term the metaphysics of the Christian system.
The movement referred to is natural; and its
plea so plausible as to merit attention. The aim
is nothing short of recovering the image of the
original Founder of the Faith, expressed in His
authentic words and acts; to bring back in all the
distinct lineaments of a living Personality the
great Teacher whom we now see in the Gospels
‘as through a glass darkly.’ It seeks by a study
of the original records in the light of all the
historical and critical aids now open to us, and
guided by the modern idea of evolution, not only
to bring us face to face with Jesus of Nazareth, to
listen to His direct words of wisdom, but to trace
all the steps of His spiritual advance, all the steps
by which He grew into the Messiah of Israel and
the Ideal of humanity, giving the deepest inter-
pretation to the prophetic dream of His nation,
* Cf. Westcott, Gospel of Life, pp. 295-297.
“
SEE
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
and so lifting it into that higher region in which
the freely accepted Cross became the necessary
means to the deliverance of man. The ‘Jesus of
history,’ it is argued, has been buried in the
‘Christ of dogma’; the Church in handing down
the Saviour has presented Him with adoring hands
and in idealized form. The more we throw off her
encrustments, the nearer we get to the original,
the nearer we are getting to the real Jesus, and, in
Him, to the truth of our religion.
However natural the hope of such minds, it is
based on illusion. It proceeds on erroneous ideas
as to what we may learn from the past. ‘ What
has been done,’ says the adage, ‘even the gods
themselves cannot make undone.’ All that. his-
torical reversions can do is to suggest that in the
onward movement something precious has been
left behind which it were well to recover before
going further. There is no such Christ, no such
Christianity in the first century as is sought for: a
Christ and a Christianity purely invariable and true
for all time and in every place. That is a concep-
tion which, the more it is studied, the more it will
be found to be 2 pure abstraction to which no con-
crete in rerum natura corresponds. The absolute
value of the Christian Faith, the real stature of the
Christ, cannot be established by merely dropping
the historical surroundings or setting ot the tradi-
tional truth. The old truth that lived spiritually
in the minds of those who first livingly appre-
hended it, and which has pulsated all through
the historical process, has to be caught up again,
realized in its essential vitality, and formulated
anew in harmony with the modern spirit. We
have to ask, Was the Christian Idea given in itself
apart, in isolation, abstractly, and may this, as the
‘essence,’ substance, or soul of the gospel, be re-
discovered? Or, on the contrary, was the Christian
Idea planted as a Life in a company of believers
who manifested its power in their lives, so that it
cannot be reduced to an invariable essence except
by an unreal process of abstraction? Cf., further,
art. BACK ΤῸ CHRIST.
3. Certain results of the movement.—The effort
to ‘rediscover Christ’ (the phrase is Dr. Fair-
bairn’s) is important less in its avowed aim than in
its subsidiary results. ‘Through them it yields a
real contribution to theological progress. We pro-
ceed to indicate three such results: (1) a new idea
of the nature of Christian doctrine; (2) the in-
sistence on the distinction between primary and
variable elements in doctrines; (3) the deepened
consciousness of the extent of variation.
(1) The same divines who have busied themselves
in the search for the Christ of history have been
instrumental in exhibiting Christian thought on
His Person as ὦ process. In that sphere of thought
they have rigorously applied the idea of develop-
ment, not indeed for the first time (since John
Henry Newman, fifteen years before Darwin’s
Origin of Species was published, had fascinated
their fathers by his use of the idea), but with a
more thorough insight than Newman, and with
better tests, furnishing in consequence widely
different results from his. They are enabled to
distinguish between Creed and Doctrine, between
articles of faith and the whole process of reflexion,
even of a conflicting character, by which articles of
faith are reached and defined. By them interest
is transferred from the result to the process. The
forces entering into the process are minutely
analyzed. It is discovered that theology has a
history ; that its history is mixed up with general
history ; that it has been moulded by a vast deal
external to the subject-matter of theology ; and
not only so, but even, as some (notably Harnack)
contend, has been substantially and in its inner
essence modified, if not perverted, in the process.
DIVINITY OF CHRIST 469
It is seen that Christian dogmas were once in-
choate ; passed through many stages under influ-
ences social, political, intellectual ; and that they
have a constant tendency so to do in adapting
themselves to their environment—-that, in short,
they are not dead formulas, but a living organism.
(2) The emergence of so many factors merely
accidental has brought into clearer perspective the
reality immanent in the process. Besides the soil
and the influences on growth, there is the seed,
the Divine Truth on which human thought and
earthly event exercised themselves. It is trace-
able to the teaching and life of Jesus and His
Apostles. Only fragments of His utterances have
been preserved to us, but the brief discourses and
conversations that we read in the Gospels stand
unique in spiritual power among the utterances of
the world. They represent a large body of teach-
ing, lost to us in form but preserved in its fruits ;
for out of His spiritual wealth there poured
throughout His ministry an abundance of spoken
truth that remained to perpetuate His influence
and serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.
Together with His life they formed and still form
Truth, not simply in a definite invariable quantity,
but as a constant fountain and source of truth,
ever open and flowing for them who believe. He
gave a new light on all things to men; and by an
inevitable necessity they proceeded to apply, and
still must apply, what He has shown, to the inter-
pretation of all they thought and knew. Thus
Christian doctrine bases itself ultimately on two
sources: (a) the Facts as to Christ’s teaching and
life; and (2) the Experience of believers in Him
interpreting life and its problems in the light of
those facts. Christian doctrine has grown up as a
vital thing in the soil of actual life ; in the experi-
ence of Christian living. Jesus appeared among
men and lived and taught. He gave the Truth by
what He was, by what He said, by what He did.
Words, Works, Personality: all preached. This
rich and various utterance fell into the hearing
and the hearts of men and women who became
His followers. Into their very being it entered
with transforming power, making them ‘new
creatures.’ By and by it filtered through their
minds and life, and expressed itself in the form
which their own experience gave toit. It is this
reproduction of the truth Jesus brought that
constitutes Christian doctrine. Its fundamental
elements are to be kept clearly in view—viz. the
Christian Facts and the Experience of Believers.
(3) The origin of variation in doctrinal belief
immediately becomes manifest. Believing experi-
ence cannot be expected to be invariable. Still
less the expression of experience. Variety of
views enters. There are diflerences of mind, of
education, of disposition and degrees of sympathy,
of ability to apprehend and explain: difierences
all of them, when given free scope, likely to lead
to mixed results. Present-day religious thought is
profoundly impressed with the fact and with the
necessity of it. And if in consequence the theo-
logical mind is infected with a certain sense of
insecurity, there is compensation in the new breath
of freedom. Obviously it is gain to be able to
review the doctrinal process and results of the
past, to disentangle the Divine Truth from its
temporary formulation, and to elaborate it anew
in such wise as will subserve the highest interests
of men to-day, as well as do justice to its own ever
fresh wealth of content. (Cf. the interesting ex-
position in Dr. Newton Clarke’s What shall we
think of Christianity ? Lect. 11.).
Il. BASES OF CHRISTOLOGICAL BELIEF. — 4.
Primarily a new experience.—The new methods
found early application to the doctrine of Christ’s
Person. That doctrine is central in the Christian
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
It is by Christ, His Person and Work,
that salvation is mediated. Historically and ex-
perimentally the Church learned it so. A study
of the NT and of the two subsequent centuries 15
chiefly a study of one great fact or truth, to the
understanding and interpreting of which the mind
and life of the period were devoted, and devoted
with absorbing interest—the Person of Christ.
That problem soon became at once the impulse
and the starting-point of an entire science of God,
of man, and of the essential and final relation
between God and man. But primarily the ques-
tion at issue was simply that of His Person. It
was provoked by Christ’s own questions and by
His claims. Its urgency was enhanced by the
experience of believers. Their experience was
unprecedentedly novel. Unlike that of Hebrew
faith, its ground was individual and personal.
Its origin layin the revolutionary impression His
presence created in the heart, an impression which
came as a thing incomparable, and remained as the
most precious fact of life. It grew as a new power
in the soul to resist and overcome sin, assuring not
the promise only but the potency of real holiness,
imparting to the latent faculties of the changing
heart an increasing plenitude of spiritual force
making for righteousness. Coneurrently with this
feature in the new experience went another, or
two others. Awakened by the sense of power in
the inner life imparted by Christ, men came to
understand what the evil is from which God seeks
to save them, and what the good is which He
seeks to impart to them. In Christ moral good-
ness, the righteousness of God, laid its inexorable
claims upon man’s life, determining feelings and
shaping resolutions as does the real entrance of
God into our hearts. The impression of Christ was
thus seen to be the power of God. A further step
was won when reflexion forced forward the ques-
tion how it could be so, in what mode the nature
of Christ’s Person must be regarded in the light of
the above experiences. But the root of the matter
was reached when the fact was realized that the
more the strength of His character overwhelmed
them, the more undeniable was made the reality of
God to them. That was reached, however, at the
very outset. It was ἐλ primary conviction which
entitled to the name of believer, and confession of
it meant salvation. It formed the fundamental
basis of Christological belief. Jesus comes acting
on human hearts with winsome gentleness, with a
soul-moving sorrow for sin, and with a great en-
abling power. The high demands He brings raise
no fear, for He who demands approaches with the
means of fulfilling, which He is ready to impart.
Herein rests the real originality of His message,
by which His gospel differentiates itself from all
other religions on the one hand, and from all merely
philosophical or ethical Idealisms on the other ; in
virtue of which also all interpretations of His Person
on humanitarian lines prove inadequate. On this
point a clear understanding is indispensable. It is
to be insisted that the ‘Christ of History’ and the
‘Christ of Experience’ were not separable to the
mind of the disciples; they were one and indi-
visible. Their Christ is not the Teaching of Jesus
alone, or His Works alone; or both together
alone, but both together along with what they
revealed regarding the inner life of Jesus, and
what they created in the inner life of believers.
It is impossible to separate the last from the first.
It is illegitimate to seek to resolve it into a creation
of the religious idealizing faculty of believers in
Him. The thought of the Apostles consciously
felt itself engaged not in evolving dreams and
speculations of its own, but in striving to receive
and appreciate a truth which was before, above,
independent of them.
system.
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
biography does His message, in this view, stand or
fall, but by Himself whom the facts reveal; the
facts come embedded, and are vital because thus
embedded, in one cardinal fact, Himself. He |
came to them not as a prophet, although He
had much in common with the prophets; nor as a
culture-hero, the offspring of spiritual imagina-
tion; but as an inner force of life absolutely
unique ; an inner experience in which God entered
into their hearts in a manner heretofore unparal-
leled, being borne in on them rather than presented
to their imitation, leavening them practically with
Himself, and demonstratively in such a way that
henceforth to their very existence in God, He, the
Revealer, must belong. In the NT we move amid
scenes where the common has been broken up b
vast events. God from the Unseen has woe
into history a fresh note, and a new era has
opened. The whole suggestion is of possibilities
and resources waiting to be disclosed. (Cf. Wernle,
Beginnings of Christianity). The beginning of
Christianity 1s neither a theological idea nor a
moral precept ; it is an experience of a Fact, the
vac of Christ, revealing and imparting the life of
God.
The impression Christ made on those who saw
and heard Him is a solid fact which no criticism
can upset. Is it possible to get behind this fact? |
The effort is strenuously made by many. What
was He who produced the impression reported in
the Gospels? Better still, What was He who pro-
duced not this or that impression, but the result-
ant of actual and permanent impressions which
He has made upon the world? In seeking an
answer, historical and critical research has been
lavished on every aspect of the question. Christ's
career, personality, have been studied as
never before. The result is that He is better
known to us than to any previous age. It is at
the same time being increasingly felt that a natu-
ralistic reconstruction of His hfe is not possible.
Candid students of the anti-supernaturalist camps
(e.g., in history, Keim [Jesus of Nazara]; in yhilo-
sophy, Ed. Caird [Evol. of Religicn); in science,
Sir Oliver Lodge [Hibbert Journal, 111. 1.1 and
Prof. James [Varieties of Religious Eaxperience))
practically confess the failure of past attempts,
and succeed in evading the postulate of Divinity
only by attributing to the human life so emple
a magnificence as to make it embrace all that
Christian thought understands by Divinity. The
new rationalism shows how decidedly the old
materialism has spent its force. Of special inte-
rest is its frank recognition of the presence and
vitality of experiences on which hitherto natuwial-
ism has set taboo. The more the new criticism
endeavours to revivify the dead past and live over
again the life of the disciples who enjoyed the
personal communion of Christ, the more it sees it
must combine in itself all the qualifications neces-
sary for seeing and understanding all that He
really was. This conviction, however, involves
the finding of a place for criteria for the adjudging
of Christ, specifically extra-naturalistic, but not
extra-scientific, and spiritual; and where this
happens without prepossession, the irresistible
sense of Christ’s transcendence impresses. His
mystery remains (cf. Contentio Veritatis, Essay ii, ;
also Rashdall, Doctrine and Development, v. and
vi.).
2. Analysis of the expericnce.—But if we cannot
go behind the fact in the sense of reaching some-
thing more ultimate, we may analyze its elements.
It will be found in content to comprise at least
four constituents: His teaching and works; His
growing consciousness of His own nature; His
response to prophetic promise: His appeal to
teaching,
By no single fact in His | deeper personality.
Sa ae ΘΙ͂Ν
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
(a) Of these the most obvious is the third, the
contemporary conviction of His Messianic dignity.
‘That Jesus is the Christ’ is one of the dominating
ideas of the Gospels and Epistles. More than one
recent writer (Martineau, Meinhold, Wrede, etc.)
have sought to show that Jesus did not accept the
title of Messiah; but not even these deny its
attribution to Him by the disciples, and that as
their main view of His Person. Careful analysis
indicates that in whatever respects the Synopties
differ in their representations,—and they are not
absolutely harmonious,—they yet represent a
general agreement of view, and set forth what the
primitive belief was. In that belief Jesus stands
forth as Messiah, Himself accepting as appropriate
what they attribute ; a sublime figure, not merely
human, or exalted to Messiahship only by self-
mastery and self-dedication, but by peculiar nature
and special appointment. The endeavour to reduce
the Evangelic description of Messiah to human
dimensions is Iudicrously inadequate. to the facts.
If it be the case that His disciples ‘caressed Him
in the most familiar manner as a fellow-human
being’ (Crooker, NT Views of Jesus, p. 25), the
statement is crudely one-sided, since the familiar
fellowship He vouchsafed, as is very evident,
is but the framework of an intimate disillusion-
ment on the part of His followers, and a grow-
ing revelation on His part. We can trace the
stages by which the higher idea was unfolded to
them. It came in a series of disappointments,
intended, probably, to wean them from the popu-
lar ideas of what the Messiah should be. There
is first the death of the Baptist, the prophet of
Messiah. Then there is the refusal to commit
Himself to the enthusiasm of those who would
have made Him a king (Jn 2% 015, Again, Christ
avoids or evades the challenge to manifest Him-
self to the world (Jn 7.5). Lastly came the
crisis, as it were, the open challenge to prove His
Messiahship by a sign and legitimate His claim,
a challenge refused (Lk 22° 23%), Hand in hand
with this progressive disillusionment of all that
was contrary to His thought in current Messianic
ideas went the progressive revelation of the true
Messiah,—a revelation which became at once a
testing and a discipline of the character of the
disciples, and an unfolding of undreamt of forces
in His; so that at last they fell at His feet and
worshipped, while others acknowledged Him as
‘Lord and God’ (Jn 9058) ; and still others plainly
felt that He was ‘ascending to the Father’ (v.").
That Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, and gave
His sanction to the belief on the part of His dis-
ciples is certain * (see next sect.) ; no less certain
(and admitted) is it that the disciples believed
Him to be the Messiah. The point of impor-
tance for the present is, how the belief origi-
nated with the latter. It is a practice among
many scholars to reverse the actual facts. They
argue as if the belief had been first formulated
and officially offered, so to speak, for their accept-
ance, a formal external idea taken up because it
had been put forth by Jesus as a scheme in which
to frame His person; in the light of which they
are to regard His life and words ; exercising a pro-
digious influence on, and Jending a force to, His
words and a sanctity to His person beyond that
* The inquiry into the Messiah-consciousness of Christ has
led so far to little agreement. Opinions multiply. The main
points under consideration are : (1) Did the Messiah idea enter
into His ministry at all? (2) If it did, when? From child-
hood? at baptism? at some later point in His ministry? and
from what causes? (3) How did He conceive of His Messiah-
ship? Was His conception complete at first, or the subject of
development? (see art. Mrsstan). Probably it is true to say
that the present popular study of Christ’s self-consciousness is
less fruitful for the interpretation of His Person than the older
method of studying His God-consciousness. His life is not so
much a self-witness as a revelation of the Father.
DIVINITY OF CHRIST 471
which, but for it, they could possibly have had (cf.
such writers as Mackintosh, Nat. Hist. of Christ.
Relig. ; Perey Gardner, Historic View Of Neen che
iv. ; Estlin Carpenter, First Three Gospels, chs. ii.,
111.). The actual facts of Christ’s career, i.c., are
conformed in the NT narratives to already exist-
ing Messianic traditions. And because of this the
accumulated sanctities of the old religion were
laid claim to by the new, whereby the latter main-
tained itself in face of the opposition which it
encountered at the first and found a soil prepared
for its reception. The contention cannot be sus-
tained. It may receive some countenance fiom
the circumstance that the writers of the NT
never record any fact or incident merely as fact
or incident, but as part of the substance of the
gospel, illustrating and conveying spiritual prin-
ciples. But the very ease with which the NT
method of presenting historical circumstance might
be turned to account under the influence of Messi-
anic bias becomes valuable evidence against that
hypothesis. For although the NT history is pre-
sented with a bias, 1.6. as bearing and bodying
forth a Person, the presentation, whether that of
the Synoptics, or of the Fourth Gospel, or of St.
Paul and the others, cannot with any measure
of success be wholly identified with or wholly
summed up in that of the Messiah. The Messi-
anic claims of Jesus may be made (as they are
made) to rest on the facts; but the facts are not
exhausted in those claims, even in the immensely
enriched and original form in which Jesus made
them. There are other portraitures of Jesus in
the NT besides that of Him as Messiah ; and even
those writers who set forth to portray Him solely
as Messiah cannot be restrained from burstirg
through their self-imposed limits, in fidelity to
the facts, and portraying Him as more than they
meant. Moreover, the same writers convey to us
the explicit assurance that they have not apyre-
hended all the truth about His Person. Subse-
quent theology accepted the assurance, deparied
widely from the purely Messianic portraiture, yet
claimed, and with perfect justice, that the new
departures were in no sense new additions to the
original Gospel, but fresh interpretations, designed
to recover and vitalize truths discernible in the
Gospels, but imperfectly understood by the Gospel
writers.
(6) What has been adverted to finds illustraticn
in another source of Christological idea, the se/f-
consciousness of Jesus. In the most noteworthy
discussion of this subject, that of Baldensperger
(Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu), only about one half
of the work is taken up with determining the sense
in which Jesus regarded Himself as Messiah; the
second part is devoted to other aspects arising out
of His self-designations, His teaching as to the
Kingdom, ete. Withal, much that cannot be ex-
cluded from Christ’s self-revelation is not even
touched upon. Any adequate exposition of Christ's
idea of His own nature will include the following
features : His interior life, His method in teaching,
His moral perfection, His oneness with the Father.
(a) The true secret of Christ's life is not open.
Who can ever know His intimate mind? Could
He have revealed it even if He would? We
know His words and deeds; we distinguish the
forces He set agoing in the world’s history; we
venture on assertions of growth both of idea and
of action in His life; but where was the source of
these? or what the process? or when the great
choices and decisive operations of His marvellous
soul? What were the supremely triumphant end
supremely terrible moments of His life? What
were the events in which He ‘found Himself’?
His abounding energy implies a rich self-conscious-
ness; the completest self-consciousness rests on
eee eee
472 DIVINITY OF CHRIST
a plenitude of interior self-relationships. That
these last existed in Him we are certain. But
in what manner or in obedience to what im-
pulses, who can discern? The records give results
not processes, and just at those points where our
curiosity is most eager, the limitations of our power
to perceive are most urgent. Wesee but a few
things. We observe the self-indulgence of His
own consciousness again and again. We have
glimpses of its exercise in solitary communings
with God, in a life of intercourse with men, in the
collision with incident and event. Above all, we
know it in its great occasions,—Baptism, Tempta-
tion, Discussion with the Doctors, Transfiguration,
Agony in the Garden, Resurrection, Ascension,—
all of which are equally discoveries of His nature
to Himself and revelations to His disciples. Be-
cause the meaning of these events seems to lie
on the surface, we must be careful not to give
them a superficial reception. They must be so
received when regarded as parts of a religious
idea, and not, as they are, experiences of a real
Person. They constitute events which were no
mere form gone through to proclaim a spiritual
truth to men or to certify to them by wondrous
signs a new relation opened for them with God.
They were not dramatic: they were as personal
to Him as they are instructive for us. He did
what He did because He was what He was—from
a deeper necessity than any deliberate persuasion
that His disciples needed this or that teaching at this
or that time. These events are far from summing
up His inner life. They are but flashes out of a
deep darkness. They reveal a life that is really
human, in constant communion with a source of
sustenance beyond the human, receiving the ful-
ness of that source and translating it into earthly
relations, yet with a_self-possession and_self-
knowledge, ὁ.6. a consciousness differentiated and
personal. But the revelation does not uncover all
the secrets of that life, leaving nothing to elude
or bewilder. There are reservations in the know-
ledge given (ef. Dale, Atonement, pp. 45, 47). And
these are not to be identified with the necessary
inscrutabilities inherent in all finite personality.
They are the intimations of a glory in His nature
which separates it from all common natures, signs
that in Him there are abysses of impenetrable
splendour into which finite natures may not enter,
however closely they may touch.
(8) Christ’s method in teaching was character-
istic. He taught neither as the scribes (It 739),
nor as a prophet (Mt 115. And this because of
His own nature and the nature of His message.
He came not as a teacher; compelling assent by
the complete answer to every difficulty, silencing
dispute with arguments. He was more personal
and spiritual. His teaching did not profess to
offer an absolute intellectual proof of itself which
must convince all sufficiently intelligent persons.
[t claimed the belief of all men, but not on the
ground of its incontrovertible evidence; on the
ground rather that all men were created to be
good, and to know the truth, and would know it
if their perceptions were not dulled and distorted
by sin. It convinced only by a process which at
the same time purified. He made His message
not an argument but a force.
Hence His method was both declarative and
suggestive ; both thought and incentive to further
thought. At times He is clear and authoritative ;
His words are such that men may refuse them but
cannot mistake them. At other times He shrouds
His doctrine in parables, and, pointing to principles,
leaves them to work and unfold their purport as
men are found ready to receive them. This was
so, because the teaching was not simply of truths
but Truth, infinite, inalienable, imperishable ; the
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
fulfilment of all partial truths. His ‘ Verily I say’
asserts His belief that it was so. The ‘mind of
Christ’ which the teaching offers is not mere
neutrality but soul, personality—back to which
the teaching goes for justification. He appeals to
no higher sanction than Himself. For Himself also
He assumes a right to revise the law of Moses
(Mt 57), and claims authority over every indi-
vidual soul (Mt 1959). For this reason it is futile
to found an argument against the final and the
revealed character of His message on its frag-
mentariness or its want of originality, futile also
to limit His teaching to any detached portion of
its recorded whole, e.g. the Sermon on the Mount.
The fragments are numerous enough to enable
us with ease to trace His mind. ‘They form a
unity which is not a new edition simply of any-
thing preceding. That some of His thoughts and
precepts were anticipated by Jewish and ethnic
men of wisdom does not detract from His origin-
ality (see art. ORIGINALITY), because that consists,
not in isolated truths, but in the remarkabie sum
of truth in which they take their appropriate and
articulate place. That doctrine again explains the
precepts of the Sermon on the Mount more fully
than the Sermon sums up tle doctrine. The
method of Christ challenges reflexion and suggests
as origin of His teaching His own statement ‘from
God’ (Mt 1127, Jn 716).
(y) What is meant by the moral perfection of
Christ is at times misconceived, yet embodies a
difference in His nature as compared with ordinary
men that is perfectly realizable. Ullmann in a
treatise of great power has made it familiar under
the term ‘sinlessness’ (Sindessness of Jesus, T. & T.
Clark). The term has been objected to as a nega-
tive conception, the negative absence of evil, a
negative difficult to prove from the limited induc-
tion available in a life of a few years. To give
the conception a concrete expression may be im-
possible ; but the term is of value as pointing to
the stainless purity of Christ. His moral self-
witness is in the highest degree positive.* It
implies not simply the consciousness of flawless
conduct, but the consciousness of perfect character
as well as the assurance of power to create in
others perfect character. Man may fail to meet
his moral obligation in three ways: by falling
short of his ideal of duty, by forming lewer ideals
than he ought, by direct transgression. And the
witness of the ordinary conscience is that man.
has failed in all three, and has reason to fear
God. The peculiarity of Christ’s moral life is that
all suspicion of this is wholly absent. He never
confesses sin. He never fears any consequences
of His acts either from God or trom men. He
seeks forgiveness, but only for others. He dreads
sin, but not for Himself. He claims to be apart
from it. He gives the impression of breath-
ing an atmosphere in which sin cannot be. He
is possessed with a holy energy, constant and
powerful. Yet His moral life finds exercise not
in abstracts but within conditions of earthly ex-
istence. He fought His way through those ex-
periences which make goodness difficult. For this
reason His goodness is both provable and imitable.
The crux of the proof must rest Jess in special
pleading for particulars of conduct than in a
central view of His moral personality. Particulars
have been contested. He has been charged with
harshness to His mother (Jn 24); with petulance
* The passage, ‘Why callest thou me good? There is none
good but one, that is God’ (Mk 1018 ||), is still a difficult ques-
tion of criticism and interpretation. That it is a self-deprecia-
tory word is the least tenable explanation. That, as a self-
depreciatory saying it is the only certainly authentic word of
Christ with reference to His moral nature (Schmiedel, Eneyc.
Bibl. ii. 1881), is perverse (cf. Marcus Dods, The Bible, its Origin
and Nature, p. 205).
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
DIVINITY OF CHRIST 473
(Lk 2); with brusque contempt (Mt 76); with
discourtesy and personal bitterness (Lk 1157#-);
with violation of property rights (Mk 5! 11°61) ;
with underrating family duty and aftection (Mt
1057, Lk 1455: 36) ; with defective and impracticable
theories as to civic virtue, wealth, almsgiving,
non-resistance, ete. (For these and others cf. such
writers as Voysey, Dole, Philip Sidney, Goldwin
Smith ; and the tendency of younger Unitarians).
Charges on particulars cannot be met except in
the light of character. The abeve are all defen-
sible consistently with the character of Jesus as
that character appears in the record. Nor need
we resort to the plea (Martineau) that the blemishes
are due to the fault of the delineators. Christ’s
moral nature is a unity. It is a unity in virtue of
that principle by which He knew Himself to be
always doing the will of God. He knew Himself
to be in the activity of spirit and will what God
in nature gave Him to become. In this respect
He felt Himself solitary among men, and acted
on the feeling. His perfection thus consists, first,
not in any completeness of precepts given or con-
crete relations sustained in conduct—these flow
from it; but in the possession of that spirit and
of those principles which not only supply all due
regulation as occasion requires, but give unity,
consistency, and purity to the moral life. In the
light of this consideration we argue for His con-
stant maintenance of moral supremacy in particular
acts. His moral consciousness penetrated all His
thought and feeling, and all expressions of both.
It was the secret, further, of His power over sin,
both in the world (cosmic) and in man: His power
‘to overthrow sin’ and ‘to forgive sins.’ He did
not disregard sin. He inherited the teaching of
His race as to sin, a teaching characteristically
striking and comprehensive. He appropriates all
its truth, and develops it in His own original
spirit. He did this just because He was so pure.
Sin was the haunting dread of His days. In
meeting its malign force and subduing it, He broke
His life. Against it He put forth all His strength,
and in so doing rose to the fulness of stature we
know, ‘being raised up by God to his right hand.’
More by what He did against sin than by what
He declared of sin or of His own goodness did He
prove His sinlessness. He did what He was. His
presence raised the disciples, as His story raises us,
to a level which, like Him, knows no sin (1 Jn
3. 6. 9).
(δ) His equality with God * connects itself chiefly
(in the Synoptics) with the thought of His sinless-
ness and His power to forgive sins (Mt θ΄“ Ὁ, Mk 2”,
Lk 5” 8. Less unquestioned is Mt 9815, where He
includes Himself in the unity of the Divine name).
St. John’s Gospel is full of the idea (57° 6%%
Seo 10} 1155.1511-..6:9. γῦ5ι. 2... and to this point
attacks have in consequence been directed with
vigour (cf. in particular Martineau’s Seat of
Authority ; and for an effective rejoinder, Forrest's
Christ of History and Experience, Lect. 1.).
(c) As remarkable a factor as any in the spell
Christ laid on man’s spirit has been His appeal to
the deeper forces of personal being. There have
been those whose presence seemed to lower for the
time being the vitality and intelligence of those
who came into contact with them, and so acted as
to destroy their self-possession. Some men overawe
and paralyze others who come within the field of
their influence. The power of Christ acted con-
trariwise. It empowered. He revealed men to
themselves in revealing Himself to their inner
sense. In receiving Him into their hearts new
powers therein arose, reserve forces showed them-
selves ; His influence was that of reason begetting
* See below under ‘ Divine designations,’ ‘Son of Man,’ ‘Son
of God.’
reason, love begetting love. In fellowship with
Him men came to higher ideals. From Him, in
fact, mankind has learned to know itself as it
ought to be, and to estimate its own best possi-
bilities. He has lifted up human aspiration more
than any other. The reason of this may be found
in the fact that He appealed persuasively to human
instinct. To appeal to el instinct is often to
create it. When a child is told a story of heroism,
when rough untaught natures are soitened by the
beauty ot tenderness seen or pictured, there is a
creation of courage or gentleness where it was not
before. When the instinct is quickened we know
that it is native. The movement Christ initiated
has proved of unrivalled creativeness in the history ἢ
of human instinct and in every direction of human
activity. ‘The idea of Jesus is the illumination
and inspiration of existence’ (Phillips Brooks,
whose Bohlen Lectures, 1879, are an eloquent ex-
position of Christ’s creative influence, in moral,
social, intellectual, emotional life). ‘The first. per-
ception of this fact glows through the NT writings :
not one of the writers fails to make us understand
that the One he writes about is One who has
opened new powers in, and disclosed new horizons
to, his own soul. This is their witness—a witness
corroborated by every succeeding age—that He
called them, and in communion with Him, He made
them ‘a new creation,’ disciplining and elevating
character, calling out a higher faith, creating pro-
founder emotions, inspiring with ever-increasing
reverence, and bringing into play those higher and
more creative faculties of the soul that see the
things of God in a wide perspective impossible to
the reason.
(7) The specialities of Christ’s teaching and
works may be briefly indicated. Their speciality
has been challenged. The opinion of a recent
Gifford lecturer is shared by many, that ‘it is
difficult, if not impossible, to select any special
article of religious faith which is in its general
aspect a doctrine peculiar to Christianity. Its
uniqueness lies rather in what some would call
the personality of the founder’ (Wallace, Lectares,
111.). That is true; but its suggestion is not true,
that there is no uniqueness in the teaching of
Christ. The uniqueness of the Teacher draws with
it uniqueness in the teaching; and that both in
its method (see above) and in its substance. Simi-
larly His works exhibit higher potency than the
ordinary human. A strong feeling to this effect is
resulting from the minute analysis which at the
present time both the ‘ Words’ and the ‘ Miracles’
are undergoing (cf. Wendt, Zeaching of Jesus;
Dalman, Words of Jesus, et al.). His dependence
on others, His anticipations by others, are less
confidently asserted. It is difficult, if not impos-
sible, to discover any form of Gentile culture which
is likely to have entered into the formative influ-
ences of His mind. From Greek philosophy He
probably lived remote as much by natural tem-
perament as by patriotic interest. He was not
beyond its range, but then as now the Jew had a
wonderful power of living in the fire without
suffering the smell of it to pass upon his garments.
Every Jew appeared in his own eyes to stand
morally and intellectually on a higher level than
the Gentile ; his system of education seemed less
destitute of vivifying and invigorating ideals. He
was nurtured on the history, the scenery, the re-
ligion of his land, all of them of exquisite interest,
stimulating the fresh mind in the highest degree to
habits of independent wisdom (cf. Ramsay, Educas
tion of Christ, ch. 3). Of Jewish sects and teachers
three have been suggested as contributory forces :
the Pharisees, the Baptist, the Essenes. The first
proved His worst foes ; they had an influence, but
it was solely negative. The second is remarkable |
474 DIVINITY OF CHRIST
DIVINITY OF CHRIS®&
for his consciousness of his own inferiority, of
Christ’s higher range in mission and higher rank
in Person. Of the third let Hausrath judge : ‘ From
the Essenes His whole conception of the world
separated Him.’* There can be little question
- . = Ὺ τῇς
that the impulse to reflexion was fostered in Christ
by study of the sacred books, the Law and the
Prophets, under the usual Rabbinical direction.
The master-words of His teaching are drawn thence.
The substance of His teaching, in numerous de-
tails, is defined negatively by contrast with the
comments of the scribes and positively by ‘fulfil-
ment’ of the Law through a clearer discernment
and profounder enrichment of the proper principles
of the Law. ‘The substance of His teaching in its
main positions is intrinsically so separate from even
its closest approximations in previous prophecy as
to be justly entitled to the claim of originality.
The source of its originality was in Himeelf.
Christ’s teaching is His own exposition of the
Divine life which was revealed in Himself + (Mt
11-7), ‘Out of a perfect relation with God flows
His teaching like a crystal stream.’ Its form is
drawn from the religious vocabulary of the time ;
its matter from His own mind. In this connexion
the following is admirably put, and meets a common
objection :
‘Tt is not enough to show that particular statements of our
Lord may be found embedded in earlier writings which consist
mainly of foolish superstitions and childish conceits. It would
be strange indeed if, with the Scriptures in their hands, the
great teachers of Israel never said, or never uttered in pregnant
phrase, any of those lofty spiritual truths which shine forth
from the pages of the prophets. But if we find, on referring to
contemporary literature, that such references are only like rare
jewels shining among vast heaps of error and superstition, that
they are only like flashes of lightning in an all-embracing night,
then their concurrence in nowise diminishes our wonder. The
problem only takes another shape. How is it, we ask, that out
of all this spiritual lumber the soul of Jesus only selected what
was good and great, and rejected all the rest? How is it, e.g.,
that from the teaching of Hillel He took (if, indeed, He took any-
thing directly thence) only what was eternally true, rejecting
at the same time all the frivolous ritualism and puerile casuistry
in the consideration of which Hillel spent his life? Remember
again that it detracts in nowise from our Lord’s claim to
originality, that even His master thought had been partially or
casually expressed by those who went before Him. The question
to be decided in our Lord’s day was this, Which of all the
thoughts about God that have passed through the mind of
saints and prophets should become the master-thought of
religion, which should condition and determine all the rest?
It would not be true to say that Jesus selected one, as though
He had been passing all in review and comparing them. No,
the truth is that Jesus laid hold of one by His Divine intuition,
in virtue of His direct insight into the nature of God’ (Moor-
house, Teaching of Christ, p. 66 f.).
When we add that Christ’s teaching was given,
so to speak, casually ; not systematically, in no
ordered or finished statement; that the whole is
comparatively small, and yet that it is easy to
draw up from the scattered sayings a sum _ of
doctrine coherent, self-consistent, and completely
satisfying to the needs of the soul, further cogency
is lent to the witness, ‘Never man so spake’
(Jn 75), and point to the question, ‘Whence hath
this man this wisdom ?’ (Mt 134). See artt. ORIGIN-
ALITY and UNIQUENESS.
lo His words have to be added His works. His
ordinary doings were those of a good man (Ac
10"). His miracles proved a special presence of
God with Him (Jn 82. There is a crude view of
the Gospel wonders which has made many see in
them an unimportant part of the Gospel story, and
even feel it desirable to do without them. So long
as they are looked upon as thaumaturgie signs or
violations of Nature’s sequence, so long will both
religion and Science reject them. If, however,
they are considered as indieations of laws which
embrace and In ἃ sense unite the seen and unseen
worlds, it is of immense importance to Christianity
* It hardly comes within the scope of this article to consider
the alleged influence of Buddhism or Mithraism,
t Cf. Perowne’s Hulsean Lects. pp. 93, 94.
that they should occur in connexion with the
foundation of that faith. As a matter of fact, in
face of all attempts to explain them or explain
them away, a certain robust sense of the general
mind has refused to concur in any view that
denies their reality or their essential place in the
history. They reveal Christ no less than His doc-
trine. They constitute warrants of His Divine
power : they also form part of the Gospel. They
stand as a real item in the list of testimonies to
His impression. They are one of the modes in
which His life found utterance, ‘an authentic ele-
ment of the original gospel offered to faith’ (A. B.
Bruce, Apologetics, p. 876; Miraculous Elements
in Gospels, chs. vi. and viii.). In this respect they
are on a different plane from the prodigies credited
to pagan heroes. That men might see the will of
God at work, Jesus did the works of His Father.
A reckless historical scepticism evaporates the
miracles partly into odd natural events, partly
into nervous healings, partly into gradually grow-
ing legends. Sane criticism, however, admits
their congruity with the record, their naturalness
to His Person, and their value to faith. The
supreme miracle of the Resurrection (wh. see) is
of primary import.
3. Validity of the experience.—The lines thus
traced converge in one picture. Their effect is
striking, and of the cumulative kind. They may
not produce infallible certainty of the truth of
Christ’s Divinity. But no infallible certainty can
be given. The Christ they portray is not absolute
in the sense of abstract ; He is absolute in the
sense of the fullest concrete; all the elements,
therefore, which go to make up this impression of
His Person contribute to the proof of its power:
by exhibiting what He is they testify to Him:
their witness is, ‘This is the Son of God.’ It was
men’s experience of Christ as Divine that gave
them the right to affirm His Divinity. Js the wit-
ness true? ‘The contention here made is that
what we know along many lines as the Christian
experience is a new and distinctive development,
and demands a new and unique factor introduced
to the human consciousness. Is the contention
verifiable? The witness is an interpretation : can
we trust it? Has the impression an exact equiva-
lent behind it of objective fact? What were the
dimensions of the objective fact capable of pro-
ducing this inner effect? The answer must be that
the same law of rationality holds here as in other
parts of knowledge. The effect must have an
adequate cause. What the soul realizes as the
highest in its inner feeling is proof of reality that
the reason may recognize. If the soul attains the
vision of a Reality whose authority over it is
absolute and from whom it receives a power that
masters all other powers, then it knows the mean-
ing of God. The finality of such experience cannot
be questioned, when its source is personality (per-
sonality being the only full reality of which we
have knowledge), and its seat the moral disposition
and not individual temperament. Now to those
conditions the impression of Christ recorded in the
Gospels conforms. Behind the records He stands,
greater than themselves, and that by their own
showing ; and because of this they furnish to their
readers a vision which does not fade but grows, a
power that is new and permanent, a command
from which the conscience cannot dissent, a mas-
tery that sets free. He Himself had this effect on
men as they companied with Him; the record of
their intercourse with Him has the same effect.
The effect is a fact of continuous experience funda-
mentally identical in kind throughout the Christian
centuries. Both are the envelope that enwraps
Truth transcending time and place. Only the
universal and everlasting can transcend the limita-
DIVINITY OF CHRIST DIVINITY OF CHRIST 475
tions of our separateness and speak in the same
manner to thousands of different souls. The
phenomena of Christian history are so diverse in
kind from those of other historic faiths as to re-
quire the supposition of a supernatural origin (cf.
Illingworth, Personality Human and Divine, p.
200). The witness that God Himself is here step-
ping into the history of the race must be accounted
true.
Ill. BEGINNINGS OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST'S
PERSON IN THE NT.—4. General character of the
doctrine.—It has been necessary to make the above
analysis of the bases of belief in Christ as pre-
sented in the Gospels and to justify it, because
it is only by understanding them fully that we
gain any test by which to determine the character
and worth of the belief itself, or reach the point of
view for appreciating aright its beginnings and its
growth. It is a doctrine that has no finality. It
is based on an experience which cannot rest, but
must grow with the growth of all life, and pervade
all other experience of life. It is a doctrine there-
fore that has a history down to the present, and
which is destined to continue beyond the present.
We are now in the midst of a new growth of its
meaning. in moving on we can purchase security
only by retracing our steps, unravelling the web
of the past and weaving it over again. Recurrence
to the original will reinvigorate like the touch of
earth to the feet of Antzeus. In the first expres-
sion there is a universality which is apt to be lost in
the divisions of later opinion: there is an implicit
fulness in the beginning which is not completely
represented in any subsequent stage. To that
beginning we now advert. in the conviction that
‘in Christ’ they were ‘a new creation,’ ‘ partakers
of a Divine nature’ (2 Co 5”, 2 P 14), the Apostles
must seek expression of their conviction. The ex-
pression runs over into every phase of their thought
and life. It breeds in them a sense of new relation
to Christ akin to that felt towards God, originating
anew thought of His Person. We see it in the
Names they give to Him, in the Properties and
Attributes they ascribe to Him, in their acceptance
of wonders attending His Origin and His passing
from sight, in the relations they proceed to insti-
tute between Him and previous history as well as
future ages. The NT idea of His Divinity is not
to be built up as an induction from these par-
ticulars ; these, on the contrary, are the reflexions,
inevitable and faint, of the experience of His
Divinity ; they are the inward seeking utterance.
It is an utterance that is quite spontaneous. — It
is the outcome of religious faith not of philosophic
interest. The speculative instinct is wholly second-
ary to the spiritual facts. But while this 1s so, the
philosophic interest is there, and that of necessity.
While the Person hidden behind the life of the
NT is vaster than the NT record of Him, it re-
mains true that if that Person were to survive and
His impression, they must be shown to ring true
to the intellect. What happens to the emotions
suggests problems to the mind. Proved facts,
even those ‘ deep-seated in our mystic frame,’ have
to formulate themselves in thought. And so the
moral life created by Christ furnished material for
new great convictions fitted to be at once its ex-
pression and its safeguard. The doctrine of His
Person was the necessary correlate of the impres-
sion of His Personality.
In the facts thus noted is to be found the answer
to two inquiries of rationalism. On the one hand,
it is asked, Why is He never called God? and on
the other, Why such diversity of view among the
writers? Take the latter first. The criticism here
has been carefully made by Dr. Martineau (Seat
of Authority, p. 361) and others, who urge that
Jesus was construed successively into (1) the Jewish
ideal or Messiah, (2) the Human ideal or Second
Adam, (3) a Divine Incarnation. This construction
of theories is asserted to be only a fanciful achieve-
ment of early Christian thought. ‘The personal
attendants of Jesus worked out the first; the
Apostle of the Gentiles, the second; the school
whence the Fourth Gospel proceeded, the third.’
In reply it may be affirmed that such criticism
holds its ground only by (a) doing violence to the
facts on which it seeks to rest, by subjecting them
to a narrowly subjective standard: the facts in-
clude those in which Christ is represented as
accepting the name of Lord ; by (4) an arbitrary
application of the idea of development to the nar-
rative. It is possible to prove the alleged con-
structions to have been made successively only by
a series of unwarranted eliminations. The Syn-
optists are not without knowledge of (2) and (3),
nor is (1) unknown to St. Paul and the Fourth
Gospel. The facts, when viewed without prepos-
session, point to no such clear-cut theories. They
do, however, indicate both movement and diver-
sity of belief, changes constantly going on in
the opinions respecting Christ’s nature, and very
material differences in individual emphasis and
interpretation, a movement and diversity only
less remarkable than the unmistakable unity
pervading them. It was natural that men of
the character and training of St. James and St.
Peter should discover in OT conceptions of the
Messiah approximate lines of thought wherewith
to describe their experience of Christ. Tempera-
mental and other causes led St. Paul and St.
John as naturally to give representations of their
experience such as they have done, the former
anthropological and practical, the latter contem-
plative and mystical. As types these three are
distinguishable, but not exclusively of each other.
There are others also, as, ¢.g., that of the Ep. to
the Hebrews, of Ephesians and Colossians, ΟἹ the
Apocalypse. These expressions differ among them-
selves, and differ in precisely the manner that is
natural and desirable. The variety is that of life
and reality. These all represent differences that
are not separate developments of substance in the
doctrine so much as precious elements constitutive
of a richer fulness than any one of them or all of
them ; afulness of necessary mystericusness. They
represent no signs of a struggle to assert Divinity
in opposition to a bare humanity: of such astruggle
there is not a trace in the NT.
As to the second point of criticism, it is possible
with some reason to maintain that the term θεός is
never applied to Christ. The matter is still in
dispute among scholars. The crucial passages are
(not taking into account Jn 11 2038, 1 Jn δ, He
IB*-) Roy 95s Wit 2B Ae 2075) 1 11 310 Piney zeal
Col 29, In 2 P 11 the rendering, ‘ Our God and the
Saviour Jesus Christ,’ is not excluded ; similarly
Tit 2. In Ro 98 the doxology may be regarded as
referring to God. In 1 Ti 3! the true text is és not
θεός. In Ac 9058 the AV reading is probably correct
{σοῦ ~Col’ 23% Eph 5°) 20 honeys nt sheave
been adduced as proofs that St. Paul speaks of
Christ as God ; but erroneously. The twostrongest
pasages are Ph 268, Col 2°. But if the texts are
not unambiguous, that does not affect the truth cf
the Divinity of Christ. It was scarcely natural for
a Jew to use the Divine Name in any connexion
(ef. Dalman, Words of Jesus, § vii., also p. 2:8).
If it were used, it applied to God in His absolute
being. Cf. Westcott, Ep. of St. John, p. 172.
God manifesting Himself in Christ was affirmed in
a variety of other modes. ‘The Apostles were not
so much concerned to ‘prove His Divinity’ as to
persuade men to accept Christ as their Saviour.
The question whether He was God or not was in
this view a subordinate question. They wrote
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
476
about Him as they preached, in His human mani-
festation and in His Exalted Glory. From that
point of view they neither missed the conscious-
ness of His Godhood. nor failed abundantly to
declare it. The declarations they make are of One
who, they were persuaded, was absolutely unique
in position, in character, in work; One whose
relationship to God was perfect, who was the
Saviour, Light and Life of men. Are such de-
clarations consistent with anything short of His
Divinity ?
2. Divine designations applied to Christ. —Of the
names implying distinctiveness of nature assigned
to Christ in the Gospels and Epistles, there are
four of supreme import: (a) ‘Son of Man,’ which
stands by itself; (6) ‘Son of God,’ with which
may be set as allied in significance, ‘Son of the
Highest,’ ‘Only - begotten Son,’ ‘My _ beloved
Son’ (or ‘My Son, my Chosen’), and ‘The Son’ ;
(ὦ) ‘Christ’; (d) ‘Lord.’ Others are the ‘ Word of
God’ and ‘the Word’; ‘Son of David,’ with which
may be placed ‘ Root and offspring of David,’ and
perhaps ‘ Prince of life’ and ‘ Prince’; ‘Saviour’ ;
‘Image of God’; ‘Second Adam’; ‘ First and
Last’; ‘The Holy, Just One.’
Son of Man.—To this title there attaches a
peculiar interest, which is reflected in the amount
of discussion it has excited. Controversy circles
round its use, its source, its meaning. It occurs
in all the four Gospels. It is the one name Christ
is represented as reserving for His exclusive use.
That He did so is plainly implied in the narratives.
His use of it has been denied (cf. Bruno Bauer, Volkmar,
Oort, Lietzmann, etc.). One of the most capable of recent
critics (Wellhausen, Das Evang. Marci) argues that the term,
if used at all by Christ, was not made current by Him but by
the Christian community, and came into use in the following
manner. The early Christians believed that Jesus had pro-
phesied His Parousia. They hesitated to make Him say so
outright, and hence represented Him as saying only that the
‘Man’ of Daniel should appear with the clouds of heaven. He
could say that without meaning Himself. But the Christian
interpretation soon read Him into the announcement, then
used the title in the prophecies of the Passion and Resurrection,
and finally as a simple equivalent of the first person singular on
the lips of Jesus. The position, in this and other forms, fails to
account, inter alia, for two facts: (a) the term is not found in
St. Paul or elsewhere in NT, but almost solely on the lips of
Jesus (instances to the contrary are Jn 1234, Ac 796); (ὁ) if a
coinage of the Early Church, how does it—-a term denoting
lowliness—harmonize with the evident endeavour to portray
a glorified Christ ?
The expression occurs in previous Hebrew and
Aramaic literature. The references of importance
are in Ezekiel, Daniel (715), and Enoch, in all of
which the Messianic significance is not indisput-
able (see Schmidt, art. ‘Son of Man’ in Encyc.
Bibl., who inclines to refer even Dn 7° to Michael,
not Messiah). In what sense is it to be under-
stood? The commonly accepted view (e.g. Bey-
schlag-Wendt) may be thus stated: Christ was
desirous of being recognized as the Messiah. He
was not desirous of fulfilling the current expecta-
tions of what the Messiah should be and do. He
therefore did not apply the current designations
of Messiah to Himself, but, finding one term, ‘Son
of Man’ (in Daniel), employed it as expressing (1)
Messianic character, and (2) much more than the
expected Messianic character, viz. the generically
human character.
Dalman (Words of Jesus) has adduced grave considerations
against this view. It is a view, he holds, started by the Greek
divines, and has no basis in primitive Christian thought. He
maintains that Christ adopted it from Dn 713, and used it of
Himself in its original sense, a sense which was not widely
prevalent in His time as applicable to the Messiah. There ‘the
emphasis rather lies on the fact that in contrast with the winged
lion, the devouring bear, the four-headed leopard, the fourth
beast with ten horns terrible exceedingly beyond its predeces-
sors, he appears unarmed and inoffensive, incapable through
any power of his own of making himself master of the world ;
he is only asa son of man. If ever he is to be master of the
world, God must make him so.’ The ‘Son of Man,’ on this view,
is not the son of man in the sense of being a man like other
men, but as being a man distinct from other men, in the sense
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
that God has given him to be what he is. The expression in-
timates less his human nature than his Divine. ‘Son of Man’
denotes ‘that member of the human race, in his own nature
impotent, whom God will make Lord of the world.’
To indicate results, it may be taken that there
is a fair consensus of agreement on the following
points: (a) that the use of the title as applicable
to Himself is due to Christ ; (ὁ) that a wider source
than the passage in Daniel is probable ; (6) that in
meaning it embodies a composite conception, com-
bining various OT suggestions, and these the most
rich and salient ; the seed of the woman, the one
‘like a son of man, the suffering Servant of Jehovah,
the ideal pecple, the recipient of special privilege,
the apportioner of judgment, of celestial origin.
In wealth of content the expression stands alone.
It was thus peculiarly appropriate as a self-
designation of Christ. In it there met the two
divisions of Messianic reference, those pointing to
the glory and those pointing to the humiliation
of the Messiah, comprising elements seemingly
incongruous and irreconcilable, yet in essentials
capable of being unified in a single character. In
the course of His ministry He was to manifest Him-
self as the conqueror of Satan, as perfect man, as
concentrating His race in an intense personal life,
as conscious of a special mission from God, of abso-
lutely intimate relation to God, of perfect depen-
dence upon God, and as sharing with God in the
judgment of the world, characteristics all of them
Messianic, and impossible to be included in any of
the terms of Messianic intention more fully than
in this, the ‘Son of Man.’ Its meaning on His
lips goes further than even the fulness of Messianic
intention; so that it is not at once intelligible
(‘mystifying title’ of Weisse and others is not
justified), a feature it shares with Him whom it
designates and the hopes it unified. In it these
features find place: much contemporary Messianic
belief of a familiar kind ; less prominent ideas that
had before this time passed into the background ;
novel functions in Christ’s conception, such as the
life of the Son of Man as a life of service, and His
death as necessary to redeem men; and the com-
bination of all these in a new synthesis which was
not simply a mosaic of old data or gathering
up of the disparate details of earlier expectation,
but which was reached by the entrance of a new
thing that made the fulfilment infinitely more
glorious than the promise might have seemed to
warrant (cf. art. SON OF MAN).
Son of God (‘the Son,’ ‘My Son’). This title,
like the former, belongs to the OT writings, being
found in Gn 62, Ex 472, 2 5. 74, Ps 27 826 8977, Job 1®
387, Hos 110 111, and there applied in various con-
nexions: to offspring of the gods, to angels, to
judges, to Israel as a people serving Jehovah, to
individual Israelites, to the theocratic king, to the
Messiah (Dalman and others object to ‘Son of God’
as a Messianic title), The expression ‘Son of God’
[or ‘My Son’] occurs in the Synoptics 27 times,
and ‘the Son’ 9 times. In St. John ‘Son of God’
occurs 10 times and ‘the Son’ 14 times. Both
oceur in St. John’s First Epistle, in several of St.
Paul’s, in Hebrews, in Revelation. In the Gospels
they are applied to Christ by the Father, angels,
demoniaes, Himself (rarely, and only in St. John),
disciples (N.B.—St. Peter’s confession, Mt 16'),
elders, high priest, centurion. In determining its
meaning, we may exclude the idea of pagan influ-
ence. There is little probability that the cult of
the Roman emperors suggested either the word
or its idea, Its application to believers (Mt 9:35,
Lk 6, Eph 1°, Jn 12,1 Jn 8" 2, Ro 84) Phizy)
does not necessarily confine its import to the merely
human sphere. Its previous usage in the OT
could not fail to prepare the way for a connota-
tion of special relationship to God.
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
That the term contains Messianic reference is |
contested by few. In line with it are to be ex-
plained the testimony of the demoniacs (Mt 8” || Lk
441), and the heavenly voices at the Baptism and the
Transfiguration (Mt 3 175), Here, too, possibly
lies the reason for Christ’s use of the term in
debates with the Jewish leaders (Jn 318 5151. 8558.)
The Messianic sense is obvious in St. Peter’s confes-
sion (Mt 108) ; less so in that of the centurion (Mk
1553). The answer to the high priest’s question was
treated as blasphemy (Mt 26°"), because by it He
claimed more than Messiahship. St. John’s state-
ments enhance the feeling of the Synoptists. He
points clearly to Christ’s use of the term and in
the solitary sense. He is careful in his use of
names, and would hardly put into Christ’s mouth
a self-designation without some warrant of sanc-
tion from His personal usage. But the Synoptists |
are not without traces of the same clearness. In
Mt 22-46 Mk 12%-37, Lk 20!!-4, the inference is
inevitable that the Messiah is the son of One
more exalted than David.
What meaning did Christ attach to the term?
The above passage is significant. He is not deny- |
ing Davidiec descent. He attirms it (see on the
other side Wellhausen, Evangel. Marci). By His |
descent from David He satisfies one condition ex- |
pected in the Messiah. That fact, however, does |
not preclude Him from satisfying further condi-
tions not included in the Messianic prophecy,
evincing a power in Him which points to another
and higher origin. This further scope in His filial
relation is intimated in such passages as Mt 1157
Peek 10", ΜῈ 9: Mk 44, Lk 8, Jn 835: % 1510
4% etc.). He taught the disciples to call God ‘ our
Father,’ and called God His own Father in a special |
sense. He asserts that He alone adequately reveals
and knows God. He suggests a special sonship in
the parable of the Wicked Husbandman (Mk 12°).
The double strain is present in His consciousness.
He is Son in the Messianic sense. He is also Son
in a Divine sense: of absolute oneness with the
Father. He has the mission of the former with
its dignity: He has the infallible knowledge with
perfect obedience of the latter. Both features
emerge in the Synoptics as in the Fourth Gospel.
Both are not justly interpreted in such a sense |
as suggests a merely ethical relation to God, a
relation which others may actually possess or are
destined to attain. In them there is the basis of
the ethical but of the essential as well. The Son-
ship of Christ is human and historical yet solitary
and transcendent.
St. Paul corroborates the Evangelic positions.
The earlier Epistles contain a large amount of
teaching as to the Person of Christ. We have
lucid references to the Sonship: 1 ‘Th 1°, Ro 85: *,
ΒΕ ho 14, 2 Co 1, Gal 2%, Eph 415, Ro 1°,
Gal 1'° 44, where, through the position assigned to
Him on the one hand, and on the other the special
Spirit dwelling in Him, equality with God is as-
serted and Divine functions attributed. In one
passage, 2 Th 2, Christ, while not named ‘Son,’
is regarded in His capacity as the opponent of
Antichrist as a consubstantial representative of
God. This idea in another context we have in
Col 13-15, He 12-8 3? ete.
A survey of the texts reveals a complex concep-
tion, including (1) a Messianic predicate asserting
the place of Christ as the complete antitype of
the theocratic king ; (2) an ethical identity in the
realization of Divine holiness in a stainless life ;
(3) a spiritual unity revealing itself in a perfect har-
mony with the mind of God and a perfect obedience
to His will, which were as much innate properties of
His personality as achievements of His moral self.
In addition, the conviction of His pre-existent glory *
* See art. PRE-EXISTENCE.
DIVINITY OF CHRIST 477
and of His cosmic agency necessitates (1) a physical
descent from Deity by a creative act of the Divine
Spirit (see ANNUNCIATION and VIRGIN-BIRTH) ;
and (2) an equality of essence in virtue of which
Divine acts and qualities are ascribed to Him.
Cf., further, art. SON OF GoD.
Christ (‘the Christ’), King of the Jews, Lord,
may all be taken together. ‘Christ’ is the Greek
equivalent of Messiah. Both words signify ‘the
Anointed.’ While applied in the OT to prophets
(Ps 105”, 1 Καὶ 19:6) and high priests (Zee 414), the
name is specially identified with the kings, from
the passage (Ps 2°) implying that they were under
the special protection of Jehovah, and exercised
righteous government. Later, when Israel had
come under Gentile rule, the idea entered into the
name that the Messiah would overthrow the secular
might and liberate the people, 1.6. be at once the
| Saviour of the faithful and the Prince or King of
the saved. In the NT the name is accorded to
Jesus everywhere. It is practically His surname,
| a circumstance remarkable when it is remembered
that He forbade its use in His earthly life. He is
greeted also as ‘ King’ and as ‘Son of David,’ re-
cognitions of Him as Messiah. That He Himself
accepted the role appears from the following: (a)
His sanction of the terms ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Son
of God’ as applicable to Him ; (4) His consciousness
of being endowed with the Spirit of God (Lk 4!**),
a mark of the Messianie King (Is 11°) and of the
Servant of Jehovah (Is 42! 61!) ; (c) His self-witness
as to His being the Son and Heir of God (Ps 2) ; (@)
His assurance of the reference in Ps 110 to Himself,
where the King in Zion is in His view the Messiah ;
(6) He spoke of the building of the Temple in the
same sense in which the Messiah is the builder of
the Temple (ef. Mt 26%, Mk 1458 with Zee 615 1%) ;
(f) He spoke of His kingdom and therefore Mes-
sianic rank ; (gy) He described Himself as Judge of
the world—a Messianic function; (A) He com-
mended St. Peter’s confession (Mt 1617); (7) He
acknowledged His Messiahship before His judges
(both Sanhedrin and Pilate); (7) He was put to
death as ‘King of the Jews.’ Messiahship, it has
been said, is not Divinity (Ottley, art. ‘ Incarna-
tion’ in Hastings’ DB). ‘True, but Messiahship as
enriched by Christ is. The new features with
which He fulfilled the old- conception, suffering
and resurrection, brought it as near Divinity as
was possible for the Hebrew mind. In them was
concentrated the work of salvation, always as-
signed in OT to Jehovah Himself, in the NT
always and in all its parts assigned to Christ.
The step is but a short one from the unhesitating
acknowledgment of the Divinity of Christ’s work
to that of the Divinity of His natere.
The step is taken when He is called Lord.
Christ refers to Himself as ‘your Lord’ (Mt 24%).
There is evidence of growth in the meaning of
Lordship in NT usage. Resch has shown that
the name was interchangeable in instances with
‘Master’ and ‘Rabbi.’ Between that stage and
the view of the Epistles that Christ is Lord over
Nature, the Universe, the Church (Col 11°38, Ph
210 ete.), there is a wide gulf. The transition
| was probably effected in Hellenistic circles, and
aided by the use of ‘Lord’ as a title of the Roman
Emperor and associated with the divine honours
paid to him.
The Second Adam (the Man from Heayen) is a
designation peculiar to St. Paul. In idea it is
more speculative than the foregoing. The impulse
to its construction is to be found in the Apostle’s
conversion through the glorified appearance of the
Risen Christ on the way to Damascus. On the
ground of that experience he contrasts men, as he
tinds them, subject to sin and death, and this man
exalted over both (1 Co 15%, Ro 51). The
478 DIVINITY OF CHRIST
religious and moral destinies of the human race
are traced to the action of two typical men, the
first Adam, ‘a living soul,’ and the second Adam,
‘a quickening spirit.’ In so thinking, he gives an
original turn to his Messianic views. The ordinary
Messianic hopes of his nation he shares. He 15
acquainted also with the tradition of the life and
teachings of Christ. But neither his intellect nor
his conscience, endued with fresh vision and power
by Christ risen, could rest satisfied with those.
He departs from them, but not to supersede, rather
to develop. He regards Christ as the foretold of
the prophets (Ro 1°), His ministry as a manifesta-
tion of the righteousness of God (3?!), His death
and resurrection as the fulfilment of foreshadow-
ings in the OT Scriptures (1 Co 15* 4). He shares
with the Synoptists and Acts the position that
Christ is the Saviour and bringer-in of the king-
dom of righteousness; with them he applies to
Christ the names ‘Son of God,’ ‘Christ,’ ete., in
a sense of exceptional dignity. What they had
reached by a gradually increasing insight he won
by the vision (Gal 116), and from the point of view
of his spiritual intuition he reads the Person of
Christ. What he had seen colours all his thought,
which is essentially a Christology centring in the
idea of ‘the Lord of Glory.’ The term signified,
of Christ’s work, relief from the oppression and
burden of sin and the law and death, with hope of
regeneration for himself and all men; it signified,
of Christ’s Person, that He was Spirit (2 Co 3!) ;
man, ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ but ‘the man
from heaven’ whom the heavenly principle made
perfect (651), pre-existent (Ro 8°, 1 Co 10', Gal 4%)
and ‘head of every man’ (1 Co 11%), human nature
in its archetypal form, particularly in creation
(86 ete.). That He of whom all this was affirmed
was not conceived to be an ordinary human per-
sonality in His intimate nature, goes without say-
ing. Taken in conjunction with other terms used,
the ‘Lord of Glory’ declares Divinity. In the
later) Epistles; “Eph, “Col. ΒΗ ΠΣ ΤΠ othe
Divinity is explained in the same directions with
greater precision and fulness, and exemplified in
fresh relations.
The fact that these writings contain a more developed Chris-
tology than that of the undisputed Epistles has been made a
cround for discrediting them. But without good reason. The
later thought is in organic line with the earlier ; both fix atten-
tion on what Christ did and does, and not on what He taught ;
both rise to the thought of the glorified Christ through the
work of Christ on earth. The later illustrates and emphasizes
rather than increases the heavenly dignity of Christ, assigning
an increment of function rather than of rank (cf. Lightfoot,
Col. p. 120).
In the Ep. to the Hebrews there is a remarkable
type of doctrine which has not yet been defini-
tively located. It has very little in common with
the NT writings generally, or even with the
Pauline. Its conception of Christ’s Person is
characterized by significant differences in sub-
stance and expression. After a prologue (almost
in the manner of the Fourth Gospel and the Apo-
calypse, which looks like a summary of previous
thought) it proceeds to its main thesis, the superi-
ority of the New Covenant over the Old. In the
first seven chapters Christ is presented as the Son,
the Revealer, and the King-Priest. As the Son,
He has been prepared for in Israel (11), has par-
ticipated in the creation and is its consummation
(1°), is the manifestation of the Father’s glory as
its effulgence (ἀπαύγασμα), and the expression of
the Divine essence (ὑπόστασις) as its embodiment
χαρακτήρ) (1), and is now at the Father’s right
hand. As the Revealer, He is superior to angels
and Moses; while yet a ‘partaker of flesh and
blood’ (915), wherein He has done away with sin
and death, establishing and vindicating His glory
by His sufferings. As the King-Priest He realizes
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
in perfection the qualifications of the priesthood
imperfectly met in the OT system. In his exegesis
the author applies to Christ two series of OT texts,
the one having in view in their original meaning the
Messiah (15, ef. Ps 27; 1&9, cf. Ps 4578), the other
relating to (06 (15. Οἱ: ἘΞ ΟΠ 7 1105 ich ΕΠ ΠΡ ΣΡ ΣΡ
All three aspects point to such pre-eminence of
Christ as makes Him incomparable with men, to
be equalled with God alone. It is at the same
time a pre-eminence appropriated in His human
experience, made His own by obedience—a point
insisted on. These two form the idea of Christ:
He is God who by a Divine Incarnation fulfils
Himself in man; and He is man who by a human
faith and endurance realizes himself in God. If
the terminology is less Hebraic than in St. Paul or
the Synoptists, the motive is the same, viz. to
express in the terms available the new contrasts
and special aspects of Christ’s Person impressed on
the author’s mind ly his independent experience
of Christ.
The Logos (‘the Word’) is the term distinctive
of Sts John! πὶ 1111} dn 11 πεν 19.) Ἰππ
introduced in a way which indicates that it was
familiar to the writer and his readers. Asa term
it is traceable in both Palestinian and Alexandrian
thought. Its idea is Hebraic not Philonian, and
to be taken in connexion with ‘the Only-begotten.’
It is no impersonal abstract Idea. The Logos is,
as in the Targums, personal and active as the
equivalent of God manifesting Himself (i Jn 1°).
He is an historical human life (Jn 114, 1 Jn 17°), a
fact not to be minimized. Yet His coming within
the conditions of humanity was the coming of One
who had been pre-existent with God in and from
the beginning (1! 3'*-*! 6®), sharing in the life of
God and in the Divine acts of creation and pre-
servation, and operative in previous history as an
illuminating and quickening potency in the hearts
of the righteous (1* * ® 12 10! 1153), Complementary
is the thought of the Apocalypse of His eternity or
semi-eternity in nature, the Alpha and Omega,
and in redemptive activity—‘ Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world,’ and of the perfect and
perpetual adoration accorded to Him with God in
heaven. The recital of the work of the Logos, so
brief, covering the vastest realms, cosmic, historical,
personal, in the most summary space, is majestic.
The absence of any line of intermediate beings
between God and man is notable. The identifica-
tion of the Word with God (θεός) is deliberate.
The description gives no plausibility to the view
that here we have a category taken from philo-
sophy and applied loosely to the facts. There is
nothing in the Synoptic representation of the
human character and consciousness of Christ which
unfits it or renders it inadequate for the Legos
conception ; equally there is nothing in the Logos
conceived as becoming incarnate in the man Jesus
which contradicts or impairs the reality or the
completeness of His humanity as portrayed in the
Synopties.
The two are adequate and congruous to each
other. They are also necessary to each other,
each being a torso without the other. The source
of the doctrine was the actual experience of the
author, but it is the experience of a mind of pro-
found spirituality and deveut idealism. He gives
the impression of having been determined in the
particular cast he gives his doctrine by contem-
porary circumstances. A specific methed is ap-
parent. It is not that he seeks to prove that
‘ Jesus is the Christ, the Son of Ged’ (Jn 20") ; it
is the special manner of his proof that differen-
tiates his record, and above all the specially in-
tense feeling towards Christ that pervades it,
characteristics that have led some to assert that
he sees Christ as primarily Divine and less human
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
than the Synoptists see Him. It is truer to say
that he sees Christ both as more Divine and more
human than the Synoptists; driven beyond them
by deepened experience of Christ on the one hand,
and that richer reflexion on the other hand to
which he was incited by the increasing Gnostic
licence of the age. (Gnosticism was a subtler foe
than current Messianism. Its sophisms could be
met only by a simpler and profounder—simpler
because profounder—truth. The Fourth Gospel
gives that truth. It attempts a portrait of Christ
corresponding to the most intimate and overwhelm-
ing sense of His power conceivable, at once wholly
revealing God, and the Divine revelation of the
whole nature, life, and destiny of man. Hence to
the historian it is an enigma, to the devout a
poem. Its outline is simple and free because so
broad and high. Its structure is less of the his-
toric than of the spiritual sense. The test of its
genuineness, like that of art, is not in its technique
but in the dim and powerful feeling of infinite
meaning it throws upon the reader. It is in conse-
quence the most fruitful of all the sources of subse-
quent thought.
3. Divine properties attributed to Christ.—We
may note, to begin with, the ascription to Christ
of what had been ascribed by OT prophets to
Jehovah (cf. Ps 459. with He 1°°; Is 749° with
Mt 12; Jer 935. [where the ‘Branch of David’
is called the ‘Lord our righteousness ’] 331° with
the NT term ‘Root of David’ applied to Christ ;
Mal 31, where the messenger about to come to his
own temple is called ‘ Lord,’ with Mk 1°, Lk 1").
Again, the tempting of Jehovah (Nu 14? 915: ὅ, Ps
95°) is the tempting of Christ (1 Co 105). In He
110. 11 what is attributed to Jehovah in Ps 1028 is |
attributed to Christ. In Jn 12*: 41 it is asserted
that the language of Isaiah (6% 1°) concerning
Jehovah refers to Christ. Is 45°, compared with
Ro 14-4, shows that the judgment-seat of God is
that of Christ. From J] 9295 and Ro 10% the name
of Jehovah is the name of Christ.
More impressive are the references to Christ’s
participation in Divine aftributes. He has self-
existence like the Father (Jn 5*°), and therefore
His life is eternal (Jn 14 11” 145, 1 Jn 1" 5": 1°).
He has pre-existence ; cf. the Apostolic testimony
(He 73, Rev 18 9918) with Christ’s (Jn 8585 177. He
cannot yield to death or see corruption (Resurrec-
tion narratives, also Jn 10, Ro 14, He 715, Jn 11”,
Ac 13*7 277), He will come again (Jn 14**, Ae 1",
1 Co 113 ete.), He gives life to others (Jn 5° 51 6%,
Ph 311), He has all power (Mt 18:8, Rev 18, Jn
5, He 1°, Ph 2°), including power over nature and
man (miracles and healings, ef. Lk 6! 8%, Mt 9°,
also Ro 81°28), a power He can communicate to
disciples (Ac 953: 816 41°), St. Paul attributes to
Him the Divine plenitude (Col 2°). He has super-
human knowledge of God and superhuman insight
into man (Jn 16° 24, Rev 938), He is unchangeable
as Jehovah (cf. Ps 10276 with He 1"! 1", also 13°).
Of Divine acts asserted of Christ are the follow-
ing :—Creation (Jn 13, Col 13°", He 1510); Pro-
vidence (He 1°, Jn 5, Col 117); Redemption (Ac
20°, Jn 131% 10-16 Mt 918. Eph 5°, passages too
numerous to be specified) ; Forgiveness of sins (Mt
9, Mk 910. Lk 5% etc.); Judgment (Jn 5% 2, Ac
171, Ro 1410. Mt 2531-46); Restitution of all things
(Ph 37, 1 Co 154-8). Finally, the whole atmo-
sphere of feeling and disposition towards Christ in
the NT is one of worship. He claims it, and His
disciples accord it. The faith given to God is given
to Him (Jn 14! ete.). Examples of doxologies are
ee ay 45) Rey 16 2 P 818 Rev 5%. The
honour of the Son equals that of the Father (Jn 5°,
Ph 2°10 He 18). The Blessing of God is invoked
from Christ not less. Distinctively Christian wor-
ship is a calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus
| the Logos Christology in the other.
DIVINITY OF CHRIST 479
Christ (1 Co 1%, Ac 9:5. Distinetively Christian
belief is the confession that Jesus is the Messiah,
or that He is the Son of God (Ro 10°, 1 Jn 4).
Baptism is into His name ( Ac 2* 81°), the Lord’s
Supper is significant of His Death and its specific
virtue, new life (1 Co 1015 11°),
A patient study of the texts cited in the two
preceding sections will set in relief several facts as
to Apostolic reflexion on Christ’s Person. The
beginnings lie unquestionably in the Messianic
hope and in Christ’s claim to be the Messiah. The
first proclamation of the gospel we have in the dis-
courses in Acts, the one burden of which is the
Messiahship of the Master. The Apostles there
speak out of an experience whose roots le in the
nation’s past, and which are renewed into fresh
growth by Christ. The proof they ofier is the evi-
dence of facts and of what the facts point to.
They detail three distinct orders of facts: the life
and works of Christ, the death on the Cross, the
resurrection and exaltation. They emphasize the
peculiar and wondrous power revealed in all three,
and especially in the last, in which they find the
key to the whole—the Risen Lord. Traces of
transcendental interest are not absent (Ac δ} 915: τὸ
102, 1 P 123 45 11-20, Ja 21 58-9 118-21), the percep-
tion of dignity and powers beyond the Messianic
attaching to Him. This type of thought is common
to St. Peter, St. James, St. Jude. It is a simple,
objective, practical presentation of Christ, yet
with features of its own so specifically new as to
make it impossible to identify it with the exist-
ing religious schools. The other writings base
themselves upon those beginnings, the Synoptics
most obviously. They give the facts with fulness
which are given in the Acts discourses in sum.
They show the process of the movement, of which
Acts gives the results. There are, however, im-
portant differences. The conviction of the higher
nature of Christ is more prominent ; it in fact per-
vades them; it is not imposed on their substance
as an after-thought or under the stress of polemical
tendency; it is part and parcel of the whole. Their
portraiture is the portraiture of One who is man
yet stands apart from men in character, and takes
the place of God in the heart. Of speculation there
isnosign. The growth of conviction is gradual,
indeed, but comes in natural course by contact
with facts. With the Synoptics we place the
Apocalypse. Speculative features appear in St.
Paul (earlier and later Epistles), the Fourth Gos-
pel, Epistle to Hebrews, in the doctrines of ‘the
Man from heaven,’ ‘the Second Adam,’ the Logos,
and the ‘ Revealer,’ and ‘High Priest of the New
Covenant’ respectively.
There is a wide cleavage of opinion on questions
as to the source and worth of the aforementioned
factors. Were they due to the influence of the
Hellenistic schools, or did they descend in the
Palestinian tradition? Are they alien accretions
to be cast aside, or are they of the essence of the
Christian message? Much ingenuity has been ex-
pended in trying to prove that the original facts
have been largely worked over in the Synoptic and
in the Pauline and Johannine doctrines.
In the former case, it is maintained, there was
a twofold process of adapting prophecy to suit the
facts of the life, and of adapting the facts of the
life to suit prophecy; in the case of the latter
the facts of the life are interpreted in the light of
some of the fundamental ideas of the Greek cults
and philosophy, taking on along with the forms
much of the substance of Greek religion. Thius
originated the scenery of hyper-physical events
that surrounds the life in the one instance, and..
ο Both, it is
alleged, changed the true character of the gospel,
and are entirely inappropriate to its inner spirit.
480 DIVINITY OF CHRIST
Such contentions have certainly not yet been made
good. They have nevertheless served to discover
deep affinities existing between Apostolic thought
and the higher mind of that age, affinities not
directly derived from each other. Considerations
are constantly increasing to vindicate the real
independence of the Apostolic mind, and its essen-
tial continuity with the fundamental religion of
the Hebrew race and the religious consciousness of
Jesus. It is not intrinsically different from them.
Its novel constituents are not alien; they do not
arrive from without, they are perceived within, as
the result of the life and teaching of the Founder
of their faith and still more as the effect of His
character. There is a freedom both in previous
Jewish religious ideas and in the religious con-
sciousness of Jesus which assured to them a vast
future vitally and organically related to them, to
which the above theory does scant justice, and
which suggests the warrant of truth to the Apos-
tolic developments.
IV. SUBSEQUENT DEVELGPMENT OF NT IDEAS. —
1. History of the doctrine.—The Logos idea became
the centre of a remarkable theological growth
which engrossed the intellectual energy of the
first five centuries. During that period the subtle
Greek mind left its mark so substantially on the
current forms of Christian belief as to render it
problematical how far the definitions of the great
Councils really embody the essence of the original
faith. The naturalness of the development is
acknowledged. Its necessity was created by cer-
tain obvious causes due to the historic character of
the Church, and its presence as a living organiza-
tion in the world. The age which witnessed the
dissolution of paganism and the triumph of new
ideals of thought and duty was one of missionary
zeal and mental anguish. The early propaganda
was extensive and intense. It had to confront the
corruption of pagan morals and the medley of
heathen beliefs. It had to justify its own novel
convictions. Its final purpose was practical: to
make men like Christ. A faithful delineation of
what He was and did became imperative; still
more a consistent conception of what made Him
what He was. The: Church offered a new life,
whose experiences were of profound interest, created
and sustained by Christ, to a world of almost
feverish intellectual curiosity. The mystery of
Christ which had revived Hebrew devotion began
to fascinate and excite the Gentile mind. Specu-
lation was stimulated, and increasing effort made
to bring the potential elements of Christ’s teaching
within the scope of men’s understanding. The
new world was at its best in reflexion, it yielded
to Christ only after understanding Him.
Something to be understood there was. The
whole process is intelligible only on the assumption
of the unhesitating acceptance of belief in Christ’s
higher nature. The problem to the Jews had been,
Is this rabbi more than the Messiah? The problem
to the Hellenic world now was, Is this Word more
than our λόγος Ὁ and before the problem was solved
to its satisfaction, Greek thought passed through
an experience as recreative and revolutionary as
Jewish aspiration had done in the Apostolic age.
The answer, further, preserved the best ideal of
classical culture, and translated it into a con-
stituent treasure of the Christian consciousness.
The result was the conquest of the older conceptions
of deity, whether of prophets or philosophers, by a
new conception, a monotheism identical with no
previous form, the richest hitherto reached, and
one which eventually proved capable of imparting
a spiritual unity to men of vastly more educative
value than any system of organized culture before
or since.
(a) Patristie age.—At first (ap to A.D. 300) the
DIVINITY ‘OF CHRIST
process is slow and uncongenial. There are parties
of practical outlook only and others of conservative
instinct which fail to comprehend the new situa-
tion. But in the better representatives of the
Christian movement there is a readier courage and
a more vigorous intellect. They manifest, indeed,
no lapse trom Apostolic attainments. The desire
to keep to what is primitive is with them, as with
the others, passionate, but in no narrow spirit.
They are eager to search into the implications of
their doctrine. But they plainly exhibit a want of
equipment for the task. They are always vague,
often conflicting. A clear theory cannot be gained
from their writings. Both facts, the existence of
sects which refused to theorize and the uncertain-
ties of those who did, are alleged by some historians
as a ground for denying to that age any assured
belief in Christ’s Divinity. The material for
judgment is not too abundant, but there are cer-
tain guiding facts. Christ is everywhere wor-
shipped as God. ΟἿ, Pliny’s well-known letter to
Trajan ; the Vesper hymn of the Eastern Church,
the Gloria in Exacelsis, the Tersanctus, all in use
in the 2nd century. Lucian’s satire betrays a
series of characteristic traits of Christians, in-
cluding the worship of ‘the crucified sophist.’
There is the witness of the martyrs who preferred
death to replacing Christ by the Emperor in their
adoration. The baptismal professions of the period,
too, maintain unimpaired the NT practice of com-
bining the Son with the Father and Spirit. We
distinguish between the popular belief embodied
in the foregoing, and explanations of the belief in
face of the Greek mind. The former was general
—the latter were but tentative. The efforts of the
First Fathers and Apologists were neither pro-
found nor precise. They were directed towards
three aims, (1) to justify the worship of Christ, (2)
to define aright the relation of the Son to the
Father, and (3) to elucidate the operation of the
Word in creation. Their discussions have in view
three types of opposition, of which the first refused
to recognize Christ as the equal of God (Ebionism) ;
the second denied His perfect manhood (Docetism) ;
while the third, prepared for by Docetism and em-
bracing an embarrassing mixture of tendencies
known as Gnosticism, conceived amiss the relation
between God and the Universe. The Christian
thinkers were profoundly moved by this threefold
antagonism. ‘They keep their faith firm, but their
apologetics are uncertain and incautious. An
adequate philosophy is beyond their power. Let
it be remembered, however, that the views they
repel are also chaotic and crude: moreover, all of
them represent some sort of a faith in Christ as a
Being of a higher order. By the controversy con-
ducted by writers such as Barnabas, St. Ignatius,
Hermas, in particular, Church doctrine attains at
this stage a certain measure of self-consciousness,
especially over against Judaism, and to a slighter
extent over against the abstract notions of heathen
speculation.
Around the problems raised by the latter, thought
in the next period deepens immeasurably, the seeds
of all future discussion are planted, both of orthodox
and heretical opinion. A succession of writers,
interesting and copious in suggestion, including
such names as Justin Martyr, Irenzeus, Tertullian,
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, develop the Chris-
tian positions in various directions with dialectical
skill and considerable spiritual insight: (1) the
nature of our knowledge of God as relative and our
knowledge of the nature of God as wholly separate
from the created world, spiritual and immaterial ;
(2) our knowledge of the nature of the Logos as
immanent in the Divine nature and expressed in
the world of created things, as eternal and mani-
fest in time; (3) our knowledge of the identity of
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
the Son with the Father as one in essence as in
will, related by generation, and of the identity of
the Son with the human race as its ‘recapitula-
tion’ or archetype, leading to aftirmations of a
real Fatherhood in the Godhead and the conception
of the Divine Unity as a life of moral relationships.
The stress of the argument came to concentrate
itself in the third of these points, against the
Adoptionists on the one hand, who secured the
unity of God by confining Christ within the limits
of humanity, and against the Sabellians on the
other hand, who secured it by treating the dis-
tinctions of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as simply
modes of the one God. By the beginning of the
4th cent. this long interior process of conflicting
reflexion was ready for a final issue.
It came in the Arian disputes, which for a century
—to A.D. 451—filled the Christian world and passed
through several phases. Arius was incited to
action by the teaching of Alexander the bishop of
Alexandria, who taught the eternal generation of
the Son (‘there never was a time when He was
not’). He maintained that as a father must exist
before his ‘son, therefore the Son of God did not
exist eternally with the Father; that not being
eternal He was created, but before time began ;
that being created, He is in all things unlike the
Father. ‘The Council of Nicsea (A.D. 325), con-
vened by the Emperor for the settlement of peace,
decided against Arianism, and defined the authori-
tative doctrine to be that the Son is ‘of one sub-
stance’ (ousia) with the Father; that He was
‘begotten, not made,’ that ‘there never was a time
when He was not,’ that ‘He was not created.’
‘The Nicene Creed was established largely by the
brilliant advocacy of Athanasius, subsequently
bishop of Alexandria. It was a signal triumph in
favour of the essential Divinity of Christ as distinct
from a merely moral likeness to God. ‘There can
be little doubt that Arian contentions propagated
themselves over a wide area; and that partly
through the ability of the Arian leaders to gather
into association with themselves much floating
dissatisfaction with the deeper currents discernible
and now becoming dominant, and partly by the aid
of political and secular methods. It is unques-
tionably the case, however, that the Arian position
had a vitality of its own which the Athanasian
dogmatics never wholly quenched, and which has
burst out again and again in subsequent thought.
It is the natural standpoint of all minds that, in
seeking to appreciate Christ, start from the idea of
God rather than the fact of Christ; its main
interest is not religious but theistic, a theoretical
deduction, not the statement of an inner experience.
Athanasius met it on the basis of that Christian
experience which initiated the problem, and from
the beginning had determined its development.
His instinct was justified; for although the Arian
agitation protracted itself all through the 4th cent.,
it was gradually deserted by the more religious
adherents, whom the Athanasian divines took pains
to conciliate by removing false impressions, by
deepening their thought, and by popularizing it
with illustrations.
The second great Council, that of Constantinople
(A.D. 381), saw practically the death of Arianism.
It reaffirmed the Nicene dogmas against various
novelties, and especially that offshoot of Arianism
which denied the Divinity of the Holy Ghost
(Macedonians). The third Council, at Ephesus
(in 431), and the fourth, at Chalcedon (in 451),
dealt with other three consequences of Arian
doctrine, known as the Nestorian, Apollinarian,
and Eutychian heresies. ‘Fhe three have reference
to the constitution of Christ's Divine-human Person.
Jesus Christ being Divine in the Nicene sense, in
what sense could He also at the same time be
VOL. I1.—31
DIVINITY OF CHRIST 481
human? It had been determined that He was
primarily Divine; not a man like other men, who
became Divine, but the personal Logos of God
manifesting Himself through the human person
with whom He had entered into union. Accord-
ing to this view, He was necessarily two distinct
natures, to one of which it seemed impossible to
render all the significance of its proper functions,
viz. the human nature. In particular, Was His
knowledge limited? Had He a true body and a
reasonable soul? Was His Person single ?—pro-
blems which enlisted the most earnest interest of
Athanasius, the Gregorys, Cyril of Alexandria,
Leo of Rome, and, above all, Augustine of Hippo.
Briefly the answers were: (1) as to Christ’s human
knowledge, that omniscience belongs to the God-
head of the Word, but that the human mind which
the Word took was limited ; (2) as to Christ’s body,
that it was a true body, really born of Mary, and
passible in the experiences of life; (3) as to the
union of the Divine and human natures, that these
two were each perfect, without confusion, and
united in one Person; ‘although He be God and
man, He is not two but one Christ.’ In the words
of Chalcedon, He is—
‘One and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same
being perfect in Godhead and the same being perfect in man-
hood, truly God and truly man, the same having a rational
soul and a body, of one substance with the Father according to
the Godhead, and the same being of one substance with us ac-
cording to the manhood, in all things like unto us except sin
. one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknow-
ledged in two natures, without fusion, without change, without
division, without separation ; the difference of the two natures
having been in no wise taken away by the union, but rather the
property of each nature being preserved, and combining to form
one person and one hypostasis.’
Or, in the words of the last of the great Creeds,
the so-called ‘ Athanasian,’ which fairly represents
the theology of the 5th century :
‘He is not two, but one Christ; One; not by conversion of
the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God ;
One altogether ; not by confusion of substance, but by unity of
Person.’
(ὁ) Medieval period (5th to 15th centuries).—The
conciliar definitions remained undisturbed as the
official formulas of the Church right through the
Middle Ages up to the present ; and without im-
portant modification or advance. To account for
this prolonged acquiescence of the medizeval mind
is not at once simple, for the Nicene system is-both
uncritical and incomplete. The Church had: to
address herself to new and arduous tasks, chiefly
of organization. She had assumed the external
equipment of the Roman empire for practical effi-
ciency in educating the multitude of peoples
brought within her pale. Her paramount require-
ments were unity and a working belief. All avail-
able spiritual forces were ranged in a practical
order for a practical end. The effect on the doctrine
of Christ’s Person is observable in the following
results: (1) the less speculative and more practical
discussion of the older problems, especially those
concerned with the effect of the Incarnation on
Christ’s knowledge and will; (2) the consideration
of Christ’s Person in association with the soterio-
logical aspects of His Work; (3) the systematic
co-ordination of the several parts of Christological
science into a connected whole, and of the whole
with other doctrines such as those of God and the
Church ; (4) the more lucid realization of the nature
and principles of this doctrine in line with the
elaboration of the doctrine of transubstantiation
and the Mass; (5) the popular illustration of its
truth, mainly in its place as part of the Trini-
tarian conception, by analogies drawn from out-
ward nature, and still more from the human mind.
Two subsidiary streams are not to be omitted,
noteworthy because of their influence in helping to
discredit the methods of the Schoolmen and in pre-
482 DIVINITY OF ' CHRIST
‘paring for the Reformation; viz. (6) free and
fruitless inquiry into ‘quotlibeta,’ 1.6. questions
arbitrarily suggested and only remotely affecting
religious interests or fundamental truth; and (7)
the rise of mystical and pietist communities cherish-
ing an emotional, sometimes sentimental, contem-
plation of the Saviour in His purely human qualities.
Scholasticism has often been eriticised; but it
taught the thoughtful theologian at least one great
lesson, that it is unsafe to develop the theological
consequences of any doctrine without continual
reference to the proportion of the whole. It eftec-
tually awakened also the more religious minds to
return for that reference to the primitive sources
in the Scriptures and the Fathers.
(ὁ) Modern (from Reformation era, 16th cent.,
onward). —The new spiritual experiences in which
the Reformation originated brought out into clearer
relief the disparity between the matter and the
method of the Scholastic disputations. A religious
Reason began to assert itself independently of the
Scholastic process. It gave the intellect a new
freedom to question the authority and relevancy
of the old; one of whose first utterances expressed
dislike of further speculation as empty. It blessed
only those energies which made religion inward
and personal. As the previous centuries had
deepened the mind sufficiently to speak for itself,
so now the age was dawning which should so com-
pletely sanctify the moral nature as to make its
instincts supreme. In Luther pre-eminently, but
not less in Calvin, Zwingli, and others, the ethical
interpretation of spiritual facts takes rise. Hence
the immense importance ascribed to that act of
faith by which the individual soul connects itself
with Christ (justification by faith), in a union not
of intellect but of heart. Out of the experiences
of this inner union we reach the true knowledge of
‘Christ (and also of God). ‘The man now who so
knows Christ that Christ has taken away from him
all his sin, death and devil, freely through His
suffering, he has truly recognized Christ as the Son
of God’ (Luther, Werke, xvii. 265). And when we
thus know Christ, we ‘let go utterly all thoughts
and speculations concerning the Divine Majesty
and Glory, and hang and cling to the humanity of
Christ . . . and 1 learn thus through Him to know
the Father. Thus arises such a light and know-
ledge within me that I know certainly what God is
andiwhates) His mind? i(xsxeen) 1601} 1 15. inethe
experience of redemption that we know the Re-
deemer. Modern religious theory has been one
long endeavour to appropriate this position. It
‘has sought to explicate its principles (1) by a more
radical and penetrating criticism of the past; (2)
by the application to the problems of Christian
theism of other categories than that of the Nicene
ousia or substance ; (3) in particular by insistence
on moral personality as the determining principle
of theological construction.
When we look back at this great historical
development, it is impossible not to be struck by
the parallel between the age of early Christianity,
the beginnings of the Middle Ages, and the Re-
formation. The bankruptey of the pagan world
was not its defect but its merit. It had generated
a universal need and a universal mode of feeling
which were incompatible with the highest culture
which had generated them, but which were destined
ultimately to combine that culture itself with
something beyond, viz. the new Christian experi-
ence. The so-called Dark Ages were brought on
by ἃ new possibility and a new necessity, the
necessity of disciplining the mass of believers to
appreciate that combination and apprehend its
elements of culture and faith,—a discipline which,
when it had accomplished its ends, left its subjects
with a deeper experience than ever, and a more
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
positive possession of its substance. The first
Reformers were clear on the central fact of this
new experience. Their successors were forced by
the exigencies of their ecclesiastical situation to
limit themselves to simple defence of the fact.
Later thinkers, with more freedom, and under the
impulse of vast movements of philosophy and
science, have gone on to unfold and organize its
content. There is much that is still obscure. But
we may venture to state these convictions, that
although (1) the analysis of the forces that have
entered into the development of Christian doctrine
in the past, popular at present, has by no means
vindicated beyond appeal its own presuppositions ;
nor (2) has it yet been proved that the predominant
impulses of the modern spirit are sufficient ade-
quately to mould anew all the facts and truths of
the inherited faith ; yet (3) it is indubitable that
broad and abiding foundations are being laid for a
system of religious thought at once expressive of
the religious ideals of the age, and consistent with
its historical and scientific temper. In elaborating
that system it is already clear that two of its
fundamental postulates must be these: (a) the prin-
ciple that Christian truth is not the creation ot the
human intellect, nor are the forces of human
reason and emotion sutlicient to explain it; and
(8) the principle of the absolute value of Christ’s
Person as the norm of all religious experience.
The Christological impulse is central. In the moral
personality of Christ, men are seeking better
answers to the old problems. The past answers
are not wrong; it 1s that they are not relevant.
And this because of the growth, not of science but
of conscience. The type of religious experience
and emotion has changed, the experience is deeper,
the emotion richer. The modern mind stands less
awe-struck, perhaps, before the Deity of Christ,
but it is more conscience-struck before the perfee-
tion of His human character, within the sacred
processes of which it wistfully looks for the mystery
of His Divinity and the secret of God.
2. Denial of the doctrine of Christ's Divinity.—
(a) History and motive.—Christianity has in all
the stages of its evolution been accompanied by
rationalistic hesitation. Based on experience, it
has never commended itself to the reason un-
enriched by that experience. A strong under-
current of antagonism runs through the centuries.
It is possible to indicate special periods when the
antagonism becomes more pronounced. Such
periods will be found, on the whole, coincident
with the points of transition in the advance of the
doctrine. It may well be, as modern Unitarians
argue, that Christ was regarded at first as a man
simply, ‘a prophet mighty in deed and word’
(Lk 24"); but their contention that this is the
point of view of the NT cannot be sustained. The
Epistles, even the earliest, start from the Risen
Christ, and the Gospel narratives are not to be
comprehended apart from the initial experience of
His higher dignity. Both sets of books owe their
origin to the new sense as to His Person created
by the new sense of power with which He pos-
sessed them. Their ostensible design is to set
Him forth as ‘Christ,’ or ‘Lord,’ or ‘Saviour,’ or
‘Word,’ ete., 7.e. as something more than man, to
whom, as such, worship is paid. They show their
authors busied with probiems as to the constitu-
tion of His Person. Those problems emerged from
the first, and among Jewish Christians who had to
make clear to themselves Christ’s true position if,
in His lordship over them, they were no longer
required strictly to follow the law of Moses, and
were now required to conceive of the transcendence
of God permitting fellowship with Him. But
those were problems which could never have
emerged at all unless from the conviction of His
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
suprahuman rank. The opposition, Ebionism, was
not so much concerned with denial of His superior
dignity as directed to affirm the supremacy of the
Father. Its protest was immensely strengthened
when the conflict with Gnostic theories necessitated
an alien apologetic with an unscriptura! termin-
ology, derived from Greek philosophy, both ob-
noxious (and probably bewildering) to the pious
Jew.
The second serious outburst of hostility was
occasioned by the Nicene theologians. In Ebionism
the Jewish temper found vent. In Arianism it
was the heathen intellect. Amid Gentile surround-
ings christological ideas had never ceased to grow.
Tradition, Scripture, experience, combined to
deepen the conviction of Christ’s Divinity, and to
enlarge the range of its problems. Hellenic ration-
alism confronted the Church at every point. It
could not tolerate the thought of two Gods; and it
had not yet grasped the unity of God as embracing
eternal distinctions facing inward on each other.
It revolted from an Incarnation in time and human
form. It therefore denied to the Son coequality
with the Father. Yet everything short of the full
deity it was ready to acknowledge. For the Arian
Christ is no mere man: He is much more than man,
only not God, but a kind of demi-god, the loftiest
of all creatures, to be imitated and worshipped.
The idea, from its wide acceptance in that age,
must have embodied certain prevalent mental ten-
dencies of the time. Its plausibility depends on
the idea of God which it conceives, viz. that of an
abstract, otiose Being, beyond interest in human
things. It is an idea as far removed from modern
modes as from the Gospel facts. It is more beset
with difficulty than the conception it opposed. In
later times it has been often revived, but never
effectively, and mainly in individual opinion.
The sincere emphasis laid on the proper Divinity
of Christ throughout the Middle Ages has been
continued in the Churches of the Reformation.
The opposition has been correspondingly sincere
and continuous. Its course manifests remarkable
variation. In the earlier stages it was determined
chietly by the common study of the Scriptures now
distributed to the multitudes. Almost every phase
of former heresy was reproduced, but without real
advance in thought or real influence on orthodox
opinion. Afterwards the special developments of
Reformed theology, notably in the doctrine of the
Atonement, created, both by natural evolution and
by reaction, the powerful contrary movement of
Socinianism. The Socinian argument, assuming
that the Infinite and the finite are exclusive of
each other, maintained the Incarnation to be im-
possible, rejected the pre-existence, resurrection,
and ascension of Christ, asserted the essential
moment of His person to be His human nature,
rendered free from sin by the Virgin-birth, and
free from ignorance by special endowments of
knowledge. Socinians did good service by bring-
ing into clear relief the Docetic elements in the
traditional doctrine, and in preparing for a deeper
appreciation of the humanity of Christ in the work
of salvation. The reverent recognition of this
last (finitum capax infiniti), that the human is
capable of bodying forth the essence of the Divine
nature as distinct from merely being the bearer of
the Divine attributes, is the greatest step that has
been taken since the Nicene definitions. It has
incited to a speculative ardour, and secured a place
for the application of scientific method, in dealing
with the contents of Christian thought, that are
rapidly working out its complete reorganization
and reconstruction. 'To discern and describe the
ideal unity of the higher spiritual life which will
exhibit the Divine-human principle of Christ’s
Person in its fulness, is the task of the modern
viction.
483
DIVORCE
Church. The spiritual potentialities of the human
mind are earnestly and perseveringly investigated.
It is a complex process, building as largely on
religious induction as on religious insight, and
sustained by a magnificent confidence in the native
powers of reason and conscience. But the same
forces which have impelled to new Christological
athrmation have infused new vigour into Christo-
logical doubt. The representatives of Unitarianism
have been active and influential. They stand for a
much more humanitarian view of Christ than either
Arians or Socinians. But their phrase, ‘the pure
humanity of Jesus,’ covers much diversity of con-
Some are almost Trinitarians, approach-
ing Christ on the Divine side, and affirming, in a
real if unorthodox sense, His pre-existence, unique-
ness, Sinlessness, and spiritual authority. Others
contemplate the human side, believe that He was
naturally born, and endowed with qualities and
gifts differing in degree and not in kind from those
which all men enjoy; that His character was a
growth, and that by degrees He rose out of tempta-
tion and error into the serene strength of a pure
and noble manhood; that He became a_provi-
dential teacher and leader of men to a higher
spiritual development. The Unitarian polemic
killed popular Calvinism ; in its higher forms it is
rich in ethical appeal.
(6) Failure. — Unitarianism has at all times
failed to lead. It has uniformly won a certain
measure of popularity by successfully representing
the dominant forces pulsating in the spirit of the
age. But it is by not being an average that a
man becomes a guide. Deniers of the Divinity
have flourished in times of utter confusion, when
whoever would attain some coherence of life and
thought must let drop much that is held in solu-
tion, and show the path of progress by manifest-
ing the direction of change. By this law Catholic
theology has stood; to representative insight it
has added prophetic foresight. The sense of its
insufficiency, when brought home, has only driven
it the deeper into the inner secrets of that experi-
ence which yielded its original impulse, and so it
has escaped becoming a prey to the narrower
reason and limited emotion of the Unitarian
schools. See also art. INCARNATION.
LITERATURE.—Besides the works mentioned in the body of the
article, (1) for the history of the doctrine the following are to be
consulted : Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ; Harnack,
Hist. of Dogma; A. Réville, Hist. of the Dogma of the Deity of
Jesus Christ ; Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines; Macarius, Théol.
dogmatique orthodoxe ; Hefele, Hist. of the Councils.
(2) For the dogmatic aspects of the subject the older manuals
of Systematic Theology are still of value, e.g. Shedd, Dogmatic
Theology ; Dorner, System of Christian Doctrine; Martensen,
Christian Dogmatics ; cf. also Wilberforce, Doctrine of the
Incarnation; Dale, Christian Doctrine; Gore, The Incarna-
tion; Strong, Manual of Theology; and, for a more popular
treatment, Liddon, Divinity of our Lord ; Eck, Incarnation.
Of recent standpoint are Nitzsch, Evangel. Dogmatik ; Clarke,
Outline of Christ. Theol. ; Denney, Studies in Theology ; Hodg-
son, Theologia Pectoris; Bovon, Dogmatique Chrétienne, and
Théol. du NT; Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology ; Powell,
Principle of the Incarnation; H. Holtzmann, Lehrb. der NT
Theologie.
(3) For the historical data of Christ’s ministry, works, teach-
ing, etc., see the numerous Lives of Christ, e.¢. by Weiss,
Beyschlag, Keim, Renan, O. Holtzmann, H. von Soden, Sanday,
Farrar, Stalker; G. Matheson, Studies in Portrait of Christ.
Shorter dissertations on particular points form a large litera-
ture. Of special interest are those which attempt to define the
primitive conception of Christ, such as Wrede’s Das Messias-
geheimniss in den Evangelien; Stanton’s Messiah; H. von
Soden’s Urchristl. Literaturgesch.; Pfleiderer’s The Early Chris-
tian Conception of Christ: Schmiedel’s Hauptprobleme der
Leben-Jesu Forschung ; Estlin Carpenter’s First Three Gospels ;
Mackintosh’s Natural History of the Christian Religion.
(4) On the problem of Christ’s Person for modern thought con-
sult such worksas Fairbairn’s Studies in the Life of Christ, Christ
in Modern Theology, and Philosophy of the Christian Religion ;
Adams Brown’s Essence of Christianity ; Losinsky’s War Jesus
Gott, Mensch, oder Ubermensch 3. Kalthoft’s Das Christusproblem;
Dykes in ExpT, Oct. 1905—Jan. 1906. A. S. MARTIN.
DIVORCE.—The teaching of Christ on this sub-
484 DIVORCE
ject in the earliest Gospel, that of St. Mark, is
clear and decisive. It is given in 10", The
Pharisees came to Him with the question, Is it
lawful for a husband to divorce a wife? The
Pharisees themselves could have had no doubt
upon the point thus broadly stated. Divorce was,
as they believed, sanctioned and legalized by Dt
24'-2, But they debated about the scope and
limits of divorce (cf. Bab. Gittin, 90a, where the
views of the Schools of Hillel and of Shammai
are given. The former allowed divorce for trivial
offences, the latter only for immoral conduct). In
utting the question to Christ, the Pharisees there-
eee had an ulterior object. ‘They came, says
St. Mark, ‘tempting him,’ knowing probably from
previous utterances of His that He would reply in
words which would seem directly to challenge the
Mosaic Law (ef. His criticism of the distinctions
between ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ meats, Mk 714-3),
Christ answers with the expected reference to the
Law, ‘What did Moses command?’ They state
the OT position : Moses sanctioned divorce. Notice
how nothing is said as to grounds or reasons for
divorcee. Christ at once makes His position clear.
The law upon this point was an accommodation to
a rude state of society. But a prior and higher
law is to be found in the Creation narrative, ‘ Male
and female he created them’ (Gn 1" LXX), ze.
God created the first pair of human beings of dif-
ferent sexes that they might be united in the mar-
riage bond. Further, it was afterwards said that
a man should leave his father and mother and
cleave to his wife, and that he and his wife should
be one flesh. In other words, married couples were
in respect of unity, as the first pair created by God,
destined for one another. The marriage bond,
therefore, which may be said to have been insti-
tuted by God Himself, must be from an ideal
standpoint indissoluble. ‘What God joined, let
not man sunder.’
In answer to a further question of His disciples,
the Lord enforces this solemn pronouncement. A
man who puts away his wife and marries another
commits adultery. A woman who puts away her
husband and marries another commits adultery.
Upon this point Christ’s teaching passes beyond
the ordinary conditions of Jewish society. No
woman could divorce her husband by Jewish law.
Bat that is no reason why the Lord should not
have expressed Himself as Mk. records. There
were exceptional cases of divorcee by women in
Palestine (οἵ. Salome, Jos. Ant. XV. vii. 10: ‘She
sent him [Costobar] a bill of divorce, and dissolved
her marriage with him, though this was against the
Jewish laws’). And there is no reason why He
may not have been acquainted with the πον τοῖν
of divorce by women in the West, or why, even if
He had not this in view, He may not have wished
to emphasize His point by stating the wrongfulness
of divorcee, on either side, of the marriage bond.
With this earliest record of Christ’s teaching the
fragment in the Third Gospel (Lk 1618) is in agree-
ment: ‘Every one who puts away his wife and
marries another commits adultery, and he who
marries a divorced woman commits adultery.’
That is to say, the marriage bond is indissoluble.
The husband who divorces his wife and remarries
commits adultery. And the man who marries a
divorced wife commits adultery, because she is
ideally the wife of her still living (first) husband.
In the First Gospel, however, we find this plain
and unambiguous teaching, that divorce is incon-
ceivable from an ideal standpoint, modified in a
very remarkable way. In Mt 5*? occurs a saying
parallel in substanee to Lk 16'8, but with the
notable addition of the words, ‘ except for the sake
of unchastity ᾿ (παρεκτὸς λύγου πορνείας). Thus modi-
fied, the Lord’s teaching becomes similar to that of
DIVORCE
the stricter school of Jewish interpreters. The
supposed sanction of divorce in Dt 24! 5 is practi-
cally reaffirmed, the clause 133 nny, which formed
the point at issue in the Jewish schools, being inter-
preted or paraphrased as παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας, by
which is probably meant any act of illicit sexual
intercourse. In other words, Christ here assumes
that divorce must follow adultery, and what
He is here prohibiting is not such divorce, which
He assumes as necessary, but divorce and conse-
quent remarriage on any other grounds. It might
further be argued that the words παρεκτὸς λόγου
πορνείας affect only the first clause, and that re-
marriage after divorce even on the ground of
adultery is here prohibited. But if this were in-
tended, it would surely have been explicitly ex-
pressed and not left to be inferred. And such
teaching would seem to be illogical. Because, if
adultery be held to have broken the marriage tie
so effectually as to justify divorce, it must surely
be held to leave the offended husband free to con-
tract a new tie.
In view, therefore, of Mk 10!?2 and Lk 1618, it
must appear that Mt 5* places the teaching of
Christ in a new light. So far as Lk. is concerned,
we might, with some difficulty, suppose that the
exception ‘save for adultery’ was assumed as a
matter so obvious that it needed no explicit ex-
pression. But in view of the disputes in the Jewish
Schools, this is very unlikely. And Mk 101-13, with
its criticism of the alleged Mosaic sanction of
divorce, leaves no room for doubt that on that
oceasion at least Christ-pronounced marriage to be
a divinely instituted ordinance which should under
no circumstances be broken by divorce. It would
not, of course, be difficult to suppose that on other
occasions the Lord Himself maedified His teaching.
We might suppose that He taught His disciples
that, whilst from an ideal standpoint, marriage, for
all who wished to discern and to obey the guidance
of the Divine will in life, ought to be an indissoluble
bond, yet, human nature and society being what
they are, divorce was a necessary and expedient
consequence of the sin of adultery. But a careful
comparison of Mt 5 with Mk 10 and Lk 16 irre-
sistibly suggests the conclusion that the exception
in Mt. is due not to Christ Himself, but to the
Evangelist, or to the atmosphere of thought which
he represents, modifying Christ’s words to bring
them into accordance with the necessities of life.
This conclusion seems to be confirmed when we
compare Mt 19 with Mk 1011, It is on many
grounds clear that the editor of the First Gospel is
here, as elsewhere, re-editing St. Mark (see Haxpos.
Times, Oct. 1903, p. 45, and ‘St. Matthew’ in the
Internat. Crit. Com.). Contrast with the logical
and consistent argument of Mk. stated above, the
account of the First Gospel. The Pharisees are
represented as inquiring, “ Is it lawful for a man to
put away a wife on any pretext?’ Christ answers,
as in Mk., that marriage from an ideal standpoint
is indissoluble. The Pharisees appeal to the Law
against this judgment. In reply we should expect
the Lord, as in Mk., to state the accommodating
and secondary character of the legal sanction of
divorce, and to reaffirm the sanctity of marriage.
But instead He is represented as affirming that
πορνεία constitutes an exception. Thus He tacitly
takes sides with the severer school of interpretation
of Dt 24, and acknowledges the permanent validity
of that Law thus interpreted in a strict sense, which
immediately before He had criticised as an accom-
modation to a rude state of social life. This incon-
sistency shows that Mk. is here original, and that
κατὰ πᾶσαν αἰτίαν and μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ are insertions
by the editor of Mt. into Mk.’s narratives, and
confirms the otherwise probable conclusion that
παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας in 5* is an insertion into the
ἐν
DOCTOR
traditional saying more accurately preserved in
Lk 16. The motive of these insertions can only be
conjectured. But, in view of other features of the
First Gospel, it is probable that the editor was a
Jewish Christian who has here Judaized Christ’s
teaching. Just as he has so arranged 5!*2 as to
represent Christ’s attitude to the Law to be that
of the Rabbinical Jews, who regarded every letter
of the Law as permanently valid, so here he has so
shaped Christ’s teaching about divorce as to make
it consonant with the permanent authority of the
Pentateuch, and harmonious with the stricter
school of Jewish theologians. To the same strain
in the editor’s character, the same Jewish-Christian
jealousy for the honour of the Law, and for the
privileges of the Jewish people, may perhaps be
ascribed the emphasis placed on the prominence of
St. Peter (10? πρῶτος, 142%! 1518 1617-19 1724-27 1951)
and the preservation of such sayings as 10% ®& %,
And to the same source may perhaps be attributed
the Judaizing of the Lord’s language in such ex-
pressions as ‘the kingdom of the heavens,’ and the
‘Father who is in the heavens.’ See, also, artt.
ADULTERY and MARRIAGE.
LiteRATURE.—Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Marriage’; Dykes, Mani-
festo of the King, 255 ff.; Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics,
410 ff.; Expositor, iv. vii. [1893] 294. W.C. ALLEN.
DOCTOR.—The English versions have been very
inconsistent in the translation of διδάσκαλος, νομο-
διδάσκαλος, ῥαββεί, νομικός. They have generally
followed Wyclif, who used maister for διδάσκαλος,
and doctour only once (Lk 2%). In the American
RV ‘master’ and ‘doctor’ disappear as tr. of διδάσ-
kados, and ‘teacher’ is uniformly used. The AV
has ‘teacher’ only once in the Gospels (Jn 3?) out
of a very large number of instances of διδάσκαλος.
The English RV advances to only four uses of
‘teacher’ (Mt 238, Lk 916. Jn 332-10), νομοδιδάσκαλος
occurs only three times in the NT (Lk 5", Ac 5°,
1Ti 1’). In the last example AV has ‘teacher’
and in the other two ‘doctor of the law.’ Of
course, ‘doctor’ is simply Latin for ‘ teacher,’ but
the American RV would have done better to adopt
‘teacher of the law’ for νομοδιδάσκαλος also (Lk 6",
Ac 5"),
The chief English Versions translate the word διδάσκαλος
in Lk 246 as follows: Wyclif, doctowrs; Tindale, doctours;
Cranmer, doctowrs; Geneva, doctowrs; Rheims, doctors; AV,
doctors; RV, doctors; Noyes, teachers; Bible Union Revision,
teachers; American RV, teachers; Twentieth Century NT,
Teachers. νομοδιδασκαλος in Lk 517 and Ac 534 is translated
doctour of the lawe by Wyclif, who is followed with variations
in spelling by Tindale, Geneva, Rheims, AV and RV, American
RV.. The American Bible Union Revision has teacher of the law
in Lk 517 and Ac 5%4 also. Twentieth Century NT has J'eacher
of the Law.
It would seem that νομοδιδάσκαλος should be trans-
lated ‘teacher of the law,’ and διδάσκαλος ‘ teacher’
always. The Old English word ‘doctor’ now
often signifies a title. Pope’s phrase, ‘when
doctors disagree,’ referred to teachers. νομικός is
used once in Mt. (22*°) and eight times in Lk., and
is practically equivalent to νομοδιδάσκαλος. See
LABBI, MASTER, TEACHER, LAWYER.
A. T. ROBERTSON.
DOCTRINES.—On the subject of doctrines in
connexion with the Gospels but little light is shed
by etymology.
Two words occur which have been translated ‘doctrine ’—
διδασκαλία, and διδαχή. The former, which is by its form pro-
perly an adjective and denotes ‘of or belonging to a teacher’
(διδάσκαλος), is used of the subject-matter of his teaching, as
the analogous word, which is found in the NT only in the
neuter form εὐαγγέλιον, ‘that which pertains to an εὐάγγελο:,᾽
is used in the sense of ‘the yood news,’ ‘ the gospel.’ The
adjectival form διδασκάλιον, which in plur. in classical Greek
means a teacher’s pay, as εὐαγγέλιον means the reward given to a
messenger of good news, does not occur in the NT. The word
διδασκαλία, aS meaning that which pertains to ἃ διδάσκαλος, has
in the NT special reference to the authority of the teacher. It
is never used of our Lord’s teaching. and only seldom of that
DOCTRINES 485
of the Apostles. Further, it occurs in the Gospels only in those
passages (Mt 159, Mk 77) in which Jesus accuses the scribes of
“teaching for doctrines the commandments of men,’ and quotes
against them the Septuagint rendering of [5 291%,
Διδαχύή, the common word for the act of teaching or that
which is taught, occurs more frequently. It is used with refer-
ence to the teaching of Jesus in a general sense, as where the
people contrast His methods with those of the scribes (Mt 728,
Mk 122), and again of His preaching, as in connexion with the
parable of the Sower, where St Mark says (42), ‘And he taught
them many things in parables, and said unto them in his
doctrine.’ Here διδαχῆ, ‘doctrine,’ exactly corresponds to
ἐδίδασκεν, “he taught,’ and the phrase evidently means ‘in the
course of his teaching,’ or ‘in the course of his remarks.’
In the same general sense the word occurs again in Jn 1819,
according to which the high priest examined Jesus concerning
His disciples and ‘his doctrine.’ With reference to the subject-
matter of His teaching it occurs in the answer of Jesus to the
question of the Pharisees (Jn 719. 17), ‘How knoweth this man
letters (γράμματα), having never learned?’ The question refers
to learning as it was understood by the scribes, that is, as theo-
logical science, those methods of Biblical interpretation in
virtue of which they themselves were called scribes (ypxu-
eres), 1.e. professional theologians. The answer of Jesus is,
“My doctrine’ (ἡ ἐμὴ διδαχή) is not mine, but his that sent
me’; in connexion with which Alford observes, ‘Here only
does our Lord call His teaching διδαχή, as being now among
the διδάσκαλοι, the Rabbis, in the temple.’ Elsewhere it 15
applied to Christ’s teaching by the Evangelists themselves, in
whose case it is sufficiently explained by the general use of the
word with reference to teaching of any kind, and by the fact
that Jesus was regarded and addressed as Rabbi or Teacher, and
accepted the title. Itis, however, important to note that, except
where it is used in its most general sense, the word ‘ teaching’
(3:5%x%) occurs in connexion with the marked contrast which
all observed between the authoritative teaching of Jesus and
the instructions of the scribes, who slavishly adhered to
such doctrines and methods as were sanctioned only by Rab-
binical tradition, and laid emphasis upon trivial questions to
the neglect of the weightier matters of the Law (Mt 159 ||
Mk 77).
As regards the doctrines which Jesus taught in
His own unique and authoritative way, it must be
carefully borne in mind that He did not formulate
them in the manner of a systematic theologian.
They cannot therefore be rightly described as
‘doctrine’ in the technical sense of the word, and
still less as ‘dogma,’ as that was understood by
theologians of a later period; but rather as ‘ap-
ophthegms,’ to use the expression by which the
LXX rendered the words of Dt 322, where Moses
says of his teaching, ‘My doctrine shall drop as
the rain.’ There the Gr. word ἀπόφθεγμα, ‘a sen-
tentious saying,’ is made to represent the Heb. πρὸ
‘that which is received.’ This word ‘apophthegm,’
indeed, corresponds very nearly to the expression
Ta λόγια, ‘the sayings’ or ‘utterances’ of which
Papias speaks as forming the kernel of the Gospels,
and which, according to that writer, were taken
down by St. Mark as the amanuensis of St. Peter.
Such a term, moreover, would aptly apply to the
style of Christ’s doctrine, which, as Beyschlag
remarks (NZ Theol. i. 31), ‘is conditioned not
merely by a necessity of teaching, but rather
springs chiefly from the nature of the things to be
communicated. These are just the eternal truths,
the heavenly things in earthly speech, which can
be brought home to the popular understanding
only by pictorial forms. It 1s therefore the mother
speech of religion which Jesus uses.’>. As has been
well observed, Christ’s teaching has to do with His
own unique personality, with a Person much more
than with doctrine properly so called. Again te
quote the words of Beyschlag (op. cit. 1. 29), ‘ His
teaching is that in His appearance and active life
whieh is necessary to make that life intelligible
to us, and without which the Apostolic teaching
about Him would be only a sum of dogmatic
utterances which we could not comprehend and
whose truth we could not prove,—a result not a
little awkward for that view which contrasts ‘‘ the
teaching of Jesus” as Christianity proper with the
Apostolic ‘‘ teaching about Christ.”’ Taking due
account of these considerations, we may yet gather
from the sources at our disposal, the simple narra-
tives of the Synoptic Gospels and the more elabo-
rate narratives and discourses of the Gospel of
456
DOCTRINES
DOCTRINES
John, sufficient materials to enable us to piece
together a scheme of the doctrine of Jesus as He
taught it and as it was understood by His im-
mediate followers.
It appears most convenient to start, as has been
suggested by Weiss, with the doctrine of the Aing-
dom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God.
The former of these expressions is peculiar to the Gospel of
Matthew. The latter is more usual in the NT. Beyschlag sug-
gests that the former was that which was most favoured by our
Lord Himself (op. cit. i. 42). However that may be, it has for us
the special interest that, as Alford points out, it is common
among Rabbinical writers, a fact which seems to indicate that it
was admirably adapted to illustrate the connexion between the
current expectations of the Jews and the message addressed to
them first by John the Baptist and then by Jesus, to the effect
that the promise whose fulfilment they expected was already
in course of being fulfilled. It is the natural link between the
two dispensations. On the other hand, the peculiarly OT stamp
which, though only by association, it bore, suggestive of Jewish
theocratic ideas, would sufficiently account for the fact that
in the other Gospels, specially designed to mec5 the wants of
the Gentiles, to whom those ideas were strange and unfamiliar,
it gave place to the alternative expression, ‘ Kingdom of God.’
Practically, however, the two expressions mean the same thing.
The earlier form may possibly, as has been suggested, have
been by association so closely connected with the national hope
of the Jews, and with that selfish exclusiveness which led them
to regard themselves as in a peculiar sense the elect people of
tod, as to seem to countenance the old narrow views of Messiah’s
kingdom, to the prejudice of the more spiritual and catholic
teaching of Jesus Himself, which impressed itself the more
strongly upon His followers the more successfully they sought
to win the Gentiles to the faith of Christ. At the same
time, they express at most only different aspects of the same
truth—Kingdom of Heaven, as the phrase occurs in the Gospels,
denoting a condition of things in which God’s will is done on
earth as it is done in heaven, while Kingdom of God refers
more directly and specially to God as the Sovereign of that
regenerated society which the expression is used to describe.
See Krin@pom or Gop.
This conception is the central point in Christ’s
teaching, by reference to which its most charac-
teristic features may be most conveniently gathered
into a connected system—as its relation to the OT,
its revelation of the nature and will of God, its
teaching as to the nature and person of Jesus Him-
self, its doctrine of man, and of God’s scheme for
man’s salvation. This central theme attracts our
notice in the beginning of the Gospels. It is the
subject of the preaching of the Baptist and also of
Jesus, whose message is briefly summed up in the
words, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand: repent
ye, and believe the gospel’ (Mk 1”). The Sermon
on the Mount itself starts with the idea of the
Kinedom of Heaven, and the same thought is the
subject of two successive petitions in the Lord’s
Prayer, ‘Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven’ (Mt 5*?° |) Lk 679, Mt
6 || Lk 113. The fundamental teachings of Jesus
naturally group themselves round this central
theme.
1. The Kingdom being the true Israel of God,
the first point of doctrine that suggests itself con-
cerns the King, the Supreme Ruler of the re-
generated people. We have thus, as the words
‘Kinedom of God’ indicate, to deal first with Jesas’
doctrine of God the Father. This, it is to be care-
fully noted, is not a new theology. The God whom
Christ reveals is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob (Mk 1256. That ‘God is Spirit,’ and ean be
worshipped only ‘in spirit and in truth,’ was not
first taught to the woman of Samaria (Jn 4°).
That principle lies at the root of the teaching of
the Law and the Prophets. Jesus accepted this
fundamental doctrine, while at the same time He
cleared it from those later speculations which
tended to make of it a mere abstraction, or to
accentuate the idea of the remoteness and incom-
municableness of the Supreme Being. This He
did by describing God, just as the Prophets and
the Law had done, as infinitely holy, righteous,
and loving. As Sovereign of the kingdom of
righteousness and love, God makes holiness and
love the essential laws of His kingdom, and com-
mands His subjects to be as Himself. In par-
ticular, Jesus laid emphasis upon the Fatherhood
of God, and taught His disciples to trust implicitly
in the Father’s care (Mt 67°*4 || Lk 122-81), and to
believe that that care extended to the very details
of their daily life; while He exhorted them not
only to rely upon and claim His compassion and
His forgiving love, but to imitate Him in respect
of these attributes, that they might ‘be the chil-
dren of’ their ‘Father which is in heaven : for he
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good,
and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust’
ΓΔ Ee cee Ink Gee),
2. But the Kingdom of God, as Jesus proclaims
it, resembles the Old Testament theocracy in this,
that the Supreme Sovereign reveals His will and
rules His kingdom by One whom He has sent and
to whom He has delegated His authority. This,
the hope of Israel, is an ideal which is already
realizing itself. The prophecy of the Messiah is
fulfilled in the person and work of Him whom God
has sent. This is therefore the keynote of the
gospel, that the Christ is come ‘to fulfil all right-
eousness’ (Mt 31°), to give effect to every part of
the constitution of the Kingdom. Thus Jesus
appears as the Divine legislator. In this capacity
He not only, as in His parables, explains and
illustrates the principles of His government, but,
as in the Sermon on the Mount, appears as the
authoritative expositor of the Law of God. He
announces that He is come not to destroy but to
fulfil the Law and the Prophets (Mt 5!”), and in
this connexion shows that the Law is not satisfied
with the literal and formal obedience of the
Pharisees, but extends to thought and motive; He
warns His disciples that, except their righteous-
ness shall exceed that of the seribes and Pharisees,
they cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven (νν. 5.3);
and in other passages He says that in the Day of
Judgment men shall be judged so strictly that
they shall give account of every idle word, and
even of any neglect on their part of the law of
kindness and compassion towards their neighbours
(Mt 1986 254°),
This aspect of Christ’s teaching, which is specially
prominent in the Synoptic Gospels, has been repre-
sented by some as constituting the essence of His
doctrine. But apart from the thought that, ac-
cording to this view, the ethical teaching of Jesus
would mean the enactment of a new code of
religion and morality infinitely more difficult than
the old which He professed to explain, it is abun-
dantly clear from the Synoptists themselves, no
less than from the testimony of St. John, that
Jesus lays far more stress upon the subject of His
own Person than upon any ethical doctrine or set
of doctrines. In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark,
and Luke, as distinctly as in that of John, Jesus
lays down as the first condition of membership of
the Kingdom the duty of accepting His testimony
concerning Himself, and of following Him. As we
read in the Fourth Gospel that ‘to as many as
received him’ Jesus ‘gave the right to become
children of God’ (Jn 113), so, according to the testi-
mony of all four, the Kingdom of God is come in
the person of the Messiah (Mt 128 || Lk 113. The
Person of Christ is the centre of the gospel.
A remarkable feature, indeed, of the Gospels is
the fact that the essential Divinity of Christ, and
even the express doctrine of His Messiahship, ap-
pear to have been made in His publie teaching
the subject of gradual development rather than of
direct and explicit teaching. Jesus suffered not
the confession of His Messiahship by the demons
whom He cast out of those who were possessed.
And although, when He received the first disciples,
John and Andrew, Peter, Nathanael and Philip,
DOCTRINES
He accepted their confession that in Him they had
found the Messiah (Jn 14:81). it was in but few
cases that He declared Himself in so many words
to be the Christ of God ; as, for example, in that of
His conversation with the woman of Samaria (Jn
46); again when He declared to His townsmen in
Nazareth that Isaiah’s prophecy of the Messiah as
the great preacher and healer was fulfilled in
Himself (Lk 41) ; and again when He answered the
doubting question of the Baptist, ‘ Art thou he that
should come, or do we look for another?’, by pointing
to the testimony of His teaching and of His works
of mercy (Mt 117° || Lk 719-33). For the rest, Jesus
allowed the thought of His Divine claims to grow
in the minds of His disciples, and it was not until
within afew months of Hisdeath that Peter in their
name confessed His Messiahship, when Jesus, in
welcoming their faith, expressly declared that it had
come to them by revelation from God. Neverthe-
less, throughout His ministry the personal element
was the most prominent feature of His teaching.
From first to last He asked of those to whom He
spoke, not faith in doctrines so much as trust in
Himself as the Sent of God who alone could reveal
the Father’s will.
And, notwithstanding the fact that He left the
full recognition of His claims to develop gradually
in the minds of His disciples, His testimony con-
cerning Himself contained implicitly all the ele-
ments of a complete revelation ot His Divine
claims. Thus He familiarized His disciples with
the use of names and titles, as ‘Son of Man,’ ‘ He
who should come,’ ‘Son of God,’ ‘the Sent of God,’
‘the Holy One of God,’ ‘the Christ,’ which they
gradually came to recognize as indicative of those
claims. (See also NAMES AND TITLES OF CHRIST).
3. With regard to the Kingdom itself, Jesus
spoke of it now as a present thing, again as that
which should be realized in the future. So He said
at one time, ‘Theirs is the kingdom of heaven’
(Mt 553-10), and agair, ‘ Neither shall they say, Lo
here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God
is within you’ (Lk 173). Again He spoke of the
Kingdom as future, and that in connexion with the
final coming, the Parousia, of the Son of Man ; so
in the parables of the Great Supper (Lk 14 *), of
the Marriage Feast (Mt 22"), of the Ten Virgins
(Mt 951-13). In this there was no real contradiction,
for the central conception of the Kingdom is that
of a gradual development, the future growing out
of the present. We recognize this in several con-
spicuous parables, and no less in the practical
means which Jesus adopted of founding and de-
veloping His Church, notably in His choice and
training of the Twelve as the nucleus of that
society of which the Kingdom should consist. Of
the former, the most important in this connexion
are the parables of the Sower (Mt 13**5\| Mk 4139
Lk 8515). of the Seed growing secretly (Mk 4°°~),
of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven (Mt 13% |
Mk 4-2). In these the obvious thought is that
the Kingdom is already here, but only in germ, 8
secret, but a present and a growing thing, the com-
plete realization of which only the day of the Lord
shall declare. The Kingdom is thus not such as
the common acceptation of the Messianic hope had
led Israel to expect, a thought of which even the
disciples found it hard to disabuse their minds—an
external condition of society into which they
should one day be ushered as a matter of favour-
itism or of covenant right, and in which there
were places of pre-eminence which could be the
objects of earthly ambition, or a condition of tem-
poral benefit which could be enjoyed in the future
Irrespective of spiritual fitness. Instead of this it
is a spiritual blessing, the gift of God to receptive
souls, for the individual and for the community of
believers a condition of heart and life gradually
DOCTRINES 487
developed in them by the power of Divine love.
So closely is future blessedness, the inheriting of
the Kingdom, dependent upon present faith and
patient persevering ettort, that our Lord is careful
to warn His disciples that while ‘it is’ their
‘Father’s good pleasure to give’ them ‘the kine-
dom’ (Lk 12*), it is possible for the most highly
favoured to come short of it, and ‘there are last
which shall be first, and there are first which shall
be last’ (Lk 13%; cf. Mt 19” 20!%|| Mk 1074, Mt
2131. 82),
4. In this Kingdom the conditions of membership
are manifestly of the first importance. These are
(a) Repentance, and (4) Faith in God and in Jesus
Christ whom He has sent.
Repentance (μετάνοια) means a complete and
radical change of heart and life, a change so
thoroughgoing that it can best be characterized
by the word ‘conversion,’ a turning round. ‘ Ex-
cept ye be converted (στραφῆτε, “ turn’), and become
as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the
kingdom of heaven’ (Mt 189), is the teaching of
Jesus according to the Synoptics, to which His
words to Nicodemus in the Fourth Gospel almost
exactly correspond : ‘ Except a man be born again
(or ‘from above,’ ἄνωθεν), he cannot see the king-
dom of God’ (Jn 3°). Such a complete change as
these words imply—‘change of mind’ (μετάνοια),
‘convert,’ ‘turn round’ (ἐπιστρέφειν, Mt 13%),
‘new birth’ or ‘ birth from above’ (γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν,
Jn 3°), is necessary for all, as Jesus shows by ad-
dressing His teaching on this theme not only to
Pharisees like Nicodemus, but to His own disciples
—notably in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant
(Mt 182), in which, in answer to a question of
Peter, He likens the condition of all recipients of
the Divine forgiveness to that of a man who owes
a debt of ten thousand talents, clearly meaning by
that the infinitude of man’s obligation to God. So
universal and so heinous is sin according to the
teaching of Jesus. Sin springs from the heart
(Mt 15!8-2°\) Mik 730-35), from its natural alienation
from God, from the infirmity of the flesh (Mt 267? ||
Mk 148). Man is, moreover, tempted to sin by
Satan as the author of evil ; though Jesus does not
teach any special doctrine of sin, or explain how
evil first came into existence, but deals only with
sin itself as an awful and universal fact. Then, as
all are tainted with the universal disease, and as
the righteousness which God demands must extend
to the whole nature, not merely to word and action
but to the heart and motives, it follows that man
is lost. unable to save himself, and therefore Jesus
describes His mission as that of seeking and saving
the lost (Mt 18", ef. Lk 19"). All are thus dependent
upon the sovereign pardoning grace of God, and so
Jesus says, ‘No man can come unto me, except the
Father which hath sent me draw him’ (Jn 6%).
But that this grace is not restricted in its opera-
tion by any hard and fast decree of election, Jesus
teaches by the manner in which He describes His
mission, which is that of seeking the lost ‘til he
find’ them (Lk 15%), and by the universal call
which He addresses to the weary and heavy-laden
(Mt 11°).
While we may for convenience’ sake distinguish
between Repentance and Faith, Jesus so presents
them as to represent Faith as the source of Re-
pentance, the one involving the other and leading
to it. Thus, to take one illustration, the re-
pentance which in His conversation with Nico-
demus He describes as a new birth, is spoken of in
the same discourse as the result of an act of faith
in Himself, which He likens to the simple look
directed by the dying Israelites to the Brazen
Serpent which Moses lifted up in the wilderness
(Jn 34). As Weiss has well put it (Bib. Theol. of
the NT, i. 97)—
488 DOCTRINES
DOCTRINES
©The new revelation of God which is brought in the message
concerning the Kingdom of God spontaneously works the re-
pentance which Jesus demands. God does not demand that
man should meet Him; He Himself meets man with gracious-
ness, and thereby does the utmost that lies in His power to
make man capable of the repentance in which He has His greatest
joy (Lk 15410), He does not make His revelation of salvation
dependent upon the conversion of the people, as in the preach-
ing of the prophets ; He will work this conversion by the reve-
lation of His grace.’
Thus, in the Gospel of John, Jesus makes faith
in Himself the condition of salvation: ‘He that
believeth hath everlasting life’ (Jn 6); and in line
with such declarations is that doctrine, character-
istic of the Johannine discourses, which seems to
represent faith as knowledge, the acceptance of
the testimony of the Son of God (Jn 3186), All
that this means is that to accept Christ’s testi-
mony, and to accept Christ Himself as the revela-
tion of the Divine grace, is to become a child of
God and a member of the Kingdom of God.
Again, Jesus demands not only faith and re-
pentance, but insists as strongly as John the
Baptist or the prophets of the OL upon the im-
portance of living proofs of faith, and of fruits
meet for repentance (Mt 35:10} Lk 38%, Mt 7?!-?7|,
Lk 655), Christ’s disciples must prove their con-
version and their right to the privileges of the
Kingdom of God by their ‘moral imitation of
their Heavenly Father’; sonship must show itself
by the family likeness. But as that ideal is far
beyond the possibility of present attainment, the
Christian life is described as a steep and narrow
path, to press along which requires constant eflort
and unremitting watchfulness and prayer (Mt
ποτ ΠΩΣ Ὁ eV |Ξ ἘΠ Malka (ΠΕ Ὲ
5. With regard to the significance of the Death
and Resurrection of Jesus as the ultimate condi-
tions of the establishment of the Kingdom of God,
our Lord treated that doctrine as He did His
Messianic claims in respect of His Divine nature.
It is eerie in the Gospels as the subject of
gradual development, as a truth not at the begin-
ning clearly made known even to the most favoured
disciples, but taught first by suggestions and figures
more or less veiled, then by warnings and predic-
tions, which became clearer as the end drew near,
to the effect that Jesus must die. Still it is pre-
sent from the first, though only in germ, and
though it is noted as that. part of their Master’s
teaching which the disciples were most slow to
apprehend. Thus it is represented as having been
suggested so early as in the time of the Baptist,
whose words, ‘Behold the Lamb of God,’ first
led John and Andrew to follow Jesus (Jn 129: 35-37),
At a later period Jesus declared in express terms
that ‘the Son of Man came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister, and to give his life a
ransom for many’ (λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν), Where the
death of Jesus as a sacrifice of substitution appears
to be distinctly spoken of (Mt 9053} Mk 10%). The
doctrine that salvation can come only through the
voluntary sufferings and death of Jesus is so clearly
taught by our Lord’s later utterances as recorded
in all the Gospels, and particularly in the Fourth,
as, for example, in the discourse on the Bread of
Life (‘the bread which I will give is my flesh,
which I will give for the life of the world,’ Jn 6°),
in the discourse on the Good Shepherd (‘the good
shepherd giveth his life for the sheep,’ 1011. 15,
cf. vy.17- 18).
ete., that it is hardly necessary to
enumerate ᾿ :
_them. One of the strongest proofs
that the disciples understood Jesus to lay special
emphasis upon the necessity of His death as an
atoning sacrifice, lies in the fact that so large a
portion of the Gospels is devoted to the narrative
of the sufferings, death, and resurrection of Jesus ;
while the full account which all the Synoptists rive
of the institution of the Lord’s Supper (Mt 2626-9 Ι
Mk 145 || Lk 95911..30), and particularly the signi-
ficant words of Jesus recorded by St. Matthew
(26), ‘This is my blood of the [new] covenant,
which is shed for many for the remission of sins,’
show that by appointing this ordinance by which
to ‘show forth his death,’ as St. Paul expresses it
(1 Co 11°), Jesus singled out this part of His work
as constituting the central truth of His manifesta-
tion to men, and summing up and applying the
whole.
Again, like the Apostles in the Acts and the
Epistles, all four Evangelists represent the Resur-
rection as the necessary seal οἱ Christ’s atoning
work, confirming His victory over death and him
that had the power of death, and as a testimony
to the Father’s acceptance of the sacrifice. So
Jesus, in foretelling His death, conjoined with the
prediction the assurance that He should rise again
the third day. The Resurrection is the necessary
complement of the Atoning Death.
6. Closely connected with these fundamental
teachings of the Kingdom of God and the condi-
tions of its realization are those which relate (a)
to the growth and maintenance of the Kingdom
after Christ’s Ascension, and (b) to the final con-
summation and the judgment of the world.
(a) According to all the Gospels, the specialty of
Christ’s mission, as that was revealed to John the
Baptist, was that He should baptize with the Holy
Ghost (Mt 81} ΜῈ 18 Lk 3%; ef. Jn 1%). All
relate the descent of the Holy Spirit at the
Baptism of Jesus (Mt 317 || Mk: 1%7\) Lk 321-2),
John the Baptist testifies (Jn 1°! *4) that He upon
whom the Spirit descended and abode is He who
baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. Jesus attributed
His power to cast out demons to the Spirit of God
(Mt12?8). That the Spirit thus spoken of isa Person,
and as such to be distinguished from Christ, is to
be inferred from the solemn warning which Jesus
addressed to those who attributed His miracles of
exorcism to Satanic agency, when He said that
blasphemy against the Son of Man should be for-
given, but that to blaspheme against the Holy Ghost
was an unpardonable sin (Mt 12%! 92} Mk 376 || Lk
12). Jesus taught, however, that the prediction of
John was to be fulfilled only after the Son of Man
was glorified. Thus we read, with reference to the
promise that the Spirit should be in believers a
perennial fountain of grace, ‘This spake he of the
Spirit which they that believe on him should
receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given;
because that Jesus was not yet glorified’ (Jn 751-99),
And Jesus Himself says (167) to the disciples, ‘It
is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not
away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but
if I depart, I will send him unto you.’ The office
of the Spirit is to abide with the disciples as the
source of grace (755), to bring to their remembrance
the teaching of Jesus (1453 1576) and guide them
into all truth (105), to give them power to dis-
charge their spiritual functions (20%: 39) as leaders
and teachers of the Church, and, as the Spirit of
wisdom and utterance, to inspire them to testify
faithfully and courageously for Christ in presence
of their persecutors (Mt 1039} Mk 131} Lk 12": 32),
Further, His function is to ‘reprove the world of
sin, of righteousness, and of judgment’ (Jn 16814).
With Christ’s teaching concerning the Spirit His
revelation of God was complete, and accordingly,
in one of His last discourses after the Resurrection,
He commanded His Apostles to ‘make disciples of
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost’
(Mt 9815).
(δ) Our Lord’s teaching concerning the final con-
summation of the Kingdom of God may be briefly
summarized. The disciples were instructed to live
in constant expectation of His Second Coming
(Mt 24°51|Mk 138-37) Lk 129-48; cf. Mt 2513).
DOG
That might occur at any time. His coming
should, according to the prophecies of the OT, be
heralded by certain signs in the world, by tumult
and distress among the nations, and by portents
im nature, earthquakes, storms, and the like (Mt
24°F ||] Mk 13748 |) Lk 21%). Nevertheless He
should come as a thief in the night, and surprise
the worldly and the careless in the midst of their
business or their pleasure (Mt 24 || Lk 172%).
Then also Christ should by His angels ‘gather
together his elect from the four winds’ (Mt 24°)
for the purpose of taking them to Himself and
saving them from destruction (Lk 179: In
connexion with this, Jesus spoke also of a time
of sifting, at which all unworthy members should
bencastroube (MiG 1350: 186 ΘΟ] ἢ OF 0 Nike 132):
Finally, after the Kingdom had been thus purified
should come the ultimate consummation. Jesus
should appear as the Judge of all nations (Mt 25?!4%),
coming in the clouds (Mt 26 || Mk 14® |) Lk 22%) to
reward the righteous with eternal bliss in heaven
and to sentence the wicked to eternal perdition
(Mt 25%-46), See also LEADING IDEAS.
LITERATURE. — Cremer, Bib.-Theol. Lex. s.vv. διδασκαλία,
διδαχή; Comm, of Alford and Meyer; Beyschlag, NT’ Theol.
(2nd Eng. ed.) i. 28-156, ii. 267-472; Schmid, Biblical Theology
of the NT, 63-90; Weiss, Biblical Theology of the NT’, 63-90.
HuGH H. CURRIE.
DOG.—See ANIMALS, p. 64.
DOMINION.—The word ‘dominion’ occurs only
once in the AV of the Gospels, as part of
the phrase ‘exercise dominion over’ (κατακυριεύ-
ovowv), in that passage in the Gospel of Matthew
(20°) which records our Lord’s reply to the
ambitious request of Salome on behalf of her
sons, and the words which He addressed to the
disciples at the time. The RV of this passage, as
of the parallel text in Mark (10%), is ‘lord it over.’
The same idea is expressed in a similar passage
in Luke (22°), which gives Christ’s words at the
Last. Supper with reference to the dispute among
His disciples as to precedence, by the simple verb
κυριεύουσιν, ‘ exercise lordship over’ (RV ‘have lord-
ship over’).
Again, in all three passages the verbs which are
so translated are followed in the parallel clause of
the verse by the words ‘ exercise authority over’
or ‘upon’ (Mt 20% AV and RV || Mk 10” AV and
RV, Lk 22% AV), ‘have authority over’ (Lk 22°
RV), representing the words of the original κατ-
εξουσιάζουσιν, ἐξουσιάζοντες. The word ‘authority ἡ
(ἐξουσία) and the verbs formed from it thus suggest
themselves for consideration in connexion with
the word rendered ‘dominion’ in the passage in
Matthew.
1. The passages quoted from the Synoptics illu-
strate a characteristic feature of the Gospels, the
manner in which they represent Jesus as_post-
poning the assertion of His kingly rights, and, in
connexion with this, the express teaching which
they attribute to Him as to the nature of the
dominion which He claimed. Thus, as He with-
stood the temptation of Satan (Lk 4°) to assume
the royal sceptre which belonged to Him as Son of
God, and to reign as the Divinely appointed king
of a visible and temporal realm, so He resisted, as
a repetition of that temptation, every suggestion
or appeal that was made to Him, by the people or
by His disciples, formally and publicly to appear as
the Messiah. He would not suffer the people of
Galilee to make Him a king (Jn 6%). He declared
to Pilate that, although royal authority was His
by right, His kingdom was not of this world, and
was therefore not to be won or maintained and
defended by temporal weapons (Jn 1850: 51),
Now the texts which have been quoted from the
Synopties may be regarded as the Joci classici of
DOMINION 489
the teaching of Jesus with reference to the nature
of the sovereignty claimed by Him, and to the
principle of that spiritual dominion of which He
spoke. They occur in connexion with what the
Gospels tell us regarding the Messianic expecta-
tions of the Twelve, who, like most of their
countrymen, anticipated in the near, and even, at
times, in the immediate, future, the visible estab-
lishment of the personal reign of Christ as Prince
of the House of David. They were addressed to
the disciples at the close of Christ’s ministry, in
the one case in the course of His last journey to
Jerusalem, in the other in connexion with the
dispute at the Last Supper as to who should be
accounted the greatest. The answer of Jesus in
both cases—to the ambitious request of Salome,
and to the dispute among the disciples—was the
same, and the principle which He laid down was
to this effect. For Master and for disciple the
question of dominion is totally different from that
which is agitated by the ambition of the world.
Among the princes of the Gentiles the way to
power and authority is the path of worldly ambi-
tion and self-assertion. It 15 not so in the King-
dom of God. There not self-assertion but self-
denial is the way to supremacy. The way to
dominion is the way of service. Places of suprem-
acy there certainly are in the Kingdom of God,
and they are reserved ‘for those for whom they
are prepared’ of the Father. But they are
allotted upon a definite, intelligible principle, and
that not of favouritism but of spiritual character.
They who shall hold rank nearest to Christ in His
Kingdom are they who shall most closely resemble
Him in respect of lowliness, self-denial, and
humble service. For disciple and for Master the
law is the same in this respect, that ‘he that
humbleth himself shall be exalted.’ So Christ is
‘among you as he that serveth’ (Lk 222, In
laying down the principle, Jesus illustrated it by
reference to His own mission. ‘The Son of Man
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,
and to give his life a ransom for many’ (Mt
2073 || Mk 103. And here as elsewhere the dis-
ciple must be as his Master, attaining his place in
the Kingdom only by the way of self-humiliation,
self-denial, self-sacritice.
2. The use in these passages, in immediate con-
nexion with the idea of dominion, of the words ‘ have
authority over,’ ‘exercise authority over’ (ἐξουσιά-
ζουσιν, ἐξουσιάζοντες), calls for some reference to the
power or authority (ἐξουσία) attributed to Christ in
connexion with His humiliation as well as with
His exaltation. That during His ministry He pos-
sessed and exercised very complete and far-reaching
authority, dominion in the sense of ἐξουσία, the
natural synonym of κυριότης, ‘ lordship,’ ‘ dominion,’
is distinctly testified by all the Gospels.
Lordship (κυριύτης) was expressly claimed by Him
even in connexion with His state of humiliation.
Thus, in controversy with the Pharisees, He
claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath, and, as such, to
be entitled to interpret the Sabbath law (Mt 198 ἢ}
Mk 2° || Lk 05. St. Luke tells us in his account
of the healing of the paralytic, that ‘the power
of the Lord was present to heal’ (5!7). The mes-
sage to the owners of the ass on which Jesus rode
to Jerusalem was ‘The Lord hath need of him’
(Mt 21° || Mk 11° || Lk 19%!: 34). When Jesus had
washed the disciples’ feet, and was applying the
lesson of that incident, He said, ve call me
Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am’
(Jn 1338).
As Son of Man, He was invested with special
power (ἐξουσία) to work miracles. As such He is
represented as exercising a delegated authority,
acting according to His Father’s will (Jn 5°"),
but that with a spontaneity and directness un-
490 DOMINION
DOOR
known before. Such was His power over unclean
spirits that they trembled and cried out at His
approach, and were compelled to yield instant
though fearful and reluctant obedience to His
command (Mk 1”7 || Lk 4%). With a word He con-
trolled the winds and waves (Mt 876?! || Mk 439-41 ||
Lk 822), So wide and great was His authority
over the powers of life and death, that His word,
even though spoken at a distance, was sufficient to
effect an instantaneous cure, as when His word of
assurance spoken at Cana to the nobleman was
followed immediately by the cure of his child who
lay sick at Capernaum (Jn 459). and when He con-
firmed the faith of the centurion, who likened
Christ’s power over disease to his own authority
over his soldiers, by speaking the word which
healed his servant (Mt 8° || Lk 1761. Three
times He raised the dead with a word: in the case
of the widow’s son (Lk 711-16), in that of Jairus’
dauchter (Mt 918-25 | Mk 52! || Lk 8°), and in
that of Lazarus (Jn 111-). He could even delegate
to others His power over unclean spirits and to
heal disease, as He did in His mission, first of
the Twelve, and again of the Seventy disciples
(Mt 105% || Mk 6 || Lk 91-6 1011). Again, He
claimed and exercised power on earth to forgive
sins (Mt 9° || Mk 2" || Lk δ᾽", ef. Lk 118).
3. According to the Johannine discourses, Jesus
declared that the Father had committed to Him
power to execute judgment ‘because he is the Son
of Man’ (Jn 52’). This function refers specially
to His state of exaltation. He came not to judge,
but to save the world (Jn 1917); “1 judge no man,’
He said to the Jews (815. At the same time His
work and teaching, even His very presence in the
world, meant a judement, inasmuch as they com-
pelled men to declare themselves either for or
against Christ, and so pass judgment upon them-
selves (ef. Jn 9); and as Jesus said Himself, ‘The
word that [ have spoken, the same shall judge him
in the last day’ (12%). To Jesus as Son of Man
all judgment and authority and power have been
committed. All things are given into His hands
(Mt 1177, Jn 3 || 137), that He may euide and
strengthen His Church (Mt 9518), and at His second
coming appear as the Judge of all nations (Mt
2551f-) Tt is He who is to pass the final sentence
upon the just and upon the unjust. On that day
He will say to those who have falsely called Him
‘Lord, Lord,’ ‘I know you not’ (Mt 7”). He will
open to His faithful ones the door to the eternal
festival of joy, but will close the door of the
heavenly marriage feast on ‘the unfaithful’ (Mt
fo 2a 2) 10 | 551 }} Sle ἘΠ1511 ἘΠῚ upon the
throne of his glory, and before him shall be
gathered all nations’ (Mt 25%). In connexion
with these predictions of the events of the Day of
Judgment, Jesus says: ‘The Son of Man shall
send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of
his kingdom all things that offend, and them that
do iniquity’ (Mt 13). The angels are thus repre-
sented as being subject to the dominion of Christ
in His exaltation, as His servants, obeying His
behests ; as even during His life on earth they
appeared as ministering spirits obedient to His
command, and waiting upon Him as courtiers
upon their Sovereign (Mt 4" 263. Lk 2943)
Lastly, as the fruit of His work of redemption,
and as part of the glory which He has won by His
pertect submission to the Father’s will, there is
given to Him, in that time of waiting which must
pass before the final completion of His kingdom,
‘all power in heaven and en earth’ (Mt 2818), as the
Father has ‘given him power over all flesh, that
he should give eternal life to as many as he has
given him’ (Jn 17%, ef. 10%). See also Power.
LITERATURE Bib.-Theol. Lex.
xusiorms ; Grimm-Thayer, Lez.
Cremer, 8.00. ἐξουσία, κύριος,
NT, 8.υυ. κατακυρίενω, ἐξουσία,
κύριος, πυριείω; H. J. Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der NT Theol.
i. 319f., ii. 409 ff.; Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus, ii. 276;
Beyschlag, NZ’ Theology, i. 59-191, 241; Comm. of Meyer and
Alford. Hua H. CurRRIE.
DOOR (θύρα, cf. θυρωρός, ‘doorkeeper,’ ‘ porter’).
—The word ‘door’ is frequently found in the
Gospels, sometimes in the literal, often in the
figurative sense.
1. We need, first, to get clearly in mind the
meaning of the term in Oriental usage. By
‘door’ is usually meant the outside or entrance
‘doorway,’ but often the ‘door’ in distinction
from the ‘doorway,’ the frame of wood, stone, or
metal that closes the doorway. The outside of
the Oriental house has little ornament or archi-
tectural attractiveness of any kind. The ‘door,’
however, and the projecting ‘window’ above it,
are exceptions to this rule. The doors, windows,
and doorways are often highly ornamented (Is
54, Rev 9131), enriched with arabesques, and, if
to-day it be the house of a Moslem, the door will
have sentences from the Koran inscribed upon it
(cf. Dt 6%). The ‘doors’ are usually of hard wood,
studded with nails, or sometimes covered with
sheet-iron. They are often very heavy. They
invariably open inwards, and are furnished on the
inside with strong bars and bolts. They have
usually wooden locks, which are worked by wooden
keys of such size that they could make formidable
clubs (Is 22”, ef. Land and Book, i. 493). There is
an opening in the door for the insertion of the
hand and the introduction of the key from the
outside, the lock being reached only from the in-
side. On entering the ‘door’ there is usually a
vestibule, where, in daytime, the ‘doorkeeper’ is
found, and where the master often receives the
casual visitor (cf. Gn 19! 23! 34°° and Job 297).
The ‘doors’ leading into the ‘rooms’ or ‘cham-
bers’ that open upon the court are not usually
supplied with locks or bolts; a curtain, as a rule,
being all that separates one of these ‘chambers’
from the ‘court,’ the idea being that all is private
and secure within the outer gate (cf. Dt 24°, Ac
1017 1213),
The ‘doorway’ consists of three parts: the
threshold or sill (sometimes used for ‘door’), the
two side-posts, and the lintel (Ex 12). The doors
of ancient Egypt, and probably of contemporary
nations, swung upon vertical pintles which pro-
jected from the top and bottom of the door into
sockets in the lintel and threshold respectively.
The commonest form of door had the pintle in the
middle of the width, so that, as it opened, a way
was afforded on each side of it for ingress or egress.
Occasionally we find that the ‘chamber,’ or
private room, had its own door and fastenings.
In Mt 6°, ‘ When thou hast shut thy door,’ the word
used means not only closed, but fastened it—egiving
the idea of complete privacy. See art. CLOSET.
In Mt 25, ‘the door was shut,’ it is clearly the
outside or entrance-door that is meant. When
this one outer door was shut, all communication
with the outside world was cut off. Then nothing
but persistent knocking at this door, and loud
entreaty, would succeed in securing even a hearing.
In this case the appeal was made to the bridegroom
himself, who, to this day, is considered in the East
sovereign of the occasion.
2. When Jesus said, ‘I am the door’ (Jn 10°),
He clearly meant to exclude every other form or
means of mediation. But through Him there is an
unhindered entering into and going out of the fold
(ef. Nu 272%).
3. When it is said that Joseph, ‘a rich man of
Arimathiea,’ begged the body of Jesus, laid it in
his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the
rock, and rolled a great stone to the door of the
tomb (Mt 27°, Mk 16°), we have a reference to a
:
DOUBT
unique kind of door. The great roll-stone is often
mentioned in the Talmud, but only in describing
interments of the dead (Keim). It was cleazly
designed to protect the dead bodies and the other
contents of the tomb from robbers, petty thieves,
and birds and beasts of prey. One large tomb is
now shown half a mile north of Jerusalem, which
has a huge circular stone, like a great millstone
on edge, cut from the solid rock, together with the
channel in which it revolves. There are signs that
it was originally furnished with a secret fastening,
doubtless to protect the contents—spices, costly
linen, jewellery, etc., against plunder. The ‘Tomb
of Mariamne,’ recently uncovered south of the
city, and the so-called ‘Tomb of Lazarus’ at Beth-
any, likewise have doors with similar ‘ roll-stones’
(cf. art. TOMB). See also artt. Court, HOUSE.
GEO. B. EAGER.
DOUBT.—
In Lat. dubitare, from duo ‘two’ and bito ‘go’; Germ.
Zweifeln, Zweifel; from zwei, ‘two’; Mid. Eng. douten, ‘to
doubt,’ had the meaning of to fear (‘I doubt some foul play’
[Shakspeare], ‘nor slack her threatful hand for danger’s
doubt’ (Spenser]), and this meaning, perhaps, survives in such
expressions as ‘I doubt he will not come.’ But, as commonly
used, to dowbt means to be of two ininds, to waver, to hesitate.
It suggests the idea of perplexity ; of being at a loss, in a state
of suspense. The questioning attitude is implied. The word
has, in short, a variety of meanings.
References in the Gospels.—The word ‘doubt’
occurs several times in AV and RY. It is used,
however, to translate several Greek terms ; nor are
these invariably rendered by the word in question.
A study of the respective passages reveals differ-
ing circumstances and conditions, different types
of character, a variety of subjects exercising the
mind. Doubt in several phases is in illustration.
(a) The doubt of perplexity. Thus in Mk 6”,
Lk 244, Jn 13°2—where the verb ἀπορέω occurs (the
strengthened compound διαπορέω is found in Lk 97).
There is no question in these passages of the ap-
prehension of religious truth ; the idea suggested
is rather that of beine taken aback, disturbed,
distracted, by the unintelligible and the unex-
pected. Herod is ‘much perplexed’ (Mk 6” RV,
cf. Lk 97) as he listens to the Baptist, as reports
reach him concerning Jesus; he is puzzled, at a
loss for explanations. And thus in Jn 13” ‘the
disciples looked one upon the other, doubting of
whom he spake’; the unexpected statement has
bewildered them. Similar feelings may be recog-
nized in the case of the women at the sepulchre
(Lk 2452) ; they are ‘much perplexed’ ; utterly un-
able, that is, to account for the empty tomb. A
like meaning may, perhaps, be read into the ‘ how
long dost thou hold us in suspense?’ of Jn 1074 (τὴν
ψυχὴν ἡμῶν aipes): the Jews being understood as
professing an uncertainty which could be at once
dispelled by some plain declaration on the part of
Jesus.
(6) Wavering faith. A second group of passages,
‘where the verbs μετεωρίζεσθαι and diord few occur,
has now to be considered. Again the word
‘doubt’ is found in AV and RV, but with refer-
ence to a mental condition other than that which
has been noted in the preceding paragraph. A
religious significance is now observable ; the exist-
ence of faith is implied, but it is an imperfect, a
wavering faith. Because of distractions of one
kind or another, confidence is impaired. The
doubters referred to are sometimes the ὀλιγύπιστοι :
their faith not only wavering but small. Thus in
Lk 12” ‘neither be ye of doubtful mind’? (καὶ μὴ
μετεωρίζεσθε), the context supplies the explanation ;
anxiety about earthly things is incompatible with
absolute trust in the Fatherhood of God. So also
in Mt 14%! ‘wherefore didst thou doubt?’ (εἰς τί
ἐδίστασας ;), Where St. Peter’s confidence has given
way before sudden panic.
And thus, perhaps, in
DOVE 491
Mt 2817 “but some doubted’ (ἐδίστασαν). What,
precisely, the condition of these genuine disciples
was is difficult to determine, but it was one
which left them unreceptive while others were
convinced of a manifestation of the living Lord.
With this passage may be compared Lk 24°8 ; the
διαλογισμοί (RV ‘reasonings’) being significant of
fearsome hesitation on the part of those who could
not at once realize that the mysterious visitor was
none other than Jesus Himselt.
(c) The critical attitude. This is implied by the
verb διακρίνεσθαι ; a term which, as used in NT,
denotes the absence of faith, the paralysis of faith.
It occurs but twice in the Gospels (Mt 2131, Mk
1155) ; where the power of faith is, by implication,
contrasted with the impotency which is involved
in the want of faith. Thought seems to be directed
to the inevitable consequence of regarding Divine
things as a subject for curious investigation rather
than as matter of personal concern. On the one
hand, there is the emphatic declaration which may
be expressed in the words of Bacon, ‘ Man, when
he resteth and assureth himself upon divine Pro-
tection and Favour, gathereth a Force and Faith
[in its sense of fidelity] which Human Nature, in
its selfe, could not ovtaine.’ On the other hand,
there is the implied warning that, as the vision of
God darkens and vanishes, man’s capacity for use-
ful action becomes weaker, until at length it dies
away.
[For discussion of ‘the doubt of Thomas’ see
THOMAS and UNBELIEF].
LITERATURE.—Lyttelton, Modern Poets of Faith, Doubt, and
Paganism; Ulingworth, Christian Character; James, The
Will to Believe; Carlyle, Sartor Resartus; Browning, Christ-
mas-Eve and Easter-Day; Tennyson, /n Memoriam (edited,
with commentary, by A. W. Robinson); Jowett, Sermons.
H. L. JAcKsoN.
DOVE (repiorepa).—Its gentle nature makes the
dove a frequent simile in ancient literature. Christ
bids His disciples to be harmless as doves, and to
unite with such gentleness a wisdom like the
serpent’s (Mt 1016. Meyer, im Joc., takes this to
mean, ‘Be prudent in regard to dangers in which
you are placed, quick to see and avoid dangers ;
and always be full of uprightness, never taking
any questionable way of escape.’ As the serpent
is the most cunning of the beasts of the field,
so should the Lord’s disciples have wisdom to
understand the subtleties of Satan; but no evil
is to mix with such wisdom. Along with it
there must be found a purity and simplicity of
heart of which the harmless, gentle dove is the
symbol. The truest wisdom for the Christian is
to keep always the simplicity of the dove. A
nature purified by the Spirit of Christ will have
wise penetration enough to defeat all the wiles of
Satan.
The dove, the emblem of perfect innocence, is
used (Mt 3156 and parallels) as a symbol of the Holy
Spirit, who is the power and wisdom of God, act-
ing on the spirits of men. When the dove appeared
to sit on the Saviour’s head, it denoted the Divine
recognition of His holiness (ν.}7), and His official
consecration to the Messianic ministry. As the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, ‘ He
was holy, harmless, undetiled, and separate from
sinners’ (72°),
It has been thought that the dove had a sacro-
sanct character among the Hebrews. Though it
was a favourite food with some neighbouring
peoples, it was not eaten in Palestine. Young
pigeons and doves were offered in sacrifice, where
no sacrificial meal was involved. So we find in
the temple courts them that sold doves (Mt 212,
Mk 11”, Jn 2" 16),- πὸ doubt for such sacrifices,
—whom Christ drove out, along with the money-
changers. In Palestine the dove was considered
DOXOLOGY
DOXOLOGY
sacred by the Phoenicians and the Philistines, and
the Samaritans were often accused of worshipping
it. There were holy doves at Mecca ; and, accord-
ing to Lucian (Dea Syria, 54), doves were taboo to
the Syrians; he who touched them being unclean
a whole day.
In Christian Art in representations of the Lord’s
Baptism, the presence of the Holy Spirit, is indi-
cated by the dove. In churches in early times the
σαντο of a dove appeared in the baptisteries, a
golden or silver dove being suspended above the
font. Lamps, too, were sometimes made in the
form of doves. In later times pyxes were some-
times made of gold and silver in the shape of a
dove, and used for the reservation of the host.
Exclusive of the turtle-dove, four species of dove are found
in Palestine: Columba palumbus, the ring-dove, or wood-
pigeon ; Columba wnas, the stock-dove, found in Gilead and
Bashan and the Jordan Valley ; Columba livia, the rock-dove,
abundant along the coast and in the uplands; Columba
schimperi, closely allied to the preceding, and found in the
interior.
Lirerature.—Hastings’ DB, s.v.; Thomson, Land and Book
(1878), p. 268 ff. ; Hpositor, 1st ser. ix. [1879] p. 81 ff.
Davip M. W. LAIRD.
DOXOLOGY. — An ascription of praise to God
in forms of words more or less fixed by usage.
Though the term does not occur in the NT, it con-
tains many doxologies, and they were an important
element in the devotional life of the primitive
Christians. This indeed was inevitable, because
they carried with them what was best in the prac-
tice of Judaism, and were especially influenced in
the expression of their worship by the language of
the OT.
1. The OT and Jewish usage.—Doxologies are
common in the OT, being found in germ even in its
oldesv portions. In the Song of Deborah praise is
given to Jehovah for national deliverance (Τρ 5 9 ;
cf. Ex 1810). In 1 Καὶ 1 815 there is thankful recog-
nition of Jehovah’s power and control in national
events. The Psalms are especially rich (28° 34% *
135, 146), though one form, ‘give thanks unto
Jehovah, for His lovingkindness endureth for
ever,’ seems to be the most common both in the
Psalms and all post-exilie literature (Ps 106! 107}
ible po 7 0 24 (Ch ae eb Go TSyze 5} Miva
regular liturgical conclusion of the services of the
Temple, and afterwards of the Synagogue, came
to be a doxology beginning ‘ blessed be (or ‘is’)
God.’ By the time of our Lord the employment of
doxological expressions had increased so largely,
that they were in the mouth of the people for any
event which stirred their gratitude or wonder, in
fact as thanksgiving for almost everything in life.
Though the fundamental religions idea of the
doxology, that Jehovah is the Holy One whose
sovereign power must be acknowledged at all
times, was a noble one, its use had too oftea
degenerated into the veriest formalism.
2. NT usage.—Traces of Jewish custom may be
seen in the Gospels (Mt 15%1, Mk 22, Lk 148. 63 g20
δ’. 2) 715), The words and attendant conditions of
the life of Jesus so impressed the people that a
new hope was born in them, and they praised God
for signs of His returning favour to Israel through
this prophet. Jesus does not yet receive Divine
homage. No doxology is offered to Him anywhere
in the Gospels, for the Messianic acclaim (Mk
11% 1) is not to be so interpreted (see Dalman,
Words of Jesus, 2201f., and Swete, i2/ec.). God alone
has the right to such ascription, for He is ‘holy’;
He is ὁ εὐλογητός, the One to whom blessing is due
(Mik 14"), son axa widen being a well-known Jewish
formula. _ See artt. BENEDICTION-and BLESSING.
Immediate], after the Resurrection, Jesus is
associated with the Father in clory, and receives
worship as Messiah and Son of God. “This is the
universal Apostolic view (Ac 233-
mately ot
Ὁ 8.5:15 59. Roa
ΡΠ σα ἨΡ 15. 29. 98. 9. 1 1 15}
So the ascrip-
tion of doxologies to the risen Christ naturally
followed. But the doxology continued to be ad-
dressed most frequently to God the Father (Ro
11 008] 15; ἘΠῚ 5.0. ΡΠ ea Goa a 15 1)
Rev 17:32. In several Jesus Christ is associated
more or less directly with God the Father (Ro 10:7,
1 P 4", Jude Ὁ, Rev 5}%). Ro 9° and He’ 1321
present baftling evidence as to the recipient ; but
in 2 Ti 4,8, 2 P 3%, Rev 1° glory is ascribed to
Jesus Christ. Thus in conformity with Christian
belief the OT usage was expanded, so that at a
very early date there arose a Christian formula,
which in the public adoration of the worship of
the Church would serve in a secondary sense as a
creed, expressing the doctrine that the risen Christ
shared in Divine honour with the Father.
3. Structure.—The doxologies of the NT consist
of three main parts.
(a) The Person to whom praise is given. This
is, as we have seen, most frequently God the
Father, though Jesus Christ is associated with
Him. Attributes are often added, usually to
emphasize the Divine blessing which has oc-
casioned the praise. In Eph 3” 51, e.g. a clause
descriptive of the power of the Almighty serves
to justify the Apostle’s prayer for strength on
behalf of his readers. See Ro 1677, 1 Ti 117 6'8, 2 P
318, Jude 2 35. Rev 15:5 533,
(6) The second term is almost invariably δύξα
(‘glory’), either alone or with some significant
addition (Ep 8:1), the chief exceptions being 1 Ti
6'6 (‘ honour and power”), 1 P 5" (‘the dominion’).
The amplitude of the doxologies in the Apocalypse
deserves attention, the praise being threefold (41
9'), fourfold (515), or sevenfold in its perfection
(713). This full-voiced glory offered to the Lamb
(519) in this book of Hebrew cast, shows how
thoroughly it was the belief of the circle from
which it issued that Jesus transcended every
created being.
Except in 1 P 411 the copula is omitted, so that it must be
determined from the context whether the doxology is affirma-
tive or precatory (see Lightfoot on Gal 15 ; Chase, Lord’s Prayer,
p- 16); Didache, viii. 2 ; Clement of Rome, 58).
(c) The third integral part of the doxology in
its simplest form is εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας (‘ unto the ages’),
which denotes the eternity of the sovereign rule of
the Lord. Before the mind of the A postolie writers,
however, the future rolls out in a series of sons,
so that the normal form is expanded very frequently
into εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων, in order to cover all
possible periods of time (Gal 1°, Ph 47, 1 Ti 17,
2 Ti 4'8, He 132, 1 P 4", Rev 5% 713, See also Eph
Si Paley aH ἘΠ ΠΕ 6. Ὁ.
The conclusion of all doxologies except 2 P 31}8 is
ἀμὴν.
4. The Doxology in the Lord’s Prayer (Mt 6").—-
It can no longer be doubted that this was not a
part of the prayer as it stood originally in Matthew.
The uncial evidence is very weak (LAS), and the
variations in the early versions are numerous
(Syre™ omits ‘and the power’; the Sinaitic is
defective, and the old Latin (k) and the Sahidie
ditter from each other and from the Syriac). The
form found in the Didache (viii. 2, x. 5) ultimately
developed into the full expression (‘the kingdom
and the power and the glory’), which probably
passed into the Syrian text from the liturgical
usage of the Syrian Church. (See Hort’s Notes on
Select Readings, p. 9). Of this final doxology the
original source may have been 1 Ch 29", which
shaped the Synagogue usage and thereby that of
the Christian Church. No Jewish benediction was
complete without reference to ‘the kingdom’ of
Jehovah. ‘It calls attention to this that He to
whom the kingdom belongs, also has the power to
hear the prayer which primarily has in view the
DRAUGHT OF FISHES
DRAW-NET 493
establishing of that kingdom, and that He is there-
fore to be praised for ever’ (Weiss). See, further,
art. LoRD’s PRAYER.
5. The Angelic Hymn (Lk 2%), in its longer and
less correct text, gave rise to the Gloria in Excelsis
(Apost. Const. ντι. 47). The Doxologia Minor (‘Glory
be to the Father,’ etc.) may possibly be traced
back to Mt 28:5, but there is no other sign of it in
the NT. However, to follow the fortunes of these
doxologies would carry us beyond our limits. (See
Smith’s Dictionary of Christian Antiquities).
LITERATURE.—Jewish Ency. vol. viii. art. ‘Liturgy’; Herzog-
Hauck’s PRE vol. xi. art. ‘ Liturgische Formeln’ ; Chase, Zhe
Lord's Prayer in the Early Charch; Westcott, Epistle to the
Hebrews, Add. Note " Apostolic Doxologies,’
R. A. FALCONER.
DRAUGHT OF FISHES.—A twice repeated
miracle: (1) at the beginning of the Lord’s
ministry, (2) after the Resurrection. The main
points are similar, but differences in the details
have always been considered important and sig-
nificant.
4. Lk ὅπ At the Lake of Gennesaret, Jesus,
after teaching from Peter’s boat, bids him put
out and let down the nets for a draught. He and
his companions have toiled all the night without
success, but obey, and enclose a great multitude of
fishes, so that the nets are in danger of breaking.
With the aid of their partners they fill the boats,
which begin to sink. Peter, who some time before
had been brought to Jesus by his brother Andrew
(Jn 11) and had followed Him as His disciple (Mt
418 Mk 116), now begs Jesus to depart from him for
he is ‘a sinful man’ [the vision of the Divine is the
revelation of man’s sin], but on a repeated com-
mand leaves all and follows Jesus.
2. Jn 21-4, Some days or weeks after the
Resurrection, when the Apostles have returned
to their work as Galilzean fishermen, after a night
of fruitless labour, when they are drawing near
the shore, an unrecognized voice hails them, asking
if they have anything to sell for food. On their
answering in the negative, they are advised to cast
the net on the right side of the ship. Having done
so, they are not able to draw the net for the multi-
tude of fishes. Instinctively John recognizes the
Lord, and tells Peter, who at once swims to land.
On drawing the net, the number ot ‘ great fishes’ is
found to be 153, yet the net is not broken. None
of the disciples has any doubt that ‘it is the Lord.’
The natural explanation of the miracle, that from
a distance Jesus saw what those in the boat failed
to observe, is possible, but is not necessary. The
power is rather that of guiding to the required
place. ‘The miracle lies in the circumstances and
not in the mere fact. ‘The events came to men
from the sphere of their daily Jabour, and were
at once felt to be the manifestations of a present
power of God’ (Westcott, Characteristics of the
Gospel Miracles),—in the second case the manifesta-
tion of the power of the presence of the risen Lord.
The significant differences between the details of the two
incidents have been drawn out by St. Augustine (in Joh, exxii.
7). ‘The one miracle was the symbol of the Church at present,
the other of the Church perfected ; in the one we have good
and bad, in the other good only ; there Christ also is on the
water, here He is on the land; there the draught is left in the
boats, here it is landed on the beach; there the nets are let
down as it might be, here ina special part; there the nets are
rending, here they are not broken; there the boats are on the
point of sinking with their load, here they are not laden ; there
the fish are not numbered, here the number is exactly given’
(Westcott, St. John, inloc.). For interpretations of the number
of fish (Jn 2111), see Westcott and other commentators.
LITFRATURE.—The Comm. and Lives of Christ on the two
passages; Trench and Taylor on Miracles ; Expositor, τν. vi.
[1899] 18; F. W. Robertson, The Human Race, 125; Ruskin,
Frondes Agrestes, 152. R. MACPHERSON.
DRAW-NET (σαγήνη, seine).—For fuller descrip-
tion see art. Nets. This kind of net is mentioned
in the Gospels only in the parable of Mt 1347-°°,
where it is very much in point. Being usually of
great size and sweeping through an immense area,
it collects many varieties of fish—worthless, under-
sized, even dead fish, as well as the choice and the
living. The process of fishing with a seine gives
the impression of comprehensiveness and complete-
ness. ‘lo one who has watched it—the very gradual
progress of the operation, the extended area slowly
encircled, the final drawing up of the net on the
beach, and the sorting of its varied contents, with
the reservation of some and the rejection of others
—the aptness of the parable becomes very apparent.
The parable closes the series of seven in Mt 13,
in which various aspects of the Kingdom of Heaven
are presented. It is parallel in meaning to the
second of the series,—the Tares and the Wheat,—
yet it has its distinct individuality. It points, like
that parable, to the intermixture of good and evil
in the Church in its present stage, and it is implicit
in the figure used that no absolute separation is
possible or to be thought of now. But the emphasis
of the parable and of the explanation added by
our Lord, lies not upon the fact of the intermix-
ture, but upon the certainty that there will be a
decisive end to it. A time of deliberate (καθίσαντες)
and final severance is announced as a warning to
the evil, as an assurance to the good. The parable
is concerned with the future rather than with the
present, hence its suitability at the end of the
series. As must be expected, the figure is not
quite adequate. The whole operation of fishing is
carried out by the same individuals. But the
separation of the good and the evil at the end of
the world will be effected not by the men through
whom the Kingdom was extended, but by the
angels, to whom this ministry is always assigned
(Mt 134 24! 2552, Rey 1415- 19),
This parable, like that of the Tares, was much appealed to in
the Donatist controversy. The Donatists, emphasizing purity
as a note of the Church, maintained that all must be excluded
from its outward communion to whom that note could not be
attached. Augustine showed that such attempted separation
was forbidden by our Lord, apart from the case of open evil-
doers, and that He had not contemplated a community in its
present stage free from admixture of evil. The net must
contain both good and bad fish till it is drawn to the beach.
As against schism, he points out the folly of those who, like fish
breaking through or leaping over the net toescape the com-
pany of worthless fish within, refuse to wait the final and
thorough separation appointed by God, and in mistakenly
pressing the purity of the Church lose its catholicity (Augustine,
Enarr. in Ps. 64. 6; cf. also Enarr. in Ps. 126. 3; Coll. Carth.
ἃ. 3; ad Don. Post. Coll. 4, 8, 10).
What conception of the Kingdom of Heaven is
indicated by the parable? The parable may be said
to be an expansion of the idea contained in ‘ fishers
of men.’ Taken by itself, it might seem to support
the identification of the Kingdom of Heaven with
the Church ; but in other contexts the Kingdom of
Heaven (or of God) requires a much more compre-
hensive explanation. Harnack’s assertion that our
Lord meant by this term, so constantly recurring
in His teaching, only an inward experience of the
believer (Das Wesen des Christentums, p. 35 ff.),
seems quite unsuited to this passage. So, too,
does the Abbé Loisy’s explanation of the Kingdom
as being still entirely in the future, and existing
in the present only as an expectation (Zhe Gospel
and the Church, 8 11.). The parable, naturally in-
terpreted, certainly suggests a visible community.
The Kingdom is conceived of both as inward and
outward, consisting in its present stage both of
those who are animated by its true spirit, and
those who belong to it only so far that they are
included in its external organization. Again, the
Kingdom is represented as belonging to the present,
and yet as awaiting its consummation in a future
crisis of judgment. And it is in idea universal
(‘gathered of every kind’), tending to include all
men within its bounds.
DREAM
494
‘The Kingdom in its highest and most Christian sense is the
working of “invisible laws” which penetrate below the surface,
and are gradually progressive and expansive in their operation.
But in this, as in other cases, spiritual forces take to themselves
an outward form: they are enshrined in a vessel of clay, finer
or coarser as the case may be, not only in men as individuals,
but in men as a community or communities. The society then
becomes at once a vehicle and an instrument of the force by
which it is animated, not a perfect vehicle or a perfect instru-
ment,—a field of wheat mingled with tares, a net contaiming bad
fish as well as good,—but analogous to those other visible insti-
tutions by which God accomplishes His gracious purposes
amongst men’ (Sanday, Hastings’ DB, art. “Jesus: Christ,’ 11.
B. Ὁ. (2), (vi.)). A. E. Ross:
DREAM.—The interest of the student of the
Gospels in dreams turns upon the occurrence in
the opening chapters of Matthew of the record of
no fewer than five supernatural dreams (1° Ο 12. 19.
10. 39). Tater in the same Gospel mention is made
of a remarkable dream which came to the wife of
Pilate (27). There is no reference to dreams else-
where in the NT except in a citation from the OT
in Ac 2" and in an obscure verse in Jude (v.®).
No allusion is made in the Gospels, or inceed
in the whole NT, to dreams as phenomena form-
ing part of the common experience of man. Any
such allusions that may occur in Scripture are, of
course, purely incidental ; they are therefore in the
whole extent of Scripture very infrequent. Barely
enough exist to assure us that dreams were
thought of by the Hebrews very much as they
are by men of average good sense in our own day.
Men then, too, were visited with pleasant dreams
which they knew were too good to be true (Ps
126'), and afflicted with nightmares which drove
rest from their beds (Job 74). To them, too,
dreams were the type of the evanescent and
shadowy, whatever suddenly flies away and cannot
be found (Job 208, Ps 73:9). The vanity and decep-
tiveness of dreams were proverbial (Ee 5’, Is 29%).
The hungry man may dream that he eats, but his
soul continues empty ; the thirsty man may dream
that he drinks, but he remains faint (Is 298). Their
roots were set in the multitude of cares, and
their issue was emptiness (Ec 5*7). When the
Son of Sirach (341: 59) represents them as but re-
flexions of our waking experiences, to regard
which to catch at a shadow and to follow
after the wind, he has in no respect passed beyond
the Biblical view. (Cf. Delitzsch, Biblical Psycho-
logy, p. 328 ; Orelli, art. ‘Triume’ in PRE?).
The interest of the Bible in dreams is absorbed
by the rare instances in which they are made the
vehicles of supernatural revelation. That they were
occasionally so employed is everywhere recognized,
and they therefore find a place in-the several
enumerations of the modes of revelation (Nu 12%,
Dt 13-5, 1S 28% 15, J] 2358. Ac 217, Jer 23% 25 9358. 32
27" 29%, Zee 10°: Job 4% 33" stand somewhat
In this matter, too, the Son of Sirach re-
tains the Biblical view, explicitly recognizing that
dreams may be sent by the Most High in the
very passage in which he reproves the folly of look-
ing upon dreams in general as sources of knowledge
(34 The superstitious attitude characteristic of
the whole heathen world, which regards all dreams
mens, and seeks to utilize them for purposes
ΟΥ divination, receives no support whatever from
the Biblical writers. Therefore in
arose
is
apart).
: Israel there |
no ‘houses of dreams,’ there was no place
for a guild of ‘dream-examiners’ or ‘dream-
critics When on rare occasions God did vouch-
sate symbolical dreams to men, the professed |
(ream -interpreters of the most hi¢hly trained
castes stood helpless before them (Gn 37. 40. 41
Dn 2. 4). The interpretation of really God-sent
dreams beloneed solely to God Himself, the sender
and only His messengers could read their purport.
Chere could be no more striking indication of the
gulf that divides the
Biblical and the ethnic views
DREAM
of dreams. If there is a hint of an overestimate
of dreams among some Israelites. (Jer 23° 27°),
this is mentioned only to be condemned, and is
obviously a trait not native to Israel, but, like all
the soothsaying in vogue among the ill-instructed
of the land, borrowed from the surrounding heathen-
ism (cf. Lehmann, Aberglaube und Zauberei, p. 56).
If there are possible suggestions that there were
methods by which prophetic dreams were sought
(Jer 298, 1 S 28% 15), these suggestions are obscure,
and involve no commendation of such usages as
prevailed among the heathen. All the super-
natural dreams mentioned in the Bible were the
unsought gift of Jehovah; and there is not the
slightest recommendation in the Scriptural narra-
tive of any of the superstitious practices of either
seeking or interpreting dreams which constitute
the very nerve of ethnic dream-lore (cf. I. B.
Jevons in Hastings’ DBi. 622).
Very exaggerated language is often met with
regarding the place which supernatural dreams
occupy in Scripture. The writer of the article
‘Songes’ in Lichtenberger’s Hneye. des Sctences
Relig. (xi. 641), for example, opens a treatment of
the subject dominated by this idea with the state-
ment that, ‘as everywhere in antiquity, dreams
play a preponderant role in the religion of the
Hebrews.’ Even M. Bouché-Leclereq, who usually
studies precision, remarks that ‘the Scriptures
are filled with apparitions and prophetic dreams’
(Histoire de la divination dans VPantiquité, i. 278).
Nothing could be more contrary to the fact. The
truth is the supernatural dream is a very uncom-
mon phenomenon in Scripture. Although, as we
have seen, dreams are a recognized mode of Divine
communication, and dream -revelations may be
presumed therefore to have occurred throughout
the whole history of revelation ; yet very few are
actually recorded, and they oddly clustered at two
or three critical points in the development of Israel.
Of each of the two well-marked types of super-
natural dreams (ef. Baur, Symbolik und Myth-
ologic, 11. 1. 142)—those in which direct Divine
revelations are communicated (Gn 1513 20% 8 2812
31:0. 11 LK Sy. Mt 120 913. 15. 19. 22 D729) and sym-
bolical dreams which receive Divine interpreta-
tions (Gn 37°: 6. 10 409-16 417}- Ὁ Jeg TRE. Dn 91. 3. 26
4° 7!)—only some half-score of clear instances are
given. All the symbolical dreams, it will be
observed further, with the exception of the one
recorded in Jg 7!*) (and this may have been only
a ‘providential’ dream), occur in the histories of
Joseph and Daniel; and all the dreams of direct
Divine communication, with the exception of the
one to Solomon (1 K 3°), in the histories of the
nativity of Israel or of the nativity of Israel’s Re-
deemer. In effect, the patriarchal stories of the
Book of Genesis, the story of Daniel at the palace
of the king, and the story of the birth of Jesus, are
the sole depositions of supernatural dreams in
Scripture ; the apparent exceptions (Jg 7%, 1K
3°, Mt 27'%) may be reduced to the single one of
11 95
The significance of the marked clustering of
recorded supernatural dreams at just these his-
torical points it is not easy to be perfectly sure of.
Perhaps it is only a part of the general tendency
of the supernatural manifestations recorded in
Scripture to gather to the great historical crises ;
throughout ‘Scripture the creative epochs are the
supernaturalistic epochs. Perhaps, on the other
hand, it may be connected with the circumstance
that at just these particular periods God’s people
were brought into particularly close relations with
the outside world. We have but to think of
Abraham and Abimelech, of Jacob and Laban,
of Joseph and Pharaoh, of Daniel and Nebuchad-
nezzar, of Joseph and the Magi, to observe how
ANS
‘
5
ἃ-
ἢ
᾿
DREAM
near at hand the suggestion lies that the choice of
dreams in these instances as the medium of revela-
tion has some connexion with the relation in which
the recipient stood at the moment to influences
arising from the outer world, or at least to some
special interaction between Israel and that world.
In entertaining such a conjecture we must beware, however,
of imagining that there was something heathenish in the recog-
nition of dreams as vehicles of revelation; or even of unduly
depreciating dreams among the vehicles of revelation. It has
become quite usual to speak of dreams as the lowest of the
media of revelation, with the general implication either that
the revelations given through them cannot rise very high in
the scale of revelations, or at least that the choice of dreams as
their vehicle implies something inferior in the qualification of
the recipients for receiving revelations. There is very little
criptural support for such representations. No doubt, there is
a certain gradation in dignity indicated in the methods of
revelation. Moses’ pre-eminence was marked by Jehovah
speaking with him ‘mouth to mouth,’ manifestly, while to
others He made Himself known ‘in a vision,’ or ‘in a dream’
(Nu 125). And it is possible that the order in which the various
methods of revelation are enumerated in such passages as Dt
131, 1S 286. 15, J] 223, Ac 217 may imply a gradation in which reve-
lation through dreams may stand at the foot. But these very
passages establish dreams among the media statedly used by
God for the revelation of His will, and drop no word depreciatory
of them ; nor is there discoverable in Scripture any justification
for conceiving the revelations made through them as less valu-
able than those made through other media (cf. Konig, Offen-
barungsbegriff, i. 55, ii. 9 f., 63 f.).
It is very misleading to say, for example (Barry in Smith's
DB i. €17; cf. Orelli, op. cit.), that ‘the greater number’ of the
recorded supernatural dreams ‘ were granted, for prediction or
for warning, to those who were aliens to the Jewish covenant’ ;
and when they were given to God’s ‘chosen servants, they
were almost always referred to the periods of their earliest and
most imperfect knowledge of Him’; and, ‘moreover, they be-
long especially to the earliest age, and became less frequent as
the revelations of prophecy increase.’ As many of these
dreams were granted to Israelites as to aliens; they do not
mark any particular stage of religious development in their
recipients ; they do not gradually decrease with the progress of
revelation ; they no more characterize the patriarchal age than
that of the exile or the opening of the new dispensation. If no
example is recorded during the whole period from Solomon to
Daniel; so none is recorded from the patriarchs to Solomon,
or again from Daniel to our Lord. If the great writing-pro-
phets assign none of their revelations to dreams, they yet refer
to revelations by dreams in such a way as to manifest their
recognition of them as an ordinary medium of revelation (Jer
2325. 23. 32 279 298, Zec 102). These passages are often adduced,
to be sure, as suggesting that appeal especially to dreams was a
characteristic of the false prophets of the day ; and it is even
sometimes represented that Jeremiah means to brand dream-
revelations as such as lying revelations. Jeremiah’s polemic,
however, is not directed against any one particular method of
revelation, but against false claims to revelation by any method.
His zeal burns no more hot against the prophet that ‘hath a
dream’ than against him that ‘hath the Lord’s word’ (2323) ;
no more against those that cry, ‘I have dreamed, I have
dreamed,’ than against those who ‘take their tongue and say,
He saith’ (2325-31), Nor does Zechariah’s careful definition of
his visions as received waking, though coming to him at night
(18 41), involve a depreciation of revelations through dreams ;
it merely calls our attention to the fact, otherwise copiously
illustrated, that all night-visions are not dreams (cf. Gn 1512
2624 462, Nu 2229, 1 Ch 173, 2 Ch 712, Job 418 208 3315, Dn 219,
Ac 169, 189 2311 2724),
The citation in Ac 2" of the prediction of JI 28
suffices to show that there rested no shadow upon
tie ‘dreaming of dreams’ in the estimation of the
writers of the NT. Rather this was in their view
one of the tokens of the Messianic glory. Never-
theless, as we have seen, none of them except
Matthew records instances of the supernatural
dream. In the Gospel of Matthew, however, no
fewer than five or six instances occur. Some doubt
may attach, to be sure, to the nature of the dream
of Pilate’s wife (9719). The mention of it was cer-
tainly not introduced by Matthew idly, or for its
own sake; it forms rather one of the incidents
which he accumulates to exhibit the atrocity of
the judicial murder of Jesus. Is his meaning that
thus God Himself intervened to render Pilate
utterly without excuse in his terrible crime (so
Keil, im Joc.)? Even so the question would still
remain open whether the Divine intervention was
direct and immediate, in the mode of a special
revelation, or indirect and mediate, in the mode
of a providential determination. In the latter
DREAM
contingency, this dream would take its place ina
large class, naturally mediated, but induced by
God for the guidance of the affairs of men—another
instance of which, we have already suggested, may
be discovered in the dream of the Midianitish man
mentioned in Jg 7.15 (so Nésgen, in loc.). In this
case, the five instances of the directly supernatural
dream which Matthew records in his ‘ Gospel of
the infancy’ stand alone in the NT.
In any event, this remarkable series of direct
Divine revelations through dreams (Mt 190 2”: }-
19.22) forms a notable feature of this section of
Matthew’s Gospel, and contributes its share to
marking it off as a section apart. On this account,
as on others, accordingly, this section is sometimes
contrasted unfavourably with the corresponding
section of the Gospel of Luke. In that, remarks,
for example, Reuss (La Bible, NT, i. 138), the
angel visitants address waking hearers, the in-
spiration of the Spirit of God renews veritable
prophecy, ‘it is a living world, conscious of itself,
that appears before us’; in this, on the contrary,
‘the form of communication from on high is the
dream,—the form the least perfect, the least ele-
vated, the least reassuring.’ Others, less preoceu-
pied with literary problems, fancy that it is the
recipients of these dream-revelations rather than
the author of the narrative to whom they are
derogatory. Thus, for example, we are told that,
like the Magi of the East and the wife of Pilate,
Joseph ‘was thought worthy of communion with
the unseen world and of communications from
God’s messenger only when in an unconscious
state,’ seeing that he was not ripe for the manifes-
tation of the angel to him, as to Zacharias and
Mary, when awake (Nebe, HKindheitsgeschichte,
212, cf. 368). Of course, there is nothing of all this
in the narrative, as there is nothing to justify it
in any Scripture reference to the significance of
revelation through dreams. The narrative is
notable chietly for its simple dignity and direct-
ness. In three of the instances we are merely told
that ‘an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph,’
and in the other two that he or the Magi were
‘warned of God’ in a dream, 7.e. either by way
of, or during, a dream. The term employed for
‘appearing’ (gaivw) marks the phenomenal object-
ivity of the object: Joseph did not see in his
dream-image something which he merely inter-
preted to stand for an angel, but an angel in his
proper phenomenal presentation (see Grimm-Thayer,
8.0. δοκέω, ad fin.; Trench, Syn. NT, § |xxx.;
Schmidt, Griech. Syn. ο. 15). The term translated
‘warned of God’ (χρηματίζω) imports simply an
authoritative communication of a declaration of
the Divine will (so, e.g., Weiss, Keil, Alexander,
Broadus, Nebe), and does not presuppose a prece-
dent inquiry (as is assumed, e.g., by Bengel, Meyer,
Fritzsche). The narratives confine ‘themselves,
therefore, purely to declaring, in the simplest and
most direct manner, that the dream-communica-
tions recorded were from the Lord. Any hesitancy
we may experience in reading them is not suggested
by them, but is imported from our own personal
estimate of the fitness of dreams to serve as media
of Divine communications.
It is probable that the mere appearance of
dreams among the media of revelation recognized
by Scripture constitutes more or less of a stumbling-
block to most readers of the Bible. The disordered
phantasmagoria of dreams seems to render them
peculiarly unfit for such a use. The superstitious
employment of them by all nations in the lower
stages of culture, including not only the nations
of classical antiquity, but also those ancient peoples
with whom Israel stood in closest relations, sug-
gests further hesitancy. We naturally question
whether we are not to look upon their presence in
496 DREAM
DREAM
the Scripture narrative just as we look upon them
in the Gilgames epic or the annals of Assurbant-
vl, on the stéle of Bentrest or the inscriptions of
Karnak, in the verses of Homer or the histories of
Herodotus. Weare not without temptation to say
shortly with Kant (Anthropologie, 1. § 29), ‘We
must not accept dream-tales as revelations from
the invisible world.’ And we are pretty sure, if
we begin, with Witsius, with a faithful recognition
of the fact that ‘God has seen fit to reveal Himself
not only to the waking, but sometimes also to the
sleeping,’ to lapse, like him, at once into an apolo-
getical vein, and to raise the question seriously,
‘Why should God wish to manifest Himself in this
singular way, by night, and to the sleeping, when
the manifestation must appear obscure, uncertain,
and little suited either to the dignity of the matters
revealed or to the use of those to whom the revela-
tion is made?’ (de Prophetis et Prophetia, ch. v. in
Miscell. Sacra, i. pp. 22-27; ef. also Spanheim,
Dubia Evangelica, 2nd pt., Geneva, 1700, pp. 239-
240. and Rivetus, in Gen. Exercit. exxiv.).
We have already pointed out how little there is
in common between the occasional employment of
dreams for revelations, such as meets us in Scrip-
ture, and the superstitious view of dreams prevalent
among the ancients. It is an under - statement
when it is remarked that ‘the Scriptures start from
a spiritual height to which the religious conscious-
ness of the heathen world attained only after a
long course of evolution, and then only in the case
of an isolated genius like Plato’ (Jevons, doc. cit.
622). The difference is not a matter of degree,
but of kind. No Special sacredness or significance
is ascribed by the Scriptures to dreams in general.
No class or variety of dreams is recommended by
them to our scrutiny that we may through this or
that method of interpretation seek guidance from
them for our life. The Scriptures merely affirm
that God has on certain specific occasions, in
making known His will to men, chosen to ap-
proach them through the medium of their night-
visions; and has through these warned them of
danger, awakened them to a sense of wrong-doing,
communicated to them His will, or made known
His purposes. The question that is raised by the
affirmation of such an occasional Divine employ-
ment of dreams is obviously not whether dreams
as such possess a supernatural quality and bear a
supernatural «message if only we could get at it,
but rather whether there is anything inherent in
their very nature which renders it impossible that
God should have made such occasional use of them,
or derogatory to Him to suppose that He has
done so.
Surely we should bear in mind, in any considera-
tion of such a question, the infinite condescension
involved in God’s speaking to man through any
medium of communication. There is a sense in
Which it is derogatory to God to suppose Him to
hold any commerce with man at all, particularly
with sinful man. If we realized, as we should, the
distance which separates the infinite and infinitely
holy God from sin-stricken humanity, we should
be little inclined to raise questions with respect to
the relative condescension involved in His ap-
proaching us in these or those particular cireum-
In any revelation which God makes to
man He stoops infinitely—and there are no degrees
In the infinite. God’s thonghts are not as our
thoug hts and the clothing of His messages in the
forms of human conception and langnage involves
Looked at sah specie cter-
tances
in infinite derogation.
nitatis, the difference between God’s approaching
man through the medium of a dream or through
the medium of his wakine apprehension, shrinks
into practical nothingness. The ery of the heart
Which has really seen
case be, ‘What is man, that thou art mindful of
him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him ?’
It should also be kept clearly in view that the
subject of dreams, too, is, after all, the human
spirit. It is the same soul that is active in the
waking consciousness which is active also in the
dream-consciousness,—the same soul acting accord-
ing to the same laws (cf. Lehmann, op. cit. p. 397).
No doubt there are some dreams which we should
find difficulty in believing were direct inspirations
of God. Are there not some waking thoughts also
of which the same may be said? This does not
in the least suggest that the Divine Spirit may not
on suitable occasion enter into the dream-conscious-
ness, as into the waking, and impress upon it, with
that force of conviction which He alone knows how
to produce, the assurance of His presence and the
terms of His message.
‘The psychology of dreams and visions,’ writes Dr. G. T. Ladd,
“so far as we can speak of such a psychology, furnishes us with
neither sufficient motive nor sufficient means for denying the
truth of the Biblical narratives. On the contrary, there are
certain grounds for confirming the truth of some of these
narratives. . . . Even in ordinary dreains, the dreamer is still
the human soul. The soul acts, then, even in dreaming, as a
unity, which involves within itself the functions and activities
of the higher, even of the ethical and religious powers. .. .
The possibility of even the highest forms of ethical and religious
activities in dreams cannot be denied. . . . There is nothing in
the physiological or psychical conditions of dream-life to pre-
vent such psychical activity for the reception of revealed truth.
. . . It remains in general true that the Bible does not trans-
gress the safe limits of possible or even actual experience’ (The
Doctr. of Sacred Scripture, ii. 436).
So little, indeed, do emptiness and disorder
enter into the very essence of dreaming, that com-
mon experience supplies innumerable examples of
dreams thoroughly coherent and consequent. The
literature of the subject is filled with instances
in which even a heightened activity of human
faculty is exhibited in dreams, and that through-
out every department of mental endowment.
Jurists lave in their dreams prepared briefs of
which they have been only too glad to avail them-
selves in their waking hours; statesmen have in
their dreams obtained their best insight into policy ;
lecturers have elaborated their discourses ; mathe-
maticians solved their most puzzling problems ;
authors composed their most admired productions ;
artists worked out their most inspired motives.
Dr. Franklin told Cabanis that the bearings and
issues of political events which had baffled his
inquisition when awake were not infrequently
unfolded to him in his dreams. It was in a dream
that Reinhold worked out his table of categories.
Condorcet informs us that he often completed his
imperfect calculations in his dreams; and the same
experience has been shared by many other mathe-
maticians, as, for example, by Maignan, Gdns,
Wihnert. Condillae, when engaged upon his Cours
@ tudes, repeatedly developed and finished in his
dreams a subject which he had broken off on retir-
ing to rest. The story of the origin of Coleridge’s
Kubla Khan in a dream is well known. Possibly
no more instructive instance is on record, however,
than the account given by Robert Louis Stevenson,
in his delightful Chapter on Dreams (‘ Thistle’ ed.
of Works, xv. 2501f.), of how ‘the little people’ of
his brain, who had been wont to amuse him with
absurd farragos, harnessed themselves to their
task and dreamed for him consecutively and
artistically when he became a craftsman in the art
of story-telling. Now, they trimmed and pared
their dream-stories, and set them on all fours, and
made them run from a beginning to an end, and
fitted them to the laws of life, and even filled them
with dramatic situations of guileful art, making
the conduct of the actors psychologically correct,
and aptly graduating the emotion up to the
climax. (See Abercrombie, Inquiries Concerning
talks coe ry . | Soo ΒΕ
or heard God must in any | the Intellectual Powers, ete., part 111. ὃ iv., esp. pp.
%
DREAM
DREAM
497
216-221; Carpenter, Principles of Mental Physi-
ology, Ὁ. 5241. ; Lehmann as cited, p. 411; Vol-
kelt, Die Traumphantasic, No. 15; Myers, Human
Personality, ete., Nos. 417 f., 480, with correspond-
ing Appendixes).
Instances of this heightened mental action in
dreams are so numerous and so striking in fact,
that they have given rise to an hypothesis which
provokes Wundt’s scoff at those ‘who are inclined
to think that when we dream the mind has burst
the fetters of the body, and that dream fancies
transcend the activity of the waking conscious-
ness, with its narrow confinement to the limita-
tions of space and time’ (Vorlesungen iiber die
Menschen- und Thiersecle, Lect. xxii. pp. 366-370,
Eng. tr. pp. 323-324). The well-known essay of
Lange ‘On the Double Consciousness, especially
on the Night-Consciousness and its polar relation
to the Day-Consciousness of Man,’ printed in the
eutsche Zeitschrift fur christliche Wissenschaft
und christliches Leben for 1851 (Nos. 30, 31, and 32),
still provides one of the most readable and in-
structive statements of this theory. But English
readers will be apt to turn for it first of all to the
voluminous discussions of the late Mr. Frederic
W. H. Myers, Human Personality and its Sur-
vival of Bodily Death (London, 1903), where it is
given a new statement on a fresh and more em-
pirical basis. In Mr. Myers’ view, the sleeping
state is more plastic than the waking, exhibiting
some trace ‘of the soul's less exclusive absorption
in the activity of the organism,’ by which is
possibly increased ‘the 501} 5 power of operating in |
that spiritual world to which sleep has drawn it
nearer’ (vol. i. pp. 151-152; οἵ. p. 135). Accord-
ingly, ‘these subliminal uprushes’ which we call
dreams, these ‘bubbles breaking on the surface
from the deep below,’ may be counted upon to
bring us messages, now and again, from a spiritual
environment to which our waking consciousness is
closed. On hypotheses like these it is often argued
that the sleeping state is the most favourable for
the reception of spiritual communications. It is
not necessary to commit ourselves to such specula-
tions. But their existence among investigators
who have given close study to the phenomena of
dreams, strongly suggests to us that those phe-
nomena, in the mass, are not such as to exclude the
possibility or the propriety of the occasional em-
ployment by the Divine Spirit of dreams as vehicles
of revelation.
That powerful influences should occasionally
arise out of dreams, affecting the conduct and the
destiny of men, is only natural, and is illustrated
by numerous examples. Literature is crowded
with instances of the effect of dreams upon life,
for good and evil; and the personal experience of
each of us will add additional ones. ‘There is no
one of us who has not been conscious of the influence
of night visions in deterring him from evil and
leading him to good. The annals of religion are
sown with instances in which the careers of men
have been swayed and their outlook for time and
eternity altered by a dream. We may recall the
dream of Evagrius of Pontus, recorded by Socrates,
for example, by which he was nerved to resist
temptation, and his whole life determined. Or we
may recall the dream of Patrick, given in his Con-
fession, on which hung his whole work as apostle
of the Irish. Or we may recall the dream of
Elizabeth Fry, vy which she was rescued from the
indecision and doubt inte which she fell after her
conversion. The part played by dreams in the
conversion of John Bunyan, John Newton, James
Gardiner, Alexander Duff, are but well-known
instances of a phenomenon illustrated copiously
from every age of the Church’s experience. ‘Con-
verting dreams’ are indeed a recognized variety
VOL. I.—32
| 1898, p. 389f.
(cf. Myers as cited, No. 409, i. pp. 126, 127), and
are in nowise stranger than many of their fellows.
They are the natural result of the action of
the stirred conscience obtruding itself into the
visions of the night, and, as psychological phe-
nomena, are of precisely the same order as the
completion of mathematical problems in dreams,
or the familiar experience of the invasion of our
dreams by our waking anxieties. In the provi-
dence of God, however, they have been used as
instruments of Divine grace, and levers by which
not only individual destiny has been determined,
but the very world has been moved. (Cf. Delitzsch,
as cited, and ‘Dreams and the Moral Life,’ in the
Homiletic Review, Sept. 1860).
With such dreams and the issues which have
flowed from them in mind, we surely can find no
difficulty in recognizing the possibility and pro-
priety of occasional Divine employment of dreams
for the highest of ends. Obviously dreams have not
been deemed by Providence too empty and bizarre
to be used as instruments of the most far-reaching
effects. Indeed, we must extend the control of
Divine Providence to the whole world of dreams.
Of course, no dream visits us in our sleep, any
more than any occurrence takes place during
our waking hours, apart from the appointment
and direction of Him who Himself never either
slumbers or sleeps, and in whose hands all things
work together for the execution of His ends. We
may, now and again, be able to trace with especial
clearness the hand of the great Potter, moulding
the vessel to its destined uses, in, say, an unusual
dream, producing a profoundly arresting effect
upon the consciousness. But in all the dreams that
visit us, we must believe the guidance of the
universal Governor to be present, working out His
will. It will hardly be possible, however, to recog-
nize this providential guidance of dreams, and
especially the Divine employment ef particularly
moving dreams in the mode of what we commonly
call ‘special providences,’ without removing all
legitimate ground for hesitation in thinking of
His employment of special dreams also as media of
revelation. The God of providence and the God of
revelation are one God; and His providential and
revelational actions flow together into one har-
monious effect. It is not possible to believe that
the instrumentalities employed by Him freely in
the one sphere of His operation can be unworthy
of use by Him in the other. Those whom He has
brought by His providential dealings with them
into such a state of mind that they are prepared to
meet with Him in the night watches, and to receive
on the prepared surface of their souls the impres-
sions which He designs to convey to them, He
surely may visit according to His will, not merely
by the immediate operation of His grace, but also
in revealing visions, whether these visions them-
selves are wrought through the media of their own
experiences or by His own creative energy. It is
difficult to perceive in what the one mode of action
would be more unfitting than the other.
LITER4TURE.— Some of the special literature has been sug-
gested in the course of the article. A good general account of
dreams in their relations to the supernatural may be found in
Alf. Lehmann’s Aberglaube und Zauberei, Ger. tr., Stuttgart,
At the foot of p. 548 is given an excellently
selected list of books on the general subject. On the history of
the estimate of dreams in the nations into contact with which
the Biblical writers came, see Lehmann (‘Index’), and also the
following: Ebers, Aeqgypten wnd die Biicher Mose’s, 321; Le-
normant, La divination et la science de présayes chez les °
Chaldéens, 126-149; Bouché-Leclereq, Histoire de la divination
dans Vantiquité, i. 276-329; Vaschide and Piéron, ‘ Prophetic
Dreams in Greek and Roman Antiquity’ in The Monist for
Jan. 1901, IX.. ii. 161-194; Audenried’s ed. of Nagelsbach’s
Homerische Theologie, δὲ 25-29, pp. 172-176; Aust, Die Relig.
der Romer, 79, 108, 139, 160; Granger, The Worship of the
Romans, 28-52. For dreams among the later Jews, see Ham-
burger’s RE i. 996-998; Jewish Encye. iv. 655-657; and cf.
Philo, de Somniis. For Patristic views: Tertullian’s On the
DRESS
495
DRESS
Soul, cc. 42-50; Synesius’ On Dreams ; and the interesting
correspondence between Evodius and Augustine (Aug. Epp.
158, 159) may be profitably read. For the anthropological view
see Tylor’s Primitive Culture (° Index’).
BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD.
DRESS. —
The words used in the original for articles of dress have lost
much of their force through great variation in translation in
the AV. For clothes in general ἔνδυμα occurs; it 1s tr. ‘ cloth-
ing,’ Mt 715; ‘raiment,’ Mt 34 6%. 28 283, Lk 1223; ‘garment,’ Mt
9911.12, ἱμάτιον signifies an outer garment, a mantle or cloak ; it
is tr. ‘garment,’ Mt 916. 20. 21 1436 218 235 2735, Mk 221 527 656 1050
117-8 1316 1524, Lk 536 844 1935 2236, Jn 134121923; ‘cloak,’ Mt 540,
Lk 629; ‘clothes,’ Lk 827 (sing. in Greek) ; (plural) ‘clothes,’ Mt
217 2418 2665, Mk 528.30 1520, Lk 1996; ‘raiment,’ Mt 118 172 2731,
Mk 93, Lk 725 2334, Jn 1922, The scarlet or purple robe of Jesus
is called ἑωάτιον in Jn 192, χλὰμός in Mt 2723-31, ἐσθής in Lk 2511,
and in Mk 1517.20 simply ‘the purple,’ τὴν πορφύραν (cf. Lk 1619).
juaricucs is tr. ‘raiment,’ Lk 929; ‘ vesture,’ Mt 27%, Jn 1924—in
hoth passages it stands in antithesis to iuérsov—and ‘apparel’ (ἐν
ἱματισμῷ ἐνδόξω), Lk 725. oroay—the Lat. stola—is used for the
long garments of the scribes, tr. ‘long clothing’ Mk 1298, ‘long
robes’ Lk 2048; for the ‘best robe’ of the Prodigal Son, Lk 1522;
for the ‘long garment’ of the Resurrection angel, Mk 16?—in
the parallel passage ἔσθησις, ‘garment’ is used, Lk 341, χιτών
signified an under-garment, and is tr. in EV ‘coat’ in Mt 540
1010, Mk 69, Lk 311 629 98, Jn 1923. The plural is in Mk 14% tr.
‘clothes,’ thongh in the parallel passage Mt 2655 ἱμάτια is used.
Closely connected with clothes we have λέντιον, the towel with
which Christ girded Himself, Jn 1345; σουδάριον, ‘napkin,’ of
Lk 1920, Jn 1144 207; ὀθόνιον, ‘linen cloth,’ of Lk 2412, Jn 1940
205.67: σινδών, ‘linen cloth,’ of Mt 2759, Mk 1451.52; and βύσσο:,
‘fine linen,’ Lk 1619; ὑπόδημα, ‘shoe,’ Mt 311 1010, Mk 17, Lk 316
104 1522 2235, Jn 127; σανδάλιον, ‘sandals,’ Mk 69; ζώνη, ‘girdle,’
Mt 34, Mk 16, ‘ puree Mt 109, Mk 68; πήρα, ‘scrip,’ Mt 1010, Mk
63, Lk 98 104 2235. 36,
All the references to clothes in the Gospels are
to male costume. There are very few indications
of the materials of which they were made or of
their shape. John the Baptist had his raiment
(ἔνδυμα) of camel’s hair, and a girdle of leather
about his loins (Mt 3? ||)—like many a roughly clad
man in Palestine to-day. The rich man of the
parable was clothed in ‘purple and fine linen’
(βύσσος), Lk 16% The three body-garments com-
monly mentioned are the cloak (iudrvov),—a word
used also in the plural for ‘ garments’ in general, —
the ‘coat’ (χιτών), and the girdle (ζώνη). The head-
dress is never definitely mentioned, but we know
that it was practically universal to cover the head.
These references indicate that the clothes worn
by Christ, His disciples, and the great majority
of His adherents, were of the simplest kind; but
among the richer classes there are indications, as
is seen in the references given above, of more
sumptuous robes. Indeed, among the better class
of townsfolk it is probable that Jewish costume was
largely modified under Hellenic and Roman influ-
ence. In dealing with the former more important
subject, the probable costume of the founders of
Christianity, the most hopeful sources of informa-
tion are (1) the costumes of Jews, and (2) the
dresses worn to-day among people of simple life in
modern Palestine.
1. The dress of orthodox Jews is as various as
their languave and lands of residence. Neither in
the head-dress, nor in the long Sabbath robes of
the Rabbis, nor in the ordinary under-garments,
are there any uniform features. There are, how-
ever, two special garments which are worn by
orthodox Jew 5 the world over ; these are the tallith
and the arha kanphéth. The tallith, or praying
a Ι, is ὃ rectangular woollen shawl about 3 feet
v 5," usually white, with dark stripes across two
ΟΣ the sides. Vrom each corner hangs a tassel or
Iringe ; these are known as the zizith. Each con-
SISts μὰ eight threads twisted together in five knots
(600 ORDER). The tallith is always worn in the
> ar ican and at prayer time: it then covers the
as ee om shoulders. Jews who affect. special
sanctity—especially those living in the Holy Land
. often wear it all day, as was once the common
custom, In the Middle Ages, in consequence of
* Much larger tadliths
to the ankles. Sx
are also worn, reaching at times even
art. ‘Tallith’ in Jewish Encyc. vol. xi.
the persecution which the Jews then underwent on
account of their religious customs, the habit of
wearing the ¢allith in public had to be given up;
but as the Jews view the wearing of the fringes as
a religious duty (Dt 22”, Nu 15°), they made a
special under-garment to carry them. This con-
sists of a rectangular piece of woollen or even
cotton material, about 3 feet long by a foot wide ;
it has a large hole in the centre through which the
head is put, so that the garment comes to lie over
the chest and back like a kind of double chest-
protector. At the four corners are the zizith, and
the garment is known as the ‘four corners,’ arba’
lanphéth, or sometimes as the tallith katon, or
small tallith. It is worn by small children, but
the ¢allith proper only by a boy after he has be-
come bar mizvah, a ‘son of the Law,’ at thirteen.
As the earliest mention of the arba kanphéth is in
1350, it is manifest that it cannot have existed in
NT times. With the tallith, however, the case is
different. It is certain that this is the altered
form of an outer garment which existed in early
times, and was known in Heb. as the simlah and
in Gr. as himation. In the ‘hem’ or ‘border’
(κράσπεδον, Mt 9% 14°, Mk 055, Lk 8¥) we have
reference to the fringed border of the cloak ; and
even more definite is the reference in Mt 23°, when
the scribes and Pharisees are reproved for unduly
lengthening the fringes (τὰ κράσπεδα) of their gar-
ments.
2. The clothes of the ordinary fellah, or peasant
in modern Palestine, are five in number,—shitt,
cloak, girdle, shoes, and head-dress.
The shirt or kamis is a simple straight garment,
extending from the neck almost to the feet, with
short, or sometimes long, loose, sleeves. It is
usually of calico; it may be of linen. Among
the fellahin it is white, among the Bedawin (who
often go about in nothing else) it is dyed blue. It
is usually open in front more than half-way to the
waist, but is brought together at the neck by a
button or knotted thread. It is worn night and
day.
Over the shirt is fixed the zwnndér or girdle, a
most necessary article of clothing. It may be of
leather, with buckles, or woven of camel’s hair, or
of brightly-dyed silk or cotton. The woven belt
is wound tightly two or three times round the
waist, and is fixed by tucking the free end into
the belt itself. In the girdle is carried, as in NT
days (Mt 10°, Mk 68), the money, often knotted
into a corner of a handkerchief, and also the pen
and ink of the learned or the dagger of the fighter.
When the man is ‘girded’ for work the kamis is
hitched up to the tightened belt, as high as the
knees. The upper part of the shirt is commonly
drawn up loose above the girdle, so that a consider-
able space is left between the chest and the shirt.
This is known as the w'bd or ‘bosom,’ and in this
are carried many things; for example, the bread
and olives for the midday meal, the seed or corn
for sowing (Lk 6°), or, in the case of a shepherd, a
newborn lamb or kid (ef. Is 40").
In order of importance next comes the head-
dress, of which two distinct types are in daily
use—the turban and the kufiyeh. Under both of
these is worn the ¢ekkiyeh or ‘ardkiych, a small
plain close-fitting cap of felt, wool, or even cotton ;
this is commonly not removed even at night.
When one has worn thin, a new one is placed on
the top, so that two or three layers are quite
usual; and between the layers the fcllah keeps
small papers of value. When a turban is worn,
the red fez or tarbush is placed over the skull-cap,
and the deffeh or turban is wound round its sides.
The deffeh among the fellahin is usually of parti-
coloured cotton or silk, red and white or yellow
being common.
In the towns it is often orna-
ee SS ΘΟ -- -
!
DRESS
DRESS 499
mented with yellow silk worked in patterns ; while
the haj who has made the Mecca pilgrimage, and
the Druse, wear plain white; and the sherif or
‘descendant of the prophet’ wears green. The
other form of head-dress is more ancient and the
more primitive: probably it is more like the
peasant dress of NT times. It consists of a kufiyeh
or large napkin of white or coloured cotton or silk,
as much perhaps as a yard square, folded diagon-
ally to make a triangular piece, and laid on the
head with the apex backward; and the ‘akdl, a
rope-like circle of camel’s hair, laid double over
the top of the head to keep the kufiyeh in position.
The free ends of the kufiyeh are wound round the
neck according to taste, being used on journeys in
the hot sun to cover, at times, all the face below
the eyes. It is a most efficient and practical head-
dress, especially when worn over a felt tekkiyeh.
The napkin referred to in Lk 1930 may have been
of the same nature, and the napkins of Jn 11" 207,
though used to cover the face of the dead, may
have been made for the head of the living.
These three garments are the essentials; in
such will a man work all day, and, if very poor,
even go journeys; but in the latter event he
would be an object of pity unless he had an ‘abd
or cloak. This is made of camel’s or goat’s hair
or of wool, and among the fel/ahin is usually of
white and brown in stripes or of plain brown.
The superior qualities are often white or black.
The ordinary ‘ab@ is made of a long rectangular
piece of material, with the sides folded in and
sewn along the top; it is thus very square, when
new, across the shoulders. It has no sleeves, and
though there are slits just below the upper corners
through which the arms may be put, it is almost
always worn resting over the shoulders and upper
arms. It extends half-way between the knees and
the feet. During sleep, especially on journeys
when the traveller has no bed, it is made to cover
the whole person, the man either wrapping it
round him, or, if there is a sack or mat on which
to lie, curling himself under it as under a blanket.
Shoes are to-day almost universally worn ; but
a fellah with a new pair of shoes will often, when
outside the town, prefer to save his shoes from
wear and tear by carrying them. Sandals are still
worn, but not commonly as formerly, when the
sandal seemed to make the simplest foot-gear
(Mk 6°).
The costume of the Palestine peasant, above
described, was probably, with no doubt differences
in materials aad in cut, the costume of the country
folk of NT and pre-NT times. The amis is the
equivalent of the χιτών, and that was the kéthéneth
of the OT. Now, as then, it is at times woven in
one piece without seam (Jn 19%). The ‘adda is the
modern equivalent of the ἱμάτιον, the simlah of the
OT. It was the outer cloak which might not be
retained as a pledge after sunset (Ex 2256), It is
quite possible that in Mt 5” there is a reference to
this.
might not be removed was because the zézith with
their blue and white threads were a reminder of
the Law. Christ teaches here that when a man
does an injury, within legal limits, as in taking
the shirt, His follower must be prepared to go
a step farther, and give up even what the Law
protects him in keeping. The reversal of the order
in Lk., though more intelligible to Gentiles, misses
the special reference to the Jewish Law. Like the
modern ‘abd, the himation was cast aside for quick
movement (Mk 10”, Jn 13412), Jeft aside when
working in the fields (Mk 13!*); and being dis-
pensed with in fighting, might profitably be ex-
changed for a sword when danger was near (Lk
22%6), It might be spread on the ground to form a
carpet for an honoured person (Mt 918), and might
The Rabbis stated that the reason the cloak |
be used in lieu of a saddle, folded across an ass’s
back (Mk 117-8). In every one of these details the
use of the modern ‘adé in Palestine could furnish
parallels.
With respect to the χιτών in two separate refer-
ences-(Mt 10” ete. and Lk 3"), two ‘coats,’ 1.6.
shirts, are spoken of rather as luxuries than neces-
sities for the traveller—as is to-day the case with
the kamis. Two ‘cloaks’ would be such unlikely
baggage as not to need mentioning.
The girdle or gunndr is the equivalent of the
ζώνη, as is specially shown in its use as a purse,
There is, however, another girding referred to in
some passages. John the Baptist’s girdle may
quite probably have been a broad ‘loin cloth’ ex-
tending from waist to knee,—a very ancient dress,
—while over the shoulders hung a rough coarse-
haired ‘aba. It is not unreasonable to suppose
that, like the modern dervish, he wore his long hair
uncovered. It is evident that his costume was in-
tentionally distinctive. When Peter was found by
the risen Master engaged in his old business of
fishing, he, like the modern Galilean fishermen
when fishing near shore, was probably girded only
with a loin-cloth, and therefore described as
‘naked’ (Jn 217). Christ girded Himself with a
towel before washing the disciples’ feet, to make
Himself in outward form more like a slave (Jn
13%). It is evident that in the crucifixion, at
least of Jews, who would not have tolerated abso-
lute nudity, the victim, after the removal of his
clothes, was girded round the waist; Peter must
have understood the words ‘another shall gird
thee’ as foretelling that event (Jn 21'8).
The long garments of the scribes and Pharisees
find their modern counterparts in the long cloak
used by Moslem religious leaders, the jibbch, and
in the velvet, plush, and silk robes of gorgeous
colours favoured by the leading Rabbis of the
Ashkenazim Jews, on Sabbath and feast-days. In
city life, garments additional to those described
above are always worn. Over the amis, but
included within the girdle, is a striped coloured
robe reaching to near the feet, called the kumbaz,
and, among the better dressed, over this is worn
the sudriyeh or ornamental waistcoat. Lebds or
drawers, though utterly despised by the true
Arab, are in common use in towns. Many other
varieties of garments might be mentioned. Those
already named and doubtless others all had their
counterparts in NT times, but there is no hint
that any but the simplest forms of peasant dress
were worn by Christ and His disciples. It has
indeed been thought that the garments divided
by the soldiers must necessarily have been five, of
which four, the cloak (ἱμάτιον), the shoes or sandals,
the girdle and the head-dress, were ‘ divided among
them,’ and the fifth, the χιτών or shirt of finer
quality, woven perhaps by the hands of His mother
herself, apportioned by lot.
The στολή was evidently considered among the
circle of Jesus a robe of dignity; it is the ‘ best
robe’ brought forth for the returning prodigal ; it
is used to describe the clothing of the ‘young man’
at the tomb (Mk 16°), and the imposing garments
of the scribes (Lk 20* etce.).
The unsatisfactoriness of patching with new
cloth a much worn garment (Mt 9156, Mk 2?!), and
the ubiquitousness of that scourge, the clothes-
moth (Mt 619: °°, Lk 12°), are daily to be seen illus-
trated in Palestine. The custom of providing
guests with clean ‘wedding garments’ is still
known, though unusual, in the modern East. But
the entertainment of the very poor by the well-to-
do at such feasts, evidently then far from un-
common, must have made such a_ precaution
absolutely necessary. In the account of the ‘rich
man’ (Lk 1015), we have reference to two of the
500 DRINK, DRINKING
DROPSY
expensive materials for dress—the purple dye
obtained from the murex on the coasts of Tyre,
and the βύσσος, or ‘fine linen, which was imported
at great expense from Egypt. ᾿ :
Reference is made at the beginning to the various
ε 1 4 Ὑ
terms used to describe the robe put on Christ by
the mocking soldiers. Of these the χλαμύς, or
military mantle, fastened by a buckle on the right
shoulder so as to hang in a curve across the body,
would appear to have been the most distinctive
and suitable for the purpose.
LITERATURE.—Tristram, Hastern Customs in Bible Lands ;
Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah; art. ‘ Dress
and Personal Adornment in Modern Palestine,’ by Masterman in
Biblical World, 1902; Nowack’s and Benzinger’s Heb. Arch. ;
artt. ‘Dress’ or ‘Costume’ in Hastings’ DB (by Mackie), in the
Encye. Bibl. (by Abrahams and Cook), and in the Jewish Eneye.
(by Noéldeke). E. W. G. MASTERMAN.
DRINK, DRINKING.—See EATING AND DRINK-
ING, Foop, Lorp’s SUPPER, MEALS, WINE.
DROPSY.— As the name (Gr. tdpwy)* would
seem to imply, this disease is characterized by an
accretion or accumulation of water in the cellular
tissue or serous cavities. In the only place in the
NT where a reference to it occurs, no mention is
made as to whether the patient suffered from a
general anasarca or a local dropsical swelling (Lk
14°). The writer simply uses the adjective ὑδρω-
πικύς (50. ἄνθρωπος) instead of the noun. This is,
however, in strict accordance with the usage of
Greek medical writers, as we have it in the works
of Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and Galen. That the
disease was not unknown to the authors of some
of the OT writings appears from the description of
the trial by ordeal of a wife suspected of infidelity
to her husband (Nu 5111), In νν."} 33 part of the
punishment inflicted on the guilty woman was a
dropsical swelling (ef. Jos. Ant. III. xi. 6), which
looks as if dropsy used to be considered as an
affliction sent by God upon the wicked for con-
tinued wilful sin (cf. Ps 109'8, and see also the
Mishnic tractate Shabbath xxxiii. 1), and especially
for the sin of self-indulgence (ef. Horace, Carm.
Il. il. 13, ‘ crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops’).
The healing of the dropsical man is introduced
by St. Luke as part of a narrative which is peculiar
to his Gospel, 1, indeed, the parable in Lk 1416-74
be not identical with that in Mt 22?4—a con-
jecture which does not seem likely (see, however,
Wright’s Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek, p.
273 t.):
St. Luke alone of the Evangelists tells of Jesus being invited
to partake of the hospitality of the Pharisees and of His accept-
ing their invitations on three different occasions : ‘ to eat’ (736),
‘to breakfast’ (11°7), ‘to eat bread’ (141). It was on one of
these oceasions, as He was sitting probably at breakfast or the
{πὶ ore eames ἄριστον, V.'2) on the Sabbath, that He healed the
Like the story of the healing of the woman with
the crooked spine, told in the preceding section, it
furnishes a vivid illustration of the way in which
the protracted controversy about the Sabbath rest
wa condueted by Jesus against the Pharisaic
\bbatarians of His time (ef. Mk 2°3_35, Mt 121-13,
Lk 6!" 131-17, Jn 59-18), It is not easy to deter-
mine whether the diseased man was specially
introduced into the house for a malignant pur-
pose, or whether he appeared there unbidden in
— to claim the sympathy and the help of Jesus.
ἼΘ᾽ presence of ἰδού seems to imply that the latter
wits the case, and that the host was as much sur-
prised a any one else at the turn of events. In
any case he could not have been an invited quest
a Jesus could not in that event, with courtesy,
have dismi sed him when healed, as St. Luke says
He did (ἀπέλυσεν, y.4). Whatever was the im-
a a found in NT, only the adj. vdparixes occurring in
mediate cause of the man’s presence, Jesus utilized
the opportunity thus afforded to emphasize once
again His teaching on the Sabbath question. Here
was a inan afflicted with a most inveterate and
dangerous malady, indicative of deeply rooted
organic disease, and, according to contemporary’
belief, springing from moral as well as from physical
sources. It was, moreover, a disease well known
to those present ; and it seems to have been more
or less prevalent in that region down to recent
times (see Jewish Intelligence, 1842, p. 319).
The persistent character of the espionage to which Jesus was
subjected is well expressed by the periphrastic imperfect of
παρατηρείσθαι (ν.1), a verb which is almost confined, in NT usage,
to St. Luke (cf. Lk 67 2029, Ac 924; see also Mk 3? and Gal 410),
The question addressed by Jesus on this occasion
to ‘the lawyers and Pharisees’ aptly illustrates
His method of ‘ carrying the war into the enemy’s
camp’ (cf. 1345, Mt 124", and Lk 74%). The ἰδοῦ
of the question, which placed them on the horns of
an ugly dilemma, is vividly narrated. ‘They were
forced to be silent because they were completely
nonplussed (οἱ δὲ ἡσύχασαν, v.*). This verb, which
oceurs in the NT only once outside of St. Luke’s
writings (see 1 Th 41"), is often used in the sense of
a silence produced by superior or determined argu-
ment (cf. Ac 11!8 21"; see also Neh 5° LXX). The
nature of the difficulty, in which Jesus placed His
enemies, will be understood if we remember the
almost incredible minuteness with which the law
of the Sabbath was treated by the Jewish Rabbins,
and the childish way in which they regulated
whether a physician should perform a deed of
merey on that day (see Schiirer, HJP It. ii. pp.
96-105 ; Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah, App. XVII., and ii. pp. 59-61; Farrar,
Life of Christ, vol. i. pp. 431-441).
Whatever might be the differences between the
schools of Shammai and Hillel as to the class of
works forbidden on the Sabbath day, the general
practice of the Jews themselves was based on the
recognition that danger to life superseded the
Sabbath law, and the question of Jesus points
out this with force. If they allowed a man to
save his son or his ox from a position of imminent
danger, and yet considered the Sabbath rest un-
broken, how much stronger claim had a man,
suffering from an incurable malady, upon Him
whose power to heal had again and again been
manifested ?
It is possible, perhaps, to trace an element of scorn in Jesus’
attitude on this occasion. The conjunction of the words υἱός
and Gov; is at least remarkable, and points to vehemence on His
part in pressing the argument. The very feast at which He sat
as guest was a proof of insincerity in their attitude. How
prevalent the abuse of Sabbath feasting became amongst the
Jews is noticed by St. Augustine (Hnarr. in Ps 911: ‘ Hodiernus
dies sabbati est: hune in presenti tempore otio quodam cor-
poraliter languido et fluxo et luxurioso celebrant Judzi’).
St. Luke does not tell us plainly whether Jesus
used any visible means in performing the cure of
the dropsical man. He, however, uses one word
which may point to a treatment similar to what
He employed on other occasions (ef. ἐπιτιθέναι τὰς
χεῖρας, 44° 1313. Mk 5% ete., and ἅπτεσθαι, 51% 2951.
Mk 14', Mt 9051 ete.). It is, of course, possible that
ἐπιλαβόμενος (v.4) may have been used by the writer
of the narrative to correspond with the word ἀνα-
omdoet(v.°), in order to emphasize the force of Jesus’
argument, and that Jesus, in actnally laying hold
of the dropsical patient, intended to convey objec-
tively the lesson which each one of them ought to
have learned from the toil involved in pulling a
drowning animal out of a well.
The reference to the ‘well’ (εἰς φρέαρ, cf. εἰς
βόθυνον, Mt 12!) is particularly appropriate when
the nature of the disease is remembered, and shows
how wonderfully every incident was used by Jesus
to illustrate the lesson He meant to teach. A
DROW NING
DUST 501
very similar instance is observed when He com-
pared the woman with the diseased spine to the
animal which, tied to his stall, required to be loosed
‘therefrom even on the Sabbath day for his daily
watering (Lk 13!°; ‘congruenter hydropicum ani-
mali quod cecidit in puteum comparavit ; humore
enim laborabat,’ Augustine, Quest. Evang. ii.
29),
_ LiteraTure.—Plummer, ‘St. Luke’ in Internat. Crit. Com.
in loc. ; Hastings’ DB iii. p. 328 ; Trench and Taylor on Miracles ;
Encye. Brit. art. ‘ Dropsy.’ Jo Re Waniis
DROWNING.— Drowning never was or could be
a recognized form of capital punishment in so
poorly watered a country as Palestine, as it was in
Assyria and Babylonia. It is mentioned in Mt 186
(|| Mk 915, Lk 17?) as a fitting reward for those who
‘offend one of these little ones which believe in
me.’ The last expression may either be taken
literally, or this utterance of Jesus may be directed
against those who cause the simple believer to
stumble in his faith. The Greek word καταπον-
rife is used by the LXX to translate the Hebrew
yao in Ex 15+, and the expression used by Jesus
may be a reminiscence of the drowning of the
Egyptians in the Red Sea, or of the adventure of
Peter (Mt 1450), where the same word is employed. |
In the Code of Hammurabi, drowning is the penalty for selling
beer too cheaply (C. H. W. Johns’ Babylonian and Assyrian
Laws, Contracts, and Letters, p. 52 ff.), as well as for more
serious offences. The keepers of the beer-shops appear to have
been women, and it is curious that drowning seems to have
been considered the form of execution proper to female criminals.
In Moslem law as defined by Abu Hanifah (ἃ. 767 A.p.), killing by
means of drowning was not accounted murder, and no retalia-
tion could be claimed. T. H. WEIR.
DRUNKENNESS.— Only one explicit utterance
of our Lord relating to drunkenness is recorded (Lk
21%). Elsewhere He warns against it indirectly,
as in the parables where He holds up drunken
servants to reprobation (Mt 24%=Lk 12”). But
His references to the vice are surprisingly meagre. |
That must not be regarded as a measure of the
contemporary extent of the evil, nor as indicating
any lack of concern on His part. Our Lord’s atti-
tude to the matter must be estimated in view of
the sentiments and practices of His times.
The habit of drinking to excess was widespread.
Hebrew literature provides ample proof of famili-
arity with its unvarying moral and social conse-
uences. The scandals associated with the early
thristian love-feasts (1 Co 1151, Jude 15) were doubt-
less partly a recrudescence of pre-Christian practices.
While excess was unsparinely condemned by
moralists, moderation was uniformly commended.
Occasional maxims hint at the expediency of
abstinence in the interests of moral integrity and |
personal security. But where that is actually
practised, it is invariably the outcome of purely
religious impulse. It would seem that the Nazi-
rites, the Rechabites, and other ascetics realized
that indulgence in wine was inimical to spiritual
life (ef. Lk 115), or inexpedient in situations de-
manding the highest possible personal purity, or
inappropriate to persons of singular and abnormal
holiness (ef. John the Baptist, with whom some
seem to have compared Jesus unfavourably, Lk
74). To the ordinary Jew, however, habitual in-
dulgence was a matter of course. Abstinence
required strong reasons to justify it. The Baby-
lonian Gemara would even seem to suggest that
abstinence might be a positive sin.
has sinned by denying himself wine.’ It bases this
opinion on an arbitrary and erroneous interpreta-
tion of Nu 67 (see Jewish Encyc. art. ‘Drunken- |
ness’). ἐν
Jesus seems to have adopted the prevailing
popular attitude. He instituted no campaign
‘The Nazirite |
| pani |
much
against the use of strong drink. He made it no
part of His mission to denounce indulgence. He
Himself followed the ordinary practices of His
day, both using wine and ‘giving His countenance
to festivities in which wine played an important
part (cf. Jn 210), His various references to the
beverage indicate that He regarded it as a source
of innocent enjoyment (cf. Lk 550. 8.89 734 178),
Nevertheless, that He did not overlook the fact
that excess was common, and that He had an open
eye for the obtrusive evils of over-indulgence, is
abundantly evident from other references, as in the
parables. That He did not feel called upon to
command or commend abstinence in spite of this is
partly to be explained, perhaps, by the fact that
drunkenness was the vice chiefly of the wealthy.
That seems to be implicitly recognized in Lk 21°,
where it is bracketed with surfeiting and subjec-
tion to the cares of this life, faults peculiarly associ-
ated with the rich or well-to-do. In the parable
of the Householder (Mt 24% °!=Lk 12-46), the
drunken characters whom He holds up to contempt
are servants of one in high position, forming the
meénage of a luxurious household in which creature
comforts would be plentiful. In the circles in
which Jesus Himself principally moved, and to
which He chiefly appealed, excess does not seem to
have been so common as to eall for urgent protest
or the starting of a crusade against the use of
alcoholic liquors.
Christ’s attitude to the whole matter was deter-
mined by the fundamental purpose of His mission.
Drunkenness in general He regards as the accom-
paniment and symptom of a carnal unregenerate
state of heart, the outcome of wickedness that
defies restraint. He implicitly recognizes it also
as strongly contributory to spiritual demoraliza-
tion, as inducing such blunting of the spiritual
sensibilities and disabling of spiritual faculty as
incapacitate the soul for the proper exercises of the
devout life, and endanger its future by reducing it
to a state of unpreparedness for the last Divine
catastrophe (Lk 21%"), A. M. HUNTER.
DUMB.
DUNG.—See AGRICULTURE, p. 39°.
See DEAF AND DUMB.
DUST (κονιορτός, Mt 1013, Lk 9° 10", Ac 13°! 22% ;
χόος-ε χοῦς, Mk 6", Rev 181, The former means
properly dust stirred up or blown about, as ‘a
cloud of dust’; the latter simply earth or soil
thrown down or raised ina heap. In NT the two
words are plainly synonymous).—The long droughts
and fierce heat of Palestine, together with the soft-
ness of the limestone rock--the prevailing forma-
tion—make for the production of dust in great
quantities. In high winds it penetrates to almost
part of the houses. The pedestrian suffers
from fretting of the feet by the dust, which
neither sandal nor shoe excludes. This renders
necessary, as well as pleasant, the washing of the
feet when the journey is done (Lk 7).
An immemorial token of grief in the East is the
easting of dust upon the person, especially upon
the head, or the laying of the face in the dust;
while of one utterly humbled, it is said that he
‘licks the dust.’
The throwing of dust in the air is still a not
uncommon way of expressing rage, or emphasizing
an appeal for justice. This is probably meant to
show that Earth herself joins in the petition for
redress of intolerable wrongs.
Our Lord’s direction that ‘the Twelve’ should
shake off the dust of the cities that rejected their
message, derived special significance from Jewish
teaching. The very dust of a heathen road ‘was
held to produce defilement. To shake off the dust
|
502 DUTY
DAE
of their feet, as a testimony against house or city,
meant that it had passed under the ban ΟἹ their
Lord, and the symbolic act proclaimed that ‘nought
of the cursed thing’ clave to them. ‘In this sense
anything that clave to a person was metaphori-
cally called ‘‘the dust,” as, ¢.g., “* the dust of an evil
tongue,” ‘the dust of usury”; as, on the other
hand, to ‘dust to idolatry” meant to cleave to 1t
(Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah,
vol. i. p. 644). The modern Oriental, if asked re-
garding any questionable business, will daintily grip
the lapel of his robe or tunic and gently shake it,
turning aside his head as if he should say, ‘ Not
even the dust of that transaction has touched me.’
W. EWING.
DUTY.—In the widest sense of the word, ‘duty’
is the correlate of ‘ought.’ * What I ought to be,
to do, to feel, that is my duty. So the word covers
the whole content of the moral ideal. But both to
the plain man and to the philosopher duty usually
has a narrower significance; and this we must
make clear before we can trace the relation of the
teaching of Jesus to the conception of duty.
Our type of duty is the soldier who kept guard
at his post when Herculaneum was overwhelmed
by lava and ashes. His station in life prescribed
an action; and he fulfilled it. What his motives
were we do not ask; we do not inquire how he
felt in the execution of his task, or what manner
of man he was. He did what he was commanded ;
he did his duty. A man’s duty, then, at any time
is the action determined by his station in life. He
stands under a rule, which he must obey and apply.
Such obedience does not, however, cover the highest
moral excellence. Two men both do their duty,
say, to the poor; but the one is hard, unsym-
pathetic, the other benevolent ; the one is just, the
other full of charity. Although in point of duty
they do not differ, we feel that the latter is a better
man than the former; for he stands nearer to the
ideal of goodness. This is the popular view.
But among the ancients the Stoics, and in modern
times Kant, have judged differently. They ex-
clude the emotions, and measure moral worth by
the degree to which duty, and duty alone, is the
motive of action. No man is good unless he obeys
the law, simply because it is the law. Duty for
duty’s sake is their watchword. ‘The sage,’ says
Seneca,} ‘ will sucecour, will do good, for he is born
to assist his fellow, to labour for the welfare of
mankind ; but he will feel no pity. ...It is only
diseased eyes that grow moist in beholding tears in
other eyes, as it is no true sympathy, but only
weakness of nerves, that leads some to laugh
when others laugh, or to yawn when others yawn.’
Kant? argues in a similar way, but with creater
depth and sincerity, that philanthropic action has
true moral worth only if done by a man whose
temperament is cold and indifferent to the sufter-
ings of others, not from inclination, but from duty,
simply because he respects the law under which he
stands. Further, the moral judgment is directed
not to what is done, but to what the agent in-
tended to do, to what he has willed and taken
every means in his power to bring about. But
even this needs qualification. Kant holds that we
must leave out of account the content of what is
willed, and simply inquire whether the law is
Soy rd ‘duty’ oceurs only once in the Gospels, when
"68 cri Suny rofitable servants these who have only
1 ieir duty to do (Lk 17), The word in the
erb whic h is twice used in Jn (1314 197) to
express t lea of oughtness or moral obligation (EV ‘ought’),
re commo CX db . For examples of this use of
1 tea ng of Jesus see Mt 2323 2527, Lk 1918
listinction between δε: and ézesaw see Cremer
ί contrast Jn 1155
Ethics (Abbott's tr. pp. 14-16); contrast
obeyed just because it is the law. And so we
reach the bare conception of duty for duty’s sake,
and find the moral law reduced to the mere form of
universality. The flesh and blood of goodness have
vanished, and we are left with the spectre of a law
characterized only by the admission ot no exceptions, ἡ
But no one can rest satisfied with an abstrac-
tion. Kant, therefore, restores content to the
idea of duty by throwing into the form of Law
Universal the various kinds of action which Society
enjoins or forbids. Thus we receive a code of
moral laws, each demanding unconditional obedi-
ence. But this is not always possible. Conflicts
of ‘duties’ will from time to time appear, not in
the sense that Duty issues conflicting commands
(for under any given circumstances only one action
can be right), but in the sense that one of two
normal lines of conduct must overcome and contra-
dict the other. Thus arise the problems that have
exercised casuists and made real tragedies. Am I
to refuse either to kill my fellow-men or to defend
my country? Am I to tell a lie, or to become the
accomplice, however unwilling, in the murder of
my friend?* Such problems are inevitable and
insoluble, if we conceive duty as a group of co-
ordinate and absolute laws of action. Conflicts
must ensue in the application of such laws, once
the ideal system of moral relations on which they
are based fails to correspond point for point with
the actual system in which they claim realization.
But the world is full of imperfection and sin, and
every man has sinned and is weak. Consequently
the only possible choice may often lie between two
lines of conduct, both of which are ideally wrong.
Moreover, if the moral ideal is expressed as a
code of rules of action, morality tends to become
no more than the rigid observance of ceremonies
that characterized the Pharisee. Life hardens into
conventionality, if the emphasis is laid on doing
rather than on being. We do not deny that char-
acter must express itself in action; that charity
without works is a contradiction; that the good
will cannot be formed save by doing good. But
deeds are particular, and relative to time and
place ; and an ethical code which prescribes or
forbids particular acts not only loses touch with
real life, but diverts the attention from the spirit
to the letter. In the same way the institutions
by which a man’s station and duties are determined
tend also to become rigid and conventional.
Now Jesus Christ did not promulgate a new
code of morals ; nor did He do more than lay the
foundations of a new society. Had He instituted
a definite social, political, or ecclesiastical order,
or prescribed a scheme of duties for His followers,
the gospel would have possessed for Ethics only
an historical interest, instead of affording, as it
does, principles by which we may criticise every
action and reform every institution. The words
and works of Jesus are a well of living water,
from which all men of whatever time or nation
may drink. We do not disparage organizations
and codes of duty. They are essential to the
realization of any human ideal ; and it is the part
of practical Christianity to work out the gospel in
a moral, social, and religious order, appropriate to
the needs of each generation. In order to use
ideas we must crystallize them ; but in the process
they become halt-truths. The life of Jesus alone
abides as the truth, reflected and refracted on the
broken surface of the river of time.
We must, however, qualify what has been said in two respects.
Jesus guarded the sanctuary of the family by the most stringent
| regulation of divorce. This was natural; for the family is the
foundation-stone of the fabric of society. Where it does not
remain pure and undefiled, to nourish love and duty, the
nation becomes corrupt at its source. Again, Jesus instituted
the Holy Sacraments, by which we may participate in His
* Op. cit. pp. 361-368.
EAGLE
living Body and Blood, 7.e. in His Life and Spirit, to cleanse our
hearts, to renew our wills, and to illuminate our minds with
the vision of Truth.
Nothing can be gained by attempting to sum-
marize the Sermon on the Mount. It is enough to
emphasize three points.
1. Jesus turns the judgment and attention from
the outward act to the inward motive, to the
thought and feeling from which the act springs.
‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old
time, Thou shalt not commit adultery : but I say
unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to
lust after her hath committed adultery with her
already in his heart’ (Mt δ"). A standard such
as this must shatter the Pharisaic complacency
that accompanies the outward observance of a
code of duties.
2. In the same way Jesus lays stress on being,
not doing, on charactzr, not action. Blessed are
the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the for-
giving, they which hunger and thirst after right-
eousness. Not that deeds are unimportant or un-
necessary. Far from it. But the vital thing is
the will. So Jesus transcends the point of view of
the casuist. In the Christian ideal there are no
contradictions. In the Gospels there is no delicate
balancing of considerations and consequences.
3. Jesus subordinates the love of our neighbour
‘end in vanity and vexation of spirit.
| religion.
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY 503
to the love of God. It is often said that the Second
Commandment, ‘'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself,’ is an adequate expression of the ultimate
principle of morality. But the self that we love
may be an unworthy self, perhaps even a sensual
self. Ifso, we shall carry this conception into the
treatment of our neighbour. There is much good-
natured vice in the world. And apart from this,
fashionable philanthropy is too often dominated
by an ideal of mere comfort. That is why well-
meant efforts at social improvement not seldom
To avoid
this, altruism must draw its inspiration from true
It must seek illumination from God, and
in His light interpret the duty towards other men.
‘In other words, the love of God, as He is seen and
| known in Christ Jesus, creates a new ideal of duty
| both in relation to ourseives and our neighbour,
Finally, the Christian motive is not the abstract
conception of duty for duty’s sake, but charity,
the pure love of the full, concrete, and perfect
ideal of humanity, realized for all time in the
Person of Jesus Christ.
LITERATURE.—Kant’s Theory of Ethics, tr. by T. K. Abbott;
T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics (esp. bk. iii.); F. H.
Bradley, Ethical Studies (Essay iv.); H. Sidgwick, Methods of
Ethics, bk. iii.; Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics; Gore, The
Sermon on the Mount, A. J. JENKINSON.
E
EAGLE.—See ANIMALS, p. 65°.
EAR.—Of the Greek words translated ‘ear’ in
EV, two (ὠτάριον, ὠτίον) refer exclusively to the
bodily organ, and occur only in connexion with
the case of Malchus (Mk 147, Jn 181% 26, Mt 26°},
Lk 2251, In Mt 28" the rendering is simply a
paraphrase. In Mk 73 (ἀκοαί) ‘his hearing’ would
be more exact. In all other instances the word οὖς
occurs, and is used ; (1) literally, to denote ‘ the ear’
(Mt 1027, Mk 7% 818. Lk 144 12% 2250) or (by trans-
ference) ‘the range of hearing’ (Lk 45; but more
frequently (2) figuratively, to denote a spiritual
faculty symbolized by the natural ear (Mt 11”
139 15 (bis), 16. 43) ΜΠς 4% 23, Lk 88 94 14%). The de-
finitive passages for this use are Mt 13°, Mk 4°,
Lk 8515. where it forms the underlying subject of
Christ’s first parable, ‘the Sower,’ a parable con-
cluded in each account by the phrase, ‘He that
hath ears (to hear) let him hear.’ Indeed, the
general principle of speaking in parables is in these
passages connected with ‘ears dull of hearing’
(Mt 13"), Christ is speaking in reference to
‘mysteries’ (Mt 13", Mk 4", Lk 810), that is, Divine
truths not necessarily puzzling in themselves, but
undiscoverable by man apart from a revelation of
them (see Moule on Eph 19 3*%, cf. also 1 Co 27:10)
When these have been revealed to him, man has
the power to recognize their truth, fitness, and
necessity (see Westcott on He 2! 7°), in proportion
as he is determined to do the Divine will (Jn 7”
8-47), This faculty of recognizing the voice of
truth and (as it were) vibrating to its utterance 1s
fitly referred to by Christ as a spiritual ‘ ear.’
LITERATURE. — Grimm - Thayer, 8.0.
472 ff.
οὗε; Eapositor, τ. ii.
F. 5. RANKEN.
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY (ἐπίγειος, émoupav.os).
—The Gr. words are found in the Gospels only in
Jn 3! [ἐπουράνιος, however, occurs as ἃ variant
reading (TR) in Mt 18%, where some critical editors
prefer οὐράνιος], in Christ’s conversation with Nico-
demus, and are best interpreted in the light of the
context. The attempt made by some commentatcrs
to explain them by collating passages where the
/same or similar words occur, yields no satisfactory
result, the meaning of the words in these passages
being so different from their meaning in Jn 3”,
It is evident from the conversation with Nico-
demus that the contrast drawn by Christ between
things earthly and things heavenly was not ἃ con-
trast between things natural and things super-
natural, or things physical and things spiritual, or
things easily understood and things unsearchable
and profound, or things belonging to the present
and things belonging to the future economy, or
things moral in which faith is active and things
heavenly where it is passive (de Wette). It was a
contrast between truths which were within the
range of religious experience, and which should
therefore have been within the knowledge and
understanding of Nicodemus—‘ a master of Israel,’
and truths pertaining to the gospel which were,
for the time being, beyond the reach of the re-
ligious consciousness. The earthly things were
those of which Christ had been speaking,—the
necessity and mystery and reality of the new
birth,—and also, as Godet rightly infers from v.”
(note use of plural instead of singular in address-
ing Nicodemus), the truths previously preached by
Christ. These were all of a moral-religious char-
acter, and could be known and verified by the
spiritually-minded. The heavenly things were
those which were to be revealed to men through
the completed redemptive work of Christ. Their
nature may be gathered from ν. 580, The Divinity
and the atoning death of Christ, God’s eternal
love, and salvation by faith, are indicated there as
being among the heavenly things.
LITERATURE.—Besides the Comm. on St. John, esp. Whitelaw
and Godet, see Cremer’s and Grimm-Thayer’s Lex. s.vv.; E. d.
Hall, Discourses, 92; D. Wright, Power of an Endless Life, 158 ;
504 EARTHQUAKE
EBIONISM
J nnnnnnnnnne ee EEE ESSENSE EEE
Thirsti Ἶ » Spr 4; ΒΚ 5. Times, xii.
J. H. Jowett, Thirsting for the Springs, 64; Expos. nes,
[1900] 50. MorIsON “BRYCE.
EARTHQUAKE.— Palestine abounds in traces of
seismic and voleanic action. From the region of
the Dead Sea northward along the Jordan valley
and as far as Damascus the whole country must
have been visited by tremendous earthquakes in
prehistoric ages. Mention of several is made in
the OT, sometimes coupled with significant re-
ferenee to serious disaster and widespread alarm
caused by them (1S 14%, Am 1}, Zec 14° etc.).
Regarded as supernatural visitations, signs of the
times, they produced a deep impression.
Five times in the Gospels the noun czas (fr. σείω, ‘to shake’)
is used of an earthquake (Mt 247 2754 282, Mk 138, Lk 2111), and
once (Mt 2751) the idea is expressed by the phrase ἡ γῆ ἐσείσθη
(EV ‘the earth did quake’). In LXX σεισμός (or συνσεισμεός) 15
employed to render vya of the original. Though specifically
applied to an earthquake, σεισροός properly has a wider connota-
tion; thus in Mt 84 it is used of a tempest (σεισμὸς μέγας ἐγένετο
ἐν τῇ Oedeern). Hence Alford thinks that in Mt 28? it denotes
not an earthquake, but the ‘shock’ produced by the rolling
away of the stone from the sepulchre.
1. Recorded earthquakes.—Of these there — are
two, namely, the earthquakes at the Crucifixion
and the Resurrection (Mt 27°! 4 287). The his-
toricity of these earthquakes is disputed. St.
Matthew alone mentions them ; St. Mark (15°: 98)
and St. Luke (234), in agreement with St. Matthew
in regard to the darkness and the rending of the veil,
apparently know nothing of an earthquake at the
Crucifixion [the Fourth Gospel has no allusion to
any of the portents], and they are equally silent
in the case of the Resurrection. Plummer (‘St.
Luke’ in Internat. Crit. Com.) quotes a state-
ment in the Gemara that some forty years before
the destruction of Jerusalem the heavy gates of
the temple were mysteriously flung open about
midnight at the Passover ; but it would seem that
sufficient evidence of earthquake shocks being felt
in or near Jerusalem at the date in question is
wanting. Probably a legendary element must be
recognized in the passages under consideration.
At the same time it should be borne in mind that
the circumstance narrated is ‘not in itself in-
credible’ (Cary, Synop. Gospels). Earthquakes are
frequently accompanied by a ‘strange, bewildering
darkness’ (Plumptre, Δί. Studizs), and if shocks
did then take place they would naturally be
interpreted of the ‘sympathy of nature.’ (Cf.
Corn. a Lap.: ‘The earth, which trembled with
horror at the death of Christ, as it were leaped
with joy at the Resurrection’).
2. Predicted earthquakes.—Mt 247, Mk 138, Lk
21". The question arises, Do the Synoptists here
preserve ipsissima verba of our Lord? It must be
remembered that ‘a generation and a half...
had passed between the events and the telling of
the tale’ (IF, C. Burkitt); hence a possibility that
the eschatological discourses as reported are
coloured by events which had already taken place
When the narratives were compiled. On the
assiunption that the predictions were uttered by
Jesus, account should be taken of the fact that
πὸ are clothed in the language of current
essianic expectation. The setting up of the
Kingdom was at hand; it would be consequent on
that national disaster which, looming in the near
future, would be presaged by phenomena in which
men saw the dread precursors of catastrophe. And
this actually came about: between the Crucifixion
and the destruction of Jerusalem the earthquake
was Trequent; the earth was a prey to the most
violent convulsions (Godet, δὲ, Mat. p. 149; Renan
L Antichrist, ch. xiv.). ;
Lar ATURE Milber Student's Life of Jesus: shu
i /P, see Index; Gould, ‘St. Mark’ in Keno. aie
Vary, ‘The Synoptic Gospels’ in Internat. Handbooks to NT.’
H. L: JACKSON.
EASTER.—See CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN, p.
255 ff.
EATING AND DRINKING.—Eating and drink-
ing are occasionally referred to in the Gospels as
acts expressive of men’s ordinary life. The simple —
natural life of Jesus was thus contrasted with the
austere ways of the Baptist (Mt 111°, Lk 7#). The
servant waits till the master has eaten and drunken,
and afterwards he eats and drinks (Lk 178) ; in the
days of Noah men went on eating and drinking,
heedliess of the coming flood (Lk 17%" 5); and the
rich fool still says to his soul, ‘Take thine ease,
eat, drink, be merry’ (Lk 1213). The careless self-
indulgence of the servant who, in his lord’s absence,
began to eat and drink with the drunken (Mt 24”,
Lk 1255) is condemned on the one hand ; and so, on
the other hand, is that over anxiety which keeps
saying, ‘What shall we eat? or What shall we
drink? or Wherewithal shall we be clothed?’ (Mt
624-34 Lk 122%). The scribes and Pharisees com-
plained that Jesus ate and drank with publicans
and sinners (Lk 5*°), which was His glory ; and it
will be the glory of those who continue with Him
in His temptations that they will eat and drink at
His table in His Kingdom (Lk 2259, See BREAD,
Cup, FASTING, FoobD, LORD’s SUPPER, MEALS,
WINE.
EBER (AV Heber).—The eponymous ancestor of
the Hebrews; named in our Lord’s genealogy as
given in Lk. (955).
EBIONISM.— It would be going beyond the scope
of this Dictionary to enter with any fulness into a
discussion of the obscure and elusive subject of
Ebionism as it meets us in its varying forms in
the history of the early Church. What immedi-
ately concerns us is its bearing upon certain ques-
tions connected with the origin of the Gospels and
the history and person of Jesus Christ Himself.
But as these questions cannot properly be handled
till we have determined what we are to under-
stand by Ebionism, a brief treatment of the general
subject appears to be necessary.
i. WHO AND WHAT WERE THE EBIONITES ?—The
name Ebionites (’E@.wvato), it is generally agreed,
is derived from the Hebrew ’ebyonim Ὁ 3 Ν ‘the
poor.’ * It seems most probable that originally this
name, like Nazarenes (Ac 24°), was applied to all
Christians ; but whether it was first adopted by
the followers of Christ themselves or given them
by others it is impossible to say. The compara-
tive poverty of the great mass of Christians in the
early days of the Church, especially in Jerusalem,
where the name doubtless arose, might lead to its
being used by outsiders as a term of contempt.
On the other hand, the Christians of Jerusalem
may themselves have adopted it because of the
spiritual associations with which ‘the poor’ (a°3"2x,
ov3y, 73) are referred to in the OT (e.g. Ps 346 69%
723), Ts: 114114529919: chs) Re Driverearts oboons
in Hastings’ DB; G. A. Smith, Jsaiah, vol. i. ch.
xxix. ‘God’s Poor’), and the blessings pronounced
upon them by Jesus Himself (Lk 67°, Mt 53). If it
was first given as a name of reproach, it could
very easily and naturally be accepted as a name of
honour. t
* Certain of the Fathers attempt to derive the name from a
supposed founder called Ebion, who is said to have spread his
doctrines among the Christians who fled to Pella after the fall
of Jerusalem (Tertullian, de preescr. Heret. 33; Epiphanius,
Her, xxx. 1,2). But though Hilgenfeld has laboured to give
historical reality to the figure of Ebion (Ketzergesch. pp. 422-424),
modern scholars have practically agreed that he has only a
mythical existence (Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, i. 299; Uhlhorn
in PRE38 ν. 126).
t It is a later idea, evidently suggested by antipathy to the
low Christological ideas with which Ebionism had come to be
identified, that leads Origen (6. Cels. ii. 1, de Princip. 1v. i. 22)
EBIONISM
After the name ‘Christian’ (cf. Ac 11%) had
become the general designation for the disciples of
Christ, ‘ Ebionites’ appears to have been reserved
as a distinctive title for Jewish as distinguished
from Gentile Christians (Ἐβιωναῖοι χρηματίζουσιν oi
ἀπὸ ‘lovdaiwy τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν ws Χριστὸν παραδεξάμενοι,
Origen, ὁ. Cels. ii. 1), but specifically for those
Jewish Christians who, in some degree more or
less pronounced, sought to maintain as essential
to Christianity the now obsolete forms of the OT
religion (the Fathers from the 2nd to the 4th cent.
passim). Thus Ebionism becomes a synonym for
Jewish Christianity in its antithesis to the uni-
versalism of the Catholic Church ; and it is in this
broad and yet pretty definite sense that the word
is properly to be employed (Harnack, J/.c. i. 289;
Uhlhorn, é.c. ibid.). It is true that in the 4th cent.
we find Jerome using the two names Nazarenes
and Ebionites in speaking of the Jewish Christians,
with whom he had become well acquainted in
Palesivine (Ep. ad August. exxii. 13), and this has
led some to sanpose that he is making a distine-
tion between two entirely different sects (so especi-
ally Zahn, wanonsgesch. 11. 648 th.) ; but it is now
generally held that in this case he was really
using two names for the same thing, and that
‘“Nazarenes’ and ‘Ebionites’ are both general
designations for Jewish Christians as such (Har-
nack, 1.6. p. 301; ef. Uhlhorn’s art. ‘ Ebionites’ in
SchatfHerzog, Hneycl. of Rel. Knowledge, with
his later art. ‘ Ebioniten’ in PRE®*).
While, however, it seems impossible to distin-
guish between Nazarenes and Ebionites, and im-
proper in this connexion to think of a separation
into clear-cut sects, there were undoubtedly differ-
ences of tendency within the general sphere of
Ebionism. From the first a stricter and a more
liberal party is to be discerned (the οἱ διττοὶ ᾿Εβιωναῖοι
of Origen, ὁ. Cels. ν. 61), corresponding in some
measure to the cleavage which emerged in the
Council of Jerusalem (Ac 15!-**)—a Pharisaic party
which held the Law to be essential even for Gentile
Christians, and a party of broader mind, which,
while clinging to the Law for themselves, did not
seek to impose it upon their Gentile brethren
(Justin, Dial. ὁ. Tryph. 47). Finally, with the rise
of the Gnostic heresy, a Gnostic or syncretistic
type of Jewish Christianity makes its appearance,
to which the name of Ebionism is still applied
(Epiphanius, Her. xxx. 1). This Gnostic Ebionism
itself assumes various forms. It already meets us
within the NT in the false doctrine which St. Paul
opposes in Colossians, and in the teaching of
Cerinthus to which St. John replies in his First
Epistle. Ata later period it is represented in the
doctrines of the Elkesaites, who combined their
-Ebionism with influences drawn from the Oriental
heathen world (Epiphanius, πων. xix. 2, xxx. 1;
Hippolytus, PAi/os. ix. 13).
iil. THE EBIONITE GOSPELS. — As against the
Tiibingen school, which held that primitive Chris-
tianity was itself Ebionism, and which took, in
consequence, a highly exaggerated view of the
influence of Ebionitic thought upon the history
and the literature of the early Church, it is now ad-
mitted by nearly all modern scholars that there
are no writings within the Canon of the NT which
come to us directly from this circle. On the other
hand, two of the Apoeryphal Gospels, the Gospel
according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the
Twelve Apostles (otherwise known as the Gospel
of the Ehionites), are immediate products of the
Judeo-Christian spirit—the former representing
Ebionism in its earlier and simpler type, and the
and Eusebius (/7E£ iii. 27) to treat the name as derived from the
‘poverty’ of the Ebionites in intelligence and knowledge of
Scripture, and especially from the ‘ beggarly’ quality of their
Christology.
EBIONISM 505
latter that syncretistic form of Jewish Christi-
anity which afterwards sprang up through contact
with Gnosticism (see GOSPELS [APOCRYPHAL];
and artt. ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’ and
‘Apocryphal Gospels’ in Hastings’ DB, Extra
Vol.). The extant fragments of the Gospel of the
Twelve Apostles show that its value is quite secon-
dary, and that the author has simply compiled it
from the Canonical, and especially from the Syn-
optic Gospels, adapting it at the same time to the
views and practices of Gnostic Ebionism. Much
more interest and importance attach to the
Gospel according to the Hebrews. We have refer-
ences to it, for the most part respectful and sym-
pathetic, in the writings of Clement, Origen,
Eusebius, and, above all, Jerome; while several
valuable fragments of it have been preserved for
us in the pages of Epiphanius. Eusebius (HZ iii.
25, 27) and Jerome (Com. on Mt 12%) both testify
that this was the Gospel used by the Ebionites,
and it is the latter who gives it its name of
the ‘ Gospel according to the Hebrews’ (secundum
Hebreos). The numerous references in the Fathers
to this work, and the extant fragments them-
selves, if they do not justify Harnack’s state-
ment that Jewish-Chiristian (i.e. Ebionite) sources
lie at the basis of our Synoptie Gospels (Hist. of
Dogma, i. 295), lend some weight to the idea that
the distinctive features of the document, so far
from being altogether secondary, ought to be re-
garded as indications of an early Aramaic tradi-
tion, which still held its own among the ‘ Hebrews’
after the growing universalism of the Chureh had
left it behind (see Prof. Allan Menzies in Hastings’
DB, Extra Vol. 343+).
ill. EBIONISM AND THE CANONICAL GOSPELS.—
Apart from the existence of special Ebionite Gos-
pels, the idea has been commen, both in ancient
and modern times, that certain of the Canonical
Gospels owe something of their substance or
their form to the positive or negative influence
of Ebionite sources or Ebionite surroundings.
(1) The Gospel of St. Matthew.—Jerome, who testi-
fies, as we have seen, to the fact that the Jewish
Christians of Palestine had a Gospel of their own
(secundum Hebreos), also tells us that this Gospel
was regarded by many as Matthei authenticum,
1.6. the original of Matthew (Com. on Mét 12%);
and on one occasion refers to a copy of it which
he himself had seen and translated as though he
believed it to be the original Hebrew (ipsum
Hebraicum) of St. Matthew's Gospel (de Viris
Illust. ii. 8). Trenzeus, two centuries earlier, says
that the Ebionites use only the Gospel of Matthew
(I. xxvi. 2); astatement which points, at all events,
to this, that even in his time the Jewish Christians
of Syria attached themselves to a particular Gos-
pel, and that between that Gospel and St. Matthew
the Apostle a close connexion was believed to exist.
Irenzeus does not seem to have been aware of the
existence of the Gospel according to the Hebrews,
and apparently confounded that work with the
Canonical Matthew. But when his statement is
taken together with those of Jerome, very interest-
ing questions are raised as to the origin and con-
nexions of the Synoptical Gospels, and of the First
Gospel in particular, with the result that in modern
theories upon this subject the Gospel according to
the Hebrews has played an important role. It
would be out of place to enter here upon any dis-
cussion of the questions thus raised (see GOSPELS).
But it may be said that while the whole trend of
recent scholarship is unfavourable to the views of
those who would make the Gospel according to the
Hebrews either the ‘Ur-Matthzeus’ itself or an
expanded edition of it, some grounds can be alleged
for thinking that it represents an early Aramaic
tradition of the Gospel story which was in exist-
506 EBIONISM
EBIONISM
Ta ὠ Ο ΟΟυ-ο----΄ Ἕὁ-ς-ςςςςς-.---------τ- - ------. -
ence when the author of Canonical Matthew wrote
his book, and upon which to some extent he may
have drawn,—a tradition which would naturally be
more Jewish and national in its outlook than that
represented by the Greek written sources on oil
he placed his main dependence (see Hastings DB,
Extra Vol. 342f.). s
(2) The Gospel of St. Luke.—On the ground that
much of the teaching which is peculiar to St. Luke
bears specially upon wealth and poverty, it has
frequently been alleged that the Evangelist made
use of a distinctly Ebionitic source, or was himself
in sympathy with Ebionism. It is true that the
Ebionites, as we meet them later in Church history,
resemble the Essenes in taking an ascetic view of
life, and regarding voluntary poverty as a thing et
merit and a means of preparing for the Messianic
kingdom. But it is altogether a misrepresentation
of the facts to say that this is the type of the ideal
Christian life as it meets us in Luke, or that his
references to riches and poverty ‘ rest on the idea
that wealth is pernicious in itself and poverty salu-
tary in itself’ (Weiss, Jntrod. ii. 309). The form
in which the first Beatitude of Matthew (5°) is
given in Luke, ‘Blessed are ye poor: for yours
is the kingdom of God’ (030), together with the
closely following Woe pronounced upon the rich
(v.74), has especially been fastened on as a clear
proof that these sayings proceed from an Ehionitic
cirele ‘ascetic in spirit and believing poverty to be
in itself a passport to the kingdom, and riches the
way to perdition.’ Similarly in the parable of
Dives and Lazarus (16'*!), it is supposed that
Dives goes to the place of torment because he is
rich, while the beggar is carried into Abraham’s
bosom simply because he is a beggar. Such inter-
pretations, however, spring from a very superficial
exegesis (cf. Bruce, Lapos. Gr. Test. on Lk 6,
Parabolic Teaching of Christ, p. 376 ff.). And,
while it is true that St. Luke dwells, more than
the other Evangelists, on the consolations of the
poor and the perils of rich men (see, besides the
passages already quoted, 418 722 1216 1616. 1058.
21'"-), the fact is sufficiently accounted for, on the
one hand, by that humane and philanthropic spirit
which is so characteristic of the Third Evangelist
and so natural in one who is called ‘the beloved
physieian’; and, on the other, as Zahn has suggested
(Linleitung, ii. 379), by his sense of the appropriate-
ness for one in the position of Theophilus, to whom
his Gospel is immediately addressed, of our Lord’s
frequent warnings of the spiritual dangers of
wealth and the worldliness to which wealth is so
prone to lead. It is to be noted, however, that
our Lord’s strongest utterance against wealth is
found in Matthew (19%) and Mark (102), as well as
Luke (18%); and that a comparison of the Third
Synoptic with the other two reveals occasional
touches, on the one side or the other (note, 6...
the presence of ἀγρούς in Mt 19”, Mk 10”, and its
absence from Lk 18”), which an ingenious theorist
might very well use to support the thesis that
Luke is not so Ebionitic as Matthew and Mark
(see Plummer, ‘St. Luke’ in Internat. Crit. Com,
p. XXVT.).
(3) It is curious to notice how, from the 2nd
an Hh the 19th, the Fourth Gospel has been
associated in two quite different ways with Ebion-
ism, and specifically with Cerinthus, an Ebionite
ΟἹ the type who taught in Ephesus
the close of the \ postolie age. Qn the
prone et we have the statements of Irenzeus and
ters that the Apostle John wrote his Gospel to
the erro
and the Ebionité«
cent.
Gnosticizing
towards
combat
(Epiphanins, Her. Ji, 12, xix.
<9); Statements which should be taken in con-
nexion with the well known story. attributed to
) ἊΨ ᾿ } |
Polycarp, of the dramatic encounter between St.
Cerinthus (Iren. I. xi, 1) |
John and Cerinthus in the baths of Ephesus (Iren.
ΠΙ. iii. 4; Epiphan. d.c. xxx. 24).* Even down to
recent times these statements have been widely
accepted as furnishing an adequate account of the
origin of the Fourth Gospel. Thus Ebrard says :
‘We are thus led to the conclusion that the Cer-
inthian gnosis was the principal cause which in-
duced John to believe that the time had come for
him to make known his peculiar gift, which he
had hitherto kept concealed. . . . He emphasizes
faith in Jesus the Son of God (xx. 31) over against
a bare gnosis’ (Schatt-Herzog, Encyc. of Rel. Know-
ledge, ii. 1189).
At the opposite extreme from the belief of Ire-
nieus was the view of a sect referred to by Epi-
phanius (/.c. li. 3), and named by him the Alogi
(because of their refusal to accept St. John’s teach-
ing regarding the Logos), who ascribed the Johan-
nine writings to Cerinthus himself, and on that
ground discarded them altogether. A parallel of
a sort to this view was furnished by the Tiibingen
writers when they assigned the Gospel to some
Gnosticizing dreamer of the 2nd century.
The residuum of truth that lies between these
two contrary views may perhaps be found in the
fact that the author was a contemporary of Cer-
inthus, and that he wrote his Gospel in full view
of prevailing Cerinthian error. It is a mistake,
however, to suppose that the work was intended
as ἃ direct polemic against Cerinthus and_ his
followers.
‘It is decisive,’ says Meyer, ‘against the assumption of any
such polemical purpose that, in general, John nowhere in his
Gospel allows any direct reference to the perverted tendencies
of his day to appear; while to search for indirect and hidden
allusions of the kind, as if they were intentional, would be as
arbitrary as it would be repugnant to the decided character of
the Apostolic standpoint which he took up when in conscious
opposition to heresies. . . . We see from his [First] Epistle how
John would have carried on a controversy, had he wished to do
so in his Gospel’ (John, i. 44f. ; cf. Westcott, John, p. xli).
The author doubtless has in view the heresies of
Gnostic Ebionism, but in the Gospel he refutes
them only by the full and positive exhibition of
what he conceives to be the truth about Jesus
Christ. He tells us himself that his purpose in
writing is that those who read ‘may believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God’ (2081). What
he means by ‘the Christ, the Son of God,’ he lets
us see in the prologue ; and his method in the rest
of the work is to show by selected examples how
this conception of the truth about Jesus Christ
has been historically realized.
iv. EBIONISM AND THE PERSON OF CHRIST.—
The distinctive feature of Judaic Christianity,
when we first meet it, lies in its continued adher-
/ence to the Law; but with the growth of more
_ definite conceptions regarding the Person of Christ,
the question of the keeping of the Law recedes
into the background, and Christology becomes the
matter of supreme importance to the Church.
From the beginning it was the tendency of Jewish
Christianity to shrink from the idea of the Incar-
nation, and to be content to regard Jesus as the
last and greatest of the prophets. And when the
Church defined its Christological position, the
Jewish section was found to be lacking at this
particular and crucial! point, and so the term
‘Ebionism’ came to be almost synonymous with
the denial of Christ’s Divinity and Virgin-birth.
Irenzeus, after referring to the way in which the
Ebionites clung to the Law of Moses and rejected
Paul as an apostate, adds that, besides this, they
teach consimiliter ut Cerinthus et Carpocrates (ct.
Hippolytus, Philos. vii. 34, τὰ δὲ περὶ Χριστὸν ὁμοίως
τῷ Κηρίνθῳ καὶ Καρποκράτει μυθεύουσιν), denying the
birth from the Virgin and holding Christ as a mere
man. Origen, more than half a century later,
“In one version of the story it is the mythical ‘Ebion’ whom
St. John meets in the bath.
ECCE HOMO
distinguishes between two classes of Ebionites (οἱ
διττοὶ ᾿ΙΣβιωναῖοι), one of which confesses, lke the
Church generally, that Jesus was born of a virgin,
while the other affirms that He was born like the
rest of men (ὁ. (5. v. 01). According to Jerome,
it appears that by the 4th cent. the Ebionites of
Palestine had made progress in their recognition
of the Divinity of Christ and the Virgin-birth, for
he says of them, gui credunt in Christum filiwm
det natum de Virgine Maria... in quem et nos
credimus (ip. ad August. exxii. 13).
But while it may be true of the vulgar or non-
Gnostic Ebionites, over whom, as Harnack says,
‘the Church stalked with iron feet’ (Hist. of
Dogma, i. 801), that their distinction from the
Church tended more and more to disappear, the
ease was different with the Gnostic or syneretistic
variety, of whom Cerinthus may be taken as an
early type. ΤῸ Cerinthus, according to Ireneus
(I. xxvl. 1; cf. Hippolytus, Philos. vii. 33), Jesus
was nothing more than a naturally-begotten man
—the son of Joseph and Mary—upon whom at His
baptism the Christ came down from the absolute
power (αὐθεντία) of God, thus making him the re-
vealer of the Father and the miracle - working
Messiah ; but from whom this Christ-Spirit de-
parted before the Passion, so that it was only
the man Jesus who endured the cross, while the
spiritual Christ remained untouched by suffer-
ing.
In the case of the Elkesaites of a later period,
we find Jewish monotheism combining itself not
only with Greek speculation, but with strange
heathen elements taken over from the Asiatic
religions. This syneretism was characteristic of
the age, and in that fact the strength of Gnostic
Ebionism lay. It was much more aggressive than
Ebionism of the simpler type, and had a far more
widely extended intluence. Of its fantastic and
fugitive forms this is not the place to speak. But
its Christology appears in general to have been
akin to that of Cerinthus; in other words it was
essentially Docetic, and involved a denial of any
real and abiding union of the Divine and human
in the Person of our Lord.
LITERATURE.—On the general subject the following should be
read : Neander, Church History, vol. ii. pp. S-41 (Clark’s ed.);
Harnack, /Tist. of Dogma, i. 287-317; PRE, artt. ‘Ebioniten,’
‘Elkesaiten’; Jewish Eneye., art. ‘Ebionites.’ For particular
points see the various references given in the article.
J. C. LAMBERT.
ECCE HOMO.—‘ Behold, the man!’ (ἰδοὺ ὁ ἄνθρωπος
or ἴδε ὁ ἄνθρωπος) (Jn 19°) was the utterance cf
Pilate when our Lord came forth wearing the
crown of thorns and the purple robe. We may
believe that the words were spoken to excite the
pity of the Jews. Pilate had given over our Lord
to be scourged, and had allowed his soldiers to robe
and crown Him in mockery, but all the time he
Was anxious to save Him from death; and there
was undoubtedly an appeal to the compassion of
the bystanders in the words, ‘Behold the man.’
Probably it was to mock the Jews that the soldiers
had robed and crowned Him who was said to have
claimed to be their king; and Pilate himself, we
can see, was not unwilling to deal somewhat scorn-
fully with them. But he does not seem to have
looked scornfully, he rather looked pitifully, on
our Lord Himself. And.when he said, ‘ Behold,
the man!’ he was, as it were, pointing out that
Jesus had suffered enough. But although Pilate’s
words were those of a weak but not wholly unfeel-
ing man who wanted to move to pity those whom
he was afraid to send angry and revengeful from
his judgment-seat, he was really, although all
unconsciously, paying an act of homage to our
Lord. ‘Ecce Homo.’ He was bidding men look to
the perfect man, the incarnate Son of God, men’s
EDUCATION 507
perfect example, their Divine yet most truly
human Redeemer.
The scene of our Lord’s appearing in the crown
of thorns and the purple robe is naturally one to
appeal to artists; and many great pictures, notably
one of the greatest and most striking of modern
times (by Munkacsy), have borne the title ‘Eece
Homo "ἢ
iicce Homo is also the title of a very notable
book by the late Sir John Secley. The book
cannot be discussed here. It deals with the man-
hood of our Lord in an original and striking way,
and does not deny, although it does not discuss,
His Divinity.
LITERATURE.—Comm. on passage cited; Seeley, Zece Homo;
Knox Little, Perfect Life (1898), p. 140; R. J. Campbell, City
Teinple Sermons (1903), 50; Rosadi, Trial of Jesus; Farrar,
Christ tr Art, p. 884 fi. ; art. ‘Christusbilder’ in PRI3,
GEO. C. WATT.
EDUCATION.—--Among the Apocryphal Gospels’
fables of what befell during the Silent Years, there
are some that are concerned with the school-days
of Jesus—mostly silly and sometimes blasphemous
stories of the sort which St. Paul brands as ‘ profane
and old-wifish myths’ (1 Ti 47), For instanee, it is
told in Arab. Lvang. Inf. xlix. that the wondrous
Child one day had a dispute with His teacher about
the Hebrew alphabet ; and when the latter would
have chastised Him, his impious arm was withered,
and he died. Such stories are, of course, abso-
lutely unhistorical ; but it is indubitable that dur-
ing His early years at Nazareth Jesus had to do
with school and teacher. It is mentioned incident-
ally by St. Luke that He could read (4!°), and by
St. John that He could write ($8); and it is im-
possible that He should have grown up without an
education. It is not the least merit of the Jewish
people that they recognized the value of education,
and brought it within the reach of the poorest.
‘Our ground,’ says Josephus,* ‘is good, and we
work it to the utmost; but our chief ambition is
for the education of our children.’ A father, ac-
cording to R. Salomo,+ had as well bury his son as
neglect his instruction; and it was a saying of
Kt. Judah the Holy that ‘the world exists by the
breath of school-children.’
A child’s first school was his home and his first
teachers his parents, in accordance with Dt 6° 7;
and his instruction began very early, since youth
was recognized as the season of opportunity. ‘He
who learns as a lad,’ said R. Abujah, ‘to what is
he like? To ink written on fresh paper. And he
who learns when old, to what is he like? ΤῸ ink
written on used paper.’ St. Paul testifies that
Timothy had known sacred literature ‘from his
infancy’ (ἀπὸ βρέφους), his teachers being—since
his father was a Greek and apparently deceased—
his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice (2 ΤῚ
3! 1°); and Josephus says that ‘from the very
dawn of understanding’ a Jewish child ‘learned
the Law by heart, and had it, as it were, engraved
on his soul.’§ It may be assumed that Joseph and
Mary would be no less zealous than others in the
discharge of this sacred and imperative duty.
When he reached the age of six or seven years, |i
the boy was sent to the elementary school, which,
since the subject of study was the Book of the
Law, was styled the House of the Book (béth ha-
Sépher). This admirable institution, comparable
to John Knox's parish school, was attached to
the synagogue ; and since there was a synagogue
in every village in the land, there was also an
*¢, Apion. i. 12. t Wetstein on 2 Ti 315,
1 Taylor, Sayings of Fathers, iv. 27.
§ Vita, 2.
|| According to the ordinance of Joshua ben Gamla. Joshua
was high priest from A.p. 63 to 65, but his ordinance was merely
a repens of existing requirements. Cf. Schurer, ΠΡ
1. ii. p. 49.
508 EDUCATION
elementary school in every village.* The estab-
lishment of this system of education was ascribed
to the celebrated Simon ben Shetach, brother of
Salome Alexandra, the queen of Alexander Jan-
nus (B.C. 104-78), and his successor on the throne
(B.C. 78-69). Schiirer+ summarily dismisses the
tradition with the remark that ‘this Simon ben
Shetach is a meeting-place for all kinds of myths.’
Whatever be the worth of the tradition, Jose-
phus’ reiterated ascription to Moses of the exceed-
ingly thorough system of education which prevailed
in his day, proves it no recent institution.
From the House of the Book such as desired to
prosecute their studies and become teachers them-
selves passed into the Scribal College, styled the
House of the Midrash (4éth ha-Midrdash),§ where
the great Rabbis taught. There were several of
these colleges in Palestine. Sometimes, like the
Christian ἐκκλησία (cf. 1 Co 16, Col 415), they met
in an upper room in a private house,|| but gener-
ally in some special place. The college at Jabne,
where RK. Eleasar and R. [shmael taught, met in a
place called the Vineyard. ‘The principal college
was that of Jerusalem, and it met within the
Temple - precincts (cf. Lk 2%), probably in the
Temple-synagogue. The Rabbi occupied a low
platform, and his disciples sat round him on the
floor, ‘ powdering themselves in the dust of the
feet of the wise,’ 4[—an arrangement which ex-
plains St. Paul’s expression, ‘educated at the feet
of Gamaliel’ (Ae 22°).
The disciples were employed in the study of the
Oral Law—the Tradition of the Elders (Mt 152),
which in those days was regarded with even greater
veneration than the Written Law,** and which
until, at the earliest, the 5th cent. of our era ++
was preserved in the memories of the Rabbis and
orally transmitted from generation to generation.
The method of study was Mishna, ὁ.6. ‘repeti-
tion,’ ΣῈ the lesson being repeated over and over
again until it was fixed in the memory ; and pro-
ficiency lay in faithful reproduction of the tpsissina
verba of the Tradition. It was a high eulogy of
Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, a disciple of R. Johanan
ben Zakai, when he was likened to ‘a plastered
cistern which loses not a drop.’ $$
This mnemonic drill was not the sole employ-
ment in the House of the Midrash. Whatever difii-
culties they felt, the disciples propounded to the
Rabbis for elucidation.
Often their questions were ridiculous quibbles, like that put to
R. Levi ben Susi in connexion with Dt 259 ‘If his brother’s wife
have lost her hands, how is she to loose his shoe?’ ll But they
were not always quite so trivial. One much discussed queestio
theologicalis was, ‘ Are they few that are being saved?’ Some
tabbis held that ‘all Israel would have a portion in the world
to come’; others, that as only two of all:that came out of
Egypt entered into the land of Canaan, so would it be in the
days of the Messiah.{] Another question was, ‘May a man
divorce his wife for any cause?’ (cf. Mt 193). The strict school
of Shammai permitted divorce only on the ground of unfaith-
fulness; but that of Hillel granted greater facility, allowing a
«ο------------ἰ..
a δδδααα. ..-.
———_—————
man to put away his wife if he hated her; if he was dissatisfied
with her cooking ; if she went deaf or insane ; if he saw another
woman whom he fancied more.***
Not being designed for a Rabbi, Jesus never
idied at any of the Scribal Colleges ; but once
sal +t HJ P 1. ii. p. 49.
Lightfoot on Mt 423: ef, Lk 517,
+ Ait. 1V. viii. 12; c. Apion. ii. 25.
[he Midrash may be defined as an imaginative develop-
mie ᾿ of a thought or theme suggested by Scripture especially
a didactic or homiletic e iti ‘ Ἵν] Pio
© or homietic exposition, or an edifying religious story
(Driver, LOT'S p, 529) ; - ;
Lightfoot on Ac 113; Taylor, Sayings of Fathers, i. 4: ‘Let
> ἢ meeting-house for the wise.’
Sv 17 Ἵ ἧ
ΓΜ αιδονα, i. 4, n. 11.
Ot on Mt 152
ith in Expositor, Dec. 1904, p. 403.
rm τερωσὶς (οἵ. Jer. Algas. Quest. x) is a
TT Ib. ow Lk 1323,
EDUCATION
He sat at the feet of the Rabbis in the House of
| the Midrash at Jerusalem—on that memorable
occasion when, on attaining the age of twelve years
and becoming ‘a son of the Law,’ He for the first
time (?) accompanied Joseph and Mary on their
annual pilgrimage to the sacred capital to celebrate
the Feast of the Passover. He lingered in the
city when His parents set forth on their return
journey, and they found Him on the third day
after in the school of the Rabbis. ‘ Raise up many
disciples’ was the Rabbinical maxim,* and the new
recruit would be welcome when He took His place
among the disciples. He was ‘sitting in the midst
of the Teachers, both listening to them and ques-
tioning them’ (Lk 2%), and evincing an intelligence
which amazed them.
There prevailed in early times a singularly unhappy miscon-
ception, that the Holy Child was confounding the wise men by
an exhibition of Divine wisdom. The Arab. Evang. Inf. (1.-lii.)
declares that He was puzzling them with questions about
theology, astronomy, physics, metaphysics, and anatomy,
‘things which the mind of no creature could reach’; and
Origen says: ‘He was questioning the Teachers; and because
they could not answer, He Himself was answering the questions
which He asked.’ ‘He was questioning the Teachers, not that
He might learn aught, but that by questioning He might
instruct them.’+ This is rank Docetism, and is refuted by the
Evangelist’s testimony that ‘Jesus made progress in wisdom
and age’ (7Aize) (Lk 252), as it were, pari passu. He had
a human education. His mind grew even as His body.
It made Jesus an object of disdain in the eyes
of the rulers that He had never attended a Rab-
binical College. They called Him ‘a Samaritan,’
which was a nickname that they had for one who
had never sat at the feet of the Rabbis.f At the
same time they could not deny that He had a
knowledge of the things of God far transcending
their theological lore. Again and again He en-
countered the wise men of Israel in debate, and
worsted them on their own proper field (cf. Mk
1228593 Mii ΘΗ τος ΝΠ 29.51.05 IN 285537 ks Oates
And once, when they heard Him discoursing in the
Temple-court, they marvelled whence He had de-
rived His wisdom. ‘ How,’ they asked, ‘hath this
man learning, though he hath not studied ?’'(Jn
7”). His wisdom flowed from a higher source. The
lofty truths which they were blindly groping after
and ignorantly reasoning about, the Father had
revealed to Him (ef. Jn 5539).
All the vaunted wisdom of the Rabbis Jesus
held in very slight esteem. It was not indeed His
manner to despise the searchings of earnest souls
after the knowledge of God, but the theology of
His day was the very arrogance of ignorance, and
blinded its votaries to the truth. It is a pathetic
fact that nothing so effectually prevented the re-
cognition of Jesus by the men of Jerusalem as
their fancied knowledge of the things of God.
Bred in an atmosphere of disputation, they were
all controversialists, and at every turn they would
raise some theological objection to His claims.
Once, when some wondered if He were the Messiah,
others answered that His origin was known, and,
according to the Rabbinical teaching, the Messiah
would appear suddenly, none would know whence,
like a serpent by the way or a treasure-trove (Jn
7°; οἵ, v.4!f-), Again it was objected that He
testified concerning Himself; and it was a Rab-
binical maxim that a man’s testimony concerning
himself was invalid (Jn 8!).§ Thus it fared with
the Messiah when He made His appeal to the men
of Jerusalem. Their minds were fenced by an im-
penetrable barrier of theological prejudice. It was
otherwise in Galilee. Among the unsophisticated
folk of that despised province the gospel gained
a fair hearing and a ready welcome. All the
Apostles save Judas were Galileans. ‘I thank
* Taylor, Sayings of Fathers, i. 1.
tin Luc. Hom. xviii, xix.
1 Wetstein on Jn 848,
§ Cf. Wetstein on Jn 591,
¥
eS ee LS ee ae ee ee ΝΜ δα συν τ eee
ie =
.
EGG
EGYPT 509
thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,’ said
Jesus, perhaps when He was leaving Jerusalem,
rejected by her wise men (Jn 10*%- 30). Ὁ ‘that thou
didst hide these things from wise and understand-
ing, and didst reveal them to babes’ (Mt 11°).
It is important to take account of this. Does it
not explain a difficulty which has been felt in con-
nexion with the Fourth Gospel? St. John repre-
sents Jesus as a controversialist absolutely unlike
the gracious Teacher of the Synoptists ; and it has
been alleged that these representations are incom-
patible. If Jesus spoke as the Synoptists report,
He cannot have spoken after the Johannine fashion.
But the ditterence is really a mark of verisimilitude.
Jesus had different audiences in Galilee and in
Jerusalem. To the simple people of the north He
spoke the language of the heart, and couched His
teaching in parable and poetry ; but in Jerusalem
He had to do with men whose minds were steeped
in theology, and He met them on their own
ground, talked to them in their own language,
and encountered them with their own weapons.
He adapted His teaching to His audiences. See,
further, art. BoyHOoD.
LITERATURE.—Schurer, HJP τι. ii. p. 44ff.; art. on ‘ Educa-
tion’ in Hastings’ DB and in Eneyc. Biblica.
DAVID SMITH.
EGG.—See ANIMALS, p. 66,
EGYPT.—The Gospel narrative comes into con-
tact with the land of Egypt at one point alone,
and then only incidentally, in a manner which
seems to have exercised no influence and left no
trace upon the course of sacred history. The
record, moreover, is confined to the first of the
Evangelists, and is by him associated with the
fulfilment of prophecy, as one of the links which
drew together the ancient Hebrew Scriptures and
the life of our Lord. The narrative is simple and
brief. St. Matthew relates that Joseph, in obedi-
ence to the command of God, conveyed by an
angel in a dream, took refuge in Egypt with the
child and His mother from the murderous inten-
tions of Herod the king (Mt 95, The return to
Palestine, again at the bidding of an angel of the |
Lord in a dream, is described (v.!"-). Joseph, how-
ever, feared to enter Judeea because of Archelaus,
Herod’s son and successor; and in obedience to a
second vision directed his course to Galilee, and
settled at Nazareth (v.***).
To St. Matthew it would appear that the chief
interest of the history lies in its relation to OT
prophecy. Both movements, the Flight and the
Return to Nazareth, are described as fulfilments
of the word spoken ‘ through the prophet’ (v.”), or
‘through the prophets’ (v.“). In the first instance
the passage quoted is Hos 11! ‘When Israel was
a child, then [ loved him, and called my son out
of Egypt’ (325 snap onsen, LXX τὰ τέκνα αὐτοῦ,
‘his, 1.6. Israel’s, children’). Hosea recalls the de-
liverance and mercies of the past (cf. G. A. Smith,
Twelve Prophets, in loc.); the Evangelist sees
history repeating itself in a new exodus, which,
like the earlier departure from Egypt, signalizes
the beginning of a new national life, and is the
promise and pledge of Divine favour. Egypt,
therefore, to the narrator is no mere ‘ geographical
expression.’ The name recalls the memories of a
glorious past, when Israel’s youth was guided and
sustained by the miracles of Divine interposition.
And to him it is significant of much that this land
should thus be brought into connexion with the
birth of a new era for the people, in the Person of
* Mt. and Lk. give this logion in different connexions, neither
suitable (Mt 1129-27 = Lk 1071-22), It is probably one of the
fugitive fragments which the Synoptists have preserved of the
Judean ministry. It is remarkably Johannine. Cf. Jn. 33° 133
118 646. 65 1015,
a greater Son, in whom he saw the fulfilment of
the best hopes and brightest anticipations of Israel’s
ancient prophets.
The narrative of the Evangelist is absolutely
simple and unadorned, and amounts to little more
than a mention of the journey into Egypt made
under Divine direction. No indication is given
either of the locality or duration of the stay in
the country. The impression conveyed, however,
is that the visit was not prolonged.* Had the case
been otherwise, it would hardly have failed to find
mention in the other Synoptic Gospels, if not in
St. John. The absence, therefore, of further
record is hardly sufficient ground for throwing
doubt upon the reality of the incident itself.
This brief statement is supplemented and ex-
panded in the Apocryphal Gospels with a wealth
of descriptive detail.. The fullest accounts are
found, as might be expected, in the Gospel of the
Infancy, and the Gospel of pseudo- Matthew (see
Hastings’ DB, Extra Vol. p. 430 ff.).
In the Gospel of the Infancy (ch. ix. f.), Joseph and Mary with
the Child set out for Egypt at cock-crow, and reach a great city
and temple with an idol to whose shrine the other idols of Egypt
send gifts. There they find accommodation in a hospital dedi-
cated to the idol, and a great commotion is caused by their
entrance. The people of the land send to the idol to inquire
the reason of the commotion, and are told that an ‘occult god’
has come, who alone is worthy of worship, because he is truly
Son of God. Thereupon the idol falls prostrate, and all the
people run together at the sound. The following chapter
narrates the healing of the three-year-old son of the priest of
the idol, who is possessed by many demons, and whose sickness
is described in terms similar to those used of the Gadarene
demoniac (Lk 827, Mk 52-9). Thereafter Joseph and Mary depart,
being afraid lest the Egyptians should burn them to death be-
cause of the destruction of the idol. Passing on their way they
twice meet with robbers in the desert. In the first instance the
robbers flee on their approach, and a number of captives are
liberated. At a considerably later stage of their journey (ch.
xxiii.) two bandits are encountered, whose names are given as
Titus and Dumachus, the former of whom bribes his companion
not to molest Joseph and Mary; and the child Jesus foretells
His crucifixion at Jerusalem thirty years later with these two
robbers, and that Titus shall precede Him into Paradise. On
the road the travellers have passed through many cities, at
which a demoniac woman, a dumb bride, a leprous girl who
accompanies them on their journey, and many others have
been healed. Finally, they come to Memphis (ch. xxv.), where
they see the Pharaoh, and remain three years, during which
period Jesus works many miracles ; returning at the end of the
three years to Palestine, and by direction of an angel making
their home at Nazareth.
In a similar strain the Gospel of pseudo-Matthew (ch. xvii. ff.)
records the number of attendants, with riding animals, a waggon,
pack-oxen and asses, sheep and rams, that set out with Joseph
and Mary from Judza. In a cave where they had stopped to
rest they are terrified by dragons, which, however, worship the
child Jesus; and lions and other wild beasts escort them on
their way through the desert. A palm-tree bends down its
boughs that Mary may pluck the fruit; and as a reward a
branch of it is carried by an angel to Paradise. A spring also
breaks forth from its roots for the refreshment of man and
beast. And the long thirty days’ journey into Egypt is miracu-
lously shortened into one. The name of the Egyptian city to
which they come is said to be Sotines within the borders of
Hermopolis, and there, in default of any acquaintance from
whom to seek hospitality, they take refuge in the temple, called
the ‘capitol.’ The 355 idols of the temple, to which divine
honours were daily paid, fall prostrate, and are broken in pieces ;
and Affrodosius, the governor of the town, coming with an
army, at sight of the ruined idols worships the child Jesus,
and all the people of the city believe in God through Jesus
Christ. Afterwards Joseph iscommanded to return into the land
of Judah. Nothing, however, is said of the actual journey, but
a narrative of events ‘in Galilee’ follows, beginning with the
fourth year of Christ’s age.
According to the Gospel of Thomas, ch. i. ff. (Latin, Tisch Evv.
Apocr. p. 156 ff.), Jesus was two years old on entering Egypt.
He and His parents found hospitality in the house of a widow,
where they remained for a year, at the close of which they
were expelled because of a miracle wrought by Jesus in bringing
a dry and salted fish to life. A similar fate overtakes them
subsequently in being driven from the city. The angel directs
Mary to return, and she goes with the child to Nazareth.
The History of Joseph, ch. viii. f., states the duration of the
stay in Egypt as a whole year, and names Nazareth as the city
in which Jesus and His parents lived after their return into the
land of Israel.
The Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt has
been at all times a favourite subject for the exercise
* Herod’s death (Mt 219) would appear to have occurred not
long after the ‘ Massacre of the Innocents’ in Bethlehem.
local ‘elders
510 EIGHTH DAY
ELECT, ELECTION
of Christian art. William Blake, Charles Holroyd,
Eugene Girardet, Anthony van Dyke, William
Dobson, and many others have painted the scenes
by the way with a circumstance and detail which
are indebted, where not wholly imaginary, to the
accounts of the Apoeryphal Gospels. ‘The reality
would doubtless ditter widely from the tranquil
and easy conditions under which it has usually
been depicted, and from which most readers have
formed their mental conceptions of the event. The
simple reticence of the Gospel narrative is in strik-
ing contrast to the luxuriance and prodigality of
miracle of the Apocryphal story. All that can be
aflirmed with certainty is that the flight would be
conducted in haste and with the utmost secrecy,
and probably for the most part under cover of
night. See also FLIGHT.
LireraTurE.—lor notes on the Gospel narrative see the Com-
mentaries on St. Matthew; and for the Apocryphal additions to
the history, Tischendorf’s Evangelia Apocrypha, Leipzig, 1853.
Certain features in the latter appear to betray Buddhist relations
or parentage. For some account of the treatment of the subject
in art, see Farrar, Christ in Art, pp. 263-273.
A. 8. GEDEN.
EIGHTH DAY.—On the eighth day after birth,
as is well known, Jewish male infants received the
rite of circumcision, and, at all events by the time
of our Lord, their proper name also, in memory of
the change in Abraham’s name (see Hastings’ DB,
art. ‘ Circumcision’). Accordingly St. Luke records
the fact that both Jesus Christ (274) and His fore-
runner John the Baptist (1°) were circumcised
and named on the eighth day (οἵ. Ph 3°, Ac 78 ete.) ;
for thus it became them ‘ to fulfil all righteousness’
(1.6. to observe all the requirements of the ancient
Law in the spirit as well as in the letter). See,
further, art. CIRCUMCISION. C. L. FELTOE.
ELDER.— In the Gospels the term ‘elder’ (πρεσ-
βύτερος) does not occur in the later Christian sense,
denoting an officer of the Church (as in Ac 14%
20", Tit 1°, Ja 54, 1 P51). In the Gospel of St.
John the word occurs only once, and that in the
doubtful passage concerning the adulteress (Jn 8°),
where it has not any official sense, but simply
means older in years. In the Synoptics there is
more frequent use, mostly in the official sense.
The few cases of unofficial meaning of the term
are: Lk 15”, where it describes the ‘elder brother?’
in the parable of the Prodigal; and Mt 152, Mk
7° 5, where it means ‘the elders’ of a former age,
the men of old trom whom customs and maxims
are handed down. In all the other passages (Mt
167) 9129 96%. 47. 57. 59 271-3. 12. 20. “ Mk 8#! 1127 1423. oun Lk
95: 20! 2955) the term ‘elders’—invariably plural—
bears the official meaning current among the Jews
of our Lord’s time. What is that meaning ?
In the OT and Apoer. there is frequent mention
of ‘elders’ in the official sense (see, é.g., Gn 507,
Ex 36-18, Ly 45, Nu 11%, Dt 31%, Jos 204, Ja 816,
1S 16%, 28 5, 1K 207, Ezr 5°, Ezk 81. Jth 62h
| Mac 7% 11°, Sus*?* etc.). From a study of these
and similar passages it appears that in all the
history of Israel, from the Keyptian bondage down
to the time of Christ, ‘ elders’ appear as an official
class ; but the descriptions and statements are not
explicit enough to give a definite idea of how they
were appointed to office, or of their exact func-
tions. It is not improbable that they were chosen
as representatives of the people ; and the duties of
the ottice appear to have been threefold- advisory,
executive, Judicial. Further, there is a distinction
between local ‘elders’ (those of a city) and ‘the
elders of Israel,’ ‘elders of the congregation,’
‘elders of the people,’ as they are variously called.
We are now to inquire how tar this OT use of the
word is illustrated
in that of the (rospels
One
= nae
only (Lk 7°) seems to indicate the
those of Capernaum, the scene of
passage
} aim.
the event described ; and even here the turn of the
expression, ‘elders of the Jews,’ might possibly
point to national ‘elders’ present or resident at
Capernaum. But on the whole it seems more -
natural to take the term here in its local sense.
In all the remaining passages cited above, the
reference is to the national ‘elders.’ From Vit-
ringa (de Synag. Vet. Wl. i. 1) downwards, NT
scholars have held with apparent unanimity that
the term designates the members of the Sanhedrin
(wh. see). This view is sustained by the connexion
and association of the term,—usually with ‘scribes’
and ‘chief priests,—and by Lk 22°, where the
Sanhedrin is called ‘the presbytery,’ or assembly
of ‘elders’ (πρεσβυτέριον, cf. Ac 22°), There are
various forms of expression: sometimes ‘elders’
simply, and sometimes ‘elders of the people,’ com-
monly associated with ‘chief priests and scribes.’
This is heid by some to indicate that there were
three orders or grades in the Sanhedrin, the
‘elders’ being the lay element, or representatives
of the people. This may be the case, but is at
best only an inference, neither contradicted nor
supported.
LITERATURE.—Hastings’ DB, art. ‘ Elder,’ and the lit. there
mentioned ; Jewish Hneye. and lit.; Grimm-Thayer, Lexicon
of the NT’; Cremer, Biblico-Theo!. Lex.; Vitringa, de Syn.
Vet.; Schurer, HJ P ; Morrison, The Jews under Roman Rule ;
Weiss, Life of Christ ; Edersheim, Life and Times.
EK. C. DARGAN.
ELEAZAR.—An ancestor of Jesus, Mt 1
ELECT, ELECTION (ἐκλέγεσθαι, ἐκλεκτός, ἐκλογή).
—Though we have no reference in the Gospels to
any conscious effert on the part of the writers to
grasp the significance of the Divine action in choos-
ing and rejecting the human objects of His favour
and the instruments of His will, we have sufficiently
explicit statements, incidentally valuable, to show
clearly that they inherited the OT conceptions on
this question. The self-identification of Jesus
with the ideal Servant of Jehovah (Lk 418: =Is 611*)
at the outset of His public ministry at once widens
the scope of the revelation of His Pathete elective
activity, and emphasizes the profound depths in
human-Divine refationships to which this activity
in the freedom of its manifestation has penetrated.
Once again, in what may without exaggeration be
called the most critical moment of Jesus’ public
life, when suffering and death (Lk 951) assumed
large proportions in His sight, the revelation of His
position as the elect of God (ὁ υἱός wou ὁ ἐκλελεγμένος,
v.*°) not only assured His fearful disciples, but
strengthened Himself in His often-expressed con-
viction that the consciousness of His eternal Sun-
ship was well founded.
The variant reading ὁ ἐκλελεγμεένος instead of ὁ ἀγαπητός (Mk 97
=Mt 17°) is generally recognized as the genuine one, not only
on account of the high authority of δὲ and B, but also because,
according to an obvious canon of textual criticism, it is the
more likely reading of the two (see Scrivener’s Introd. to the
Criticism of the NT’, ii. 247f.; cf., however, Nestle’s Criticism
of the Greek NT2, p. 52, and art. ‘Ascension of Isaiah’ in
Hastings’ DB, vol. ii. p. 5014), The Matthwan and Markan ver-
sions bear evident traces of assimilation to the voice at Jesus’
baptism. In this connexion it is important to remember how
fully Jesus recognized that His position as the elect Son involved
the fulfilment (ἔμελλεν πληροῦν, Lk 931) by Him of conditions fore-
ordained as inseparable from His earthly life (cf. Lk 922 1338 247,
in each of which places is found St. Luke’s favourite and em-
phatic δεῖ ; see also Mk 831, Mt 1721), The determining factor in
the free choice (cf. ἐξουσίαν ἔχω θέίναι αὐτήν, x λ., In 1018) by
Jesus of the cross as the crowning act of His self-abnegation
was its absolute necessity (οὐχὶ ταῦτα ἔδει παθεῖν, Lk 2426), The
ultimate synthesis of these apparently irreconcilable hypotheses
may elude the keenest observation, but the reflexion that, in
acting as He did, Jesus was fulfilling conditions which lie at the
root of all well-ordered moral and spiritual activity (cf. ἔπρετιεν
αὐτῷ, He 210; gigeaev, 217) will serve to remind us of a sphere
where these seeming contradictions are discovered to be pro-
foundly at one, both in their origin and in the end at which they
It is noteworthy that St. Luke not only gives the burden
of the conversation between Jesus and His heavenly visitants ;
ELECT, ELECTION
he also implies that Jesus was there informed in detail of the
character of the death which He was about to suffer (συνελάλουν
αὐτῷ. . - ἔλεγον τὴν ἔξοδον αὐτοῦ, 9001.).
How universally the title of ‘the Elect’ or ‘the
Elect One’ had become identified with that of ‘the
Christ’ is best seen in the contemptuous irony of
the scoffing rulers who mocked on the day of the
Crucifixion. The demonstrative οὗτος and the titu-
lar ὁ ἐκλεκτός Combine to mark the emphasis with
which they rejected the Messianic claims of Jesus ;
and not only the claims, but the foundation upon
which those claims rested (cf. Lk 23%). It is re-
markable that St. Luke seems to be the only NT
writer who has adopted the use of the word as a
designation, strictly speaking, of the Messiah (ef.,
however, the variant reading ὁ ἐκλεκτός in the
Baptist’s testimony to Jesus, Jn 1533 WH). This
statement is not atlected by St. Matthew’s quota-
tion from Isaiah (421), who may be regarded as the
originator of the title. Here we have the idea in
prominence, but by way of interpretation rather
than by direct statement (cf. his use of the verb
ἠρέτισα, Mt 121°, instead of the merely descriptive
ὁ ἐκλεκός μου Of Is 421),
The only other writing of a late date in which ‘ the Elect One
appears as a Messianic title is the Book of Enoch, which seems
to have been the chief means of popularizing its use. Indeed, it
would be irteresting to trace the influence of that work in this,
as well as in other respects, upon the Gospels of the NT. Of the
many names by which the coming Messiah is designated there,
the favourite one seems to be ‘the Elect One’ (see 405 459}. 492. 4
519. 5 526. 9 554 619. 8.10 621), and on a couple of occasions this is
joined with another word or words which are equivalent to a
characterization of the conditions upon which His election to
the Messiahship rests (‘the righteous and elect one,’ 536; ‘the
elect one of righteousness and faith,’ 396 [see The Book of Enoch,
R. H. Charles’ ed. pp. 106-186]). A somewhat fantastic repre-
sentation of the method by which the Divine election of Jesus
was consummated occurs in Hermas, where the servant elected
by his lord (ἐκλεξάμενος δοῦλόν tive πιστόν, ~.7.2.), after having
approved himself as a zealous guardian of his master’s interests,
is chosen by the latter (μετὰ τοῦ πνεύμοτο; ἁγίου εἵλατο ποινωνίον)
to occupy the position of ‘ great power and lordship.’ Whatever
we may think of the orthodoxy of this teaching, it is at least
interesting as showing how completely the habits of thought in
the early Church were dominated by this aspect of the Incarna-
tion, and how men strove by the aid of reason to harmonize the
ideas underlying the titles of ‘Servant’ and ‘Son’ (see Sim. 5,
i.—-vi.).
As the Christological ideas of the early Church
begin to emerge and to crystallize, we find this one
holding a firm place, while at the same time another
equally emphatic conception begins to assert itself.
The election, by God, of Jesus was held to be a
means to a wider end—the establishment of a chosen
body which should exhibit on earth the graces and
virtues of Him in and through whom their election
was accomplished (cf. 1 P 2%: %, where the writer’s
insistence on the profound oneness of Jesus and His
people is fundamentally and cssentially Pauline,
though he elaborates no argument to prove what
he states ; ef. ἐξελέξατο ἡμᾶς ἐν αὐτῷ, Eph 1’).
‘The fundamental conception of Jesus dominating everything
was, according to the OT, that God had chosen Him and through
Him the Church. God had chosen Him and made Him to be
both Lord and Christ. He had made over to Him the work of
setting up the Kingdom,’ ete. (Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, Eng.
tr. vol. i. p. 81). ‘The Christian community must be conceived
as a communion resting on a divine election’ (7b. p. 148).
We must not forget, however, that this Divine
election has its roots struck deep in the election
which issued in the Incarnation, and that, apart
from the latter, which is the rationale and guarantee
of the former, we cannot believe in the existence of
“an elect race’ (ὑμεῖς δὲ γένος ἐκλεκτόν, 1 P 2°). Th's
was apprehended very soon by the Fathers of the
Church, who never separate the idea of the elec-
tion of Jesus from that of the community (ὁ ἐκλεξά-
μενος τὸν Κύριον ᾿Ιησοῦν Χριστὸν καὶ ἡμᾶς δι αὐτοῦ,
κιτ.Ὰ., Clem. Rom. Ep. ad Cor. Ἰχὶν. ; οἵ. also the
Paulinism ὁ λαὸς ὃν ἡτοίμασεν ἐν τῷ ἠγαπημένῳ αὐτοῦ,
Ep. of Barnabas iii. 6). While it is recognized that
the ultimate Author of all elective purpose is God
the Father, it is agreed that the active Agent in
ELECT, ELECTION 511]
giving expression to the Divine decree is the Son,
apart from whom (εἰ μὴ δι ἐμοῦ, Jn 14°) it is not
only impossible for men to approach God, but even
to hear the voice of that calling (κλήσεως ἐπουρανίου,
He 3}, cf. 12%) which He addresses to them in Christ
(ὁ καλέσας ὑμᾶς. . . ἐν Χριστῷ, 1 P 5!), and which,
when heard, is the antecedent condition of their
election (cf. 2 P 1; see οἱ κλητοὶ καὶ ἐκλεκτοὶ καὶ
πιστοί, Rev. 1714).
It will scarcely be contended that there is any practical differ-
ence in the Christology of those who speak of an election διὰ
Χριστοῦ, and of those who in the same connexion use the phrase
ἐν Χριστῳ. We are able, perhaps, to see in the former expression
an emphatic assertion of the delegated activity of Christ who
prepares ‘for Himself’ a people (αὐτὸς ἑαυτῷ τὸν λαὸν τὸν καινὸν
ἑτοιμάζων ἐπιδείξη, Barn. v. 7, cf. xiv. 6) whose prerogatives and
position shall be in correspondence with His royal priesthood,
and with the Sonship to which He was chosen (1 P 24-9, Rev 206
16; cf. He 133 ἀπαράβατον τὴν ἱεεωσύνην, Ro 81417 οὗτοι υἱοὶ θεοῦ
εἰσίν... συνπληρονέμοι δὲ Χριστοῦ, 5.:.λ.).
Nor is the teaching of Jesus Himself devoid of
references to those chosen by God out of mankind
‘as vessels made to honour’ (cf. 2 Ti 931, Ro $74).
He indirectly tells us that ‘the elect’ have an in-
fluence in the Divine government of the world
which makes for mercy and pity and salvation.
The awful scenes accompanying the destruction of
Jerusalem would result in the annihilation of its
doomed inhabitants, were it not that, ‘for the sake
of his chosen,’ the Lord (some of the old Latin
versions read Dews) had determined to cut short
the duration of that period (cf. Mk 13°=Mt 24”,
in both of which passages occurs the verb κολοβοῦν,
found nowhere else in the NT, showing the inter-
dependence of the two authors, although.the forms
of the verb in both places are not the same). St.
Luke does not make any mention in this part of
his record of the elect, but curiously enough he
makes a reference to the vengeance of God being
wreaked (ἡμέραι ἐκδικήσεως, Lk 2172) on the un-
fortunate city, which reminds us of the words of
Jesus contained in another passage in the same
Gospel. Jesus there is said to speak of God
‘avenging his elect’ (ὁ δὲ θεὸς οὐ μὴ ποιήσῃ τὴν ἐκ-
δίκησιν τῶν ἐκλεκτῶν αὐτοῦ, Lk 187), It may be per-
missible to conjecture that St. Luke omitted to
mention Jesus’ reference to the elect in the former
context because of the promise implied in the
interrogatory sentence just quoted. On the other
hand, it is possible that a displacement has occurred
in the text, with the result that we have a double
reference to God’s activity on behalf of His chosen,
each being suitable to the textual position it
occupies. The subject of the prayers of those who
appeal (τῶν βοώντων αὐτῷ) ‘day and night’ is that,
in the first place, they may be delivered from in-
justice ; and, secondly, that they may soon see the
vengeance of God active on their behalf against
those who oppress them (cf. ἐκδίκησόν με ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀντι-
δίκου μου, Lk 185, where the first idea is prominent ;
and ἐκδικεῖς. . . ἐκ τῶν, κιτ.λ., Rev 6”, in which
the second thought is emphasized; cf. also the
reference to the cry of Abel’s blood for vengeance,
ef. He 12#=Gn 410). It is possible that, by in-
terpreting the cry of the elect in this twofold sense,
we are able to obtain a clearer idea of the meaning
of the ‘longsuflering’ of God with regard to them
(μακροθυμεῖ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς). The ambiguity of the ex-
pression is mitigated if we remember that the
patience of God is needed even by His elect, whose
insistent (cf. φωνῇ μεγάλῃ, Rev 6%, and ἡμέρας καὶ
νυκτός, Lk 18’) appeal for vengeance on their
enemies and oppressors is not in harmony with the
voice of that blood by which they were redeemed
(aiua ῥαντισμοῦ, He 12°4). Much more, of course,
does the patient waiting of God, sometimes
amounting even to seeming tardiness, reveal His
tenderness when exemplified in the case of those
who torment His elect (ὥς τινες βραδυτῆτα ἡγοῦνται,
2P 3°). Arising out of this thought we are not
512 ELECT, ELECT{ON ELECT, ELECTION
surprised to find on more than cone occasion that
not only is it insufficient for their final acceptance
that men should be ‘called’ (cf. the contrast πολλοὲ
κλητοί and ὀλίγοι ἐκλεκτοί, Mt 2244), for this is in
harmony with much of Jesus’ teaching elsewhere
(cf. Mt 77: 6 etc.), but that there is even a danger
that the elect may lose that to and for which they
were chosen (see. . . ἀποπλανᾷν . . . τοὺς ἐκλεκτούς,
Mk 137, cf. Mt 245; ef δυνατόν can. hardly be an
implied assertion of the impossibility of success
attending the efforts of the false teachers to lead
astray the elect; it rather refers to that object
which they had in view). Another and a further
condition must be fulfilled before the chosen
of God may claim the salvation to which they
were elected (. . . τὴν ἡτοιμασμένην ἡμῖν βασιλείαν
ἀπὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου, Mt 254; cf. 20°, He 111°).
On more than one occasion Jesus insists on the
necessity of endurance or perseverance up to the
very end of their experiences (ὁ ὑπομείνας. ..
σωθήσεται, Mk 13%=Mt 2433; ef. Mt 10”, Eph 618),
and, on the other hand, we are justified in apply-
ing to this place His warning, which He gave to
those whose joy in receiving the gospel message
was but a transitory (πρύσκαιρος, Mt 13°1= Mk 417
emotion. Of a like nature is the incidental re-
mark of the seer of the Apocalypse, that Jesus’
companions in His warfare with ‘the beast’ are
those who not only were called and elected, but
whose calling and election had been crowned b
their enduring faithfulness (πιστοί, Rev 174). We
are thus able to appreciate the anxiety of later
Christian writers, who emphasized this part of
Jesus’ teaching, and who reminded their readers
that their entrance into the eternal kingdom of
Jesus was conditioned by their enduring zeal ; for
in this way alone their ‘calling’ and ‘election’
were made stable and lasting and certain (βεβαίαν
ὑμῶν τὴν κλῆσιν καὶ ἐκλογὴν ποιεῖσθαι, 2P 1, ef.
He 34),
That Jesus held firmly by the Jewish belief in
the election of that race to spiritual privilege, is
evidenced by many signs both in His teaching and
His methods of work. Itis true that His words are
in perfect harmony with the Baptist’s scornful warn-
ing against that foolish pride of birth which leaves
out of sight the rea araibilier involved by privilege
(cf. Mt 35: and Jn 8). At the same time, He is
no less ready to assert the claims of His fellow-
countrymen to the rights which were theirs as the
Divinely chosen people (ἡ σωτηρία ἐκ τῶν Ιουδαίων
ἐστίν, Jn 4°; cf. τὸν ἄρτον τῶν τέκνων, Mt 1525).
The sting of His bitter denunciation of con-
temporary religionists lay in His recognition of
their spiritual position, and of the fact that they
of right were the teachers of the people (ἐπὶ τῆς
Μωσε ὡς καθέδρας, Mt 237, cf. ν.136.). In spite of
many disappointing experiences, He was again and
again amazed at the aa of faith and spiritual
insight amongst ‘Israelites’ (Mt 8!=Lk 79; Jn 8:0.
οἵ. Mk 6°), and His pathetic lament over the de-
taying Jerusalem shows how eagerly He had hoped
to make the Jewish nation realize its ancient place
as the ‘first-begotten in the family of His Father
Ex 4", Jer 31. cf. He 12). His activity in this
direction betrays itself both in His words which
incidentally express His feelings (ἄφες πρῶτον xop-
Τασύηναι τὰ τέκνα, Mk 777, Mt 15%), and in His
deliberate instructions to His disciples to confine |
their missionary labours ‘to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel’ (Mt 108). We are, however, bound
that
and
to remember St. Matthew alone records this
that there are some evidences of
the abandonment of its strict enforcement even by
Himself (Jn 4°42, ef, Ac 188 ἘΠῚ: ἷ
᾿ Though Jesus felt Himself forced to recognize
in the attitude of the Pharisees and lawyers of
His day, the failure ot God’s people to realize the
re triction,
Jesu
Divine purpese in them, He also recognizes no less
distinctly that, according to that purpose, theirs
was a high destiny (. . . τὴν βουλὴν τοῦ θεοῦ ἠθέτησαν
eis ἑαυτούς, Lk 7 [cf. for the use of βουλή in this
sense Ac 259 458 20°7, Eph 111, He 6!7]), and it seems
as if at times His realization of what this people
might have become, and His keen disappointment
at their actual achievement, led Him into speaking
disparagingly of those who were outside the Jewish
covenant (cf. the contrast ὑμεῖς. . . ἡμεῖς, In 45",
which is the verbal expression of a contrast running
through the whole narrative [see Westcott, Gospel
of St. John, ad loc.|; cf. also the privilege involved
in the word πρῶτον as well as the harsh contrast
τέκνα [παιδία]... κυνάρια, Mk 7211).
We immay here note that St. Matthew has preserved several
fragments which deal with the claim of Israel as God’s people
to be the sole recipients of the gospel message (Mt 1058. 23 1524
232f-), though he also records sayings of Jesus which conflict with
this (2414 2819, cf. Mk 1310 1117 149 1615, Lk 2447). Perhaps the
most striking instance of these just referred to is that in which
Jesus avers, as His reason for the evangelization of Israel alone,
that His ‘coming’ is imminent, and that no time is to be lost,
because, in any event, the work will not be completed before
that occurrence (. . . ἕως ἔλθη ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, Mt 1023). It is
evident that whatever may have been the case with regard to
Jesus’ actual knowledge of the date of His parousia, those who
heard His words understood Him to mean that it would take
place soon (cf. καὶ rote, Mk 1326, Lk 2127, Mt 24903 οὐ μὴ παρέλχθη
ἡ γενεὰ αὐτὴ ἕω: πάντω γένηται, Lik 2122, see 1 Th 415), More-
over, the Evangelists seem to have established an intimate con-
nexion in the consciousness of early Christianity between His
second coming and the preaching of His gospel to ‘the cities of
Israel’ (Ac 326, Ro 116; see Edersheim, Life and Times, i. 644 ff. ;
cf. also Ὁ. Holtzmann, Leben Jesu, Eng. tr. pp. 160, 301, ete.).
‘It might, of course, be objected, that the idea of the universality
of the judgment leaves no sufficient reason for restricting the
disciples’ work to the Jewish people, and that the heathen were
perhaps even in more urgent need of the disciples’ preaching
than the Jews, since to the latter had been given the Law and
the Prophets. The justness of the objection may be granted.
But against it we have set the belief in the election of Israel,’
etc. (O. Holtzmann, op. cit. p. 279 n.1). His own assertion
with the limiting words εἰ μή (Mt 154) is strongly emphatic as
to His conviction with regard to the Divine favour towards
Israel. ‘The saying of Jesus to His disciples at the last supper,
that they, to whom He committed His kingdom which He had
received from His Father, would be beside Him . . . sitting on
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Lk 22°9f-), indicates
that He viewed the activity of His disciples, and therefore
also their future judicial function, as primarily extending to
the people of Israel. Also when Jesus spoke of a coming of the
heathen from the east and west . . . He was thereby thinking
of an ingathering . . . which, as a whole, consisted of native
Israelites’ (Wendt, Lehre Jesu, Eng. tr. ii. 349 f.).
Not only do we find Jesus recognizing and acting
upon the OT conception of the national election of
Israel—that preferential treatment which His fellow-
countrymen claimed as of right—though He re-
minded them from time to time that in order to a
genuine Abrahamic descent it was necessary to
cultivate an ethical and spiritual likeness to their
great forefather, which would alone complete their
title to the promises made to them through him
(cf. the implied contrast between physical and
spiritual descent in the words σπέρμα and τέκνα.
Jn 857. 39; cf. Lk 38= Mt 3°). Jesus also Himself, in
establishing His Kingdom amongst men, proceeds
along lines exactly parallel to these. He assumes
to Himself the right to select certain instruments
whereby His designs may be furthered and ulti-
mately accomplished. As He was the Chosen and
Sent of His Father, so He is delegated to choose
and send others, who were to be the few through
whom God’s work upon the many was to be accom-
plished (cf. Jn 1718 207! 1318 ete.) It is true that at
times Jesus speaks of His disciples as His Father’s
choice and possession (σοὶ ἦσαν, Jn 17°), and that
they are His by His Father’s gift (μοὶ αὐτοὺς ἔδωκας,
17°; ef. καὶ τὰ ἐμὰ πάντα od ἐστιν καὶ τὰ σὰ ἐμά, V.)).
At the same time He is no less emphatic in His de-
clarations that they are His own elect, the result
of His own discriminating choice (ἐγὼ ἐξελεξάμην ὑμᾶς
ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου, Jn 1619 ; ef. ἐγὼ οἶδα τίνας ἐξελεξάμην,
1915). Our knowledge of Jesus’ acquaintance with
the characters of His disciples prior to their selec-
ELECT, ELECTION
tion by Him, is too scanty to permit us to judge
accurately of His methods; but from the facet that
they were for the most part natives of that part of
Galilee where His earliest activity displayed itself,
and that some of them were antecedently disciples
of the Baptist, we are led to conclude that He pos-
sessed sufficient individual acquaintanceship to
warrant His choice (cf. Mk 1108. Mt 418%, Lk 516 ;
see Jn 1*-), He seems, moreover, to have felt a
heavy weight of responsibility on their account,
and in the review of His work towards the end of
His life, He seems to congratulate Himself on being
able to render a good account of His stewardship
in this respect. As the result of His guardianship
(ἐγὼ ἐτήρουν αὐτοὺς. καὶ ἐφύλαξα, Jn 17:3), they
all justified His choice with but one exception, and
that exception had its mournful justification (iva 7
γραφὴ πληρωθῃ), and, in spite of the necessity of
such failure (κατὰ τὸ ὡρισμένον, Lk 22”; cf. Ac 27,
see also Lk 17!=Mt 18%), its awful warning (οὐαὶ
δὲ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ἐκείνῳ Ov οὗ, x.7... Mk 1471, Mt 264).
The work which this chosen nucleus was destined
to achieve finds also a definite place in the con-
sciousness of Jesus as He looks out on the world
and down the future ages. He does not, in fact,
hesitate to name those who are to be brought to
share in the glory and in the power of His judg-
ment-coming, though they are scattered in all
directions over the world (ἐκ τῶν τεσσάρων ἀνέμων ἀπ᾽
ἄκρου γῆς ἕως ἄκρου οὐρανοῦ, Mk 1351-- Mt 9451), His
elect (τοὺς ἐκλεκτοὺς αὐτοῦ).
The work wrought by the little band chosen by Christ, and
continued by their successors from one generation to another
during the period intervening between the initiation of His
Kingdom and its consummation, can hardly be better delineated
than in the words of the present Bishop of Birmingham: ‘The
Apostles were the first “elect” in Christ with a little Jewish
company. ‘‘ We,”—so St. Paul speaks of the Jewish Christians,
—‘‘we who had before hoped in Christ.” But it was to show
the way to all the Gentiles (‘‘ye also, who have heard the word
of the truth, the gospel of your salvation”) who were also to
constitute ‘‘God’s own possession” and His ‘‘heritage.” The
purpose to be realized is a universal one: it is the reunion of
man with man, as such, by being all together reunited to God
in one body. . . . And the Church of the reconciliation is God’s
elect body to represent a Divine purpose of restoration far
wider than itself—extending, in fact, to all creation. It is the
Divine purpose, with a view to ‘‘a dispensation of the fulness of
the times, to sum up” or “bring together again in unity” all
things in Christ. . . . This great and rich idea of the election
of the Church as a special body to fulfil a universal purpose
of recovery,’ etc. (Gore, The Epistle to the Ephesians, p. 71 f.).
Here, then, we have in its incipient stages a
revelation of this Divine process of working in its
new and wider aspect. There is fundamentally no
change of method, but rather a consecration of what
has always in the OT been recognized as_God’s
plan of work (cf. e.g. Am 3%, Dt 7° etc.). In the
fresh start, so to speak, which He has made we
find His choice not merely involved in the Incarna-
tion as the mode of procedure, but in the election
of the Man Jesus (Lk 9%), whom He deliberately
ordained or appointed (ἐν ἀνδρὶ ᾧ ὥρισεν, Ac 17", cf.
1038) for His work. Jesus, acting on authority
delegated to Him, chooses certain men and sends
them to carry out what He has commenced. In
the end He breaks down all national barriers and
limitations (Mt 28", ef. Mk 1015). and people in
every nation (ἐν παντὶ ἔθνει, Ac 10°) are accepted
by Him so long as they ‘fear God and work right-
eousness.’ ἢ
Keeping these facts and considerations in mind,
we are at liberty to ask ourselves the very difficult
questions, On what basis does the Divine election
stand? Is there any antecedent condition in com-
plying with which men are placed amongst the
number of God’s elect? From whatever point of
view we look at this mystery, one thought, at
least, clearly emerges: in His choice of Israel as
the guardian of the sacred deposit of religious
truth, God exhibited His wisdom in a way we, as
students of the Divine government of the world,
VOL. I.—33
ELECT, ELECTION 513
can discern and appreciate. Their genius for the
work entrusted to them is universally recognized
(cf., on the other hand, such passages as Dt 9°* 10”,
Jer 3113, Mal 1°, which, however, do not conflict
with the general truth of our statement, though
they emphasize the absolute freedom of God’s
choice). From them and from them solely have
come into the world those truths which spring
from a pure and spiritual monotheism ; and we are
not forbidden to recognize, in the analogous lessons
taught to the world by other nations, that ‘the
principle of selection’ (ἡ κατ᾽ ἐκλογὴν πρόθεσις, Ro
911) finds its place in their history too (see Sanday-
Headlam, ‘Romans’ in Internat. Crit. Com. pp.
248 ff., 342 ff. etc.). When we remember that to
the consciousness of Jesus the full and final revela-
tion of His unique Divine Sonship was only made
at His Baptism (Mt 3!7= Mk 17=Lk 3”), and con-
firmed beyond doubt during the period of His
Temptation, we are at liberty te believe that
His previous life was a gradual preparation for His
final election, as well as a proot that in selecting
Him for His work His Father had chosen the fittest
Instrument to reveal Himself to mankind. Re-
membering, too, the gradual gathering together by
Jesus of His little band of chosen disciples and
followers, and the care taken by Him in training
and disciplining them for their position and work,
we are able to apprehend in some dim way the neces-
sity of a moral and spiritual correspondence be-
tween Him who chooses and His chosen. The fact
that Jesus Himself included Judas Iscariot amongst
the number of His ‘elect’ (Jn 6”) does not invali-
date this contention, as we may well be allowed to
believe that the unhappy traitor exhibited a char-
acter sufficiently endowed with spiritual possibili-
ties to justify his election to the Apostleship.
Perhaps he may be adequately described as one of
those labourers who, having been hired (μισθώσασθαι
ἐργάτας, Mt 20') to work in the vineyard, were ulti-
mately rejected because they failed to correspond
with their new environment.
We may here note two different uses to which the word
‘elect’ or its equivalent idea is put in the Gospels. («) It
describes those who are chosen for a certain definite work, and
are for this purpose endowed with suitable characteristics, and
elected to certain special privileges and spiritual graces (see
Mt 2422-24, Mk 1320-22), For them endurance and active perse-
verance to the end alone ensure their final salvation (ἐν τῇ ὑτο-
μονῇ ὑμῶν κτήσεσθε τὰς ψυχὰς ὑμῶν, Lk 2119), though they are
always to remember that God’s active sympathy is ever on
their side (187). (0) It is also used of those whose salvation is
assured by their sharing in the power and gory of the returning
Messiah (μετὰ δυνάμεω: καὶ δεξης πολλής, Mt 2421=Mk 13265 cf.
ὀλίγοι ἐκλεκτοί, Mt 2214),
In conclusion, we may be permitted to point out
that in acting on ‘the principle according to elec-
tion,’ God has for ever vindicated His justice and
righteousness by choosing us ‘in Christ’ (see ἐν
Χριστῷ, ἐν αὐτῷ, Eph 155). By and in the Incarna-
tion the human race and the separate individuals
of the race have received those capacities and en-
dowments which fit them for their work and for
their Divinely appointed destiny (ὃς πάντας ἀνθρώ-
mous θέλει σωθῆναι, 1 ΤΊ 24). No one in the fore-
ordaining counsels of God is contemplated as
doomed to eternal exclusion from His presence (μὴ
βουλόμενός τινας ἀπολέσθαι, 2 P 3°), and if they are
thus shut out finally (ὅπου ὁ σκώληξ αὐτῶν οὐ τελευτᾷ,
κιτ.λ., Mk 948), it is because of their own deliberate
action in causing their bodies to be servants of un-
righteousness, and thus in being stumbling-blocks
in the way of the salvation of their fellow-men (cf.
Mt 5784: 185%, Mk 0458. etc.). No excuse as to lack
of opportunity or privilege will avail ; for although
inequality will always here as elsewhere exist, none
shall be judged apart from their capacities and
opportunities (ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὴν ἰδίαν δύναμιν, Mt 251°) ;
and all shall be reecompensed according to the know-
ledge they were able to acquire (Lk 127"), It is
514 BEL HLL
ELISABETH
true that apart from Christ (χωρὶς ἐμοῦ, Jn 15°) we
are powerless for good ; but as none, not even those
who have never heard His name, are outside Him
(τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῳ συνέστηκεν, Col 117; ef. Eph 1%), so
none need be apart from Him in that profounder
sense whereby human life becomes Divinely active
and abundantly fruitful. To all is given the oper
tunity of attaining the end to which they are called
and chosen, J. R. WIL.Is.
ELI [ELOI], ELI [ELO{], etc.—See SEVEN
WORDS.
ELIAKIM.—Two ancestors of Jesus bore this
name, according to Mt 1 and Lk 3”.
ELIEZER.—An ancestor of Jesus, Lk 3”.
ELIJAH (AV Elias) is mentioned in the Gospels
on 9 occasions, reported in 15 passages (rejecting
Lk 9°). Of these passages only one, Lk ae
alludes to the story of Elijah as it is contained in
the OT. Here Jesus justifies His performance of
miracles in Capernaum, while refraining from
working them in Nazareth, by citing the well-
known story of Elijah’s going away from Israel in
time of famine to relieve the distress of a Sidonian
widow (1 K 17°"). ΑἸ] the other passages refer to
the present or future work of an Elijah who,
according to common Jewish belief, still lived and
would appear again upon earth.
The dominant note in the belief is that the pro-
phet was to appear as the forerunner of the Mes-
siah. This notion appears in its simplest form in
the accounts of the avowal of the Messiahship of
Jesus at Ceesarea Philippi (Mt 16%", Mk 8516. Lk
g'st-), The answers then given by the disciples to
Jesus’ question as to the popular estimate of Him-
self were varied, and doubtless representative :
He was John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one
of the prophets (cf. Mk 6%, Lk 98). Only one,
Simon, saw in the work of Jesus the consumma-
tion, rather than the postponement, of their Mes-
sianic hope. The period of Elijah the forerunner
is past, and the Messiah is here.
The relation between the prophet Elijah, the
lawgiver Moses, and the Messiah Jesus, is dra-
matically presented in the narrative of the Trans-
figuration (Mt 17, Mk 9", Lk 9"), Here, too,
the logical proof is presented that Elijah has come
already, and is John the Baptist. When once
Jesus has been accepted as the Messiah, the work
of John cannot fail to be known as the great pre-
paratory work of Elijah. This work finds expres-
sion in St. Matthew’s report of Jesus’ character-
vain of John (11%; omitted from the parallel in
sk. ).
ee Spot ἐμ ΘΕΙ͂ΑΙ that He. was Elijah (Jn
_hatural expression of his lofty idea of
the work of preparation for the Messiah contrasted
with the insufficiency of the work he had actually
been able to perform. The passage incidentally
describes one of the functions of Elijah who was
to come, viz., that he should baptize. Saptism
ν᾿ as then one or the preliminaries of the salvation
Which the Messiah was to brine.
( apt aa (Mi ee Sgetn ἀπ᾿ conneniow with the
a πεαρς για sl rt ; ae ) The bystanders
Acallto Elijah, Theo το ΡΥ ke ae
νὰ a a κοι hey proposed to Wait and see if
mind that Elijal ΜῈ . re eh Him, Bearing ΕΝ
their akioaiis ic forerunner of the Messiah,
would have an vernatr sn Sey Whether Jesus
eet ote. a ernatural re ief, as a man might,
ther Elijah would, by coming to His aid
prove that Jesus Was after all the Messiah. ;
Ξ here remains the striking picture of the
in the character of Elijah,
seems
1 daptist
drawn in Lk 1198. The
passage clearly assumes the developed doctrine of
the Messiahship of Jesus, and the career of John
the Baptist is analyzed from this point of view. The
high spiritual plane of the identification is obvi-
ous. John comes in the spirit and power of the
great prophet, reconciling iamilies, reducing the
disobedient to obedience, preparing Israel for the
coming of the Messiah. Only on this high plane
could the identification be successful. The work of
the forerunner here finds fullest expression. He
not simply proclaims, he prepares. ‘his is, how-
ever, the implication of the other passages ; other-
wise the suggested identification of Jesus with
Elijah would not have been possible, for it was the
very works of Jesus that called out the suggestion.
The same is true in the case of John.
The belief in the reappearance of Elijah, held by
the Jews of NT times, is a later stage of the belief
which is expressed in Mal 4°[Eng.]: he would come
before the great day of Jehovah to reconcile the
hearts of parents and children. Sir 481°": describes
the same work more elaborately, and forms an
early interpretation of the passage in Malachi.
The Rabbinical writings abound in expressions of
the same belief, with characteristic extravagances
and specifications. These Jewish traditions know
Elijah as zealous in the service of God, and as a
helper in distress, as well as the forerunner of
the Messiah. Naturally his work is in behalf of
their own people, and is performed in connexion
with their own institutions.
As the Jews elaborated the earlier doctrine of
the Messiah, and as in their thought He became
more and more exalted in holiness and majesty,
the impossibility of His appearance in the midst of
all the sin and shame of Israel was increasingly
felt ; and the character of Elijah, the holy prophet,
zealous in his earthly life for the political and
religious integrity of the nation, and already en-
shrined in tradition as having been spared death,
was a fitting one to be chosen to carry on the
great work of preparing Israel for the blessings of
the Messianic era. Indeed, in some passages the doc-
trine of Elijah has developed to such an extent as
well nigh to usurp the functions of the Messiah.
LITERATURE.—Volz, Jiidische Eschatologie, 192 and passim;
Jewish Encye. s.v.; Gfrorer, Jahrhundert des Heils, ii. 227 f.;
Bacher, Agade d. Tannaiten, passim; Weber, Altsyn. pal.
Theol. 337-339 ; Schiirer, GJ V 3 ii. 524 ἢ,
O. H. GATES.
ELISABETH.—The NT notice of Elisabeth is
confined to the Third Gospel, and its brief record
concerning her may well be due to St. Luke’s
acquaintance with Mary the mother of our Lord.
It is interesting to know that she was a kinswoman
(cvyyevis, Lk 1536) of Mary, though it is unfortun-
ately impossible to verify the exact relationship
that existed between them. Elisabeth is described,
with her husband Zacharias (wh. see), as a faithful
adherent of the OT type of religion—strict and
regular in observance of the Law (v.°). She enjoyed
the double distinction, according to Jewish thought,
of being both a priest’s daughter and a_priest’s
wife (v.5). The joy of such a twofold honour was,
however, diminished by the fact that she was
barren (v.7), to an Oriental woman little less than
a calamity. But a single event in the Gospel
narrative at once dispelled her sorrow and entitled
her to a place of honour not among Jewish women
alone, but in the eyes of the whole world. In her
old age (v.**) she became the mother of John the
Baptist.
Between the promise and the birth of this child
she was visited by Mary (v.*), who remained with
her for a period of three months (v.°%), and to
whom she was made a proof of the Almighty’s
power (vv.***8), On Mary’s appearance she re-
ceived a special inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
ELISHA
which even enabled her to recognize in her kins-
woman the mother of her ‘ Lord’ (v.4!), and in
Mary’s Child a fulfilment of the promise of Jehovah
Himself (ν. 5). Herein she unconsciously illus-
trated the meaning of her own name, which in its
Hebrew form signifies ‘ God is an oath.’
On the theory (upheld by Burkitt, Harnack, et al.) that the
Magnijicat ought to be attributed to Elisabeth and not to
Mary, see artt. BirtH OF CuRist, p. 2080 note, and ΜΑΘΝΙΕΙΟΑΊ.
H. BISSEKER.
ELISHA (AV Eliseus).—The famous disciple,
companion, and successor of Elijah. In NT he is
only once referred to, viz. in Lk 4%’. Jesus, preach-
ing in the synagogue at Nazareth, reminds His
fellow-townsmen, who were unwilling to receive
His teaching because He was one of themselves,
that Elisha, who was an Israelite, healed but one
leper, and he was a Syrian. He leaves them to
draw the obvious inference as to the probable con-
sequence of their rejection of Him. It is clear,
however, that in this warning our Lord was look-
ing far beyond Nazareth, and that He had in view
the casting away of the Jews through unbelief, and
the call ot the Gentiles. J. CROMARTY SMITH.
ELIUD.—An ancestor of Jesus, Mt 1),
ELMADAM (AV Elmodam).— An ancestor of
Jesus, Lk 3%; perh. = Heb. Alinodad (cf. Gn
105).
EMMANUEL.—See IMMANUEL.
EMMAUS (‘Exzpaovs).—The question of Emmaus
would seem at first sight to be simple, and the iden-
tification of this place easy. Indeed, Emmaus not
being mentioned more than once in the Gospels,
there are no different texts to be harmonized. We
read in Lk 24% that Emmaus was a village 60
furlongs from Jerusalem, and that after having
arrived there at the close of the day, and having
sat with Jesus at a meal, the two disciples were
able to return the same evening to Jerusalem and
there find the Apostles still assembled together.
The only parallel passage in Mk. (16:3), part of
the unauthentic close of the Second Gospel, does
not mention the name of the locality, and speaks
only of an appearance to two disciples ‘as they
walked on their way into the country’ (duciy . . .
περιπατοῦσιν... πορευομένοις eis ἀγρόν). On the
other hand, Josephus says (BJ vu. vi. 6) that
Vespasian established a colony of 800 Roman
veterans on the lands which he gave them at a
distance of 60 (v.2. 30) furlongs from Jerusalem, at
a place called Emmaus. Now, there still actually
exists to the west of Jerusalem, on the road which
leads to Jaffa, a place named Kolonieh. It is true
that the distance is less than 60 furlongs: authors
estimate it sometimes at 45, but more frequently
at only 35, furlongs. It might be held, however,
that the territory of the colony extended over an
area of several miles, and that it might, according
to circumstances, be thus considered as being distant
either 30 or 60 furlongs from the capital. Under
these conditions nothing would seem to oppose our
placing, on the grounds indicated above, the Em-
maus of St. Luke, identified with that of Josephus,
at Kolonieh.
It must, however, be remarked that the different
reading noted in the passage from Josephus (60 or
30) creates some uncertainty. It must also be
noted that, according to some authors, the name
Kolonieh is not to be explained by the Latin
colonia at all, but by the name Kudlon (Kovddr),
mentioned in Jos 1659 (LXX) as that of a town of
Judah situated in the hill country. These diffi-
culties, however, would not be altogether insur-
mountable if they were the only ones; a further
EMMAUS 515
gue graver complication arises from the following
acts.
In 1 Mae. an Emmaus is spoken of more than
once as the scene of various occurrences: Judas
Maccabeus vanquished Gorgias there in B.c. 166-
ΤΟ (Maier 32038 42225). ef. Jos. Ants ΧΙ svaie 4ὴ:
and in B.C. 160 Bacchides fortified it and placed a
garrison in it (1 Mac 9° ; cf. Jos. Ant. XIII. i. 3).
The position of this place is easy to determine ; it
must have been situated between Jerusalem and
Jaffa, nearer the latter, at the spot where the
slopes of the mountainous region descend towards
the great maritime plain. In this quarter, indeed,
is found a site which has left important ruins, and
which is mentioned several times in the course of
the first centuries of the Christian era under the
name Emmaus. From the 3rd cent. onwards it
was called Nicopolis, without the remembrance of
the ancient Semitic name being lost ; and, as is the
case with most of those places with two names,
under the Arab domination it resumed its earlier
name and was called ‘Amwds, the appellation it
still bears. Now, from the earliest times of ecclesi-
astical history, the opinion gained ground that
this Emmaus-Nicopolis was the Emmaus of St.
Luke. Eusebius, no doubt reflecting the views of
Origen, and after him Jerome, maintained this
identity (OS? 257. 21, 121. 6); and after them this
view ot the case held sway for a long time in the
Church. If it is asked how this conclusion could
be formed, seeing that Emmaus-Nicopolis is situ-
ated at a distance from Jerusalem which is esti-
mated (according to the particular route adopted)
at 180, 175, 170, or 166 furlongs, almost thrice the
60 furlongs mentioned above, the reply is promptly
given: δὲ and some other MSS read ‘160’ instead
of ‘60.’ The tendency to identify Emmaus-Nico-
polis and the Emmaus of St. Luke became so
strong, so irresistible, that it led to a curious
result: in the Middle Ages, at the time of the
Crusaders and afterwards, the memory of Emmaus-
Nicopolis having been lost, the Emmaus of St.
Luke was looked for nearer Jerusalem, and when
it was believed that it had been found, not only
the name of Emmaus, but also that of Nicopolis,
was given to it.
From the 13th cent. (1280) or perhaps from the
last years of the 11th (1099, see ZDPV xvi. p. 300),
a tradition arose which for more clearness may be
called the Franciscan tradition, and which places
the Emmaus of St. Luke at ed-Kwbeibeh, to the N. W.
of Kolonich, at some distance to the north of the
road from Jerusalem to Jafla, and about 60 (more
exactly 62-64) furlongs from the capital. Still,
indeed, all the efforts of the champions of the
Franciscan theory are directed towards establish-
ing that the Emmaus of the Evangelist 15. ed-
Kubeibeh. Interesting ruins have been discovered
there: those of a church dating from the time of
the Crusades, and in the interior of its enceinte the
remains of a more ancient structure, which might
be those of a Byzantine church, but which the
defenders of the Franciscan tradition consider to
be the very house of Cleopas, around which the
sanctuary had been built.
The first question to clear up is that of the text.
Now several authors, and in particular P. La-
grange (fev. Bibl. 1896, pp. 87-92), have, in the
opinion of the present writer, shown irrefutably
that the original reading must have been ‘60 fur-
longs,’ and that ‘160’ is a correction meant to enable
the Emmaus of St. Luke to be identified with that
of 1 Maccabees. ‘The 160 furlongs,’ Lagrange
concludes admirably (p. 89), ‘represent neither the
ancient tradition, nor the universal tradition, nor
the unconscious tradition. This reading is a
critical one, imposed by the authority of a master,
very probably Origen, and collides almost every-
516 EMMAUS
“where with the firmly assured tradition of the
Churches. To judge from the manuscripts, the
question is settled : we must read ‘60 furlongs.
We must remark, further, that Emmaus-Nico-
olis was a town before the Christian era and
[πὰρ beyond (πόλις, Jos. BJ I. xx. 4), whereas
the Evangelist speaks of a village (κώμη). Even
after Emmaus-Nicopolis had been destroyed by the
Roman soldiers of Varus (A.D. 4), it was not on
that account a village; a ruined town is not a
village. It was even the chief town of a toparchy
(Jos. BJ 111. 111. 5; Plin. HW v. 14). The remains
of a church have been found there, which date not
merely from the Crusades, but very probably from
the Byzantine epoch; it is in vain that a recent
author (Barnabé), who favours ed-Kubeibch, has
tried to prove that this church was really nothing
but a hot-baths establishment. But it is also vain
to seek to infer from the presence of a church,
even an ancient one, that we have to do with the
Emmaus of St. Luke.
Another very strong argument against Emmaus-
Nicopolis is its excessive distance. It is worth
noting what efforts its partisans make to show that
the two disciples could have returned the same
evening to Jerusalem, walking for this purpose five
or six hours. One of the most convinced defenders
of this theory, Schiffers, does not hesitate to affirm
that they could have set out again from Emmaus
as early as 3 o’clock in the afternoon and arrived at
Jerusalem at 9 o’clock (Rev. Bibl. 1894, pp. 26-40 ;
see also his book Amwdas, das Emmaus des heil.
Lukas, 1890). In that case it must be held that the
words ‘it is toward evening, and the day is now far
spent’ (Lk 2459), may have been spoken immedi-
ately after noon.
The failure of the identification of Emmaus-
Nicopolis with the Emmaus of St. Luke proves
nothing in favour of el-Kubeibeh, which can pro-
duce only a late tradition in its favour. The argu-
ment which it has been sought to draw from the
name ¢e/-Kubeibeh as an alleged corruption of Nico-
polis (!) refutes itself. But the probabilities indi-
cated at the opening of this article in favour of
Kolonieh are greatly weakened by the undisputed
fact that the ecclesiastical tradition of the first
centuries pronounces in favour of ‘Amwas-Nico-
polis; this fact proves that all recollection of an
Emmaus situated nearer to Jerusalem had become
effaced in the 3rd century. Under these cirecum-
stances the most elementary duty is to declare the
problem unsolved, and incapable of solution under
the present conditions and with the data which we
»OSSeSS,
Nor does the etymology of the name furnish
any precise indication. We do not know to what
Hebrew or Aramaic term Emmaus [we find also the
forms Ammaus, Ammaun, Emmaum; ’Appaors,
λμμαούμ, ᾿Εμμαούμ] corresponds. <A vain attempt
lias been made to connect it with the root hamam,
and to prove thereby that baths existed at this
pot. An argument in favour of this has been
ba θα ὁπ. the fact that the baths situated near
‘iberias were called by the same name (ef. Jos
ly Hammath), but it is now known that the
correct reading is Ammathus (Αμμαθούς: ef. ZDPV
Xl. pp. 194-198). It is on the frail basis of this
hypoth tical derivation that Mrs. Finn grounds
δ ; the ry that Emmaus=Urtas, to the south of
Bethlehem, near Solomon’s Pools, 60 furlones from
Jerusalem (see PHFS¢. 1883, pp. 53-64). It is
by on equally dubious etymological process that
olonel Conder has been Jed to seek for Emmaus
"ΕΝ amas, to the S.W. of Jerusalem, δῇ a dis-
ince, moreover, not of 6 : hur 'S
ener cin es * 60, but of 86-90 furlongs.
5 attempt to place the Em-
i A bu-Ghosh (Kiriet-el- Enab).
view of distance
maus of St. Luke at
From the point of
this would be | 14%, Lk 9211.)
ENDURANCE,
sufficiently exact, but there is nothing to lead us
to conclude in favour of this particular spot rather
than any other within the same circuit.
Lastly, we recall the fact that the Talmud
speaks of Kolonich as being also called Moga or
ham-Mosa, a name which we may connect with
the περ of Jos 18% (LXX: ’Auwod, but also
᾿Αμωκή). Near Kolonich there exists to-day a place
called Beit-Mizzeh, which recalls Moga.
LITERATURE.—PHF'St, 1874, pp. 149, 160, 162-164, 1876, pp.
172-175, 1879, pp. 105-107, 1881, pp. 40, 237 f., 274, 1882, pp. 24-37,
1883, pp. 53-64, 1884, pp. 83-55, 1885, pp. 116-121, 1886, p. 17,
1901, pp. 165-167, 210; PEF Memoirs, iii, 36-42, 1308. ; ZDPV
xiii. 194-198, xvi. 298-300, xix. 222, xxv. 195-203; MN DPV, 1901,
141. ; Rev. Bibl. 1892, pp. 80-99, 101-105, 645-649, 1893, pp. 26-
40, 223-227, 1894, p. 137, 1896, pp. 87-92, 1903, pp. 457-467, 571-
599; Reland, Pal. 427, 758; Robinson, DP 111. 146-151, 158 ;
Tobler, 1.0}. von Jerusalem, ii. 538-545, 752 f.; Schwarz, Dus heil.
Land, 98 ; Guérin, Judée, i, 257-262, 293-308, 348-361 ; Thomson,
The Land and the Book, i. 116, 123 ff., 132, ii. 59; Sepp, Jeru-
salem und das heil. Land?, i. 54 ff., Newe Entdeckungen, ii. 228-
253, 260-263 ; G. A. Smith, HGH L, 214; Buhl, GAP 186; Conder,
Tent Work, 8, 13, 140; Furrer, Wanderungen?, 161-169; Le
Camus, Pays Bibliques, i. 185-194, 204-207; Sanday, Sacred
Sites, 29-31, 92; Zschokke, Das neutest. Emmaus, 1865 ; Guille-
mot, Emmaiis-Nicopolis, 1886; Buselli, L’Linmaus evangelico,
1885-1886; Domenichelli, L’Emmaus della Palestina, 1889,
Ultime discussioni, 1898; Schiffers, Amwas, das Emmaus des
heil. Lukas, 1890; Riickert, ‘ Amwas, was es ist und was es nicht
ist’ in U'heol. Qschrift, 1892; Barnabé, Dewx questions d’archéo-
logie palestinienne, 1892; A. Duc, Die Emmaus-Frage, 1905 ;
Merx, Die Evy. des Markus und Lukas, 1905, p. 528 ἔς ; see also
the Bible Dictionaries, s.v.; the Comm. on St. Luke, ad loc.,
and the Lives of Christ. LUCIEN GAUTIER.
ENDURANCE.—The active qualities of persever-
ance and persistence, never absent from the biblical
notion of endurance, form, in effect, the substance
of the art. ACTIVITY, and need not be considered
here. The passive aspect suggests an inquiry as
to—
4. The causes of those trials which Christ had
to endure.—Of (a) supernatural causes (1) the first,
an all-inclusive cause, was the Divine will (Jn 1018),
recorded beforehand in OT Scriptures (Mt 26°, Mk
1451, Lk 2237 4551.) and referred to constantly by
Christ in words of resignation (Mt 26%, Lk 1074),
often under the figure of a ‘eup’ (Mt 20” 26%, Jn
18), (2) A second supernatural cause (under
Divine permission) appears in the agency of Satan,
acting both directly, in temptation and opposition
(Mt 455. 13%, Lk 1018), and also oftener indirectly,
through the weakness (Mt 167°, Lk 22°!) and wicked-
ness (Lk 22°, Jn 6” 844 133) of men. These two
causes, whether expressly referred to or not, are
undoubtedly to be regarded as factors never absent
(see Jn 19! and also 12*! 1499 16", where the title
‘prince of this world’ is significant in this con-
nexion).
(b) Internal causes (supernatural also, in a
different sense) were not wanting. (1) The pro-
phetic mission of Christ (Jn 12% 1857) made suffering
and death morally inevitable at the hand of man
(Lik 474 114° 13%) Jn 77), light and darkness being
essentially opposed (Jn 3%; ef., for illustration, a
remarkable passage in Plato, Rep. vii. 517 B, where
a similar inevitability is declared even in the case
of Socrates). (2) The revelation of His Divine
nature, implied in His relationship to the Father’s
Being (Jn 5! 858 10°°"-) and prerogatives (Mt 93, Lk
7") was bound to provoke deadly hostility in un-
believing Jews (Mt 26, Jn 19”). It is at the same
time clear, from Christ’s anxiety to avoid publicity
(Mt 1916. Mk 79° 8:6 ete.) and needless Hens (Mt
17°"), that persecution and death were not courted
by Him.
(c) The external causes were more complex.
(1) Many trials arose from the imperfections of
His disciples ; their dulness (Mk 8158. 982, Lk 2435).
spiritual powerlessness (Mt 1716), false zeal (Mt
1559 105, Mk 9%, Lk 9°4), mistaken aims (Mk 9°
10%", Lk 22°4), and discreditable falls (Mt 2655, Mk
. But (2) most arose from Christ’s
ENDURANCE
rejection by ‘ His own’ (Jn 1, Mt 2337, Mk 126f-,
Jn 5" 1915) from motives (which He well perceived,
Mt 9? 12%, Mk 953. Lk 6°, Jn 2”) of fear (Mt 8%,
Jn 19. τ 1015} policy (Jn 11%, Mk 15"), gain (Mt
264%, Mk 10”, Lk 164), envy (Mt 9155 27}8, Jn 121%),
and hate (Lk 19%, Jn 77 15-4) ; a rejection char-
acterized in its display by indifference (Lk 14:58.)
ingratitude (Lk 17/7-, Jn 615), contradiction (Jn 813),
insult (Mt 10” 12%, Mk 15%, Lk 7% 22 931, Jn 88
97+), treachery (Lk 11° 20? 2248), injustice (Mk
14°5%, Jn 194-1 16). violence (Lk 4%, Jn 859 1031),
brutality (Lk 22%, Jn 19'-* ete.), and death (Jn 1918).
2. Some features of Christ’s endurance are vitally
connected with fundamental doctrines of His person
and work. (1) It was voluntary. Of this the em-
phatic statement in Jn 10" leaves nodoubt. Such
an utterance may be hard to parallel, but pru-
dence would almost make it so; and the expres-
sions used in Lk 95], Jn 7% 8?! 13%! seem to speak
of a course equally spontaneous; indeed, in one
case (8:5) a voluntary (1.6. a suicide’s) death is
actually suggested as their meaning! (2) It was
perfect. (a) Under suffering: for His spirit, words,
and demeanour were admittedly supreme examples
of His own teaching, ¢.g. upon submission (Jn 1876,
Mt 5*), retaliation (Lk 6* 9251). and love to enemies
(Mt 5#-, Lk 23%). (ὁ) Under temptation: other-
wise it would be inexplicable that Christ should
have urged repentance as a first essential for others
(Met 417 17° 9195}, Tk 532 133 15, ete.), whereas He
afforded no example of it in His own case. On the
contrary, He laid claim to sinlessness both nega-
tively (Jn 1459) and positively (839), as unchallenge-
able (8°). An intuitive perception of His sinless-
ness appears in the self-abasing awe of a few good
men (Mt 34, Lk 58) more convincingly than in the
ambiguous testimony of many other observers (Mt
273-19) Lk 2347, Jn 194 ete.). (3) It was human.
Christ’s capability of human suffering is beyond
question. No mention, indeed, is made of sickness
in the ordinary sense ; perhaps it is excluded ; but
all other bodily needs and infirmities were shared
by Hum (Mb 42 5:0: 5.91.5 Jn 4° 19°). The emo-
tions of His mind (Mk 3° 7%4 104, Lk 1911, Jn 11°)
and spirit (Lk 107, Jn 11° 13?!) were evident from
their. outward traces, as well as from His own
statements (Mt 15, Lk 225, Jn 11%). On two
occasions He referred to those of His soul (Jn 12°,
Mk 14%). That this capability of suffering was
not counteracted by the exercise of miraculous |
power is proved by His reference to His ‘ tempta-
tions’ (Lk 22°8), by His prediction of sufferings on
the part of His disciples similar generally to His
own (Mk 10**), by the shrinking of His human
will (Mt 2639. 13. Lk 1250. Jn 1257), by His refusal to
allay His own hunger miraculously (Mt 457), or to
lessen His torments even by ordinary means (Mk
15“), by His craving for the support of human
sympathy (Mk 14**:), and by His reliance above
all else upon the Father’s presence (Jn 859 1055) and
the spiritual support of prayer (Lk 613 91% °8 ]]1 224
etc.). Asman He met temptation (Mt 44), and over-
came by faith (see Jn 111}, Mt 27%, and also the
important expression ‘my God,’ Mt 27*, Jn 20").
In some respects, however, His endurance differed
essentially from that of believers. (1) It was free
from the inherent tendencies of a sinful nature
(Jn 14°) and from the enslaving influence of sins
committed (8*-*6), (2) It contained the additional
elements of prescience and perfect consciousness.
Predictions of suffering are numerous and detailed
(Mite 20 SEN 05. ΜΠ 1155 0) Τὴς 2 12. 190 1333,
17” 22°7 etc.). The knowledge (Jn 184) whereby
He ‘saw’ and ‘tasted’ death (Jn 8! 1013) was
complete. (3) Above all, the relation between the
Passion of Christ and the sin of the world (Jn 1°’),
symbolized by the supernatural darkness, laid on
Him that infinite woe, almost amounting to despair
ENEMIES 517
(Mk 15**-), the prospect of which was undoubtedly
the main factor in the Agony and other fore-
bodings.
3. There remain to be considered the purposes
for the attainment of which Christ’s endurance
was a necessity (Lk 24°). In the trials and tempta-
tions of (a) His life, two such purposes are prom-
inently visible: (1) the fulfilment of all righteous-
ness (Mt 3! 5’), described as a progressive course
through service and suttering (Lk 22°7-, Jn 13! 19°),
in which Christ met continually the Father’s ap-
proval (Lk 2#- 55. Mt 3!717°, Jn 125), being declared
to be the ‘Son of God’ ideally as well as actually.
(2) The acquirement of sympathy ; through experi-
mental acquaintance with the weakness of the flesh
(Jn 14, Mt 26%). Numerous instances might be
given of the sympathy of Christ with human nature
in its aspirations (Mk 1051. 988. Jn 2127), weakness
(Mt 12!"-), weariness (Mt 1138, Mk 6*1), misery (Mt
8°), and shame (Mt 1119, Lk 1515). To Him, there-
fore, as ‘Son of Man,’ ideally as well as actually,
is given authority to exercise pardon (Mk 2'),
legislation (2%), and judgment (Jn 5*7). Lastly,
the great purpose which involved the endurance of
(6) His death is in the main so clear as to leave no
room for doubt. It may be summed up in the
words ‘forgiveness’ (Mt 2058), ‘redemption’ (Mk
10*), and ‘removal of sin’ (Jn 12%); to which, in
Jn 11°, is added the gathering of all the children
of God into one in Christ (cf. 1774"), benefits poten-
tially world-wide (Jn 159 651), but limited, in their
highest realization, to believers (Jn 3168), It need
be no cause of surprise that these purposes are not
more frequently enlarged upon in the Gospels, for
they were incomprehensible to the disciples (and
are remarked as such, Mt 1622, Lk 9% 18%, Jn 137)
until after the Crucifixion had taken place.
4%. It may be added that Christ warned His dis-
ciples in all ages to expect trials comparable in
some measure to His own (Mt δ}: 107%, Jn 15!7#-),
and accompanied in many cases by decline and
apostasy (Mt 24?* 488). Hence He marked endur-
ance as a continual test of genuineness (Lk 8:5: 15)
and an indispensable requisite for final salvation
(Mt 241%). At the same time He declared a com-
plementary truth, namely, the Divine preservation
of His ‘own sheep’ (Jn 10% 177 18°, Mk 13”), a
privilege commonly described as the ‘ perseverance
of the elect.’ However stated, the antithesis of
these two trutls is plain. The assurance in Jn
10 is largely parallel to that in Mt 1618, except
that the latter, the indestructibility of the Church,
is more clearly collective in form. There are
‘branches’ (so it appears, Jn 157) even ‘in Christ’
that the Father takes away; moreover, the re-
markable use of the imperative in 154 suggests an
element of conditionality in the abiding or perse-
verance referred to. The practical inference is
intended to lie in a direction quite the opposite of
false security and presumption (Mt 7“, Lk 1374:
21. o98-t.) «Perseverance is undoubtedly the
privilege of the elect, but there is no infallible sign
of the elect except their perseverance’ (Vaughan
on Ph 1°), F. S. RANKEN.
ENEMIES (ἐχθρός).---Ἴ, Of public enemies: twice
in the Benedictus, Lk 17%, where the word implies
Gentile persecutors. In Lk 19* it is spoken of the
Romans and their threatened siege ot Jerusalem.
In the quotation from Ps 110! which occurs in Mt
224) Mk 1956. Lk 20%, He 13° 10!5, the same word de-
notes all the world forces opposing Christ. 2. Of
private enemies, in the correction of the old maxim
enjoining hatred, ‘Love your enemies,’ Mt δ᾽. 44,
Lk 677, 8, Of the devil and the powers of evil,
in the parable of the Wheat and the Tares, Mt
137%. 4, Of the spiritual forces acting in opposi-
tion to Christ, of which the strongest is death,
ENERGY
518
1 Co 158, 5, Οἵ wicked persons hindering the
spread of Christ’s inilucnce, the enemies of the
cross, Ph 3%. The word used in NT for enemies
is usually applied elsewhere to private or personal
enemies, not to public foes. See, further, artt.
FORGIVENESS, HATRED, LOVE.
C. H. PRICHARD.
ENERGY.—The Gr. ἐνέργεια (tr. ‘ working’) is used
only of supernatural spiritual working, and only
in the Epistles; in Eph. and Col. of God, in Ph 3*
of the exalted Christ, in 2'Th 29 of Satan. In Eph
119 we find in one sentence four terms expressive
of power—évépyeia, κράτος, ἰσχύς, and δύναμις. These
Divine qualities were exercised in the resurrection
and exaltation of Christ, and the Christian soldier
is exhorted (Eph 610) to obtain a portion of them
in equipment for his spiritual warfare. Of these
terms the chief is δύναμις, ‘power,’ of which the
application is manifold. On three occasions (Lk
5'7 618 815 or Mk 5%) it is specially used of a healing
power (AV ‘ virtue’) that issued or was drawn from
Jesus as froma storeliouse of spiritual energy. See
artt. FoRCE, POWER, and VIRTUE.
4. ‘Energy’ in the physical sense means power or
capacity of work. It includes the active and the
potential side, force of motion and energy of
position: two interchanging factors of which the
sum total is constant. In its moral application
there is a similar duality. The man of energy is
not only an active agent, but also one in whom
we recognize a reserve of power. This energy of
character is partly physical, partly mental. It is
altogether different from the purely physical quality
of strength or might (κράτος, ἰσχύς), the virtue of
the warrior or athlete. A physical basis is neces-
ay: yeu dauntless energy may be found in a
feeble frame. The quality is essentially moral,
because it involves the constant exercise of a
powerful will. The fundamental requirement is
unhindered mental force. Two modern statesmen
may be instanced. One wrote in his diary the
cardinal principles of his life—benevolence, self-
sacrifice, purity, energy. Another expounds and
exhibits the ‘strenuous life.” The duty of work
and the heroism of energy constitute a large part
of the teaching of Carlyle. Such lessons and lives
are illustrations of the spirit of Christianity. On the
other hand, indolence and idleness are natural to
many men and even to many nations. The habit
of inactivity is fostered by mental indifference or
the lack of any propelling emotion such as religion
or patriotism. The duty and honour of work are
Christian conceptions. In 2 Th 38! we have an
early indication of a long struggle, in the course
of which sloth was enthroned as one of the seven
mortal sins. (Cf. Paget, Spirit of Discipline, pp:
1-50).
2. The life of our Lord Himself furnishes the
supreme type of Christian energy. Energy is
measured by the amount of work it can accomplish
Within a given time. The ministry of Jesus was
‘imited to a very brief period, but into that little
space there was crowded a work that has no
par ullel in the history of the world. Energy is
‘iso theasured by the vastness and continuance of
its effects, and after nineteen centuries the quicken-
ing influence of Jesus is operating on the world
With undiminished power. Jesus was never idle.
Ϊ or Him every hour had its appointed task (Jn 24)
and every day was governed bya steady and strenu-
ous purpose | Jn 9‘), He was sometimes Weary in
His toils Mt 8%, Jn 4°), yet was ever ready to
Tefen = . ‘a apa Hie tine at strength, His
: | ih eason was that the springs
τ τος rey never ran dry. It is right to Say
Divinely unconquerable wil, but 2 neve tek
a “ee 3 4) a
tree that the str ngth of His Spirit was fed by His
ENTHUSIASM
love to man and His faith in God. His boundless
love and compassion for human beings inspired
Him to go about doing good. His perfect faith in
God enabled Him to feel, as no other on earth has
ever felt, that nothing was impossible (Mt 17”).
But beneath all conscious faith and love there
sprang up in the soul of Jesus a fountain of life
and power through His abiding union with His
Father. ‘My Father worketh hitherto,’ He once
said, ‘and I work’ (Jn 5"). ‘He went about doing
good,’ St. Peter declared, ‘for God was with him’
(Ac 1038).
3. The teaching of Jesus on this subject may
be divided into two parts. (1) He enjoins many
qualities that contribute to the life ot strenuous-
ness. Such are diligence (parables of Talents and
Pounds, Mt 25, Lk 19), readiness (Lk 1255), use of
opportunities (Jn 95), watchfulness (Mk 1839), per-
severance and importunity of prayer (Lk 11° 18°),
constancy and continuance of service (Lk 12” 171°),
Such precepts receive double force from the ex-
ample of His life of unresting labour (Jn 57 99).
In St. Paul the same lessons are illustrated and
inculeated (1 Co 15": 8),—(2) Faith is set forth as
the supreme source of active energy. Faith re-
ceives healing ; 1t can also bestow healing. Before
its presence both bodily and mental diseases dis-
appear. Sayings of Jesus to this effect are re-
membered as maxims and metaphors. ‘ All things
are possible to him that believeth’ (Mk 97 11%).
By faith mountains disappear and trees may be
uprooted (Mk 11%, Lk 17°). Such sayings passed
into ordinary speech (1 Co 13°), and the life of
achievement was regarded as illustrative of the
power of faith (He 11). The fact that men of
faith are the possessors of boundless energy is
indeed writ large in the history of the world. But
the living faith enjoined by Jesus and practised in
the planting of Christianity procured an immediate
possession of surprising power. Exorcists and ma-
gicians were abashed ; and demonic possession, still
a plague of the East, disappeared. before the ad-
vancing standards of the new faith. This spiritual
energy depended on immediate communication with
God. The last words attributed to Christ are
these: ‘Ye shall receive power after that the Holy
Ghost is come upon you’ (Ac 15).
R. Scorr.
ENOCH.—There is no mention of the patriarch
Enoch in the Gospels except as a link in our
Lord’s genealogy, Lk 3°”.
ENOS.—An ancestor of Jesus, Lk 338,
ENROLMENT.—See CENSUS and QUIRINIUS.
ENTHUSIASM.—Enthusiasm means etymologi.
cally a Divinely inspired interest or zeal (Gr. ἐν-
θουσιάζω, to be inspired by a god, from ἐν ‘in,’ and
θεός ‘god’); and therefore atfords an appropriate
modern rendering for the phrase πνεῦμα ἅγιον, ‘ Hol
Spirit,’ in the NT (Lk 115: 35. 41. 67 41, Ag 9 48. 31 63.5
7°° 917 11°4 139; see Bartlet’s Acts, p. 386). The
author of Ecce Homo has called attention to the
enthusiasm Jesus required of, and inspired in, His
disciples (pp. 141, 152, 154, fifth edition). His own
life was marked by enthusiasm, intense and exalted
emotions in regard to His vocation. As a youth
He was enthusiastic for His Father’s house (Lk
2"); at the Baptism He devoted Himself to His
calling (Mt 3%), and was conscious of receiving the
Spirit (316), the spirit of zeal and power. His first
enthusiasm to use the new energy afforded the
occasion for the temptation in the wilderness (Mk
1” ‘straightway the Spirit driveth him forth’).
In His call to His disciples, His teaching and
will, but it is néne the legs |
healing, His journeyings from place to place in
the early Galilean ministry (Mk 117: 27-33-41) this
ENTHUSIASM
mocd of enthusiasm is dominant (Lk 4). The
same impression is conveyed in St. John’s record :
His answer to His mother in Cana, the casting out
of the traders from the temple, the challenge to
the priests, the confession of His Messiahship to
the woman of Samaria, the forgetfulness of the
needs of the body in His absorption in His work
(27: 17. 19 4:6. 32.34)" have all the same characteristic
of an intense, exalted emotion. His mood was
mistaken for madness by His relatives (Mk 3”),
and His answer regarding His spiritual relation-
ships would not remove their doubt (3%: *>), His
demands on His disciples to abandon all, and to
cleave to Him (Lk 909. © 1450) and the Beatitudes
He pronounced on the spiritually aspiring, and on
the persecuted (Mt 5° 15), spring from the same
inward source. He was deeply moved by an
evidence of faith which He met with (Mt 8:9 1535,
Lk 107, Mt 161”, Jn 12%, Lk 23%). He even in-
tensely desired to fulfil His vocation in His death
(Lk 125, The Baptist contrasted his own baptism
with water and the Messiah’s baptism with the
Holy Spirit and fire (Mt 3"). His words have been
thus interpreted : ‘He baptizes with water, in the
running stream of Jordan, to emblem the only
way of escape, amendment. Messiah will baptize
with wind and fire, sweeping away and consuming
the impenitent, leaving behind only the righteous’
(Bruce, ‘St. Matthew’ in Eapositor’s Gr. Test. p.
84). When Jesus presented the same contrast in
His demand to Nicodemus (Jn 3°), it is not probable
that He referred to judgment, but to the inspira-
tion which He brought to men in His ministry,
the enthusiasm for God and His kingdom which He
imparted. We have abundant evidence that He so
inspired men in Galilee by His healing, teaching,
forgiveness of sins, companionship (Mk 157: 97 21-19),
and attracted many (Mk 37 6°), The people
believed Him to be John the Baptist, Elijah,
Jeremiah, or one of the prophets (Mk 64, Mt 1012).
That this mood was temporary Jesus recognized
in the parable of the Sower (Mk 4°-°). The flame
blazed up again for a moment among the Galilean
pilgrims at the triumphal entry (Mk 11°"°). The
early ministry in Judzea and in Samaria, as re-
corded by John, made the same impression (Jn 9259
3°5 499-42), After His Resurrection and Ascension
the Christian Church received at Pentecost the
permanent and communicable gift of holy enthusi-
asnu (πνεῦμα ἅγιον, as explained above).*
It is a difficult problem whether in His early ministry Jesus
was not led by His enthusiasm to show less reserve in the
expression of His claims and lcss restraint in the exercise of
Iiis powers than was His practice afterwards, when He had
Iearned from experience the peril this course involved of a
premature close of His ministry. The solution of the problem
depends on the answer given to the wider question, whether
such a change of method, due to the teaching of experience,
would be compatible with His unerring moral insight and
*In this view of the meaning of Christian enthusiasm, as a
power which finds its true source in the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit, we get an interesting glimpse into both the history of
language and the philosophy of that history, from the disrepute
which attached to the word ‘enthusiasm’ during the age of
Rationalism and Deism. Those were days when leaders in the
Church set themselves to ‘put down enthusiasm,’ and Christian
apologists were anxious to prove that neither Jesus Christ nor His
Apostles were ‘enthusiasts.’ Hartley defines enthusiasm as ‘a
mistaken persuasion in any person that he is a peculiar favourite
with God; and that he receives supernatural marks thereof’
(Observations on Man, i. 490), a definition which entirely cor-
responds to the contemporary ideas on the subject (see J. E.
Carpenter, James Martineau, p. 92). In the 18th cent. enthusi-
asm was a synonym for fanaticism; an enthusiast was simply
a fanatic. And the constant application of the terms to the
Evangelical Revival and its leaders shows that this debasing of
their value was due to the spiritual deadness of the critics
rather than to the extravagances of the enthusiasts. Similarly,
the Jewish leaders said of Jesus, ‘He hath a devil, and is mad’
(Jn 1020); Festus said to Paul, ‘Thou art beside thyself’ (Ac 264) ;
and some of the people of Jerusalem, when they witnessed the
charismatic gifts bestowed upon Christ’s followers on the Day
of Pentecost, exclaimed, ‘These men are full of new wine’
(Ac 213),
ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 519
sinless moral character, and the Divine guidance He constantly
sought and found in the fulfilment of His vocation. If not, we
cannot assume any such change. The question is discussed in
The Expositor, 6th series, vol. vi. ‘The Early Self-Disclosure.’
LITERATURE.—Arthur, Tongue of Fire; J. C. Shairp, Studies,
362 ff. ALFRED E. GARVIE.
ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM.—This was one of
the acted parables of Jesus, in which some im-
mortal lesson is concealed. The washing of the
feet, the entry, and the cleansing of the Temple,
stand together as dramatic representations of the
principles and ideas of the Kingdom of God; of
the humility and self-denial required in the life of
the Christian ; of the mixture of condescension and
majesty in the manner of the King’s coming ; and
of the peace He gives and of the judgment that
follows in His steps.
Of the Synoptic accounts Mk. seems the
original. Mt. describes the entry in keeping with
his representation of Jesus as the Malka Méshiha
of the Jews, and in consonance with the prophecy
of Zec 9°. The RV rendering of 214 τοῦτο δὲ γέγονεν,
‘Now this is come to pass,’ seems to put the refer-
ence to the fulfilment of that prophecy into the
mouth of Jesus. But the inference from Jn 12? 16
is that the prophecy is an afterthought of the
disciples, in the light of the Ascension ; and the ten
texts of ‘fulfilment’ in Mt. are always comments of
the writer. Mt.seems to represent Jesus as riding
on the she-ass and the colt (ἐπάνω αὐτῶν). In Zec 99
the Heb. >, as Rosenmiiller points out, is exegetical
not copulative, and as ‘ass’ (24) is male, the
proper rendering is ‘ sitting on an ass, even a colt,
the foal of she-asses.’ There is thus only one ass
in Zechariah. The apparent duplication is due to
Hebrew parallclismus. Mt. is accused of embroi-
dering the historical statement by adding a second
ass in order to show the exact literal fulfilment
‘of prophecy (Kirsopp Lake, at Liverpool Church
Congress). Robertson’s attempt (Christianity and
Mythology, p. 368) to explain the two asses mytho-
logically as signifying that the ‘Sun-god is at his
highest pitch of glory and is coming to his doom,’
is not to be taken seriously. Mt.’s penchant for
‘doubles’ being well known (cf. 878 051 20°°-*4), the
passage must not be pressed. Bengel’s comment
is ‘pullo vectus est, asiné item usus, pulli comite.’
Farrar suggested rendering ἐπάνω airey=‘on. one
of them’; cf. Ac 234. Justin Martyr (Apol. i. 32)
speaks only of a colt, but, connecting the incident
with Gn 4911, describes it as ‘ tied to a vine.’
The prophecy Mt 215, a compound of Is 6211 and Zec 99, is
taken partly from Heb., partly from LXX. LXX suppresses
ὄνον, Which is recovered from Hebrew. Mt. suppresses δίκαιος καὶ
σώζων [YY] Niph. ptep.: salvatus not salvator, trans. active,
through influence of 4y21 (‘ thy salvation ’) Is 6211], emphasizing
apaus, ‘meek’ (*3).
In Mt. there is a description of the commotion
(ἐσείσθη) in the whole city ; the question, ‘ Who is
this?’; the answer, ‘This is the prophet Jesus,
he who is from Nazareth of Galilee,’ and the
greeting, ‘Hosanna ἕο the Son of David. Mk 11-10
adds some vivid details. The colt, never before
used (so Lk.), was tied ‘at the door without in the
open street’ (ἐπὶ τοῦ aupsdou [not ‘where two ways
met,’ biviwm, Vulg.], Just. Mart. ἔν τινι εἰσόδῳ κώμης
(l.c.); Gppoda, ai ῥύμαι (Hesych.). The woven
branches (στοιβάδες) cut from the gardens (ἀγρῶν,
v.l. for δένδρων) are different from the κλάδοι (olive
branches in classical Greek) cut from the trees, in
Mt 21%. The cry of the people is ‘Hosanna;
Blessed in the name of the Lord (ace. to Hebrew
accents and idiom, 6.9. Dt 21°), Blessed he the
kingdom that cometh, even that of our father
David.’ Mk. treats the visit as one of inspection.
Jesus retires, ‘having looked round on all things,
for the hour was late,’ whereas Mt. and Lk. give
it as prelude to the cleansing of the Temple. Lk
ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM
1929-45 vives additional touches. They placed Jesus
on the colt ἐπεβίβασαν (ἐπεκάθισαν of Mt 217 being
doubtful); the exact place of the exhibition of
popular enthusiasm is given, ‘even now at the
descent of the Mt. of Olives’ (ἤδη πρὸς τῇ κατα-
βάσει), from which, Dean Stanley states, the first
view is caught of the south-eastern corner of the
city as the road from Bethany begins to descend.
The lament over the city, the retort to the Phari-
sees’ objection, ‘If these should hold their peace,’
etc., are peculiar to Luke. The song is, ‘ Peace in
heaven and glory in the highest,’ a seeming adapta-
tion of the ‘Hosanna,’ ete., to suit Greek taste,
perhaps through the influence of the angels’ scng
{τ ὅν
Jn 12!" describes the scene from the stand-
point of the people in the city who went out to
meet Him (εἰς ὑπάντησιν) : the blending of the two
streams of people, the οἱ προάγοντες, ‘those going
before’ of the Synoptics being those who had gone
out to meet Him and had turned back when they
met Him at the head of the procession, and thus
preceded Him to the city; the testimony of the
people who were with Him to the new-comers that
(reading ὅτι for ὅτε) He had summoned Lazarus
from the tomb; and the fact that the people from
the city took branches of palm trees (τὰ Bata τῶν
φοινίκων [from class. Bais, palm-branch,’ not from
βαιός, ‘small’; note the three different words for
‘branch,’ κλάδος, στιβάς, and βαΐον]. ‘The prophecy
is given in a shorter form. Jesus is hailed ‘King
of Israel,’ and the Pharisees comment on their own
powerlessness and His popularity (v.!).
This entry was connected with Jesus’ conscious-
ness of His Messianic mission, gradually develop-
ing as His work assumed definite direction and
His doctrine definite form; was conceived after
the prophecies of the OT, and planned in order to
satisty the expectations of many who were wait-
ing for the coming of the Kingdom of God, ‘the
consolation of Israel,’ ‘the redemption of Jeru-
salem’ (Lk 955. 8), After the feeding of the 5000
(JnG6") the multitude recognized Jesusas the prophet
that should come into the world, and would have
seized Him and made Him a king, but He defeated
their purpose ; for He could not allow an emotional
peasantry, ever ready to flock to the standard of
a deliverer, to identify His Kingdom with this
world, or His cause with that of a Judas of Galilee.
Here He devises the entry on the lines of Jewish
propheey, which, though free from any hostile
intention, was equivalent to a declaration that He
was the Messiah, and implied that He was more.
It was not directly urged against Him at His
trial; but it supplied Pilate with his question,
* Art thou the King of the Jews?’ and, accordingly,
with the legal basis for his sentence. This and
the cleansing were His two first and last actions
as Messiah. They were followed by the Cross.
We may infer in some measure from the song,
the prophecy quoted, and His mode of entry, how
ae uted and how far He transcended the
esslamle expectations of His day.
4, Th King lom of our father David.—The
K ngdom of God or of heaven in the sense of
ΣΙ" Herrsch ft of God, ‘the power of
ron) Ἵ present or future manifestation,’ the
chal ee eB ae SOY Crean of, God’ (Dal-
of Home Rule for the Jews hatin
ab eauee or the Jee had aiways been
Shortly th: Sees i (Mt 417),
Wsedeingdén of tees anion es rad asked when
τοι nould come (Lk 177°), And
His answer was in keeping with His objec f
purifying the Messianic jdeas ; 1 ee oO
Messianic ideals of His age. It was th en”
of His Father Mt 26% BE i her Ὡς Kingdom
righteous (Mt 13: “the war, Age Father of the
. iat He proclaimed
rule or
God in it
Jesus’ addresses
f
1
betore
ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM
the kingdom of their father David of which the
people thought. And His question, ‘ What .think
ye of Christ?’ (Mt 22"), shows that He did not
consider Davidic origin sufficient status in itself
for the Messiah. ‘The kingdom of our father
David’ recalls the grand ideal of the theocratic
ruler, the representative of J’, the ideal son to
whose descendants that throne was ensured (2 S 716),
upon which the prophets of the OT continued to
build their hopes—hopes which had become greatly
modified and materialized during the struggle with
Antiochus and Rome, and by contact with Grecian
thought, and which made the ordinary Jew dream of
a deliverer with all the heroic qualities of a Judas
Maccabeeus, and the more philosophic think of an
earthly empire, cosmopolitan and world - ruling
like the Roman. It was the idea in the prophets,
chiefly in Dn 7-4-1", of a kingdom, holy, super-
natural, universal and eternal, that Jesus sought
to recover from the lumber-room of tradition ; and
in this He was assisted by the gradual revival
of more spiritual Messianic hopes among thought-
ful and devout Jews like Simeon and Anna, (ef.
also the angelic prediction of Lk 1° ‘And the
Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his
father David’). The Gospels give an account of
the general Messianic expectations. The Messiah
was not to come from Galilee but from Bethlehem
(Mt 2°), was king of the Jews (v.?), was to perform
miracles (Jn 7°"), to be a prophet (4°), to appear
mysteriously (7:7), to be a descendant of David (Mt
957), and to restore again the kingdom to Israel
(Ac 1).
2. The address ‘Son of —David”—The Messiah
is first designated vids Δαυίδ in Ps-Sol 17%—a title
founded on Scripture expressions such as ‘son’
(Is 9°), ‘seed’ (Targ. 2S 712), ‘branch’ (Jer 23° and
Zec 6", where the Aram. paraphrase for ‘branch’ is
‘Messiah’). The Davidie descent of Jesus, never
refuted by His opponents, was accepted by St.
Paul (Ro 15). But Jesus based His authority on
something higher than this:(Mt 22%),
3. The song ‘Hosanna... highest’ (cf. Ps 118: °8,
the festal ery amidst which the altar of burnt-
offering was solemnly compassed on the first six
days of the Feast of Tabernacles, and on the last
day seven times).—-‘ Hosanna,’ which may be a con-
traction for Héshi' Gh πᾶ (σῶσον δή, LXX), or shorter
Hiph. imper. with enclitic, xryvin, is evidently
a salutation=‘ greeting to (ef. Lat. Lo triwmphe)
the Son of David,’ not supplication as in Ps. ; cf.
Didach2, x. 6, wcavva τῷ θέῳ Δαβίδ (‘hail’). ὡσαννὰ
ἐν τοῖς ὑψίστοις (Mt.)=dsEa ἐν ὑψίστοις (Lk.). In Ps
725 116° the Heb. ? (=dat.) is found after Hiph. of
yw>; but the fact that the branches at the Feast
of Tabernacles were called ‘hosannas’ and Mt.’s
remarkable omission from Zee 9° of yw (σώξων,
LXX), which would have thrown a new light on
this cry, seem to denude the expression of any
special significance. See HOSANNA.
Dalman suggests that the original cry of the people was
‘Hosanna, Blessed in the name of J” be he that cometh’ (op.
cit. p. 222). It is also to be remembered that in the OT, J”
Himself is generally represented as Saviour, while the Messiah
was the prince of the redeemed people ; the idea that the
Messiah was the Redeemer being more recent. An interesting
connexion between Ps 11827 ‘Bind the sacrifice with cords or
woven branches’ (D°Nly τε στοιβαδες, Mk 118) and the entry of
Jesus is brought out in Symm. συνδήσατε ἐν πανηγύρει πυκάσ-
ματα.
It is possible to make too much of the cere-
monies of the Feast of Tabernacles in connexion
with this entry, which took place just before the
Feast of Passover in spring. But it is equally
possible that the sone, ete., may have been due to
reminiscences of the preceding Feast of Taber-
nacles, when Jesus was pronounced the prophet
and the Messiah (Jn 7%), and that the whole
ἢ 1b was | passage was sung, that which used to be supplica-
ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM
ENVY 521
tion now passing into greeting. Our conclusion is,
then, that though the song ‘ Hosanna,’ ete., was
used in salutation, it contains an allusion to the
preceding Feast of Tabernacles, expresses the con-
victions of many of the people, and offers a remark-
able parallel to Ps 118?>-*",
4, The mode of entry.—Some of the same Galilean
folk who wished to make Jesus a king before the
time of Jn 6” have now, in their progress to
the city, gathered around Him and escort Him,
their national Prophet, with song. Others come
from the city to meet Him, and receive Him with
acts of homage which show that they regarded
Him at the time as the prospective deliverer of the
nation. In 2 Mac 1051 Judas Maccabzeus is wel-
comed with similar acclamations and ‘branches
and fair boughs and palms,’ and in 1 Mac 13%
Simon. In 2 Καὶ 9 the followers of Jehu, the
newly proclaimed king, threw down their cloaks
(ἱμάτια, as here) before him. Stanley also (SP 191)
mentions that in recent times the people of
Bethlehem cast their cloaks before the horse of
the consul of Damascus. Dalman agrees with
Wellhausen that the procession did not acquire its
Messianic colour until a later period, and that few
at the time thought of the prophecy in Zec. (op.
cit. p. 222). In the light of after events, Jesus
entered the city as Messianic king, priest, and
prophet. (1) The ‘prince’ shad to provide the
sacrifices ‘to make reconciliation for or to atone
for [830] the house of Israel’ (Ezk 45:5, οἵ. 464-6
and 2 Ch 30%). So does ‘the Lord’s Anointed?’
here. (2) The priest presents the offering. So
does ‘the priest after the order of Melchizedek’
(Ps 1104) proceed, metaphorically speaking, to
‘bind the sacrifice with cords unto the horns of
the altar’ (118°). The harmony between the two
offices of the Messiah as king and priest is well
described in Zec 6 ‘and the counsel of peace shall
be between the two’ (so Rosenm.). The growing
predominance of the priestly office of the Messiah
is also expressed in the choice of the colt ‘ whereon
never man sat’ (Mk. and Lk.), οἵ. Nu 19° ‘a red
heifer . . . upon which never came yoke.’ (3) The
prophetic character of the Messiah as the ‘mes-
senger of the covenant’ (Mal 81), coming to His
temple, J’”s prophet to the world and a light to
the Gentiles (Is 49°), was suitably expressed by the
proclamation of the people, ‘his is Jesus the
prophet,’ ete., and by their testimony to His mira-
cles, generally connected with a prophet. (4) There
was another ideal of the OT realized in Jesus on
this occasion. The meek and afllicted [5.)] saint of Ps
22*4, the Psalm appropriated by Jesus on the cross,
was represented by Him who wept over the city
and entered it ‘meek [-3y Zec $°= pais, Mt 21°; also
in Mt 5°= Ps 3711, and sitting upon an ass.’ Other
significations of this Heb. adj., such as ‘poor,’
‘oppressed,’ and ‘ persecuted’ (in Isaiah), were also
realized in Jesus. But it is His meekness that
Mt. emphasizes, doubtless because of His riding
on an ass. At one time the ass was not a despised
animal. Judges rode on white asses (Jg 5°).
But through contact with Gentiles the ass had
fallen into contempt. For évos Josephus substitutes
κτῆνος and ἵππος. LXX in Zec 9 preferred ὑπο-
ζύγιον and πῶλος to the despised word. It was,
however, the tradition that the Messiah should
come riding on an ass (Sepp, ὃ vi. ο. 6). (5) The
conception of Messiah as the suffering Servant of
Deut.-Isaiah was, however, most of all exemplified
by Him who on this occasion humbled Himself
[7323 (Niph. of 73y in reflexive sense) Is 53’=€ra-
πείνωσεν ἑαυτόν, Ph 28] in a voluntary manner in
His progress to a death for His people.
Matthew describes Jesus as armed with author-
ity (ἐξουσία, cf. 8°), and on this occasion depicts
Him as the Malka Méshihad of the Jews. His
authority is over all flesh, to make them feel their
want of God and Him. The sense of power was
derived from the sense of His mission and the
consciousness that He was the Son of God, which
made Him soar beyond the Messianic réle and see
Himself the Lord of the whole earth, holding
sway by peace, spiritual peace, and by power,
spiritual power. ‘He claimed for Himself,’ as
Dalman remarks (op. cit. p. 313), ‘an exalted
position such as had not been assigned even to
the Messiah,’ and, as Harnack (What is Christi-
anity ? p. 141) observes, ‘He leaves the idea of the
Messiah far behind Him, because He filled it with
a content that burst it.? It was in the same spirit
that He affirmed His Kingship before Pilate (Mt
Pale)
The object of this entry was the inauguration of
Jesus’ last mission to His people. The attraction
of the provincial crowds, the Jerusalem populace,
the Greeks and proselytes, if not the impressing
of the Jewish hierarchy, this was the end desired,
and in a great measure attained. He never seems
to move in solitary state in the Temple; crowds
are always around Him; He is the topic of the
people’s conversation and the subject of the
priests’ conspiracy. This was a suitable prelude
to a great missionary enterprise all too brief,
but crowded perhaps with more real work and
witness for the King and His Kingdom than the
preceding portion of His ministry. It led to the
cleansing of the Temple on the same or the follow-
ing day, and these together culminated in the Cross.
LITERATURE.—Dalman, Words of Jesus; Harnack, What is
Christianity 2; Stanley, SP ; Farrar, Life of Christ ; Edersheim,
Life and Tiines; Hitchcock, Mystery of the Cross; artt.
‘Hosanna,’ * Messiah,’ ‘ Prophets’ in Hastings’ DB.
I’. R. MONTGOMERY HITCHCOCK.
ENVY.—The word φθόνος occurs in the Gospels
only in the two parallel passages Mt 9718 and Mk
15” in connexion with the trial of Jesus. When
the members of the Jewish hierarchy sought the
death of Jesus at the hands of Pilate, they
attempted to veil their motives under the pretence
of loyalty to Cesar. Pilate was too astute a man
to credit these professions for a single instant.
He perceived (ἐγίνωσκε, Mk 1510) the underlying
feeling to be envy. If the word ἤδει (‘he knew,’
Mt 2715) is significant, it supports the opinion that
Pilate had previously become acquainted with the
attitude of the chief priests toward Jesus. The
message that Pilate later received from his wife
(Mt 2719) somewhat favours this opinion. In fact
it was the business of Pilate to know of the person
of Jesus and His relations to the leaders of the
Jews, and nothing but the contemptuous indiffer-
ence of a Gallio would have hindered him from the
inquiries necessary for gaining this knowledge.
Perhaps it might seem at first as though the feeling which
prompted the priests might more properly be termed jealousy.
A comparison of the two feelings, jealousy and envy, readily
shows the distinctive character of each: ‘Jealousy is the
malign feeling which is often had toward a rival, or possible
rival, for the possession of that which we greatly desire, as in
love or ambition. Envy is a similar feeling toward one,
whether rival or not, who already possesses that which we
greatly desire. Jealousy is enmity prompted by fear; envy is
enmity prompted by covetousness’ (Century Dictionary, s.v.
‘Envy’). ‘Envy is only a inalignant, selfish hunger, casting its
evil eye on the elevation or supposed happiness of others’
(Bushnell, 7d.). In Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament,
xxvi., the comparison is less happily stated. Apparently
jealousy (ζῆλος) ‘may assume two shapes; either that of a
desire to make war upon the good which it beholds in another,
and thus to trouble that good, and make it less; or, where it
has not vigour and energy enough to attempt the making of it
less, there may be at least the wishing of it less. And here is
the point of contact which ζῆλος has with φθόνος : thus Plato,
Menex. 242 A, πρῶτον μὲν ζῆλος, ἀπὸ ζήλου δὲ φθόνος : the latter
being essentially passive, the former is active and energetic.’
This citation from Plato shows that there may be a genetic
relation between jealousy and envy, but it does not show that
envy is passive. Trench quotes from Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii. 11,
omitting ὁ δὲ τὸν πλησίον [παρασκευάζει] μὴ ἔχειν διὰ τὸν φθόνον [τὰ
522 EPHPHATHA
EPILEPSY
ee ὺυ»"-------’----ς----------- ----“““σεσΖε -π-
ἀγαθά]: ‘One that is moved by envy contrives that his neigh-
pour shall not have the good that he has or seems to have.’ A
careful examination of the use of φθόνος in classic Greek authors
justifies this statement of Aristotle, and reveals that it means
the same active malignant feeling as is expressed in modern
English by the word ‘envy.’ It was φθόνος which moved the gods
to prevent men from attaining a great or uninterrupted experi-
ence of prosperity. Pindar, the tragic writers, and orators
also are found using the word to designate the active impulse to
destroy another's prosperity so far as one has the power to do it.
The Septuagint, according to Hatch’s Concordance, uses
φθόνος only in the Apocryphal books. The most noteworthy
instance is in Wis 224 ‘on account of the envy of the devil, death
entered into the world.’
Since envy is an ill-will or malice aroused by
the success or good gifts of another, it is the fit-
tine word to designate the motive of the pricsts
who protested their loyalty to Cesar. Envy is
not a primary emotion. Other feelings prepare
the way for, and may enter into, it. It is the
result of a development in the life of selfishness
(Jul. Miiller, Lehre von der Siinde, i. 233 f. [Eng. tr.
Christian Doctrine of Sin, i. 1717). In the Gospels
this development is not difficult to trace. The
deeds and words of Jesus were from the outset
attended by suspicion on the part of scribes and
Pharisees. His growing popularity aroused their
jealousy. When they could charge Him with a
compact with Beelzebub (Mt 127", Mk 3%) Lk
11"), they had begun to hate Him because of the
popular confidence in Him, and especially because
this confidence was of a degree and a quality
which they never had received, and which they
could not hope to receive. This occurrence was an
attempt to discredit Him with the people, and it
showed that envy had obtained full lodgment in
their hearts. From that time onwards it had so
large a share in their lives, that when they appeared
before Pilate they were so mastered by this feeling
to which they had given free rein for months, that
they were unable to conceal it. See also artt.
COVETOUSNESS and JEALOUSY.
F. B. DENIOo.
EPHPHATHA.—An Aramaic word, found in the
Greek text of Mk 74. We there read that Jesus
said toa man who was ‘deaf and had an impedi-
ment in his speech, Ephphatha’ (éppadd). The
Evangelist appends a Greek translation of the
word : 6 ἐστιν διανοίχθητι, ‘that is, Be opened.’
There are two Aram. words of which ἐφφαθά may be a trans-
literation: (1) MAEN; (2) MDX. The former is a contraction of
MANN Imperative Ithpaal; and the latter is a contraction of
nopnx Imperative Ithpeal of the verb ΠῚ ‘to open. In Greek
MSS, s8D present ἐφφεθώ, which is certainly Ithpeal, whereas
iggatie may be Ithpaal. Jerome gives Ephphetha, and some
Latin MSS give effetha, ephetha, and even ejfeta. Wellhausen
in his Com. on Mk 7% prints ἐφφατά, but apparently without
MS authority.
The form ἐφφαθά, when compared with its Aram. equivalent
Mn=enkx, presents several interesting peculiarities bearing on the
dialect spoken by our Lord. (1) We note the disappearance of
the guttural π We know that in Galilee and Samaria the
wutturals were much neglected, or even interchanged ; and they
are often ignored in transtiterating Semitic words into Greek.
Thus we find Μεσσίας from NW; Βηθεσδά from NION M3;
we from O3M °3; Σίμων from jiynw (side by side with Συμεών,
where the « does duty for y). (2) We note the assimilation of
n to 5, giving ἐφφαθά for ἐθφαθώ ; or in Aram. MN5N for NOSny.
This is quite in accordance with a rule in Palestinian Aramaic,
that frequently, and especially with the labials 3, Ὁ, and 5, the nin
the passive prefix ΤΙΝ is assimilated to the first radical (Dalman’s
ane ar ‘ Grammatik, p. 201). (3) Tt is noteworthy that we
he repetition of the aspirate letter ¢. According to
He br inalogy, NOSX ought to give irreéé, inasmuch as the
daghesh al indicates the harder and not the aspirated form
of the letter 5. We infer, therefore, that in the Semitic
language, which lies behind our Greek Test., there was a devia-
tion from Hebrew rule as to the daghesh. If Heb. had been the
anl | re ]
basal language of the Gospels, we could not have had such
forms as Βαρθολομαιος from D> Ἵ and Βηβφαγή from ΓΞ
x2. The aspirated forms n and 5 after a closed syllable would
B intolerable. The daghesh forte is also singuiarly treated in
M τθατος from NAD and Zaxveies from ‘31. (4) The appearance
of « in ἐφφαθά may possibly indicate that the dialect spoken by
our Lord used the Syriac prefix nX eth with passive forms, and
not nx ith, as is found in Palestinian Aramaic; in other words,
used Ethpaal for Ithpaal.
As to what is the subject of the verb διανοίχθητι,
‘Be thou opened,’ there is room for difference of
opinion. It may be the mouth, as in Lk 1® (so
Weiss, Morison), or the ear, as in Targ. on Is 50° (so
Bruce, Swete); or it may be the deaf man himself
who is addressed. One door of knowledge being
shut, the man is conceived of as a bolted chamber :
‘Jesus said to him, Be thou opened.’
LireRATURE.—Zahn, Linleitung in das NT i. 1-24; Kautzsch,
Granin. des Biblisch-Aramidisch, §5; Dalman, Arai. Gramm.
201f., 222; A. Meyer, Jesu Muttersprache, 52; Mcyer, Bruce,
Swete, etc., on Mk 734. J. T. MARSHALL,
EPHRAIM.—Jn 115: only. After the raising of
Lazarus, Jesus departed, in consequence of the
plots of the chief priests against Him, ‘unto a
country (RV ‘into the country’) near to the
wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and there
continued with his disciples.’
There are scarcely any textual variations. TR spells’ Εφραΐω ;
Lachmann, Tischendorf, Westcott-Hort spell ’E¢gpai ; Stephanus,
1550, had on the margin the reading ’E¢g:~, which is supported
by NL and Latin witnesses, and the name xu¢evperu as to be
supplied after χώραν. This is the reading of D, Sapfurim in
its Latin part, for which Chase (Syro-Lat. Text of Gospels, 108)
and R. Harris (A Study of Codex Beze, p. 184) suggested that
cau might be the Heb. DY ‘the name’; but more probable is the
identification with Sepphoris, which in Jos. Ant. xiv. 91 is
spelt Σα τφόροις (v.11. Σαμφόροις and other forms); so Jerome (s.v.
“Araba’ in OS 17. 13f.): ‘Diocesare, que olim Saforcie
dicebatur.’
Eusebius in his Onomasticon says (ad Ephron, Jos.
xv. 9): καὶ ἔστι viv κώμη ᾿φραὶμ μεγίστη περὶ τὰ
βόρεια Αἰλίας ὡς ἀπὸ σημείων « ; in the Latin render-
ing of Jerome: ‘est et villa pergrandis Hfrwa
nomine contra septentrionem in vicesimo ab A¢lia
miliario’ (ed. Klostermann, p. 86. 1, 90.18). With
this has been identified Afra [=m™p5y Jos. xviii. 23):
‘in tribu Beniamin ; et est hodie vicus Lfraim in
quinto miliario Bethelis ad orientem respiciens’
(p. 29. 4; the Greek text [28. 4: καὶ viv ἔστι κώμη
Αἰφρὴλ ἀπό] is here defective); further, 1 Mac 11%
=Jos. Ant. xiii. 127 [ed. Niese]: τοὺς τρεῖς νομοὺς
᾿Αφαίρεμα (v.l. ᾿Αφέρεμα) καὶ Λύδδα καὶ Ῥαμαθείν ;
finally, the notice of Josephus (BJ iv. 551), that
Vespasian took Βήθηγά re (earlier reading Βαιθήλ or
Βηθήλ) καὶ Ἢ φραὶμ πολίχνια. Since Robinson, the
site has been sought at the modern et-Taiyibeh,
4 miles N.E. from Bethel. Schiirer (@JV* i. 233)
quotes Robinson, ii. 332-338; Guérin, Judeée, ili.
45-51; Buhl, GAP p. 177; Heidet, art. ‘Ephrem’
in Vigouroux’s Dict. ii. 1885 ff. ; οἵ., further, art.
a deers by J. H. Kennedy in Hastings’ DB,
and by T. K. Cheyne in Encye. Biblica.*
Origen compares, for the retirement of Jesus, Mt 4126. and
then allegorizes: Ephraim, according to Gn 412lf ‘ καρποφορία;
ἀπῆλθεν ἐκεῖθεν εἰς τὴν χώραν “τοῦ ὅλου κόσμου, ἐγγὺς τῆς ἐρήμκου
“ξκπλησιας,᾽ εἰς Ἐφραΐμ τὴν "καρποφοροῦσαν᾽ λεγομένην πόλιν, etc. (New
Berlin edition, pp. 420, 551). About the site he says nothing.
Es. NESTLE.
EPILEPSY.—There is but one specific instance
of this awful malady recorded for us in the
Gospels.t This case is, however, common to all
three Synoptists (οἵ. Mt 17, Mk 9176, Lk 9°) ; and
the three accounts, while not in verbal agreement,
are sufficiently harmonious to leave no doubt in
the mind of the reader as to the nature and malig-
* Schurer (GJ V3 ii, 163, n. 435) is certainly right in rejecting
the identification of Sapfurim with Sepharvaim (2 Καὶ 1724) put
forward by Resch (TU x. 4, pp. 141, 204) and approved by
Blass (Ev. sec. Joh. 1902, p. x1), and in finding in Sapfurim the
name of the town Sepphoris, which covered a very large area.
But it is not yet certain whether Codex D has preserved here a
correct tradition. Lk 910 offers similar variations in the text
(Tori καλουμένην, τόπον λεγόμενον, τόπον Epyuov, etc.). "Kopasu
might itself be derived from Sepphoris, the first letter being
dropped after the ς of εἰς.
+ ‘Epileptic’ is substituted by RV for ‘lunatick’ of AV in
Mt 424 17!5 as tr. of σεληναζεσθαι.
EPILEPSY
nant character of the disease. It is noteworthy
that the writers all attribute it to the active
agency of demons; and this is the more remark-
able as St. Matthew, in another place, appears to
differentiate between demon possession and epilepsy
(Mt 474 δαιμονιζομένους καὶ σεληνιαζομένους) Not
only do the Evangelists record their own and the
popular belief in the connexion of evil spirits with
epilepsy ; they also lead us to believe that Jesus
exercised His power on the presupposition of the
truth of this contemporary idea (cf. Mt 17%, Mk
9, Lk 9%).
It is well to remember in this connexion that medical thought
at this time and, indeed, for a long period subsequent to this,
was distinctly on the side of the Synoptists. Aretzus(c. 70 A.D.)
in writing of it (Sign. Morb. Diuturn. 37) attempts to explain
the reason why epilepsy was called ‘the sacred illness’ (ἱερὴν
κικλήσκουσ, τὴν sayy). The remedy, according to this writer,
belonged not to human but to Divine agency. Hippocrates, on
the other hand, writing some five centuries earlier, refuses to
accept the belief that there was anything supernatural about
this disease. In his opinion it is to be explained in the same
way as any other disease to which people are liable (ὥστε μηδὲν
Oiaxpivovta τὸ νόσημμα θειότερον τῶν λοιπῶν νοσημάτων, 5.τ.λ., Morb.
Sac. 303 [see Hobart’s The Medical Lanquage of St. Luke, p. 20)).
The important place held by the belief in the malevolent in-
fluence of demons and in the powers of the exorcist will be
recognized if we turn, ¢.g., to Tertullian, Apol. 23 ; Origen, ec.
Cels. vii. 334; Apost. Constit. viii. 26, amongst the written pro-
ducts of early Christian thought.
The word employed by St. Matthew in_ his
description of the epileptic boy (σεληνιάζεται), as
well as in his catalogue of ailments (453), shows
that in the opinion of the ancients the moon had a
preponderating influence in bringing on this disease
(cf. Ps 121° for a reference to the baleful effect
which the brilliant rays of the moon were supposed
to exert, and which from the context seems to have
been thought as deadly as sunstroke). This belief,
too, descended far down into the Middle Ages ;
and, indeed, it can hardly be said to have altogether
vanished from the popular mind, though it is prob-
ably now confined to the remoter quarters of human
habitation.
A comparative study of the particular case de-
scribed by each of the Synoptists reveals the fact
that St. Mark gives a much more graphic and
detailed account of the symptoms than either of
the other two. According to this writer, the boy
was deaf and dumb, he was liable to be seized with
convulsions at any time or place (ὅπου ἐάν, v.18)" to
fall violently to the ground, foaming at his mouth,
enashing with and grinding his teeth. Finally, he
is said to be gradually wasting away as a result of
the frequency of the seizures. He was, moreover,
afflicted from his childhood with this awful malady,
a by no means uncommon feature of such cases (see
art. ‘ Medicine,’ by A. Macalister, in Hastings’ DP
iii. 327°). St. Mark also gives a vivid account of a
fit which seems to have been brought on by the
presence of Jesus, or by the excitement consequent
on his introduction to that presence (9°). Νὸ
sooner did he come before Jesus than a seizure
with terrible convulsions took place, and falling
on the ground he rolled about (ἐκυλίετο does not
seem to be adequately treated in EV) foaming.
Perhaps the most peculiar part of the Markan narrative is the
account of the healing process. According to the Matthzan and
Lukan versions, the cure was not only perfect, it was instan-
taneous (Mt 17!8=Lk 942), St. Mark, on the other hand, says it
was gradual and difficult of accomplishment. Jesus, adopting
a tone of peremptory authority (ἐγὼ ἐπιτάσσω σοι, V.2°), addressed
the spirit as a person, and was answered by the latter, who
caused his victim to utter loud cries and to writhe with violent
convulsions before he obeyed the command. Nor was the com-
pletion of the cure yet reached, for an unconsciousness super-
vened so profound (ἐγένετο ὡσεὶ νεκρός, v.*6) as to deceive many of
the bystanders into the belief that death had claimed the victim.
It was not until Jesus took the boy by the hand to raise him
from the ground that the miracle took its final shape, and the
people were enabled to witness and to marvel at ‘the majesty
of God’ (Lk 943). ἢ ; ;
It is to be noted that this feature in the healing acts of Jesus
does not stand alone in this place. It is revealed in another
case also recorded by St. Mark. Ina preceding section he tells
EQUALITY 523
of the healing by Jesus of a blind man at Bethsaida. The cure
in this case, too, was effected gradually, and was completed only
by the contact of His hands with the afflicted patient (see 822-25),
That ‘the scribes’ seized the opportunity afforded
by this case to carry on their controversy with
Jesus and His disciples is implied in St. Mark,
where the element of hostility is referred to (see
v.4 ‘and scribes disputing against them’ [πρὸς
avrovs]). The method of healing adopted by Jesus
was in striking contrast to that to which they were
accustomed to lend themselves (cf. Shabbath 61
and Tosefta Shabbath, in loc., where we learn of
the employment of charms, such as amulets and
winged insects of a certain kind, in the cure of
epileptics). With Jesus it is the assertion of per-
sonal superiority. His words carry with them the
weight of indisputable authority. The command
is that of One who claims the lordship over disease
and death. At the same time directness and sim-
plicity are the essential characteristics of His atti-
tude and bearing. Nor did Jesus permit this
contrast to pass unnoticed (see Mt 12°’, where He
refers to a practice recognized as legitimate by the
religionists of His day).
Exorcism was practised in public by men who
professed to wield authority over the demon world
(ef. Ac 19%, which is the only place where the
word ‘exorcist’ occurs inthe NT). These exorcists
seem to have relied upon the repetition of certain
names to effect their. purpose, and along with this
the recitation of special incantations, of which
Solomon particularly was considered to be the
author (see Jos. Anf. VIII. 11. 5; Schiirer, H.JP τι.
iii. 151-155, and also To 6-8 for the lengths to
which belief in the efficacy of charms and incanta-
tions had made its way among the Jews). We
must not forget, moreover, that the followers of
Jesus framed their methods of healing the sick
upon this contemporary model. The utterance of
the name of Jesus found its place in their cures
(Ac 86 1618, Mk 988. 89. 16!” ete., where ἐν τᾷ ὀνόματι
Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ seems to be an essential part of the
formula employed). See also Demon, LUNATIC.
J. R. WILLIS.
EPIPHANY.—See CALENDAR, p. 261 f.
EQUALITY.—Equality in capability, responsi-
bility, and future destiny is by no means taught
by Christ in the Gospels. Christians are not re-
duced to one uniform level of worth and dignity,
either here or hereafter. In the parables of the
Talents and the Pounds the servants are not ina
condition of equality during their period of proba-
tion or afterwards (Mt 25-8) Ik 1941-27). The
inequality of Dives and Lazarus here is an admitted
fact, and their inequality beyond the grave is a
sure consequence (Lk 1055). Christ repeatedly ad-
mits without deprecation the inequality observable
among men. ‘'There are last which shall be first,
and there are first which shall be last’ (Lk 13”, ef.
Mt 193). There is, indeed, no sugvestion whatever
that a certain level of equality, tried even by
internal criteria, is to be aimed at. Growth in
grace follows the law of life, an increasing incre-
ment following upon each further increment (Lk
19°), ‘He that is but little in the kingdom of
heaven’ ts greater than John the Baptist (Mt 11",
Lk 738). Pre-eminence is not at all directly dis-
couraged or deprecated, only it must be the deepest
and truest excellence, apart from the odiousness of
comparison with others. The sons of Zebedee are
too anxious for the position of pre-eminence here-
after, and too heedless of the call to self-sacrifice
now (Mk 1057, Mt 20”). All disciples are in danger
of desiring to be honoured by titles here, instead
of awaiting God’s bestowal of dignity in the new
life beyond (Mt 235-15), But, to be greatest in the
Kingdom of heaven it is necessary to be as a little
ER
ERROR
child here (Mt 184, Lk 98). Such lowly and meek
Christians are called ‘little children,’ and the Lord
identifies Himself with them (Mk 95. The disciple
must not lord it over his fellow-disciples wantonly
and arrogantly (Mt 24%). Not only superiority,
but even equality, is forbidden as the goal of effort.
Mutual service is to be the aim of the Christian
community—the first is to be bond-servant of all
(Mk 105). This precept of service, instead of insist-
ence upon equality (Lk 2256: 7’), was beautifully and
touchingly practised by the Master-Servant on
the night of His betrayal (Jn 13°). Every man is
to descend below the level of equality and leave it
to God to call him higher if it be good in His
sight (Lk 14"). Especially in respect of penitence
for sin is it good to sink all considerations of com-
parative mérit (Lk 1812). Except in the ideal sense,
equality is neither an established fact nor a correct
principle in the Christian Society. We are sons
of one Father, and so brothers; but brothers are
not equal, for some are older or wiser or richer
or better. We are servants of one Master, and
so fellows; but in this service there are various
offices and diverse stations. Unity rather than
equality is the leading characteristic of the internal
economy of the Kingdom of heaven (Jn 1018 11
17! etc.).
LiTERATURE.—Bruce, Parabolic Teaching of Christ, pp. 178-
225; Mozley, Univ. Sermons, p. 72 ff.; Newman, Selected Ser-
mons, p. 260 ff. W. B. FRANKLAND.
ER.—An ancestor of Jesus, Lk 3%.
ERROR.—As one who lived in the undimmed
vision of holiness and truth, ‘who saw life steadily
and saw it whole,’ Jesus must have felt with an
intensity we cannot fathom how sin had distorted
the reason of man as well as perverted his affec-
tions. All around Him He saw men walking ‘in
the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their
understanding, alienated from the life of God
because of the ignorance that is in them, because
of the hardening of their heart’ (Eph 418), He saw,
also, as no one else had ever seen, that the recovery
of those who had become ‘ vain in their reasonings’
(Ro 1°!) was to be achieved less by attacking their
godless errors than by aiming at the renewal of the
moral and spiritual nature. This is the funda-
mental and vital pont to emphasize. Underlying
all Christ’s dealings with error there was the recog-
nition of the dependence of men’s opinions and
beliefs upon their character. We seldom realize
how much we contribute to the judgments we
form. We set out with the intention of being
wholly governed by the object. We want to know
What it really is, and not merely what it appears
to be. So we approach it, examine it, and form
our opinion of it. But the eye brings with it the
power of seeing ; what we see depends not merely
upon the object, but upon the organ of vision.
Chis is true especially with respect to all judg-
ents of value, all questions of right and wrong,
cuty and religion. The possibilities of error
tease not merely with the complexity of the
tbject-matter, but with the way in which our
rests and convictions, our desires and predilec-
bound up with it. In the region of the
, .
moral and
‘piritual life not only must the intellect
e \",—Tree trom false theory,—but still more
17 it that the heart be pure and the
ound Lo
uppret iate goodness a man
must be, if not good, at any
᾿ " Ἢ wel ‘Y . > P ς 4 . ν
rane My ways. Every one,’ said Jesus,
[ΠΗ IS ¢ the trot}
th heareth my voice’ (Jn 18°7),
of course, mean that all moral and
Viel ; simply to a depraved heart.
‘ ph thodoxy have been only too
1 1 2
uch is the case, and to
— = aaa Ea εὐ δ 9 ὑὐσθασα!α!αᾳκ᾽
silence the heretic by declaring him a bad man.
But it does mean that there is a moral aptitude for
Christian discipleship. It was inevitable that men
who had no enthusiasm for goodness should mis-
understand Christ and reject Him. It was equally
certain that His ‘sheep’ would hear His voice and
follow Him.
There are a few striking illustrations of these
principles in the Gospels which demand our atten-
tion.
1. The necessity for inward, moral clarity and
simplicity is strongly insisted on by Jesus (Mt
67 3, Lk 11%), © We so often talk as if we were
only obliged to ‘follow our conscience”; as if no
one could lay anything to our charge unless we
were acting against the present voice of conscience.
But this is very perilous error. We are also
obliged to enlighten our conscience and keep it
enlightened. it is as much liable to error as our
uninstructed intelligence, as much liable to failure
as our sight’ (Gore, The Sermon on the Mount, p.
146f.). The thought is expressed in other forms
equally suggestive. Thus the ‘pure heart’ is the
condition of the vision of God (Mt 58). It is the
‘honest and good heart’ which, having heard the
word, keeps it (Lk 8%). Heavenly truth is hid
from the wise and prudent, but revealed unto babes
(Mt 1135. The disciples must be converted and
become as little children (Mt 182°, Mk 1015).
2. Our Lord’s method of dealing with the ignor-
ant and erring is full of instruction. Take the
case of the woman suffering from an issue of blood
(Mt 970-2, Mk 5%-*4, Lk 8-48). It would be hard
to exaggerate the poor woman’s ignorance. Her
mind was full of erroneous thoughts of Jesus. At
best she looks upon Him as a worker of magic.
She thinks that she may be able to steal a blessing
from Him in the crowd. But there was working,
even in that darkness, the precious element of faith.
She trusted Jesus as far as she understood Him,
and that was enough for the Master. He knew
that faith in Himself, even though it were only as
a grain of mustard seed, would break through the
incumbent weight of error and ignorance, and
offer a free way for His grace: ‘Daughter, be of
good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole ;
go in peace.’ Jesus adopted essentially the same
method in dealing with persons like Zacchzeus,
Mary Magdalene, the woman of Samaria, and the
‘publicans and sinners’ generally. These victims
and slaves of passion and ignorance were certainly
not good. Their lives were stained by error and
sin. The religious classes looked upon them as
moral outcasts. And yet there were those among
them open to conviction. Their wilful and pas-
sionate lives had not destroyed in them a strange
yearning for better things. And when purity
drew near to them, adorned with such Divine
graciousness as it was in the Person of Jesus, they
became responsive to it and yearned after it. That
was faith, and Jesus saw in it a power which
would work for the redemption of the whole
nature. His one endeavour was to call it forth
into fullest exercise. Erroneous thoughts of God
and life, of duty and religion, would all slowly
disappear under the influence of this new devotion
to Himself. But, after all, those who responded to
His invitations (Mt 11°58") were never numerous.
The great mass of the people was untouched and
uninfluenced. Sunk in stupid ignorance, vice, and
worldliness, the masses, at the best, followed Him
for a time in gaping wonder, thinking far more of
‘the loaves and fishes’ than of the new life and
truth He placed before them. Hence the sad words
with which Jesus upbraided ‘the cities wherein
most of his mighty works were done’ (Mt 112%).
3. The Pharisees and the other religious leaders.
—At first it seems a strange thing that these men,
ESCHATOLOGY
on the whole, fell into the appalling error of re-
jecting Jesus. ‘The gospel did not place itself,
directly and at the outset, in opposition to the
errors of the Pharisees. . . . But the dividing gulf
was none the less real, and would batile every
attempt to fathom or bridge it over’ (Reuss,
Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age, p. 227).
A few reflexions on the lines of the previous re-
marks will make this clear. The whole life and
thought of the typical Pharisee was a closed
system. His religion was already fully organized.
‘In the hands of the Pharisees, Judaism finally
became petrified.’ It was a body of rules and
doctrines which laid the main stress on conduct
and outward ceremonies,—a rigid mould without
plasticity or capability of expansion. It could only
react in antagonism towards one who offered a
religion of the spirit, a worship of the Father in
what to make of a renovating and inspiring call
which bade him begin afresh, and completely revise
his life and religion in the light of a figter ideal.
He was self-satisfied, and resented criticism as an
intolerable impertinence. He was like one who
says that he must follow his conscience, but who
does not continually seek to enlighten his conscience
by confronting it with higher aspects of truth.
He had ears, but he heard not; eyes, yet he was
blind. This was the most fatal kind of error, the
most hopeless of all moral states; and it was in-
. evitable that it should come into deadly collision
with Jesus. ‘While the Pharisaic spirit had
changed religion into a narrow and barren formal-
ism, the gospel carefully distinguished the form
from the essence in things religious. Its estimate
of man’s true worth and the certainty of his hopes
rested not upon the outward conduct of the life,
but upon the inward direction of the heart and
feelings’ (Reuss, The Gospel and Judaisni, vol. 1.
). 227). The errors of the Pharisees and the bitter
hastility to Jesus which they provoked may be
studied in the following passages—they are a mere
Relecuion ἢ Mii ὁ. 12-8 155 ὁ 931) Mik 51:9. Lk
gi ] ] 87-54 198: Jn 520-47 714-52 G 12-59 ΟΝ
4. The errors of the disciples.—It is not necessary
to go into details here. In responding to His call
the disciples of Jesus had placed themselves in
training for the higher life. They had passed into
a school where the scholar’s ignorance and error
would be dealt with patiently and wisely. They
had much to learn, but the essential thing was
that they were in communion with the Light of
Life.
LITERATURE.—Illingworth, Christian Character; Gore, The
Sermon on the Mount; Reuss, History of Christian Theology in
the Apostolic Age; A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief; Per-
sonal Idealism, Essay I. by Prof. G. F. Stout; Descartes,
Meditation 1V. A. J. JENKINSON.
ESCHATOLOGY.—
I. Eschatology in the Synoptic Gospels.
A. Current Jewish eschatological conceptions.
1. The coming Kingdom.
2. The Jewish supremacy.
. The Messiah.
. Various forms of the conception of the Messiah.
. The preliminaries of the coming Kingdom.
(a) The heirs of the Kingdom.
(0) The Resurrection.
(c) Hades, Gehenna, Paradise.
(d) The Final Judgment.
B. The main features of our Lord’s eschatological teaching.
1. His conception of the Kingdom of God.
2. His Messianic consciousness.
3. His view of the time of the Consummation.
II. Eschatology in the Gospel of John.
1. The idealizing style of the Gospel.
2. Its conception of Eternal Life.
3. Its attitude to Eschatology proper.
Literature.
Ol fe OO
The design of this article is indicated particularly
under the letter B in the above Table of Contents.
ESCHATOLOGY 525
It is to set forth the main features of the teach-
ing of our Lord regarding the Last Things. His
doctrine is presumably discoverable from the Four
Gospels, and is capable of being exhibited in a
self-consistent form. Yet in view of the facts of
the case and the present state of critical opinion,
it will be necessary to keep certain distinctions
steadily in mind.
We must distinguish between (I.) the Synoptic
Gospels and (II.) the Gospel of John; and we
must distinguish between (A) current Jewish con-
ceptions and (B) the conceptions of Jesus. In
proportion to our feeling of the real unity of our
subject, it will be impossible to maintain these
distinctions with rigidity ; yet a total disregard of
them is impossible to any one who would keep on
terms with the criticism of the Gospels in our own
: : | day, or, what is more important, would appreciate
spirit and in truth. The Pharisee did not know | i
in any just degree the holy originality of Jesus.
The bearing, however, of what is called the
Synoptic Problem upon any matter important to
our purpose is so slight that we may safely ignore
it, mentioning only that we assume as a good
working hypothesis the prevailing critical theory,
which gives precedence in point of time, and even,
in certain aspects, of importance, to the Gospel of
Mark.
I. ESCHATOLOGY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS.—
A. CURRENT JEWISH ESCHATOLOGICAL CONCEP-
TIONS AS WITNESSED TO BY THE GOSPELS.—So far
as these are concerned, it does not seem necessary
to make any distinction between the Synoptics
among themselves or between them and John. It
may be generally postulated, moreover, that the
fundamental conceptions are those of the OT,
although it will be found that some of these have
undergone modification since the time of the latest
canonical books. Our principal witnesses are
naturally the Synoptics. In them we have the
most accurate reports accessible to us of the words
actually used by Jesus ; and where His sayings, as
there recorded, employ the language of eschatology,
apart from explanations which give it a turn
peculiar to Himself, we may assume that the
language in its natural implications represents
current Jewish belief.
1. The coming Kingdom.—It is clear that Jesus
addressed people who had a perfectly distinct,
though not accurately defined, idea of an age or
kingdom to come, which should follow on the
consummation (συντέλεια, Mt 13°!) of the present
age. He speaks, e¢.g., of rewards to the faithful
‘in this time (καιρός), and of eternal life in the
‘world (αἰών) to come’ (Mk 1039) ; and the phrase
‘Kingdom of God,’ which was constantly on His
lips, while doubtless subjected to expositions
which charged it with new meanings for His
followers, yet rested on a view of things common
to Him and to even irresponsive hearers. It meant
the perfect form of the Theocracy of which all
the prophets had spoken.
2. The Jewish supremacy.—It was generally
helieved that the Kingdom would come through
an act of power, in which God would visit His
people,—the Jews,—delivering them from all their
enemies, so that they might serve Him without
fear in holiness and righteousness for ever (Lk 1%).
Men of the type of Simeon, Zacharias, and Joseph
of Arimathia waited for the consolation of Israel.
Such persons doubtless believed with the prophets
(e.g. Is 1118: 94%, Zec 95) that the supremacy of
God’s people would be maintained, if not actually
accomplished, by methods of peace, and even in
the spirit of brotherly alliance among the nations
(see esp. Is 1953), who would receive the ‘law’
from Mount Zion (Is 274). Yet obviously both
they and the general populace, and even the dis-
ciples after the Resurrection (Ac 1°), thought of a
526 ESCHATOLOGY
state of things in which the position of God’s
ancient people would be central and supreme.
3. The Messiah.— Beyond the general belief that
the Kingdom would come through an act or series
of acts of Divine power, there is abundant evidence
that in the time represented by the Gospels there
was among the Jewish people, though not confined
to them,* the definite expectation that the King-
dom would come through the advent of a personal
Ruler—called by the Jews the Messiah or, in
Greek, the Christ=‘the Anointed’—on whom God
would pour forth His Spirit in extraordinary
measure. This belief, so far as the Jews were
concerned, goes back to the testimony of the
earlier prophets (esp. Isaiah and Micah), but its
history within the OT period shows that it some-
times either disappeared altogether or retired into
the background, its place being taken by such a
view as that expressed in Jer 31°"-—of a reign
of Jahweh Himself through His law written on
the hearts of His people.t We need not here
inquire into the causes of this fluctuation. It is
enough to remark that for about a century before
the time of Christ the belief that the Kingdom
would be established through an individual world-
wide Ruler, who would exercise practically Divine
powers, had been current in larger or smaller
circles among the Jews. Sufficient proof of this
lies in the circumstance that in the time of our
Lord passages in the Prophets (e.g. Deutero-Isaiah)
or in the Apocalypse of Daniel, which had origin-
ally no reference to an individual Messiah,t had
come to be so interpreted. The interpretation is
current. No other is even thought of. In some
cases, no doubt—as notably in the fulfilments of
ΠΟ πίθον marked by the First Evangelist—it may
ye difficult to decide whether the exegesis of a
passage cited from a prophet is not of purely
Christian origin; but there are unquestionably
some cases (notably Dn 7!) in which the impor-
tation of a reference to an individual Messiah
into passages which really contain no such refer-
ence, is of pre-Christian date.
4. Various forms of the conception of the
Messiah. —It is difficult to determine with any
minuteness how the Messiah was conceived, as
regarded either His Person or His work. In re-
gard to the former, e.g., it would be unwarrant-
able to infer from Mt 1” (οἵ. Is 74) that it was
generally believed that He would be born of a
virgin, and perhaps equally so to infer from the
fact that the disciples (16'°||), and perhaps others
also (14%), expressed their belief in the Messiah-
ship of Jesus by calling Him the Son of God, the
prevalence of a belief among Jewish theologians of
the Ist cent. that the Messiah was of one meta-
physical being with Jahweh. The utmost per-
haps which we can affirm is that it was largely
believed that the origin of the Messiah would be
mysterious (Jn 757), and that this belief rested in
ull probability directly on the Messianic interpre-
tation of Dn7®".§ It seems possible, however, to
distinguish two general types of belief regarding
the Messiah and His work. The one may be called
) hatin ᾿
Prophetic, the other the Apocalyptic type.
I ic former type, which was the more popular and
I vind even with the scholars of the time
Ik 12 » rested on the early Prophetic testi-
} 4 . . .
ὶ hat the Messiah would spring from the
ot David, —a belief of whess persistence and
poe Senn, 1 οἱ 1 citus, ist. v. 3; Suetonius, Vesp. 4;
, < I t e esp. Riehm’s Messianie Prophecy,
4 is disputed by such competent
meeption itself see the
ieieatinc ; coe, en
n i vor ( Smal Der L rung der isr.-jtid.
ee ει
ESCHATOLOGY
ooo
of whose correspondence with the actual fact the
circumstance that Jesus is confidently affirmed or
assumed by five of the NT writers (Matthew,
Luke, Paul, author of Hebrews, author of Apoca-
lypse*) te have been of the seed of David may
be considered the most striking proof. According
to this type, so far as purely Jewish belief is con-
cerned, the work of the Messiah, while super-
human, was conceived on comparatively secular
lines. He would destroy his persistent enemies
and establish a reign of lasting righteousness and
peace over obedient and contented subjects. This
type, taken by itself, hardly possesses for us
eschatological interest. It belongs to a mode of
conception in which the problems of death and
immortality, if realized at all, cannot be solved.
The sphere offered for solving them is too mun-
dane. It is otherwise with the apocalyptic type
of view, which rested mainly on the Book of
Daniel, esp. Dn 7}* and 12%. Whether or not
the author of Daniel in the latter of these passages -
conceived of a resurrection from the dead available
for all past generations of faithful Israelites, it
seems certain that in the time of our Lord this
sense was assigned to his words by those who,
like the Pharisees, held the doctrine. According
to Josephus,t the Pharisees held ἃ fatalistic
doctrine of the present life—but not of human
conduct—which seems to have resembled that of
the Stoies, and which made them for the most part
averse to schemes of political revolution. ‘Their
participation, therefore, in the popular view of the
‘Son of David’ was more theoretical than real.
Their tendency was to conceive the final Kingdom
on strictly supernatural lines. It was a wonder
that would not spring from earth, but would
descend from heaven. The Messiah was the Man
of Daniel’s vision, the Man of the Clouds.+
Two points have recently been much in dispute: (a) Whether
in view of the grammatical possibilities of Aramaic, as used in
the time of Jesus, He could have applied to Himself the phrase
‘Son of Man’ or ‘Man’ as a title, basing on Dn 715; and
(b) Whether He could have done this so habitually as our
Gospels represent. Even those who, like Lietzmann§ and
Wellhausen,|! have reached on these points the most negative
conclusions, do not doubt that in the latter part of His career,
and perhaps habitually, Jesus held the apocalyptic view of
the final Kingdom and of the glorious advent of the Messiah ;
and, even if we exclude the title ‘Son of Man’ from those
passages in the Gospels which have no eschatological reference,
there remains a sufticient number (about a third of the entire
number, exclusive of John) where the eschatological reference
is distinct. Thus, e.g., out of 32 instances of ‘Son of Man’ in
Matthew's Gospel, 14 are apocalyptic.4]
It is indubitable that in the time of our Lord the
Book of Daniel and other Apocalypses modelled on
it were much read by a considerable portion of the
Jewish people. Many of those whose views were
influenced by this literature saw no inconsistency
in combining with these views others derived from
literature of the ‘ prophetic’ type, e.g. The Psalter
of Solomon,** embodying the ancient and still
popular conception of the ‘Son of David.’ Yet, as
this veneration for ancient prophecy was combined
for the most part with political quiescence, it may
perhaps be said that in the more reflective minds
‘Son of David’ and ‘Son of Man’ represented one
heavenly ideal. Jesus Himself expressly repudi-
ated the implications of ‘Son of David’ (Mk
12%. ||); but it is remarkable that this did not
hinder the prevalence in Christian circles of the
Apostolic age of the belief that He was of the seed
of David according to the flesh, and the Evangelists
Matthew and Luke risked publishing pedigrees,
* Mt 11, Lk 331, Ro 18, He 714, Rev 55,
+ Ant. xvi. i. 3; BU τι. viii. 4.
t Gressmann, J.c., p. 336.
§ Der Menschensohn, ein Beitrag zr neutest. Theol. 1896.
| Skizzen αι. Vorarbeiten, Heft vi., Berlin, 1899.
§| Muirhead, Mschatology of Jesus, p. 218, London, 1904.
| ** Psalins of the Pharisees, commonly called The Psalms of
' Solomon, Ryle and James, Cambridge, 1891.
.
ESCHATOLOGY
ESCHATOLOGY 527
whose apparent mutual inconsistencies constitute
the chief difficulty of the modern mind in accept-
ing the fact they were designed to establish.
Instructive in this connexion is the phrase
‘Kingdom of the heavens’ in Matthew’s Gospel.
The phrase is, of course, equivalent in meaning to
‘Kingdom of God’ which the other Evangelists
employ. It need not, however, be questioned that
Jesus, occasionally at least, used ‘ Kingdom of the
heavens,’ and it seems certain that He did not
invent the phrase. It was current, and it pointed
to the apocalyptic construction of the Messianic
hope. ‘The Kingdom belonged to the heavens, and
would come thence to earth. It was the unlike-
ness of Jesus to the altogether wonderful Person-
age of the apocalyptic Messiah that offended the
Pharisees. If He were the Messiah, why should
He refuse a sign from heaven ? (Mt 16!*).
5. The preliminaries of the coming Kingdom.—
Assuming this leading idea of a Kingdom to come,
heavenly in its origin and nature, we must now
ask how the various matters preliminary to or
accompanying its advent were conceived.
(a) Who were the heirs of the Kingdom? There
were people ‘just and devout’ (Lk 2”) who ‘waited
for the consolation of Israel,’ the still surviving
type of Jahweli’s ‘ poor ones’ who ‘cried unto him
and he heard them’ (Ps 34°). Such persons, how-
ever, did not advertise themselves, nor did they as
a rule sit in the seat of the learned. The prevail-
ine teachers were the scribes and Pharisees, whose
yoke, practically intolerable, was yet theoretically
imperative. It has been questioned how far readers
of the Gospels get from them a fair impression of
the moral and religious influence exercised by the
teachers of the Law, and it has been contended,
with perhaps some justice, that the impression so
derived is as one-sided as the impression of the
toman Church one naturally gathers from his-
tories of the Protestant Reformation. Still, the
good type of scribe or Catholic is not due to the
tendency against which the Evangelic text or the
Reformation is a protest. It cannot be doubted
that in the time of our Lord it was authoritatively
taught by the Pharisees that the title to inheri-
tance of the heavenly kingdom was a punctilious
observance of the Law after the manner of their
own practice. Their doctrine, indeed, on this
point is not explicitly stated in the Gospels or in
any contemporary documents. But the impression
we gather from the situation depicted in the
Gospels and from the record regarding the Apostle
Paul favours the supposition that the view of the
Pharisees in the time of Jesus is that represented
by the Rabbinism of the 2nd cent., viz. that the
Messiah would come when Jahweh’s people, the
Jews, were found generally and curefully observing
the Law.* And the ‘Law’ meant not simply the
legal precepts of the Pentateuch (in particular the
Priestly Code), it meant the ‘tradition’ of the
elders. While the average man inevitably shook
off the punctilios of obedience, and the Pharisees
themselves took refuge from their own rigour in
an elahorate casuistry, we cannot doubt that the
generally accepted view was that the passport to
the Kingdom was ‘the righteousness of the law.’
(6) The Resurrection. But generations of faithful
Tsraelites passed, and the Messiah did not come.
Would they miss the glory when it came? At
least since the time of the Syrian persecution
(B.C. 168-165)—the time of the Apocalypse of
Daniel—it was taught that death formed no in-
superable barrier to the inheritance of the King-
dom. Probably the author of Daniel (127) had in
* The Jerusalem Talmud (Taan. 64a) remarks on Ex 1629 that
‘if Israel only kept one Sabbath according to the command-
ment, the Messiah would immediately come.’ See Edersheim’s
Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. ii. p. 712.
view mainly (we cannot say exclusively) those
Israelites who had sealed their fidelity to the law
of Jahweh with their blood, but it may be taken
for certain that, long before the time represented
by the Gospels, all idea of the blessings of the King-
dom being restricted to embers of the holy nation
who had suffered death for their fidelity (if such an
idea was ever entertained), had completely disap-
peared. It was taught that there would be a
resurrection of the righteous (Lk 14%), i.e. of those
who kept the ‘ Law’ and the ‘ Tradition.’
(c) Hades, Gehenna, Paradise. There is nowhere
in the Gospels an explicit statement of what was
held regarding the state of the dead; but four
times (Mt 1155 1618, Lk 10% 16%) the word Hades
(Aiéns) oceurs. In the LXX this word is the
almost invariable equivalent of Sxy; and when
Jesus used it without comment, it must be held to
have conveyed to His hearers the associations
proper to that word. The NT as well as the OT *
is dominated by a view of things in which the
modern idea that annihilation may be the fate of
some men has no place. The dead are in a land of
darkness and forgetfulness, cut off from knowledge
of affairs human and Divine. Still, in this eondi-
tion—at most the pale reflexion of full-blooded
life—they exist. Two things, however, must be
observed : (i.) There is in the OT itself a marked,
if not systematized, protest against the idea that
permanent detention in Sheol or Hades can be the
fate of the righteous, who had found their portion
in the living God (see esp. Ps 16 and 73 and Job
14 and 19). Historically, doubtless, the experience
of suffering under the various oppressors of the
nation (Assyrian, Chaldean, Greco-Syrian) had
much to do with the development of this protest ;
but it is probably a mistake to suppose that it was
when they were actually suffering under the yoke
of the world-powers that the people of Jahweh
adopted from foreign sources much or anything
that bore on the problem of what lay beyond
death. This caution applies specially to the rela-
tion of Hebrew thought to the mythological ideas
of Babylon or Egypt. The impregnation of the
Hebrew spirit with ideas coming from these
sources dates in all probability from a much
earlier pericd than the 6th cent. B.c. All we can
say for certain, perhaps, is that the experience of
national humiliation quickened in a special degree
the peculiar Hebrew genius, leading it at this time
(say from the 6th cent. onwards) to place the
peculiar stamp of the Jahweh faith on mythical
ideas or pictures, which in some cases it had
carried with it since the days of its infancy in
Mesopotamia. (ii.) Although there is no hint
in the OT itself of effect being given to moral
distinctions between the wicked and the godly
in Hades itself, yet the suggestion of a possible
escape for the godly from the gloom: of the
underworld could not but raise, and ultimately
decide, another question, viz. whether the distine-
tion between the godly and the wicked was not
observed from the moment of death. For perhaps
about 100 years before Christ the idea of separate
compartments in Hades, for the godly and the
wicked respectively, had more or less prevailed
(see APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE, esp. the part
dealing with the Book of Enoch). Obviously
our Lord could not have uttered the parable of the
tich Man and Lazarus (Lk 16!**-), or said to the
penitent malefactor (23%), ‘To-day shalt thou be
with me in Paradise,’ had He not been addressing
people accustomed to the idea that in the inter-
mediate state, previous to the resurrection and the
final judgement, moral distinctions were accorded
a real, if incomplete, recognition. It is obvious
* On this whole subject of the conception of Sheol, etc., cf. esp.
A. B. Davidson, Theol. of the OT, p. 425 ff., T. & T. Clark 1904
|
|
|
|
|
|
528 ESCHATOLOGY
ESCHATOLOGY
references (see | of the covenant in Israel), and if the collective
from the entire tenor of our Lord’s
esp. the instructive passage Mt δ“) to Gehenna
that He spoke to those to whom this term repre-
sented the utmost condemnation and punishment.
It represented the fate of those who should still be
enemies of Jahweh in that day when Jerusalem
should be renewed by righteousness, and all flesh
(i.e. all living) should go out and behold the car-
eases of those who had transgressed, for “ their
worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be
quenched’ (Is 66). See artt. GEHENNA and
PARADISE. Ue
(d) The Final Judgment. In our Christian
minds, as with the NT writers, the idea of the
Resurrection is inseparably associated with that of
the Judgment which follows it. In the main
track of OT thought, indeed, this association did
not exist. The habit of conceiving the subject of
the Divine favour or punishment rather as a
nation than as a number of individuals, made it
possible, or even natural, practically to ignore the
individual side of the problem of life and death,
and the distinction, natural to us, between this
world and that which is to come is represented in
the OT mainly by the distinction between this life
with God and this life without Him. Under this
view of things the prevailing conception of judg-
ment in OT times is that of a manifestation of
Jahweh’s righteousness (whether it be through His
‘messenger’ [Mal 31] or through the Messianic
‘Son of David’ [Is 11!"]), in which He effectually
visits His people with His merey, and breaks the
arm of the unrighteous peoples, who forget God
and oppress them. These heathen return to Sheol
(Ps 9); but the covenant of Jalweh with His
faithful people is established for ever. The his-
tory seems to show that it was possible for pious
Israelites to rest in this view, merging individual
hopes in hopes for the nation, until the actual
disaster of the Exile shook their faith in the per-
manence of the collective unit of the Jewish State.
From this time, however, as we see clearly from
the writings of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (cf. esp.
Ezk 18), the claims of the individual come into
prominence. It was felt that in the righteousness
of God one generation ought not to suffer for the
sins of its predecessors. Each generation, even
each unit of a generation, had its own rights.
Yet, in fact, it seemed as though these rights were
ignored. It is with the problem raised by this
conflict between the prophetic conscience and the
facts, that the apocalyptic literature from Daniel
onwards is concerned. The solution obtained
springs from the despair that lies on the border
of hope. The mundane element in the old idea of
a Prince of the house of David tends to disappear.
The blessing, which could not spring from earth,
was expected from heaven, and at the touch of the
new power, coming thence, even the ‘dust’ of the
earth (/.e. esp. dead Israelites who had kept the
covenant) should awake (Is 2619). While, doubt-
‘ess, the adumbrations of the conception of im-
mortality which we find scattered throughout the
0 [ had their origin in the sentiment that it must
be well with the righteous for ever, this positive
aspect of the matter was inseparable from a nega-
tive. The righteous could hardly be vindicated
‘SS punishment fell on the rebels and trans-
Hence even in Dn 195, which cannot be
niversal resurrection, among the
from the dust of the earth
Ss ho arise to ‘shame and ever-
pt lt was inevitable that these
ha
‘many’ 10 awake
there are ‘ me
lastine nyt
imstin contem
conceptions should be universalized. If, as even
the former Prophets and Psalmists in their own
fashion had taught, there was to be a wniversal
judgement (i.e. vengeance of Jahweh exercised
upon all rebel Gentiles and upon the transeressors
unit of the nation was practically displaced by the
individual, it is clear that the idea of universal
judgment must have come to have for its counter-
part the idea of universal resurrection. No doubt
the conception was held vaguely, and was as little
efiective tor practical consolation as it is to this
day (cf. Martha’s attitude, Jn 11*)—still it was
there. When Jesus spoke of the ‘resurrection
of the dead,’ or even of the Messianic ‘Son of
Man’ as executing judgment, He was using lan-
guage whose general implications were either en-
tirely or (as in the case of ‘Son of Man’) at least
partially understood by His hearers.
B. THE MAIN FEATURES OF OUR LORD’S Es-
CHATOLOGICAL TEACHING,—Turning now to the
subject of our Lord’s eschatological teaching, and
looking to the present condition of critical opinion,
we may make a distinction, which has in most
respects only a theoretical value, between the
eschatological views of the early Church as re-
flected in the Gospels and those held and taught
by Jesus Himself. The Gospels are as a whole
too entirely dominated by the spirit of truth as it
was in Jesus to make it possible, without arbitra-
riness, to vindicate this distinction in detail. Yet
the investigation in which we are engaged seems
to reveal problems arising out of portions of even
the Synoptis Gospels, in connexion with which it
may be well to remember that the Master must
not be measured even by His best reporters. The
distinction may seem @ priori to have even more
warrant in reference to the Fourth Gospel, whose
representation both of the Person and the words of
Jesus stands in such obvious contrast to that of
the Synoptics as to justify our dealing with it
in a separate section. We may do this even
though in the end we may find ourselves to agree
with Haupt* that the Johannine presentation of
the eschatology of Jesus supplies just the kind of
supplement to that of the Synoptics which a
critical study of the latter led us to think neces-
sary. We therefore consider at present only the
eschatology of Jesus as presented in the Synoptic
Gospels.
1. His conception of the Kingdom of God.
Both John the Baptist and Jesus preached, saying,
‘Repent: for the Kingdom of God (in Mt. most
frequently ‘the Kingdom of the heavens’) is at
hand.’ There seems no reason to doubt that in
general Jesus thought of the Kingdom just as John
did. Modern writers on the Gospels, like Johannes
Weiss+ and Titius,+ warn us with considerable
justice against reading our own _ philosophical
thoughts into the simple realism of the Bible.
The Kingdom of God meant the perfect rule of
God over all things in earth and heaven for the
benefit of His people. It was eternal, it was uni-
versal in the sense of embracing people of all
nations, though, of course, only those in each
nation who did righteousness ; and it embraced not
earth only, but also heaven, whence it should come,
and to whose type, as regarded at least the char-
acter of its subjects, it should be conformed. It
may be postulated perhaps, further, that the King-
dom was conceived by Jesus, in at least its exter-
nal features, on the closest possible analogy to an
earthly kingdom. In two important respects,
however, it differed from the latter. (a) It was
not promoted by the weapons of flesh and blood.
It was a Kingdom where rank—even that of the
King Himself —was determined by the measure of
service. The spirit of service was the spirit of
* Haupt, Die Eschatol. Aussagen Jesu in den Synopt. Evan-
gelien, Berlin, 1895.
+ Johannes Weiss, Diz Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes,
Gottingen, 1900.
¢ Tittus, Die neutest. Lehre von der Seligkeit, pt. i. 1895.
ESCHATOLOGY
ESCHATOLOGY 529
lowly love. (4) It was a Kingdom which, while
coming ultimately from God and heaven, came
through a Mediator, by whom it would be ad-
ministered. Since His baptism Jesus had the
witness within Himself that He was the Mediator.
He was the Messianic King who was truly the
‘Son of God’ (Ps 2). To Him the whole trust of
the Kingdom was given, even all power in heaven
and earth. Barring the mystery revealed at His
baptism, which concerned primarily Himself only,
we mnust adinit that such a view of things was
inevitable to One who found the form and sub-
stance of His faith in the OT, and at the same
time believed, in harmony with the earlier Prophets
and the prevailing tendency of His own time, in a
personal Messiah. We seem therefore warranted
in assuming that such was the view of Jesus at
the commencement of His ministry. The King-
dom was coming from heaven. He Himself was
the Person appointed to establish it on earth.
Beyond this, however, the witness of the OT and
His own special experience previous to and at the
time of His baptism would not necessarily carry
Him. Itis perhaps permissible to find in the story
of the Temptation (Mt 4'*, Lk 418.) the record of a
period when, not without a struggle with the prince
of this evil world, He renounced the idea that the
Kingdom was to come immediately through some
dramatic catastrophic exercise of the heavenly
power with which He felt Himself to be charged.
It is more to our purpose at present to note that
while He renounced this catastrophic ideal (if we
may call it so) to the extent of refusing to allow it
to deflect Him from obedience to the Divine word,
He did not, according to the Synoptics, renounce it
so far as His general view of the mode of the
Kingdom’s advent was concerned. To the last He
spoke in apocalyptic fashion of the Son of Man
coming on the clouds. The glorious Parousia
would illuminate simultaneously all quarters of
heaven like the lightning (Lk 17%). It would
happen within that generation although He could
not tell the day nor the hour, and it would be pre-
ceded by disasters on a great scale, affecting not
simply the human world, but the cosmical system.
How far it is true to the mind of Jesus, as He
spoke on earth, to take the language of the so-
called ‘great eschatological discourse’ (Mk 13, ef.
Mt 24) with strict literalness, has been of late
keenly debated, and some have been disposed to
see in this discourse and matter harmonizing with it
in the Gospels, an example of the way in which our
Lord found it necessary to accommodate His lan-
guage to conceptions which were inevitable for the
hearers if not for Himself. Others may perhaps
incline to a view which has been advocated by
the present writer,* that the phenomena of this
peculiarly apocalyptic discourse offer an occasion
on which it is profitable to remember that the
thoughts of Jesus far transcended those of even
the most forward of His disciples. But, while we
may well acknowledge a certain elusiveness in the
language of Jesus in which He deals with the
future, we cannot without violence to the Synoptic
record refuse to admit that in His habitual view
the Kingdom of God was not something that had
already come with Himself, but was rather some-
thing that still lay in the future. Everyone sees
that when Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of God is at
hand’ (cf. ἤγγικεν =has come near), or bade the dis-
ciples pray, ‘Thy kingdom come,’ He must have
thought of the Kingdom as being still in the
future.
But what of the passages in which it seems to
be implied that the Kingdom is already present ?
For instance Mt 111 (ef. Lk 7%), in which John the
Baptist is declared less than the least in the King-
* Op. cit., Lect: 1.
VOL. I.—34
dom of God, or Mt 12* (εἴ. Lk 112°), in which the
expelling of demons in the name of God is offered
as proof that the Kingdom of God has come, or the
parables (Mt 13%, Mk 4°) in which the Kingdom
of God is represented as actually in process of
coming to its proper magnitude in the world, and
therefore already rooted there? Itis the ruz of
the student of eschatology in the Gospels to show
how these two modes of conception, presential and
Juturistic (sometimes distinguished as ethical and
eschatological), can be reconciled. Perhaps the
most satisfactory recent treatment of the subject
is to be found in a brief but brilliant essay of
Professor Wernle.* Wernle lays probably ex-
cessive stress on what he considers the ‘ ecclesias-
tical’ element in the construction of even the
Synoptic Gospels (esp. Matthew). But his book,
read in the light of the contributions of prede-
cessors to the same discussion (esp. Haupt, Titius,
and Joh. Weiss), shows very convincingly that we
must, in fairness to our authorities the Synoptics,
and in view of the entire historical situation
retlected in these writings, start from the fact that
our Lord habitually thought and spoke of the
Kingdom—however much He might identify it
with Himself—as, so to speak, an objective wonder
of the future. It does not, indeed, follow that
this was the sole or even the most important aspect
of it present to His mind; but it seems right that
we should accommodate to it, if possible, those
passages in which the Kingdom seems to be spoken
of as if it were already present, and that this
accommodation should be made apart from the
intrusion of distinctively modern thoughts. This
Wernle has done with great plausibility in the case
of the passages above referred to, pointing out that
when regard is had to the context, literal or cir-
cumstantial, the difficulty disappears. Thus in the
passage Mt 11!!(Lk7*) a main element in the situa-
tion is a certain rivalry between the circle of John
the Baptist and the circle of Jesus. The former
approach the latter in an attitude of aggressive
doubt. If Jesus is the Messiah, where is the
Kingdom that should come with Him? In what
respect are those who have attached themselves
to Jesus better than those who hold to their old
master, John? To such aggressive questioning the
answer is: ‘The Kingdom has come already. Its
powers are seen working among us (v.**). Those
who keep apart from the sphere of these wonders,
however truly they may fulfil otherwise the con-
ditions of membership in the Kingdom, are yet
actually standing on the outside.’ On this read-
ing, the passage, so far from being antagonistic to
the eschatological view of the Kingdom, in reality
strongly supports that view. For a main point of
the argument is the assumption that, while a high
ethical standard in practice may be expected of
the children of the Kingdom or may be a condition
of entrance into it, the Kingdom itself is some-
thing more than this. It is the product of a power
altogether supernatural and apart from the will of
men. Not righteousness, but the working of this
power, is the criterion of the Kingdom. Else surely
the Kingdom would be with the greatest of men
born of women, and not (as it actually is) with
men of even much less stature than his.
The same line of solution seems available in the case of the
other passages. Thus in the passage Mt 1222f-, esp. v.28 (cf. Lk
11]4f., esp. v.29), a main element in the situation is again the
element of attack. The Pharisees insinuate that the demons
may be subdued by the power of Beelzebub, their prince.
Jesus answers that such a state of the case is inconceivable.
Satan cannot wish to overthrow his own work. If, on the other
hand, the power be the power of God, then the Kingdom of God
has come in effect. The strong man armed (the prince of this
world and author of all evil in it) has been conquered and
bound. Again, obviously, the criterion of the Kingdom is not
Ὡ Die Reichsgotteshoffnung in den diltesten christlichen Doku-
menten und bei Jesus, 1903.
530 ESCHATOLOGY
ESCHATOLOGY
simply the presence of the good, but the presence of the good
in power. Finally, there are the parables in which the Kingdom
is spoken of as something growing in the earth and therefore
already planted. Note especially the parables of the Mustard-
seed and the Leaven. Here, indeed, we are left to imagine the
context in which the parables were uttered, as even Mark (4567.
in this instance follows the topical method of Matthew, and
relates the parables only as specimens of the didactic method
of Jesus (cf. v.83). But may we not reasonably suppose, as 1Π
the other cases, the context of a certain antagonism? Timid
followers come to Him with a difficulty born of vision and re-
flexion: ‘If Thou art He with whom the Kingdom comes, why
is the word of the Kingdom really received by so few who hear
it, or how shall even the wonders of God done in one little land
affect the whole world?’ To which Jesus replies in effect : ‘ Have
patience, and you shall see.’ The greatest things of the world
are not always those that give promise of greatness. They are
often those whose beginnings are remarkably small, and yet
connecting beginning and end is the one power. If this was
the occasion of the utterance of the parables under discussion
(and it seems difficult even to imagine another), it is obvious
that both the question of the doubters and the answer of Jesus
assume that the constituent of the Kingdom is the supernatural
Divine power before which no opposition can stand. The ques-
tion is, Can the power really be present when there is so little
to show for it? And the answer is, Yes, it can. The same
power that begins with little ends with much. We read our
own thoughts into the simple intention of these parables, when
we speak as if Jesus intended to teach that the manifestation
of the Kingdom would not be catastrophic, but would be a
matter of growth and development. Doubtless the parables,
taken by themselves, are capable of bearing this meaning ; but
just this isolation of them from the general context of the
situation reflected in the Gospel history is that of which we must
beware. But there remains still what is, apparently, the most
important passage, Lk 1720, Whether we translate ‘in you’
or ‘among you’ (ἐντὸς ὑμῶν, v.21), Jesus seems to say very em-
phatically that the Kingdom is present. On a nearer view
of the passage, however, and a more careful articulation of
its sentences, this appearance vanishes. V.21 must be under-
stood in harmony with v 23% (cf. the ‘lo, here’ and the ‘lo,
there’ of vy.21-23). The leading thought of the passage is the
suddenness (in the special aspect of simultaneousness) of the
manifestation of the Kingdom. The advent of the great day
shall be like the lightning flash, of which you cannot say, ‘ here’
or ‘there,’ for it is everywhere and all at once.
It thus appears that there is nothing in the
Synopties really antagonistic to the ‘ eschatological ’
view of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is not present
in any sense not reconcilable with the fact that it is
also and mainly future. No one may understand
the Gospels who cannot accept the fact that in a
perfectly distinct sense the teaching of Jesus was
not modern. It was in the highest degree sane
and authoritative, yet it remained true to the
traditional view that the Kingdom would come by
miracle and catastrophe. The unmistakable indi-
‘ations of this are the facts that the references
to the Kingdom in the Synoptics are prevailingly
of futuristic implication (on this see Wernle, op.
cit.), and that even in the Fourth Gospel there
are numerous passages to show that Jesus never
thought of the Consummation apart from the
transcendent wonders of the Resurrection and
the Judgment.
Phere was, however, one important modification
of the traditional view. The Consummation and
all that accompanied it were Ὁ be mediated and,
indeed, effected by Himself. Propheey, it is true,
contained the promise of a Messiah. But the cor-
respondences of fulfilment to prophecy are largely
contrasts, and the impressiveness of history is per-
haps mainly due to these contrasts. The efforts
of the Evangelist Matthew to show—sometimes in
strangely far-fetched ways —that Jesus fulfilled the
se are an instructive index of the diffi-
Te ties felt by even the most spiritually minded
Jews In reconciling the Messiahship of Jesus with
the testiinony of prophecy. It becomes important
to inquire how in an eschatological aspect Jesus
conceived His own Messiahship.
_ 2. His Messianic consciousness.—Of creat sieni-
ficance in this connexion is the Temptation. The
record of this cannot rest on other testimony than
His and the key the juxtaposition of the
narratives ot the Bantism and the Temptation
must be soneht in His Messianie. consciousness.
The latter, therefore, we niust try reverently to
own
why, to
a ed ee ee ee ee τ ΝΝ
conceive. It seems true to say that the Tempta-
tion represents a contrast or conflict of faith that
pervades our Lord’s entire ministry on earth. In
general it is the contrast between God and man,
between what is omnipotent and what is humanly
possible ; in particular, it is the contrast between a
measureless gift and the definite responsibility of
using it aright. Jesus had received a practically
limitless endowment. He wasin the world as God,
for He was the ‘Son’ of God accredited to His own
consciousness by His lather. Yet He was flesh
and. blocd, a genuine Brother of men. Each term
of this contrast had its own place in the will of God.
It was the task of the Messiah to reconcile them.
Thus He would do the will of God. An unre-
strained use of this gift would remove Him from
the brotherhood of men ; a refusal to use it meant
the failure of His mission. How wasa superhuman
task to be done by One who should yet remain a
man? The key to this problem was grasped in the
victorious experience of the Temptation. What
the solution meant in detail we learn from the
subsequent history. Reading that history in the
light of the Temptation-narrative, we seem to
discern in it two principles: (@) the one is the
principle of faith; (6) the other is the principle
of self-sacrifice. These two principles have, of
course, ἃ common root in the one Messianic life ;
but it is useful to view them apart. The principle
of faith covers the strictly supernatural side of
the work of consummating the Kingdom. It is
the hope of what GoD will do through His Messianic
Son in bringing the promised Kingdom from heaven
to earth. We cannot do justice to the conscious-
ness of our Lord reflected in the Gospels if we
fail to note the supremacy of this principle. If we
may make for the moment the distinction between
faith and duty, we must find what is at once deep-
est and loftiest in the consciousness of Jesus—not
in the thought of what He Himself is to do in the
fulfilment of the Messianic career but—in what
God is to do in Him and through Him. He never
loses sight of the ‘one like unto a son of man’
who is to come with the clouds and receive a
dominion universal and everlasting. The Messiah-
ship is not simply His present task. It is His hope
for Himself and for the world. The eschatology
of Jesus is mainly His hope of the accomplishment
of an act of omnipotence, in which God will finally
constitute the Messianic Person and functions.
This hope was necessarily shadowy in circum-
stantial outline, but it rested on an alsolutely
substantial foundation. Its foundation was the
presence of the Spirit that fell to Him as the Son
of God. The gift of the Spirit, moreover, was not
simply the ground of a hope that related primarily
only to Himself. It was a leading of duty and a
power of benefit in relation to others. He could
give to others helps that were not permissible to
Himself. Hence there is a miraculous element
in the Messianic ministry even on earth. The
miracles are the premonitory signs of the final Mes-
sianic glory. They are the pledge that the Power
which will be manifested in that glory is not far
away. While these σημεῖα and δυνάμεις abound in
the earthly ministry, they are always under the
control of the principle of faith. No one is suffered
to experience the extraordinary helps who does
not believe.
The other principle, resting equally in the depths
of our Lord’s filial consciousness, is the principle of
self-sacrifice. It is in the practical dominance of
this principle that we may discern at once the
originality of Jesus and the difference between
His eschatology and that of contemporary Jewish
faith. While He retains the traditional view that
the Consummation will be effected in transcendent
catastrophic fashion, —collapse of the present world,
——SE
ESCHATOLOGY
appearance of the ‘Son of Man,’ resurrection, judg-
ment,—He reaches the conviction, possibly as
early as the time of His baptism, that this Con-
summation will not be attained previous to His
own death and resurrection. How entirely this
conviction, once attained, dominated His concep-
tion of the Divine purpose and His teaching of His
disciples, may be seen in the facts not only that
in the Fourth Gospel the sacrificial death of the
Messiah is prophesied by the Baptist, and is a
matter of our Lord’s consciousness from the very
beginning of His ministry (Jn 2!%"), but also that
(as regards the latter point) there is little if any-
thing in the Synoptic Gospels opposed to the
Johannine view. This may not decide the com-
paratively unimportant question as to when our
Lord attained the conviction that He must as the
Messiah submit to a violent death, but taken
along with the testimony of the rest of the NT
(say, especially, the Pauline and Petrine Epp.) it
shows conclusively the practically predominant
importance of this event—or rather signal service—
in the mind and faith of the Christian’ Church.
For every one text in the Epistles that calls atten-
tion to the glory of the Kingdom that is to come
in the incomprehensible power of God, there are
probably at least ἔσο in which the emphasis rests
not on the power of God the Father, but on the
love of the Son of God. Indeed, it may be ques-
tioned whether there is a single reference to the
Consummation in the Epistles or the Apocalypse
of the NT which does not in its immediate
context suggest that the centre of the coming
glory is the Person of Him who was delivered for
the offences of His people, but raised for their
justification. Even in the Epp. to the Thessa-
lonians, which are commonly supposed to represent
the most primitive type of Pauline doctrine, it is
not the ‘Kingdom of God,’ but ‘His Son from
heaven,’ that is to believers the object of waiting
{ΠΡ in 2°):
This indissoluble connexion between the ‘suffer-
ings of the Christ’ and the ‘glory that should
follow’ (1 P 11 could not have been fixed so
securely in the mind of the first believers had it
not been first in the mind of Jesus Himself. The
Synoptics bear witness to the importance of the
connexion for Jesus not only by reporting the pro-
foundly significant but isolated sayings, Mt 20°
2675". ||, but by the very distinct way in which they
connect the critical incident of the disciples con-
fessing their Master’s Messiahship with the insti-
tution of a new order of lessons, the theme of
which is the necessity and the near prospect of the
Messiah’s sufferings (167! ||), This representation
rests on a sure basis of reminiscence, and it seems
to have a special guarantee in the fact that the
teaching does not contain an articulated doctrine
of atonement like that which is expressed in the
Epp. (esp. Romans), but aims rather at expressing
the necessity of the Master’s sufferings in terms
that apply equally to the disciple. Admitting the
distinctiveness of the two sayings, Mt 20% 26** |,
we seem warranted in saying that, according to
the Synopties, the view of things that practically
determined the career of Jesus was that the good
of which He possessed the pledge in His unique
filial consciousness would not come during the
period of His own life on earth. The spirit that
brought help and healing to others was, as regarded
Himself, a spirit of self-sacrifice. The sacrifice
would culminate in His death. But the death
would be momentary. In two or three days (cf.
Hos 6?) He would rise again. Yet the momentary
death would not be in vain. The death and
resurrection of the Messiah meant a conquest of
death for a new believing Israel. The death
would be the ransom price (λύτρον, Mt 2038) which
ESCHATOLOGY 531
neither man nor angel could pay for the soul of
a brother man. It would be the institution and
support of the true and abiding temple of the
Divine presence (Ex 30!9-, Job 33!8*4, Ps 49%.
See on this A. B. Bruce’s Kingdom of God: VT. &
T. Clark, 1889). The thought of the redemptive
value of the sufferings of Jesus as the Christ
dominates the Fourth Gospel, most of the Epistles,
and the Apocalypse of the NT. If it is not pro-
minent, it is certainly present, in the Synoptic
Gospels. The lack of prominence finds its explana-
tion in the reserve that naturally characterized
the utterance of Jesus regarding His own death.
The presence of frequent or elaborate references
to the matter in these Gospels would have taken
from our estimate of their ‘objective’ character.
Jesus may well have felt that the work of the
Messiah was to die, not to explain the consequences
or power of that death. Of this there would be
another Witness. He who sacrifices himself com-
mits his case to God and to posterity. This
brings us to another matter.
3. His view of the time of the Consummation.
We have seen that Jesus did not dissociate Him-
self from the traditional view that the end would
come in the form of a catastrophic transformation,
culminating in the advent of the Messiah Himself,
who would come from heaven. He seems rather
everywhere, both by the assumptions and by the
direct references of His language, to set His seal
to this view. When we consider how widely His
consciousness of personal concern in the accom-
plishing of the Kingdom must have caused His
view of things to differ from all views that were
by comparison tentative and theoretical, and reflect
how much there is in the ethical quality of His
teaching, particularly in the parables which con-
ceive the Kingdom under the analogy of natural
growth, to suggest an openness of His mind to all
that may be of abiding worth in the modern idea
of evolution, the tenacity with which He adhered
to the catastrophic view of the final event cannot
but profoundly impress us. Reverent investigators
will pause before accepting the conclusion that He
was in this matter under some kind of delusion.
They will strive rather to see in the attitude of
One who was conscious of being not simply the
herald but also the bearer of the Kingdom of God,
a model for the attitude of all who would turn
serious thoughts to the last things. Whatever
else we bring to a study where there is room for
all knowledge and all thought, we must give a
final as well as a supreme and pervasive place to
the wonder-working power of the living God. We
have sure ground in the Synopties for saying that,
while Jesus regarded the work of His Father in
heaven, even in what we call nature and ordi-
nary providence, as wonderful (Mt 6%" ete.), this
did not prevent Him from steadfastly contemplat-
ing a final wonder of destruction and reconstrue-
tion which should be the consummation of the
Kingdom or its perfect establishment on earth.
While so much is clear, there is very great difficulty
involved in the question whether He predicted, so
definitely and unmistakably as the Synopties lead
us to suppose, that the tinal wonder would be
accomplished within the term of the generation
then living. The problem is not to be solved either
by the quantitative method of counting heads
(whether Gospel texts or modern authorities), or
by the alternative method of saying, Either He
was mistaken, or such texts as Mk 9! 13° || are
false reports. It can hardly be doubted that Jesus
uttered words which were naturally understood, by
those who heard them and by others to whom
they were reported, to mean that the final wonder
—the Parousia of the ‘Man’ of Daniel's vision and
of age-long expectation — would happen within
ESCHATOLOGY
their own generation. It is inconceivable that an
expectation so confident and definite could have
rested on anything but a definite reminiscence of
words used by Jesus which seemed capable of only
one interpretation. ame ¢
Is it, then, possible to justify such sayings as Mk
91 13% || apart from the blunt avowal that Jesus
laboured under an illusion, and that He trans-
mitted the illusion to His immediate followers not
only before but after His death and resurrection ?
This has been felt to be among the most difficult
questions of historical Christology, and various
types of solution of the problem are still repre-
sented by leading authorities. These may be
rouchly classified under the heads: (a) prophetic,
(ὦ) pictorial, (6) realistic. Under (a) would be
included all theories, such as that of Beyschlag,
which emphasize the fact that in this instance at
least Jesus spoke in the manner of an ΟἽ" prophet,
and that His utterance kept within the limitation
common to all the prophets. This limitation re-
quired Him to see and announce the final salva-
tion of Jehovah as about to happen within a
measurable interval after the judgment (in this
case the fall of Jerusalem) impending over the
nation. Under (4) would be included theories of the
type of Haupt’s, which emphasize the necessarily
pictorial character of language, which must express
extra-mundane realities in mundane forms. Might
not the assertion that the Son of Man would come
on the clouds within their own generation be the
most effective way of leading persons familiar
with the apocalyptic style of language to the per-
fectly confident but also essentially spiritual type
of faith represented in the NT literature? (c) The
term realistic, finally, might describe all theories
whose tendency is to insist on what has been called
the ‘biblical realism,’ and to require us to put
upon the language of Jesus the most literal or
natural construction possible. The most distin-
guished representative of this type in its bearing
on the present problem is perhaps Titius. Titius
thinks that Jesus must be considered to have held
in a bond fide sense the view which His words
naturally express, viz. that His own generation
would see the end of the present wicked world and
the establishment on earth of the perfect heavenly
Kingdom. But His confession of ignorance as to
the day and the hour of the Consummation (Mk
1355) shows that He held His own conviction in an
attitude of reverent submission to His Father’s
will, which must have made the transition to accept-
ance of the differing reality easy and natural.
[t is possible to incline to any one of the above
types consistently with a reverential appreciation
of the unique mental and spiritual equipment of
Jesus; and valuable elements of truth may be
foundin them all. The opinion of English-speaking
students of the Gospels has perhaps till recently
inclined most to the pictorial type (ὁ). For some
time, however, this has been undergoing modifica-
tions from the increasing attention paid to the
ipocalyptic writings. This has fostered the belief
that more regard than has been given is due to the
realistic character of our Lord’s mode of thought
and utterance. On the whole, the variety and
vacillation of opinion suggest the likelihood that
we are not yet in a position to offer a solution of
the problem that shall possess demonstrable cer-
tainty. Our information about Jesus. while ade-
quate for spiritual and practical purposes, is
insuflicient for the purposes, or at least for the
appetite, of biographical seience. To a creat extent
we do not know, or are only slowly learnine
either the exact occasions of His utterances or the
amount of meaning they may have conveyed or
failed to convey to
those to
delivered, Care
whom they were
ater than the limitation arising
ESCHATOLOGY
from defective information, because more intimate
to ourselves, is that connected with the inability
of even the modern mind to find within itself a
measure for the words of eternal life. To those to
whom Jesus was and is the unique bearer of the
Kingdom of God both to themselves and to the
world, it must seem pertinent to ask whether those
who can never stand in the centre of such responsi-
bilities can properly estimate the things falling
within the vision of the one Person, bearing our
nature, who did and does so stand ?
Without presuming to offer a key that fits the
lock of all the critical difficulties, the present
writer ventures to call attention to the view of
the whole matter expressed in his Eschatology of
Jesus (Melrose, 1904). While it does not meet the
difficulties of those whose view of the Person of
Jesus is frankly naturalistic, it has some claim
upon the attention of those to whom the historical
Jesus was the unique manifestation in the flesh of
the Power that is directing human history to its
goal. To those for whom this conviction is fixed,
the two following considerations may perhaps
appear of paramount importance. The one is that
many of the sayings of Jesus must have had a
certain elusiveness. The mere fact that they were
so habitually aphoristic and pictorial is itself
almost a proof of this. Besides the meaning
which immediately strikes us, there is a reserve
of possible meaning which lies along the line of
our vision, yet goes beyond what we actually see.
There is a measure of this elusiveness in the
language of all genuine seers. Must there not
have been an extraordinary measure of it in the
language of Jesus?
The other is that the elusive language of the
seer is not delusive. Jesus does not set Himself to
utter dark sayings; but His practical instinct
keeps Him from dazzling His hearers with an
excess of light. He gives them all the light they
can take; but it does not follow either that this
is all that fills the recesses of His own spirit, or,
on the other hand, that in His utterance He is
consciously keeping anything back. We must con-
ceive the seer to deliver the truth in the form in
which it holds his mind. But the form in this
case is not the particular word or image. It is not
even so impressive an image as that of the Son of
Man coming with the clouds (Dn 7}, ef. Mk 1376
14). The form concerns rather what may be
called spiritual emphasis. It is the exact poise of
the spiritual mind at the point of self-surrendering
trust in the goodwill and immediate action of the
good God. For such a mind the employment of
definite words and images in relation to the secrets
of the future may mean no more than a definite
certainty of new and immediate manifestations of
the Divine power and love. They do not neces-
sarily mean a definite realization of the precise form
in which the manifestation will be made. It is
the definite certainty, not the indefinite form,
which the words are caleulated to convey. If they
convey even to His most susceptible hearers some-
thing that is in one aspect more and in another
less than this, this is due to the fact that their
spiritual poise is inferior to His. The poise in
their case is rectified by the subsequent teaching
of the Spirit in the light of events.
Those who are able to accept this view will probably do so
mainly for two reasons: (a) Because it explains the desire of
Jesus to assure His faithful followers that they would live to
see the manifestation of the Kingdom in power (Mk 91 1320 ||,
Mt 10%). (ὁ) Because it explains the ability of the Apostles and
Apostolic writers to accept apparently without any great travail
of mind the disappointment of first hopes, or even to regard the
disappointment as part-fulfilment (see, e.g., Jn 16!2f- and 2 P
38M). To these may perhaps be added: (6) That this view has
no necessary connexion with the idea that Jesus in this matter
accommodated His expressions to the limitations of the disciples.
The idea of accommodation is no doubt suggested by Jn 1612f.;
πννον ων
ESCHATOLOGY
but even if we suppose that the words of this passage are a
literal reminiscence of what the Master said, we must observe
that one who professes to be accommodating his words to the
limitations of his hearers takes thereby all sting from the
charge that he has compromised the truth. Many reverent
students of the Gospels will probably, however, prefer to
regard the words of Jn 1612 not as a literal utterance of the
Master, but rather as a devout recognition proceeding from the
inner circle of disciples of an element or quality in their Master
which, in spite of all the simplicity of His utterance and His
impressive veracity, had eluded and mystified them. They
thought they had understood, yet how much they had mis-
understood! On this view Jesus did not ‘accommodate.’ He
spoke as the word was given Him, in the style that is most
faithfully reflected in the Synoptics. Whatever may be the
truth about Jn 16124, we seem warranted in saying that Jesus
had but one way of speaking of the Consummation. During
all His ministry, and up to the end of it, He spoke of it as
imminent. It was something for the generation then living.
Ac 16and the other books of the NT outside the Gospels may
be taken as proof that He spoke of it in the same way after His
resurrection. If in this regard He was ‘limited’ in the days of
His flesh, He was limited also when He wore the body that was
from heaven: if He ‘accommodated’ in the one sphere, He
‘accommodated’ in the other also.
The NT as a whole is filled with an expectation,
which in the form in which it was entertained
was not fulfilled ; and yet faith in Jesus and belief
in the still coming Consummation lived on and
live still. Our conclusion is, then, brietly as fol-
lows :—As a protest to His own people, Jesus pre-
dicted the downfall of the Jewish nation within a
measurable period (see esp. Mt 23 and 24). While
in all probability He depicted this catastrophe in
colours that closely matched those of the event
itself, the very intensity of His concentration upon
a vision that might seem to concern only the
Jewish nation serves to show that through the
telescope of Jewish particularity He was looking
out upon the whole human world. His vision was
that of One uniquely alive to the purpose of God,
of which He, the Messianic Son of Man, was the
supreme executor. It was the vision of a prophet,
seeing all things in relation to the Divine purpose,
not the vision of a mere politician or patriot.
The Jewish nation was chosen to bless the world
with the knowledge of God. Failure to fulfil this
vocation brought on it the destructive wrath of
God; and the condemnation of the chosen people
involved in an obvious sense the doom of the
world. That ignorance of God and hostility, of
which the Jewish obduracy was the signal ex-
ample, would reach a climax in the murderous
death of the Son of God. From that moment the
forces of final reconstruction would set in. When
the Consummation would be attained, when the
Son of Man should come in His glory, and all evil
and evil-doers be put away, no man or angel
knew. Not even the Son, only the Father. But
this much was certain. The power of the Prince
of this world—the Prince whose power was mani-
fest in sin, disease, and death—was broken. The
proofs of that victory could not be long delayed.
Some would live to see signs of which they had
not dreamt, that the Kingdom had come in power.
This covers in brief probably as much as we are
able to report of the unique eschatological con-
sciousness of Jesus. The account, however, would
not be complete without a fresh reference to the
blank space of our ignorance. This space we shall
enlarge or diminish according to our estimate of
the difference between the area of our knowledge,
and that not merely of tie general purpose ot
God, but of the consciousness of Jesus, the Son of
God. All men are agnostics in the sense of ad-
mitting that they have not been made privy to
the counsels of Creation and Providence; but
besides this common agnosticism there is a kind
peculiar to Christians, which breathes the spirit
of faith and reverence. Christians believe that
‘all things,’ including especially human destiny,
have been committed to the hands of Jesus Christ.
In that faith they can anticipate with calmness
ESCHATOLOGY 533
the worst tragedies of personal or social history.
They believe that there is no terror of the kingdom
of darkness which the Son of God has not over-
come with the armour of His holy light; but,
because they believe this, they do not presume to
possess, even in the measure of His Spirit to which
they have attained, a key that will open every
secret that was stored in the depths of His person-
ality, even while He was on earth. The last
mystery to Christians is no longer the mystery of
death, judgment, and the hereafter. It 15 rather
the mystery—which is also the fact—of Jesus
Christ, the mystery of the relation of these things
to Him, or rather, perhaps, of His relation to
them.
II. ESCHATOLOGY IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN.—
We pass by questions as to the date or authorship
of this Gospel. The writing may be placed with
contidence near the border dividing the Ist and 2nd
centuries. It does not matter for our purpose on
which side of the border it is placed. To the eyes
of most Anglo-Saxon eritics the Gospel reveals
still the marks of an intimate of Jesus, and with
them we assume that, even in the form in which
we read the Gospel, it proceeded from the circle
of a ‘disciple whom Jesus loved.’ We assume also
—what probably no one denies—that there is but
one mind between the author of the Gospel and
the author of the Epistles that bear the name of
John. Whoever was its author, the Gospel could
not have reached so soon the position of authority
it has held in the Christian Church sinee the 2nd
cent., had it not been considered to express the
living and profound belief of Christendom regard-
ing what was most essential in the Person and
History of Jesus. Yhis is the matter of import-
ance to our present inquiry. If we find that the
view of our Lord’s eschatological consciousness,
which has seemed to us to be most reasonably
deducible from the Synoptic Gospels, agrees on
the whole with what is presented here, that view
may be considered to have behind it a weight of
authority that could not well be greater. For the
authority is not simply the consciousness of an
inspired Apostle or Apostolic man; it is that of the
consciousness of the Church as a whole at the
critical period of the close of the Apostolic age.
We may fix attention on three matters: (1) the
idealizing style of the Gospel; (2) its conception
of Eternal Life; (3) its attitude to Eschatology
proper.
1. The idealizing style of the Fourth Gospel.—
From the first it has been admitted that, as com-
pared with the Synopties, this Gospel is one rather
of the mind than of the external actions of Jesus.
Even the most remarkable external actions, the
miracles, are but ‘signs’ of the mystery that is
really important to us—that, viz., of the Person of
the ‘Son of God.’ The ‘signs’ are recorded that
we may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and
may have life through His name (20°), The
Logos that was ‘towards God (πρὸς τὸν θεόν) and
was God’ (1'), was made flesh, and the writer and
his companions beheld His glory, and reported
the vision, not so much from literal reminiscence
of the acts and words done and spoken by Jesus
on earth, as under the inspiration of the Spirit
that came according to promise from the presence
of the Father and the Risen Ascended Son. The
author is concerned rather with the discourses of
Jesus than with His actions, and the discourses
are, we believe, not so much reported as inter-
preted. They are the words of an eternal life in
which the ,writer and his fellow-believers share
(1 Jn 118}. Jesus is Himself the Word, the Truth,
the Life. What is told of Him represents but a
few out of many instances of His self-manifesta-
tion. They are like the sparks that witness to
534 {SCHATOLOGY
SSCHATOLOGY
a hidden, mighty, and continuous electric stream.
One consequence of this mode of treatment is that
there is little in this Gospel to indicate that Jesus
experienced anything of the sinless infirmity of
flesh and blood. There is, ¢.g., no suggestion
that He grew in knowledge of the path He had
to tread as the Saviour of the world. There is no
temptation, no agony in Gethsemane, no ignor-
ance or doubt as to the times and seasons of the
Consummation. ‘The author does not, perhaps,
consciously ignore these things, but to mention
them is no part of his purpose to manifest the
eternal life that was in the Son of God.
If such a view of the Person of Jesus were carried out with
rigorous abstract logic, we should reach a result that would not
only be glaringly at variance with the picture presented by the
Synoptists, but would be indistinguishable from the heresy
against which, at least in its germinal form, the author himself
protests (1 Jn 222 58), viz. that the incarnation of the Logos was
mere appearance. The point to be observed is that the view
is not carried out rigorously. The reason is that the author
combines a sense of history with a sense of spiritual fact. But
what mainly concerns him is the spiritual fact: what Jesus,
who rose and ascended, is now to His Church, that in deep
reality He has always been. No doubt He was truly human,
and, because He was so, there was during His earthly sojourn
real limitation, but the limitation was free because self-imposed
(see, e.g., 1018), and behind it there was always the Divine
reality. He was never other than the Logos, the eternal and
only-begotten Son of God.
Even though it be conceded, as we think it must
be, that neither as regards incidents nor discourses
is the Johannine picture of Jesus so strictly his-
torical as that of the Synoptists, it does not
follow that it is not, in another than the literally
historical sense, a deeply true picture. The
guarantee of its truth is the fact that the Chris-
tian Church has accepted it, and in doing so has
conquered both its own feeling of disappointment
in the delayed Parousia and the unbelief of the
world. The Church discovered, that is to say, the
presence in the mind and utterances of Jesus of a
quality of which it had not at first grasped the
signilicance. His words were ‘spirit and life’
(6%). They could be interpreted only by His own
perpetual teaching through the Spirit of truth
(1615:
We may call this, if we choose, the idealism
of the Johannine Gospel and of the early Church ;
but the question is worth pondering whether any-
thing less than an idealism which rested on a sure,
if profound, basis of truth, could have held the
Church to its loyalty to the unseen Jesus in face
of the disappointment of hopes which the Syn-
optic testimony, taken in its natural sense, had
encouraged. In any case, the Johannine picture
of Jesus may be considered to supply a striking
confirmation of the opinion, already partly ex-
pressed in this article, that no amount of frag-
mentary sentences of Jesus, however accurately
reported, and however definite their meaning may
be when they are taken by themselves, can be a
perfect index of a mind like His.
2. Its conception of Eternal Life.—Every reader
of John notices the prominence of the words ‘ life,’
Ἢ ‘eternal life,’ or ‘spirit.’ The phrase ‘ Kingdom
of God” has practically disappeared, and ‘life’ or
‘eternal life’ takes its place. The fact is of im-
portance to us in our present study, because it is
the index of John’s way of conceiving what in
(
the Synoptic mode of speech might be called the
pr f aspect of the Kingdom. Jesus appears as
the possessor and even the direct dispenser of the
Divine life. It is siven to the Son to lave life in
Himself even as the Father (55), and no one can
come to Him except it be given him from the
Father (6 Yet neither the Father nor the Son
dispenses life in its fulness till the Som is glorified
through death, or returns to the clory which He
had from the first with the Father (799γ.
irom But once
the life is imparted it
is a ew birth which carries
its own promise. It is, in a proper sense, sufficient
for itself. If a man is born of God, the Divine
seed remains in him. Its product is righteousness,
and its perfect fruition is likeness to the only-
begotten Son Himself (3° 9-47, 1 Jn 85: 9 ete.). It
is clear that this mode of view brings the Divine
boon nearer to the individual heart, and necessarily
alters, at least for the individual, the perspective
of the eschatology.
Not simply the great event itself,—the glorious
Parousia of the Christ,—but the events of resurree-
tion and judgment that accompany it, are regarded
from within rather than from without. Those
whose hope is set on Jesus do not lift to the
heavens faces sick with deferred hope. They look
within and behold Him with the vision of the pure
in heart. For them Jesus has come already and
keeps coming. The supreme matter is to abide
in Him or in His love by keeping His words.
Let a man thus live and believe in Him, and he
shall never die. Nothing, that is, not even what
we call death, will break the continuity of his life
(11%) The water of life that Jesus gives shall
be in him a well of water springing up unto ever-
lasting life (41. The Judgment similarly is, or
tends to be, withdrawn from futurity. He who
believes does not come to judgment; he has passed
already from death to lite (5%, 1 Jn 34). On the
other hand, he who disbelieves is condemned
already. Life has come to him, but he chooses
death ; light, but he chooses darkness. In turning
from the only-begotten Son of God he puts from
him his chance of being saved from a Divine wrath
already present (315% 3) Until he seeks the Father
through Him who is the Way, the wrath of God
abideth on him. Every thoughtful reader of Jn.
perceives that such are the main ideas both of the
Gospel and of the Epistles. He will hardly fail to
reflect also that these are, and have remained ever
since the time of these writings or earlier, the
vital ideas of the Christian Church in its cultiva-
tion of individual and social life, both on its
practical and its meditative side.—Comparing the
Johannine testimony with the utterances in the
Synoptic Gospels—few, it may be, but important—
which reveal a consciousness in Jesus of a Kingdom
of God that is present and not simply future, and
considering especially the fact that in spite of
their testimony to Jesus’ sense of the imminence of
a Kingdom yet to come, there is not in the Synoptic
Gospels the slightest indication that this tremend-
ous prospect at all diminished His appreciation
of the worth of those ethical precepts (c.g. those
relating to marriage and the parental relation
(Mk 107% 79") that have to do with the secular
order, we shall hesitate before accepting the idea
suggested by Joh. Weiss (op. cit.), that the precise
meaning of the ethical utterances of Jesus is to be
determined by our knowledge (?) of His eschatol-
ogy, and that Jesus would not have spoken as
He does, e.g., in Lk 1476, had He not believed that
within a generation the institutions of marriage
and the family would cease, and that those who
should survive this end. of the world, being ‘sons
of the resurrection’ (Lk 20°), should be thence-
forward as the angels (¢b.). In this reference also
the Johannine Gospel confirms our sense of an
element in the equipment and outlook of Jesus
to which justice can hardly be done by those who
lay unqualified stress on the distinctively eschato-
logical portions of the Synoptic Gospels.
3. Its attitude to Eschatology proper.—Yet it
has to be observed, finally, that, while the futur-
istic element is not prominent in the Johannine
Gospel, it is by no means eliminated. It may be
felt, indeed, that the terms in which it is expressed
involve a departure from (or, at any rate, a trans-
| formation of) the objective standpoint of the Syn-
ESCHATOLOGY
ESCHATOLOGY 535
optics. The last three words of the phrase,‘ the
hour cometh and now is’ (5+), suggest a state of
mind in which the thought of a future radically
or incaleulably different from that which is already
present to the vision of faith, is no longer keenly
operative. The same is still more obvious in the
Supper discourse (cls. 14-16), in reading which one
feels that the line of distinction between the Lord’s
final coming to receive the disciples to Himself,
and His continuous abiding with them or visita-
tion of them through the comforting Spirit, tends
to be a vanishing one.
Yet it does not follow that the distinctively
eschatological utterances or references contained
in the Johannine Gospel (e.g. 5°% 21°") are of the
nature of a formally dutiful acknowledgment of
an earlier mode of speech and a still lingering
form of popular Christian expectation correspond-
ing toit. Such a view, at least, is not an exhaus-
tive description of the state of the case. It seems
true rather to say that the futuristic outlook,
while it lost, even within the time covered by the
NTI writings, its first aspect of keen expectation,
was yet to the last of that period felt to be—what
it is still—an indispensable element of Christian
faith. That the matter is looked at from within,
and attention fastened not on what is to com to
us, but rather on what w2 are to become (1 Jn 3?),
does not alter the fact that the total on which we
are looking belongs to the future as well as to tlie
present, and that that future is in the wonder-
working power of the Conqueror of death. It is
never possible to neglect the aspect of futurity,
and it is sometimes imperative to emphasize it.
Such a passage as 1 Jn 918 compared with Mk 13%
shows significantly how much the Fourth Evan-
gelist, in spite of the depth of his insight into the
Master’s mind (or, shall we say, becausz of that
insicht), was to the last influenced by the eschato-
logical utterances of the Synoptic testimony. He
recognizes the antichrists of his own day, and is
confident that it is the ‘last time.’ The 9218
chapter of the Gospel speaks similarly for the
attitude of the Evangelist’s circle. The chapter
is an appendix, and v.“f show what is probably
its main motive. The aged Apostle has passed
away, and the question is raised, Did not the
Master say that this disciple should not see death
till He should come in ον The expectation
implied in the question connected itself in all
likelihood with the utterance in Mk 91}. There
was a general impression throughout the Churches
of Asia that John was the person mainly intended,
and a story was current to the effect that in pre-
dicting Peter’s mode of death the Master had told
that disciple of the survival of John. The author
of the appendix claims to be in a position to tell
the readers of the Gospel what the Master had
really said. It was far from being a definite
promise. It was only the hint of a possibility.
The apology would hardly have been deemed
necessary if the tendency to insist on a literalistic
interpretation of the Synoptic testimony, placing
the glorious final advent within ‘this generation,’
had not still been prevalent at the close of the Ist
cent., z.e. at the time when John died.
Neither the author of the Gospel and the
Epistles nor the author of the appendix to the
Gospel has anything to object to the probability
of an immediate Parousia of Jesus in glory ; but
the impression which their utterances leave upon
our minds, and which from the first they were
fitted to convey to the Church, is that the contrast
important to the authors is no longer that be-
tween present and future, but rather that between
God and the world, between the love of the Father
and the love of this present evil world. The
matter of absorbing interest is not that the Son
of God will come again, but that He has come.
Life is not movement towards a point on a straight
line: it is expansion from a centre, and because
the centre is living he who is at the centre is also
implicitly at the goal of the moving circumference.
The Evangelist has expressed this in very char-
acteristic fashion in the closing words of his prin-
cipal Epistle: ‘We know that we are of God, and
the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we
know that the Son of God is come, and hath given
us an understanding, that we may know him that
is true, and we are in him that is true, even in
his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and
eternal life’ (1 Jn 5'™-).
Those who find their own consciousness ex-
pressed in such words, and feel impelled to trace
that consciousness to its historical source, will not
readily suppose that they have found the source
anywhere nearer than the consciousness of Jesus
Himself. Who but He could have been the first
either to possess eternal life or to know that He
possessed 1ὖ ἢ
ΓΤΈΒΑΤΟΠΕ.--ΕῸΥ the literature on Eschatology in general
or on Scriptural Eschatology see the art. ‘Eschatology’ in
Hastings’ 1/B and in Encyc. Biblica. It is indispensable tor the
student of the Gospels to understand the genesis and scope of
Jewish apocalyptic literature, and for this purpose the Intro-
ductions in Driver’s Vaniel (in the ‘Cambridge Bible for Schools
and Colleges’) and Scott’s Revelation (in the ‘Century Bible’)
will be found sutficient by most English readers. Of German
works there may be mentioned, in this connexion, Hilgenfeld,
Jiidische Apokalyptik, 1857 (still a standard work); Gunkel,
Schépfung τι. Chaos, and his Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Ver-
stdndniss des NT’, 1895 and 1903; Bousset, Der Antichrist, etc.,
1895, and his Die jiid. Apokalyptik, 1903; to which must now
be added Gressmann, Ver Ursprung der isr.-jiid. Eschatologie,
1905. On OT Eschatology see very specially A. B. Davidson’s
Vheology of the Old Testament (T. ἃ T. Clark, 1904), δὲ xi. and xii.
In regard to the Eschatology of the Gospels a good list of
books will be found in Moftfatt’s Historical New Testament (T.
& T. Clark), p. 639f., bearing especially on the theory of the
‘Little Apocalypse,’ which many scholars, following Colani and
Weiffenbach, suppose to be incorporated in Mk 13, Mt 34. Be-
yond the works of Haupt, Titius, Joh. Weiss, etc., mentioned in
this article, the most comprehensive work, strictly ad rem, is
probably Baldensperger’s Das Szlbstbewusstsein Jesu, of which
only the First Part of the 8rd ‘vollig umgearbeitete’ edition,
entitled ‘ Die Messianisch-Apok. Hoffnungen des Judenthums’
(Strassburg, 1903), has as yet (1906) been published. A discus-
sion of the matters specially emphasized by Joh. Weiss and
Baldensperger will be found in a volume of the ‘ Decennial Pub-
lications of the University of Chicago,’ entitled T'he Messianic
Hope in the NT, by Professor Shailer Mathews, Chicago, 1905.
See also Porter’s Messages of the Apocalypses, and his art.
‘Revelation’ in Hastings’ DP. For illustrations of Rabbinical
views and interpretations, current more or less in the time of
our Lord, see very specially the latest edition of Edersheim’s Life
and Times of Jesus the Messiah (London, 1900), vol. ii., Append-
ixes 5, 8,9, 13, 14, 17, 19; also Weber’s Jiid. Thaologie 2, Leipzig,
1897. In P. W. Schmidt’s Die Geschichte Jesu (Tub. and Leipz.
1900), there is a section entitled ‘ Zukunftspriiche,’ the views of
which are defended in vol. ii. of the same work (1904), pp. 354-
360. Of older works the following may be mentioned: I. A.
Dorner, de Oratione Christi Eschatologica, Mtth, 241-36, Stutt-
gart, 1844; Herm. Cremer, Die eschat. Rede Jesu Christi, Mtth.
24and 25, Stuttgart, 1860; Εἰ. J. Mayer, Krit. Com. zu der
eschat. Rede, Mtth. 24 and 25, 1 Theil ‘ Die Einleitung,’ Frank-
furt-a-O. 1857 : Rud. Hofmann, Die Wiederkunft Christi τι. das
Zeichen des Menschensohns am Himmel (Mtth. 2489), gekronte
Preisschrift, Leipzig, 1849; Wilh. Weiffenbach, Der Wiederkunfts-
gedanke Jesu, Leipzig, 1873 (424 pp.), also his ‘ Die Frage der
Wiederkunft Jesu’ in Denkschr/ft des evangel. Predigerseminars,
Friedberg, 1901. Of pamphlets and magazine articles, in addi-
tion to the last named, may be mentioned Tholuck, Die Conse-
_quenzen der Reden Christi tiber seine Wiederkunft τι. sein
Gericht in ‘Programm der Universitat Halle,’ 1871; C. Bruston,
‘L’enseignement de Jésus sur son Retour’ in fevue de Théol.
et de Philosoph. 1890 (pp. 421-452, see also some earlier articles
in the same Review) ; Kingman’s art. in Biblical World, 1897, i.
pp. 167-178 ; Pfleiderer, ‘Composition der eschat. Rede, Mtth.
244.’ in JDTh, 1868, pp. 134-149; Kienlen, ‘ Die eschat. Rede
Jesu, Mtth. 24,’ ib. 1869, pp. 706-709; Joh. Weiss, ‘ Die Com-
position der Synop. Wiederkunftsrede’ in SK, 1892, pp. 246-270.
In regard to the Jewish Apocalypses, it would be ungrateful
not to mention the invaluable editions of Enoch, Baruch, etc.,
published by Professor R. H. Charles, Oxford, Clarendon Press,
since 1893, when his Book of Enoch, translated from Professor
Dillmanws Ethiopic Text, appeared. See in this the discussion
on ‘Son of Man’ as at Enoch 462, pp. 127-129, and ‘The Son of
Man: Its Origin and Meaning’ (Appendix B), pp. 212-317.
| Since the publication of Charles’ Enoch the philological ques-
| tion regarding ‘Son of Man’ has been keenly discussed by
‘ Lietzmann, Wellhausen, Schmiedel, Dalman, Fiebig, and others.
536 ESLI
See Muirhead’s Eschatology of Jesus (Melrose, 1904), Lecture
iv., and Riehm’s Messianic Prophecy, 2nd Eng. ed. (T. & T.
Clark, 1900) pp. 354-356. Lewis A. MUIRHEAD.
ESLI.—An ancestor of Jesus, Lk 3”.
ESSENES.—The Essenes were an ascetic com-
munity among the Jews, the existence of which
can be traced for over two centuries, from about
B.c. 150 to the Fall of Jerusalem. For original
information regarding them we are dependent on
Josephus (BJ i. viii.; Ant. XVII. 1. 5, XV. x. 4, 5,
xu. ν. 9) and Philo (Quod omnis probus liber, cls.
12, 13, ed. Mangey, pp. 457-459). Josephus has
also scattered references to individual Essenes, and
the elder Pliny (HN v. 17) an appreciative notice
of them, for which he was probably indebted to
Alexander Polyhistor and his work ‘On the Jews.’
Other ancient authorities are either secondary or
untrustworthy.
Josephus introduces the Essenes as one of the
three ‘sects of philosophy’ which were influential
amongst the Jews, the others being the Sadducees
and the Pharisees ; but from the descriptions given
of their practices and organization, they seem to
have corresponded more closely to a monastic order
than to a sect or a religious party. Their name is
probably, though not certainly, derived from the
Aramaic form of the Hebrew word hdsidim (‘pious
ones’), and this already suggests a close relation,
especially in their origin, between the Essenes and
the Pharisees. Their numbers are estimated by
Jos. (Ant. XVII. i. 5) and Philo at 4000; and while
there is no evidence of their existence as an order
outside Palestine, within its area they were widely
distributed, being found in a great many of the
villages and small towns, as well as in Jerusalem,
where there was a ‘Gate of the Essenes.’ The
members of the order were celibates, living in com-
munity houses and owning nothing as individuals,
but having everything in common. They are ex-
tolled for their piety, their industry, which was
confined to agricultural pursuits, the simplicity
of their food, and their scrupulous cleanliness.
Further characteristics of their life were that they
had no slaves, used no oil for the purpose of
anointing, dressed in white, and rigidly prohibited
the use of oaths except on the adinission of a new
member to the order.
The order was held together by the strictest
discipline. Full membership was granted only
after a novitiate of two years, and then upon an
oath to reveal everything to the members and
nothing to the outside world. Offenders against
the rules of the order were punished by exclusion ;
and as they were still held bound by their vows,
they were unable to return to ordinary life.
What makes the Essenes ‘the great enigma of
Hebrew history’ (Lightfoot, Col.7 p. 82) is that, while
they are distinguished by exaggerated adherence to
the Jewish Law and by special reverence for Moses
as lawgiver, they betray at the same time certain
ideas and practices which are foreign to Judaism,
and seem incompatible with its spirit. The indica-
tions of incipient dualism which may be found in
their abstinence from marriage and in other ascetie
practices, find a parallel in their doctrine of im-
mortality, wherein they agreed with the Pharisees
against the Sadducees as to the immortality of the
soul, but differed from the Pharisees in denying
the resurrection of the body. And they deviated
still further from orthodox Judaism in the practice
οἱ making a daily praver to the sun ‘as if entreat-
ing him to rise, and in refraining altogether from
animal sacrifice. It followed that they were ex-
cluded trom the services of the Temple. On the
other hand, they were rigid beyond: all others in
their observance of the Sabbath ; and they went
ETERNAL FIRE
a ----------- - ε-“-ο-- ----οο-“’-““ οο--’“-’ ’’
beyond the Pharisees in their absolute determinism,
aflirming ‘that fate governs all things, and that
nothing befalls men but what is according to its
determination’ (Jos. Ant. XIII. v. 9).
It is in this apparent eclecticism that the prob-
lem of the origin of Essenism consists. While it is
impossible to deny the Jewish foundation on which
it rests, it is equally impossible to overlook the
presence of foreign elements. The source of these
has formed the subject of endless discussion, and
has been found by various writers in Parsism and
Buddhism (Hilgenfeld), Parsism (Lightfoot), Syro-
Palestinian heathenism (Lipsius), and Pythaygorean-
ism (Zeller, Keim). But all attempts to demonstrate
any necessary connexion or indubitable channel be-
tween any one of these and Essenism have failed.
And it remains either to assume that foreign inilu-
ences had percolated unobserved, or to suppose that
the characteristic phenomena emerged indepen-
dently in Persia, Greece, and Palestine.
The Essenes are not directly referred to in the
NT; but some have without suflicient reason
claimed John the Baptist, and even Jesus, as
Essenes. It has also been alleged that their
influence may be traced within the circle of Chris-
tian ideas and practices. The possible relation of
Essenism to the heresy controverted by St. Paul
in his Epistle to the Colossians has been discussed
at leneth by Bishop Lightfoot in his edition of the
Epistle (cf. his Galatians’, p. 322 tf.), and also by
Klépper, Brief an die Kolosser, pp. 76-95.
LITERATURE.—Schiirer, HJP 11. ii. 188 ff. (with full Bibliog-
raphy); Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums, pp. 431-443;
artt. ‘Essenes’ in Hastings’ DB (by Conybeare) and in Encyc.
Bibl. (by A. Jilicher), and ‘ Essener’ in PRE 83 (by Uhlhorn).
C. ANDERSON SCOTT.
ETERNAL FIRE.—An expression twice used by
Christ in reference to the future punishment of the
wicked. In Mt 185 βληθῆναι eis τὸ πῦρ τὸ αἰώνιον
stands in contrast to εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν ζωήν ; and from
Mt 955} we learn that this eternal fire, into which
the wicked are to be cast, was prepared not for
them but for the devil and his angels. These are
the only passages in which the expression is found
in the Gospels ; but equivalent terms occur. In Mt
18° the eternal fire is identified with the fire of
Gehenna; and in 254% we have κόλασις αἰώνιος. In
Mt 32 and Mk 9* it is the unquenchable fire
(ἄσβεστον), and in Mk 9% Gehenna is the place of
punishment where their worm dieth not, καὶ τὸ
πῦρ οὐ σβέννυται. The wicked after their separation
from the righteous (Mt 1915. 80) are to be cast into a
furnace (κάμινος) of fire.
A brief account of the origin of this phraseology will throw
light on its meaning. The idea of punishment by fire comes
from the OT. The destruction by fire of Sodom and Gomorrah
supplied the typical example, and it is frequently referred to as
such (Dt 2923, Is 19 1319, Jer 4918, Am 411, Wis 107, 3 Mac 25;
ef. such well-known NT passages as Jude 7). A similar judg-
ment is spoken against Edom (Is 349-10, where it is said that
the fire is eternal and will not be quenched). In Am1. 2, Damas-
cus, Gaza, etc., are threatened with the fire penalty. See for
other examples of the unquenchable fire, 2 IX 2217, Is 131, Jer 44
2112, Ezk 2047-48, Am 56. The ‘everlasting burnings’ of Is 3314
refer, like the preceding, to temporal judgments. But there
are passages which at least suggest the extension of the idea
and its imagery to the future world. According to Dt 3272 the
fire of Jehovah’s anger reaches down to Sheol. Cheyne finds in
Is 504 and 6624 a reference to the punishment of souls in the
underworld : but Salmond and A. B. Davidson see in the latter
passage only the description of a present-world penalty: and
this seems the more natural interpretation. This passage seems
to have suggested the later Jewish belief regarding eternal
punishment, for certain expressions in it are used in this sense
in the Apocryphal writings (e.g. Jth 1617, Sir 717) and by Christ
(Mk 947). The scene of this judgment is, in all probability, the
Valley of Hinnom, regarded by the Jews as a place accursed on
account of its Molech sacrifices ; and the fires which were kept
burning, through which the victims passed, would readily
suggest the idea of Gehenna and its eternal fire.*
* Kimchi’s statement, that a fire was kept constantly burning
in Hinnom to consume the offal and the dead bodies which were
thrown into it, comes too late (4.p. 1200) to be accepted without
evidence.
ETERNAL FIRE
ETERNAL FIRE 537
In the Apocryphal writings the fire penalty is extended with-
out reserve to the future world, and in a greatly intensified
form. Most of the writers have ceased to expect an equitable
distribution of rewards and penalties in this life: their hopes
are fixed on the future; and they, therefore, transfer the OT
imagery of retribution to the life after death. The Book of
Enoch is the great storehouse of teaching on this subject. For
the impure angels and the faithless angelic rulers an abyss of
fire is prepared, in which, after the judgment, they will be
tortured for ever (106-13 1811 217.10 546 9024.25), For human
offenders, a fiery abyss is opened on the right hand of the
Temple (9025-27); this is Gehenna. They descend into ‘the
flame of the pain of Sheol’ (0810), or into the ‘burning fire of
Sheol’ (1037-8). Thus it appears that the NT ‘eternal fire’ of
Gehenna is anticipated in this book: the only difference being
that, while in the NT the fire prepared for the devil and his
angels is identified with that into which wicked men are cast,
in the Book of Enoch they are always distinguished.
Two questions arise regarding the nature of the
eternal fire. Is it material? And in what sense
is it eternal?
(1) In many OT passages, even where it is said
that the fire is unquenchable, and will burn for
ever, material fire is undoubtedly meant, for fire is
one of the physical agents which God commonly
employs in His temporal judgments, and its burning
for ever must refer to the lasting destruction which
it effects. Sodom, Gomorrah, and Edom are given
as examples of places on which the doom of eternal
fire fell, and they still bear its proof-marks. But
in other passages the literal sense cannot be main-
tained, as, e.g., where God’s anger or jealousy and
man’s wickedness are said to burn /ike tire. Nor
can it be allowed in passages like Is 6674 if Cheyne’s
interpretation is accepted ; since undying worms,
preying on souls or bodies that are being con-
sumed by unquenchable fire, is an impossible idea.
In the NT, as we have seen, Christ drew largely
on OT imagery in speaking of the ‘last things.’
But the whole drift of His interpretation of pro-
phetic language is at variance with the literal
sense of the fire penalty. What He gives in His
eschatological teaching is not a dogmatic but an
imaginative presentation of the truth; and the
imagery He employs belongs, not to the substance,
but to the form of His thought. The prophet,
like the poet and the artist, must present the
future in terms and forms borrowed from present
experience, and the underlying truth must be
spiritually discerned. If, as Christ tells us, the
eternal fire was prepared for the devil and his
angels, it cannot be material fire; for spirits can-
not undergo physical torture. ἢ
Death by fire was the severest penalty under
the Jewish law, and as it was inflicted only for
the most shameful sins (Ly 20% 21°, Jos 7”), a
peculiar infamy was associated with it. Christ,
therefore, when He employed this imagery in speak-
ing of the doom of the wicked, intended to warn
men that God has attached a terrible retribution
to sin. At the very least it signifies an ordeal of
suffering analogous to that which fire causes in the
living tissues. To the question, How will the
suffering be caused? Scripture gives only the
figurative answer, ‘as by fire.’ Bp. Butler (And.
pt. ii. ch. v.) thought that it might come in the
way of natural consequence, without any direct
infliction on the part of God. Sin, which yields
pleasure here, becomes misery there without chang-
ing its nature, through the natural working of
moral law. The agony of remorse, which some-
times overwhelms the sinner in this life, has been
* Yet the contrary has been maintained on high authority.
Augustine held that the fire was material, and that spirits may
be tortured by it, since it is always the mind and not the body
that suffers, even when the pain originates in the body. He
also suggests that devils may have bodies made of air, ‘like
what strikes us when the wind blows, and thus be liable to
suffering from fire’ (de Civit. xxi. 3, 9, 10). Th. Aquinas held
that the fire is material (Swmma Theol. pt. iii. supplmt. Ixx. 3).
And in our own day Ed. White inclines to the view that the
wicked before extinction will be punished by material fire (Life
in Christ, p. 352).
regarded as a foretaste of the eternal fire. The
pena damni, or the consciousness of being for ever
cut off from the sight of God, the only satisfying
good, will be, it has been said, intense sutiering as
by fire, when the distractions of the world have
ceased to dazzle. And these will, doubtless, be
elements in the retribution. But if this were all,
a possible consequence would be that the penalty
would fall most lightly on the most degraded. A
soul that can be made miserable through remorse,
or the conscious loss of God’s presence, has not
reached the lowest stage of hardening; while ex-
perience tells us that those who have reached this
stage are least liable to sutiering from such a
source. In them remorse can be awakened, not
by the pana damni, but by sutiering externally
caused. And the language of the NT suggests that
in the future world an environment is prepared,
with its appropriate agencies and influences, for
the punishment of those who are morally and
spiritually dead. Such expressions as ‘ Depart
into the eternal fire,’ ‘shall be cast into the lake
of fire,’ etc., clearly presuppose such an environ-
ment, one in which the least worthy shall sutier
the most, ‘be beaten with many stripes.’
(2) Why is the fire called eternal 2—In Mt 25*!-46
the adjective αἰώνιος is used with reference to ‘the
fire,’ ‘ punishment,’ and ‘the life,’ and no satisfying
reason has been given for saying that, as regards
the first two, it means ‘time limited,’ and, as
regards the last, ‘time unlimited.’ If Christ’s
purpose had been to call attention to the duration
of each, then ‘endlessness’ is the idea emphasized.
But, except where this word or its Hebrew equi-
ralent is applied to objects that, for the nonce,
are invested with a quasi-eternity (Lv 3”, Gn 178
40:0), it takes us into a sphere of being to which
time measurements are inapplicable, and in which
objects are presented in their relation to some
eternal aspect of the Divine nature. Thus eternal
life does not mean natural life prolonged to in-
finity ; such a life might be lived without any ex-
perience of the eternal life, which signifies life in
tellowship with, or that partakes in, the eternal
life of God. God’s relation to believers is such that
between them and Him there is a community of
life. Eternal fire, on the other hand, figuratively
expresses the truth that, God’s nature being what
it is, there must be, under any economy over
which He presides, a provision tor the adequate
punishment of sin. The eternal fire is such a pro-
vision, and, being eternal, it can be no mere tem-
porary contrivance for tiding over an emergency,
but must be the retributive aspect of the Divine
holiness. God is, was, and ever shall be a consum-
ing fire in relation to sin unrepented of ; this is His
unchanging and unchangeable attitude. Some of
the OT saints were all their lifetime subject to
bondage through fear of death, for to them Sheol
(Is 38) was a place where all life in fellowship with
God was lost. But suppose that their worst fears
had been realized, it would still have been true
that they had had a passing experience of the life
eternal. And similarly if, after ages of suffering,
the wicked were to cease to be, it would, none the
less, be true of them that they had been cast into
the eternal fire. In Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom, ete.,
we have examples of what is meant by ‘suffering
the doom of eternal fire’; but this does not mean
that ever since the fire destroyed the cities their
inhabitants have been enduring its pains. Eternal
fire may or may not mean everlasting suffering in
it (see artt. ETERNAL PUNISHMENT and RETRIBU-
TION).
LITERATURE.—Origen, de Princip. τι. x. 4-8, c. Cels. iv. 13, v.15;
Lactantius, Jnst. vii. 21, 26; Augustine, de Civ. bk. xxi., Ench.
cexi.-cxiv., de Gest. Pelag. 10, 11; T. Burnet, Concerning the
State of Departed Souls, 1738; Matt. Horbery, Duration of
“ἌὌι͵ΑῖκμιΓ.
538 ETERNAL LIFE
Fulure Punishment, 1744; J. Agar Beet, T'he Last Things? ;
R. H. Charles, U'he Book of Enoch, also Critical History of the
Doctrine of a Future Life; J. L. Clarke, The Eternal Saviour
Judge: H. Constable, Duration of Future Punishment ; J. Fyfe,
Nie Hereafter; Ἐς ΝΥ. Farrar, Eternal Hope, and Mercy and
Judyment ; Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality ; Η. Ν.
Oxenham, Catholic Eschatology ; E. B. Pusey, What is of “απ ἢ
as to Everlasting Punishment 2; Ed. White, Life in Christ.
See also Literature at end of art. RETRIBUTION.
A. BISSET.
ETERNAL LIFE.—This phrase occurs more than
forty times in the New Testament. In many pas-
sayes it denotes primarily a present possession or
actual experience of the Christian believer, while
in others it clearly contemplates a blessed life to
come, conceived as a promised inheritance. The
Greek expressions are ζωὴ αἰώνιος, ἡ αἰώνιος ζωή (Jn
173, 1 Ti 613), ἡ ζωὴ ἡ αἰώνιος (1 Jn 15. The word
‘life, or ‘the life’ ({@4, ἡ ζωή), without the quali-
fying adjective ‘eternal,’ is often employed in the
same general meaning. a ee ᾿
There are passages in the Synoptic Gospels in
which the phrase ‘eternal life’ is used synony-
mously and interchangeably with ‘the kingdom
of God’ (Mk 9-47, Mt 7153ὴ, The Kingdom of
heaven and the life eternal are very closely related
in the teaching of Jesus. Compare also the sug-
gestive language of Ro 5! ‘shall reign in life
through Jesus Christ.’ But it is especially in the
writings of St. John that we find ‘eternal life’
presented as a heavenly boon which may become
the actual possession of believers in the present
life. God Himself is the source of all life, and ‘as
the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to
the Son also to have life in himself’ (Jn 5°). In
the Word ‘which became flesh and dwelt among
us’ there was a visible manifestation of the life
eternal: ‘In him was life; and the life was the
light of men’ (14); so that He Himself declares, ‘I
am the way, and the truth, and the life’ (146). In
accord with these statements the very life of God
is conceived as begotten in the believer by the
Holy Spirit, so that he is ‘ born anew,’ ‘born from
above’ (3°). Thus begotten of God, the children
of God become distinctly manifest, and God’s
‘seed abideth in them’ (1 Jn 3% 7°), That is, in
these Divinely begotten children of God there
abides the imperishable germ (σπέρμα) of life from
above, the eternal kind of life which the twice
born possess in common with the Father and the
Son. Hence it is that the believer ‘hath eternal
life’ as an actual possession (Jn 3°). He ‘hath
passed out of death into life’ (Jn 5*4, 1 Jn 314).
In Jn 17° we read what has to some extent the
manner of a definition: ‘This is life eternal, that
(iva) they should know thee the only true God, and
him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.’
So faras this text furnishes a definition, it seems
clearly to imply that ‘eternal life’ consists in such
τ knowledge of God and of Christ as involves a
personal experience of vital fellowship. It carries
with it the love and obedience which, according
to Jn 14", brine the Father and the Son into the
believer's inmost life, so that they ‘make their
abode with him.’ In view of the use of ἵνα in 434
1515 18" we need not refine so far as (with Westcott
on this passage) to maintain that the connective
hie re retains its telie foree and indicates an aim
ἰ end, ἃ strugele after increasing knowledge
ither than the attainment of a knowledge already
in po ion. But it should not be supposed that
any present knowledge of God and of Christ is
inconsistent with incalculable future inerease.
W hails ΤΌΝ ence of this Divine life consists in
the knowledge of the only true God and His
anointed Son, such knowledee is not the whole
of eternal life, for other ideals with their addi-
tional content 1 before us in the teachine |
of Christ and of His Apostles. What ver else is
true touching this saving knowledge of the true
Ϊ
i
ETERNAL LIFE
God, its present possession is one of the great
realities in the personal experience of the believer.
In 1 Jn 5!""8 the gift and actual possession of this
eternal kind of heavenly life are made emphatic:
‘God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in
his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he
that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.’
This language is incompatible with the thought
that the ‘eternal life’ spoken of is merely a pro-
mise, a hope or an expectation of such life in a
future state, as some of the older expositors main-
tained.
This heavenly kind of life in Christ, conceived as
a present experience of salvation, is further con-
firmed and illustrated by what Jesus said of Him-
self as ‘the bread of life’ and the giver of the
water that springs up into eternal life. We have,
no doubt, the enigmatical words of profound mysti-
cism in Jn 6%. Jesus declares that He is ‘the
bread of life,’ which ‘giveth life unto the world.’
ΟΣ am the living bread which came down out of
heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live
for ever: yea, and the bread which I will give is
my flesh, for the life of the world.’ ‘Except ye
eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood,
ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth my
flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life: and
I will raise him up at the last day.’ ‘ He that
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in
me, and 1 in him.’ ‘ He that eateth me shall live
because of me.’ ‘He that eateth this bread shall
live for ever.’ These emphatic repetitions of state-
ment would seem to put it beyond all question
that their author meant to teach that the Son of
God, sent by the living Father, ‘lives because of
the Father,’ and imparts the eternal life of the
Father to every one who believes in Him. Of this
living bread the believer now partakes, and ‘ hath
eternal life’ (νν. 1: 4). This life also is conceived
as attaining a certain goal, or receiving a definite
consummation ‘at the last day.’ For it is ἃ per-
manent possession, and of a nature to advance
from strength to strength and from glory to glory.
The eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the
Son of Man have been thought by some expositors
to refer to the partaking of the body and blood of
Christ in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper ; but
such a reference to an institution not yet estab-
lished, and utterly unknown to His Jewish oppo-
nents, would have been strangely irrelevant. ‘Lhe
life eternal into which the believer enters involves,
as matter of course, all due allowance for Divinely
appointed conditions, aids, provisions and means of
nourishing the life itself ; but to exalt these unduly
is to divert the thought from the more central and
profound mystic conception of Christ Himself as
the life of the world. So the remarkable sayings
of Jesus in the synagogue at Capernaum, recorded
in Jn 6°, are but another form and a mystic
expression of His emphatic declaration in 5% ‘He
that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent
me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judg-
ment, but hath passed out of death into life.’
The exact meaning of the word ‘eternal,’ when
used to qualify ‘the life,’ is best understood when
the life is conceived as issuing from the eternal
Father, and so partaking of His Divine nature (cf.
2P 1%). Having life in Himself, and giving to His
Son to have life in Himself (Jn 525), He imparts the
same life to all who believe in the Son; and that
life is in its nature eternal as God Himself. It is
an eternal kind of life which belongs to the unseen
and imperishable things (cf. 9 (Ὁ 418). In the
Johannine writings the word ‘life’ or ‘the life,’
and the phrase ‘eternal life,’ are used interchange-
ably. ‘The latter is the more frequent form of
expression, but it is evident that the writer often
employs ‘the life’ in the same sense. This life is
aa
ee
ETERNAL ‘LIFE
spoken of in contrast with ‘death’ and ‘ perishing.’
The believer ‘shall not perish, but have eternal
life’ (315), ‘hath passed out of the death into the
life’ (5%), ‘shall never see death,’ nor ‘taste of
death’ (851: 53), ‘shall never perish’ (1078). He who
has not the life is in a condition of spiritual death,
and must perish unless he receive the life of God,
the eternal kind of life, which has been manifested
in Christ. In these and other similar passages life
and death are not to be understood as identical in
meaning with existence and non-existence. The
person who has passed out of death into life had
existence before the new life came, and such exist-
ence, in estrangement from God and in disobedi-
ence of the gospel, may be perpetuated in ‘ eternal
destruction from the face of the Lord’ (2 Th 19).
So the ‘death,’ which those who ‘perish’ taste,
need not be understood as annihilation, or utter
extinction of being. As ‘the death’ is a condition
of moral and spiritual destitution in which one has
no fellowship with God, so ‘ the life’ is the blessed
experience of fellowship and union with Christ as
vital as that of the branch and the vine. And
this participation in the very nature of the Eternal
God is the essence of the ‘life eternal.’
In the writings of St. Paul we also find a mystic
element in which we note the concept of eternal
life as a present possession. The exhortation to
‘lay hold on the life eternal,’ and the designation
of it as ‘the life which is life indeed’ (ἡ ὄντως ζωή,
1 Ti 6? 9), may refer either to the present or the
future ; but when the Apostle speaks of believers
as made alive and risen with Christ, and sitting
with Him in the heavenlies (Eph 25: 6), he implies
a fruition that was already realized. It involved
a positive experience like that in which ‘the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made him
free from the law of sin and of death’ (Ro 85).
He also has a wonderful appreciation of the
heavenly illumination which ‘shined in our hearts
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Co 46). This
surpassing light is conceived by the Apostle as a
product of the Spirit of the Lord, and a reflexion
of the glory of Christ as seen in the mirror of His
gospel. In that mirror the believer beholds the
glory of his Lord reflected, and by the power of
the heavenly vision he is ‘transformed into the
same image ’ (2 Co 317: 15), The Johannine doctrine
of ‘passing out of death into life’ is conceived by
St. Paul as a dying unto sin and being made alive
unto God in Christ Jesus. The believer is ‘alive
from the dead’ and ‘walks in newness of life’ (Ro
63), He has been ‘ crucified with Christ: and it
is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me ;
and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in
faith, which is in the Son of God’ (Gal 2”). And
so in Pauline thought the spiritual life of faith,
enjoyed in fellowship with God and Christ, 1s a
‘life hid with Christ in God’ (Col 3%), and ‘the
free gift of God’ (Ro 6”). This conception is in
essential harmony with the doctrine of St. John.
Eternal life is in its inmost nature the free, pure,
permanent spiritual life of Christlikeness. It is a
present possession, a glorious reality, a steadfast-
ness of conscious living fellowship with the Eternal
Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
But in all the Gospels and in the Epistles we
also find eternal life contemplated _as a future
glorious inheritance of the saints. In St. John’s
Gospel the ‘eternal life’ which the believer now
‘hath’ is destined to attain a glorious consumma-
tion in the resurrection ‘at the last day’ (5%: 5)
For Jesus is Himself the resurrection as well as
the life, and declares: ‘ He that believeth on me,
though he die, yet shall he live ; and whosoever
liveth and believeth on me shall never die’ (1155: 90),
Such a life must needs abide in eternal permanence.
ETERNAL LIFE 539
Jesus spoke of ‘the water of life’ which becomes
in him who drinks it ‘a fountain of water spring-
ing up into eternal life’ (44). He spoke ot food
‘which abideth unto life eternal,’ and of ‘ gather-
ing fruit unto life eternal’ (4*° 67). In all the
Gospels He is represented as teaching that ‘he that
loveth [or findeth, so Synopt.] his soul loseth it ;
and he that hateth [or loseth] his soul in this world
shall keep it unto life eternal.’ We read in Mk
1059. °° «There is no man that hath left house, or
brethren, . . . or lands, for my sake and for the
gospel’s sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold
now in this time, . . . and in the age to come life
eternal’ (cf. Mt 19° and Lk 18%). These Gospels
also speak of eternal life as an inheritance to be
received at a future day (Mt 1916, Mk 1017, Lk 1025
18!8), Such contrast of ‘this time,’ ‘this world,’
‘on the earth’ with ‘the age to come,’ and ‘in
heaven,’ implies possessions in some other age or
world beyond the present. In the picture of the
Judgment (Mt 25*!+°), the righteous who go ‘into
eternal life’ are said to ‘inherit the kingdom pre-
pared for them from the foundation of the world,’
and to enter into the joy and glory of the King
Himself.
This idea of eternal life as a glorious future in-
heritance finds also frequent expression in the
Epistles. Those who ‘by patience in well-doing
seek for glory and honour and immortality’ shall
receive eternal life as a reward of the righteous
judgment of God (Ro 2%). All who are made free
from sin and become servants of God ‘have their
fruit unto sanctification, and the end life eternal?’
(Ro 57! 67). In the Epistle to the Hebrews (11 9!)
we read of ‘them that shall inherit salvation,’ and
of them that ‘receive the promise of the eternal
inheritance.’ In 1 P 14 the writer tells his readers
that God has begotten them unto a living hope,
‘unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled,
and that fadeth not away, reserved for them in
heaven.’ According to all these scriptures, eternal
life is begotten in the Christian believer by the
Holy Spirit of God, and is to be perpetuated
through the ages of ages. It is eternal in quality
as being a participation in the Divine nature of the
Eternal One, and eternal in duration as continuing
for ever and ever. [ᾧ is a possession of manifold
fulness, and is conditioned in a character of god-
likeness, which ‘has the promise of the life that now
is, and of that which is to come’ (1 Ti 48). There
can be no living this life apart from God, for it is
begotten in the sonl by a heavenly birth, and must
be continually nourished by the Spirit of God.
Such vital union with the eternal Spirit brings un-
speakable blessedness in this life and in this world ;
but it is as permanent and abiding as the nature
of God, and is therefore appropriately called an
incorruptible inheritance. Each individual life,
whose ‘fellowship is with the Father, and with His
Son Jesus Christ’ (1 Jn 1%), is conceived as con-
tinuing eternally in that heavenly fellowship. In
this age and that which is to come, in this world
and in any other, on the earth or in the heavens,
the child of God abides in eternal life.
See art. Eschatology 11. 2, and so far as this sub-
ject relates to the Future State, artt. HEAVEN,
IMMORTALITY, RESURRECTION.
LITERATURE. —Gueder in Herzog, Real-Encyclopddie (ed.
Plitt, 1881), vol. viii. pp. 509-517, also Kahler in same Encye.
(ed. Hauck, 1902), vol. xi. pp. 330-334 ; M‘Clintock and Strong’s
Cyclopedia, vol. 111. pp. 313-317; Charles, Crit. Hist. of Doe-
trine of Future Life, pp. 368-370 ; Dalman, Words of Jesus, pp.
156-162; Drummond, Kelation of Apostolic Teaching to Teach-
ing of Christ, pp. 193-198 ; Hort, The Way, the Truth, the Life
(Hulsean Lectures for 1871), Lect. ur. ; Titius, Jesu Lehre vom
Reiche Gottes, pp. 29-39; Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus, vol. i.
pp. 242-255 ; Westcott, The Hpistles of John, pp. 214-218; Bey-
schlag, New Test. Theology, vol. i. pp. 266-268, vol. ii. pp.
429-430; Holtzmann, Neutest. T'heologie, vol. ii. pp. 516-518 ;
Immer, Theol. des NT, pp. 512-515; Stevens, Johannine
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT
540
Theology, pp. 312-3827, also Theology of the NT, pp. 224-233 ;
Weiss, Bibl. Theol. of the NT, vol. ii. pp. 347-352.
M. S. TERRY.
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.—RV of Mt 25* (eis
κόλασιν αἰώνιον). The AV here and in 26 other
passages has ‘everlasting.’ The adjective αἰώνιος
occurs 70 times in the ΝΊ (1 ΤΊ 619 omitted in RV )
and in the RV, with one exception (Philem oe) is
uniformly rendered ‘eternal.’ This is a_distinet
ain, as it leaves the exact significance to be deter-
inined by use. Three passages should be examined :
‘Through times eternal’ (Ro 16”) ; ‘before times
eternal’ (2 Ti 1°, Tit 12); in these uses 1ὖ 1s clear
that ‘eternal’ and ‘everlasting’ are not inter-
changeable. This agrees with the LXX, in which
αἰώνιος is used of the rites and ceremonies of
Judaism which are done away in Christianity (Ex
12% 299 405, Nu 18” and others). The suggested
use of ‘onian’ has failed to find approval not-
withstanding its advantages, and ‘age-long’ is
inept. ;
lor NT thought the use of the term in the
Fourth Gospel should be studied. Excluding
varallel passages, ‘eternal life’ is found 21 times
in the Gospels, and of these 17 are in John. In
this Gospel, as also in 1 Jn., the notions of succes-
sion ate duration are eliminated, and ‘eternal’
becomes almost synonymous with ‘Divine.’ ‘It is
not an endless duration of being in time, but being
of which time is not a measure’ (Westcott, see
Additional note on 1 Jn 5*). See ETERNAL LIFE.
In the Synoptic Gospels, to ‘enter into life’ and
to ‘enter into the kingdom’ are used interchange-
ably (cf. Mt 1910: 11 with 3, Mk 9% with 47, Mt 25%
‘inherit the kingdom,’ and v.** ‘unto eternal life’).
In the Fourth Gospel ‘eternal life’ is the equiva-
lent of ‘the kingdom of heaven’ of the Synoptic
Gospels (cf. Jn 3% °, where ‘the kingdom of God’
occurs, with v.%). This suggests a very compre-
hensive and definite idea. ‘Eternal life’ is the life
of the Kingdom of God, forgiveness, righteousness,
salvation, blessing, whatever that life is declared
to be in the teaching of Jesus. ‘Eternal punish-
ment’ is the antithesis of ‘eternal life,’ the penal-
ties upon all unrighteousness inseparably bound
up with the Kingdom, and which, in His new
teaching of the Kingdom, Jesus plainly sets forth.
As a working principle, then, ‘eternal’ may be
accepted as descriptive of things belonging to,
essentially bound up with, the Kingdom, and is
almost the equivalent of ‘ Messianic,’ in the Chris-
tian, as opposed to the merely Jewish significance
of the term, ‘that ye may believe that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of God: and that believing ye
may have life in his name’ (Jn 20%), These deeper
meanings of αἰώνιος in the NT should serve to
remove the question of the time element in future
punishment from the unsatisfactory basis of mere
verbal interpretations. ‘
In collating the teaching of the Gospels, full em-
phasis must be given to the following postulates :
1. Thi certainty of retribution is inseparably bound
ip with the revelation of Jesus as to the will and
cluwacter of God. The Father who ‘seeth in
cret’ and rewards unobtrusive righteousness (Mt
) will render to the unrighteous the due reward
οἱ their deeds (Mt 719. 102 1936 1513 196. 35 Lk 187
parallel passages omitted throughout). Hence the
MT ency of the call to repentance (Mt 417) | and to
1
the obe lience of righteousness as in the Sermon on
the Mount, and, at any cost, to ‘erucify the flesh’
which prompts to sin (Mt 529 80 188: 9), In this
J us t | 6 His stand with the prophets οἵ old and
with the ‘ast of their order, John the Baptist (ef.
Lk 3 lhe revelation of the all-perfect Father
never weakens, but ever adds new emphasis to the
call to a life of ri sousness, and to the certainty
οἱ penalty for all unrighte yusness. 3
Ϊ
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT
2. The characteristic teaching of Jesus as to the
penalties of sin is bound up with His gospel of the
Kingdom.—The incomparable worth of the King-
dom, as the richest ‘ treasure,’ and ‘ pearl of great
price’ (Mt 13:4), and the supreme quest of it as
the first duty and sovereign wisdom of life (Mt 6°),
have, as their converse, the incomparable loss which
the rejection of the gospel must inevitably entail.
This is the supreme penalty—exclusion trom the
Kingdom, to be cast into the ‘outer darkness’ (Mt
812 9913 95%), denied by the Lord (Mt 72 10% 2512,
Lk 13%-*7), shut out from the glad presence of the
King (Mt 25"). The use of the figures ‘weeping
and wailing and gnashing of teeth’ in the sentence
of exclusion clearly indicates that remorse is one
element in future retribution (cf. Lk 167° ‘Son,
remember’).
8. The hearing of the gospel adds to human
responsibility, and increases the severity of the
inevitable penalty of disobedience. —This is the
burden of much of the teaching of Jesus. Light
is come into the world, and with the light a more
solemn duty (Jn 3° 94 15-24 169, Lk 124-48). It is
the apostate disciple who, as salt which has lost its
savour, is cast out (Mt 515). To His disciples Jesus
gives the warnings of God’s searching Judgment
(Mt δ), To those who call Him ‘Lord, Lord,’
and in His name have done ‘many mighty works,’
He utters the dread ‘Depart’ (Mt 72-5, ef. Lk
13”-°7). It is the disobedient hearers of His word
who are compared to a foolish builder whose house,
built upon sand, is ruined by the storm (Mt 7° 5,
Those who deny Him, He also will deny (Mt 1039);
those who are ashamed of Him, of them will He
be ashamed (Mk 858), It is the unfaithful servant
(Mt 24*5-°1), the unwatchful (Mt 251-13), the unprofit-
able (Mt 25%"), who are cast out of the Kingdom.
It is the unfruitful branch of the vine that is cast
forth, withered, gathered, cast into the fire,
burned (Jn 15°), The final condition of hopeless
doom, the state of ‘eternal sin,’ is the direct result
of self-willed, deliberate resistance to the Divine
grace (Mk 3%; see ETERNAL SIN). And in the
larger issues the severity of judgment falls upon
cities and generations ‘exalted to heaven’ in
privilege and opportunity, but doomed because of
neglect (Mit 1120-4 1241-42),
In all this there is no reference to those to whom the gospel
has not been made known. The mention of the Cities of the Plain
(Mt 1015) and that of the men of Nineveh (Mt 124!) are too in-
cidental and indirect to yield any determining principle. Even
the great Judgment passage (Mt 25%1ff-), if indeed it is to be
interpreted universally as including all the nations of the earth,
may be interpreted also as assuming a corresponding univers-
ality of knowledge, the gospel preached throughout the whole
world. The judgments Jesus announces are vitally bound up
with the message He brings. The problem of those to whom
the offers of grace have not been made is not considered, and
we are not justified in applying to them the severities of penalty
and dread doom which, in the teaching of Jesus, fall only upon
those who deny Him and reject His gospel.
4. The final triumph of the Kingdom, and con-
sequent final separation of the righteous and the
wicked.—This is again and again solemnly asserted
and described. In the parables of the Tares (Mt
1351.) and the Drag-net (Mt 1347#-), the ultimate
overthrow, and, as the terms used would seem to
imply, the final destruction of evil are decisively
declared. From the explanation of the parable it
is clear that the wheat and the tares represent
persons—‘the sons of the kingdom’ and ‘the sons
of the evil one.’ This sharp division of men into
two classes entirely distinct is to human vision
impossible. The facts of life show the presence of
‘wheat and tares,’ good and evil in every man.
The difficulty is unresolved. The end is declared,
but not the stages by which it is reached. The
| Kingdom is to be all righteousness, out of it is to
|
be gathered ‘all things that cause stumbling, and
them that do iniquity’ (Mt 13%). Every plant
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT
not planted by the Father is to be uprooted (Mt
1515), and every tree which beareth not good fruit
is to be cut down and destroyed (Mt 7).
So far there can be little hesitation in setting
forth the teaching of Jesus. The difficulties arise
when we seek to determine exactly the nature
and duration of the penalties and of the doom.
The difficulty is accentuated by the fact that Jesus
uses freely the religious symbolism current at the
time. .Gehenna, the worm that dies not and the
fire that is not quenched, the outer darkness, the
weeping and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth,
were familiar figures, and are clearly used because
familiar (see ETERNAL FIRE). If, then, we ask how
far Jesus gave His sanction to the popular notions
behind the symbols, we are confronted with the
difficulty of determining what those notions were.
The use of these figures to describe the place of
punishment in the world of spirits is admitted, but
it is not so clear which of the three doctrines which
have divided Christian thought—endless punish-
ment, annihilation, restoration—was held. Sup-
port has been found for each opinion, and from the
words of Jesus Himself quite opposite conclusions
have been reached. In what has been said above,
finality would seem to be taught, but other
opinions are held.
(1) Especially the great sayings in which the
note of the universality of grace rings so clear (Jn
83:16. 17), and the persistent search of the lost (Lk 15%)
and the all-embracing work of Jesus are so abso-
lutely declared (Jn 159 1251. 92). have been dwelt upon
as justifying ‘the larger hope.’ The exact award
of penalty, the few and many stripes according to
the measure of disobedience (Lk 1247 48), the com-
pleted sentence implied in ‘till thou have paid the
last farthing’ (Mt 5%, cf. 18% %), the startling
symbolism of the phrase ‘salted with fire’ (Mk 9"),
which is said to teach ‘ that the destructive element
performs a purifying part’ (see Internat. Crit.
Com. ‘Mark’ in loco), the use of κόλασις, pruning,
‘suggestive of corrective rather than of vindictive
punishment’ (Zzpos. Gr. Test. on Mt 25%), and the
use of αἰώνιος as suggesting ‘age-long,’ have all
been singled out as leaving room for the hope of
final salvation through the fires of judgment.
The exact balance of the awards ‘eternal life’ and ‘eternal
punishment’ (Mt 2546) has often been insisted upon as teach-
ing finality. As the life is certainly endless, so, it is urged,
must the punishment be. But even this is not conclusive.
'The terms ‘life’ and ‘punishment’ point to an essential differ-
ence. Life is of God, essentially Divine; punishment is from
God, a Divine act. It is well also to bear in mind that ‘if good
ever should come to an end, that would come to an end which
Christ died to bring in; but if evil comes to an end, that comes
to an end which He died to destroy ’ (Clemance, Future Punish-
ment, p. 65).
But more than upon single texts, reliance is
placed upon the revealed character and purpose of
God in Jesus Christ.
(2) On the other hand, the strong terms, destrwe-
tion, perdition, unquenchable fire, and the analogies
of consumption of tares and chaff and withered
branches by fire, are instanced as indicating anni-
hilation. T'wo sayings of Jesus are indeed terrible
in their severity, and ought not to be minimized :
‘Be not afraid of them which kill the body, but
are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him
which is able to destroy both soul and body in
hell’ (Mt 1038). Whether the reference be to God
as the object of fear (so Wendt, Teaching of Jesus,
i. 201, and most commentators) or ‘ the tempter >and
‘the devil whose agent he is’ (so Bruce, Expos. Gr.
Test. in loco), the statement as to the destruction of
the soul itself remains. The same thought is sug-
gested by the figure used in the saying, ‘He that
falleth on this stone shall be broken to pieces ; but
on whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter him as
dust’ (Mt 21%). Were utter extinction of being to
be taught, it could hardly be in plainer terms.
ETERNAL SIN 541
(3) In close association, and lending support to
the theory of annihilation, is the doctrine of ‘ con-
ditional immortality’ or ‘life in Christ.’ Accord-
ing to this theory the object of revelation is ‘to
change man’s nature, not only from sin to holiness,
but from mortality to immortality.’ Many sayings
in the Fourth Gospel are pressed to support this
theory, especially those where the gift of life is
declared to be only through the Son, and_ to
those only who abide in Him by faith (Jn 915: 16
6%: 50-58 ᾿
It is this evident and apparently ‘insoluble
antinomy’ which has led many to conclude ‘that
we have not the elements of a complete solution,
and we ought not to attempt it. What visions
beyond there may be, what larger hopes, what
ultimate harmonies, if such there are in store, will
come in God’s good time; it is not ours to antici-
pate them, or lift the veil where God has left it
drawn’ (Orr, The Christian View of God and the
World, 397). This conclusion, so far at least as
the Gospels are concerned, may be accepted. In
the teaching of Jesus the emphasis is always upon
present opportunity, duty, responsibility. ‘One
said unto him, Lord, are they few that be saved?
And he said unto them, Strive to enter in by the
narrow door’ (Lk 13%), ‘Walk while ye have the
light, that darkness overtake you not. While ye
have the light, believe on the light, that ye may
become sons ‘of light’ (Jn 12%: **). God’s eternal
grace and man’s ‘boundless power of resistance’
stand over against each other. Jesus honours both,
but nowhere in His reported sayings does He dis-
close the final issue.
The teaching of the Epistles does not come
within the scope of this article, but this brief
reference is necessary. To the present writer, at
least, it does appear that St. Paul’s faith reaches a
final issue. By him an endless dualism is decisivel
rejected. ‘That God may be all in all’ (1 Co 155-38)
is the final goal; but what that includes, or how
accomplished, isnot declared ; only of Christ it. is
said, and we may hold this faith confidently, ‘He
must reign till he hath put all his enemies under
his feet.’
LITERATURE.—This is very voluminous, and no attempt is
made to include even all modern works. The following may be
consulted :—(A) In favour of endlessness of punishment: Pusey,
What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment ?; S. Davidson,
The Doctrine of Last Things; Salmond, The Christian Doctrine
of Immortalily.—( B) Treating the answer as unrevealed: Barrett,
The Intermediate State; Beet, The Last Things; Clemance,
Future Punishment ; Orr, The Christian View of God and the
World, Lect. ix.—(C) In support of annihilation: Row, Future
Retribution; Stokes, Conditional Immortality ; E. White, Life
in Christ.—(D) Maintaining the ‘larger hope’: Cox, Salvator
Mundi; Farrar, Eternal Hope, and Mercy and Judgment;
Plumptre, Spirits in Prison, includes art. ‘ Eschatology’ from
Smith’s Dict. of Christian Biog.; Jukes, The Restitution of all
Things.(E) On the general question: see Hastings’ DB, art.
‘Eschatology’; Alger, Doctrine of a Future Life; also Greg’s
Enigmas of Life, ch. vii., for a striking presentation of retribu-
tion as determined by the nature of sin; Stephen, Hssays in
Ecclesiastical Biography, the Epilogue.
W. H. Dyson.
ETERNAL SIN.—The RV of Mk 3” (αἰωνίου
ἁμαρτήματος, 50 NBL; C*v4 D read auaprias) ; AV
‘eternal damnation’ (κρίσεως, so AC?), ‘a strong
translation of an incorrect text’ (Morison). It is
not surprising that the latter explanation of a
difficult word (ἁμάρτημα) should have found its way
into the text of some later MSS. As an explana-
tion of the correct text, ‘eternal judgment ’—or, as
the judgment is clearly adverse, ‘eternal condem-
nation’—is not without force. It has the merit
of emphasizing the essential matter, which any
interpretation, to be adequate, must take into
account, that an ‘eternal sin’ is a sin which
‘hath never forgiveness.’ But this early gloss is
inadequate. There is more than the emphasis of
repetition. It is not the penalty of the sin, but its
nature, which is declared ; not the mere duration
ETERNAL SIN
of the sin or of the sinning, but the guilt; not
eternally sinning, but an eternal sin. |
That sin tends to propagate itself is witnessed
to by experience, and that continuance In sinning
must exclude forgiveness is an essential principle
of all moral judgment. Sin and penalty are of
necessity coterminous. But wnforgiven because
unrepented of is true of ald sin, and is no adequate
explanation of an ‘eternal sin’ which carries the
Padumeut ‘unforgivable.’ The absoluteness of the
sentence is already declared in the words ‘hath
never forgiveness ;’ it is the ultimate ground of
this judgment which is further declared. Te
‘Eternal sin’ finds its contrast and opposite in
‘eternal life,’ which is not simply or character-
istically endless life, but essential, perfect life, ‘ the
life which is life indeed’ (1 Ti 6 RV), the life
of the Kingdom of God (cf. Mk 995. 5: 4 and
Jn 3": the life of God (1 Jn12RV). So
‘eternal sin’ is more than ‘sin eternally repeat-
ing itself,’ it is a fixed state of sin, sin which has
become character, nature, moral death, which is
death indeed. But see art. BLASPHEMY, p. 209°.
This is the final revolt of man, free will carried
to its ultimate in the defiance of God, a final con-
dition, hopeless and beyond recovery, beyond the
reach even of Divine illumination and influence.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews cer-
tainly contemplates in 6'§ the possibility of such
fatal apostasy, cf. also 1 Jn 5! ‘sin unto death’
(see Westeott, ad loe.); but neither of these pas-
saves appears to the present writer to afford help
here.
Two questions must be distinguished — the
actuality and the possibility of this state of
moral depravity. That the grace of God should
prove unavailing is indeed hard to believe, and by
many the thought is rejected utterly. Yet there is
much in the teaching of Jesus and in human life
to justify the fear that this possibility may become
an actual fact. The hardening of the heart which
follows all unfaithfulness is the witness in human
life to what must inevitably result if unfaithful-
ness is persisted in, a fixed state of spiritual blind-
ness and insensibility. There is a law of degenera-
tion in the moral world as in the natural. But it
is in the Scripture doctrine of sin that the full
ground of this fear is seen. According to the teach-
ing of Jesus, the measure of responsibility is ‘ the
light that is in thee’ (Mt 6%), and sin is wilful
disregard of the light of truth. ‘To be blind is to
be without sin ; but to those who say ‘ we see,’ and
yet walk in darkness, ‘sin remaineth’ (Jn 95). So
every increase of light brings increased responsi-
bility (Jn 3! 15*2); and for self-willed deliberate
refusal of the Divine grace, refusal not in ignorance
or misunderstanding but with full consciousness
and choice of will so that the will itself becomes
identified with evil, there can only be judgment,
not because the Divine compassions fail, but be-
cause the redemption, as the Redeemer, is despised
and rejected of men. In the final issue the free
vill of man is valid even against the beseechines
of God (Jn 5%, Mt 2387), i
Che doom of the finally impenitent is here nega-
‘ly told: ‘hath never forgiveness’; but that
includes the uttermost penalty, exclusion from the
Kingdom of the Father, loss of the ‘eternal life.’
ΠῚ I ns last stage and uttermost working ; it
val off from God, its source and life. ‘Sin,
tis tall grown, bringeth forth death’ (Ja 115)
her, art. Srn.
5. 15).
en the
nmentaries on St. Mark:
Salmond,
i mortal » Pp. 806, 498 ;
Row, Future
waif "Ἐφ : ud Ρ 319; Wendt,
VT + ΄ » ng r iN ἐν ἊΣ oe vens, Theology of the
W. H. Dyson.
, Kingdom of God;
ETERNITY
ETERNITY.—There is no word either in OT
Hebrew or in NT Greek corresponding to the
abstract idea of eternity.
In Is 5715 both AV and RV have the phrase ‘the high and
lofty One that inhabiteth eternity.’ MT has 1y ji, lit. ‘dwelling
for ever’—the thought of the writer being evidently the wn-
changeableness of God. 1¥ probably comes nearest of all Hebrew
words to express permanence. Originally it was a substantive
connected with Assyr. adu, meaning ‘time,’ ‘passing time,’
‘the present.’ But in OT it is used adverbially to express
indefinite duration of time generally in the future. Its use is
mainly poetical: of God (Is 5715), His law (Ps 199), His attri-
butes (1113-19), But it is found also in connexion with things
whose existence in Hebrew thought would be limited, e.g. a
king’s life (Ps 216, Pr 2914), the lip of truth (Pr 1219).
_A word of wider meaning and more general application is
avy, connected with Assyr. ulldnu, meaning ‘remote time.’
δὲν is frequently used of the fast-days (Is 639-11, Mic 51 714 etc.),
people (Is 447, Jer 515), hills (Gn 4925, Hab 36). Itis also used, like
4y, of God or His attributes as existing from the remote past
(Ps 932 11992, Is 6316-19) to the remote future (Ps 1388, Jer
313, 1K 109), specially in the phrase D?\y7 7y) ΟῚ ΡΠ ‘from
everlasting to, everlasting’ (Ps 90? 10317, Neh 9? etc.). But in
the case of D?\y also there are many places in OT where its
meaning is obviously limited to the affairs and lives of human
beings, e.g. of a slave (Dt 157, 1 S 2712), of careless dweilers (Ps
7312), and in the familiar phrase, ‘May the king live for ever’
(1 K 121, Neh 28). Often, however, the word is used to indicate
the writer’s hope or belief that a certain state of good [e.g. God’s
covenant (Gn 915), or His promises (Is 403), or His relations to
His people (Ps 4518 856, ete.)], may continue indefinitely. Par-
ticularly is this true of the Messianic hope (Is 98, Ps 1104 45%),
Sometimes this thought of permanence is emphasized by the
use of the plural (Is 264 4517, Dn 924). In Ec 811, a very ditficult
passage, RVm gives as an alternative rendering of ODya
‘eternity.’
The other Hebrew phrases worthy of note are ΠΕΣ ‘perpetuity’
in the frequent phrase ns}? ‘for ever’ (Is 1320 258, Am 87, Hab
14 etc.), and O°) FAN ‘length of days,’ Dt 3020, Job 1212, Ps 214,
and in the well-known passage Ps 236 51 shall dwell in the house
of the Lord for ever.’ Here the meaning is disputed, but the
probability is that the highest anticipation of the Psalmist was
to have the joy of spending an indetinite period in the Temple
in prayer and meditation. Similar to pbiyd is the phrase 37) 77°,
lit. ‘to age and age,’ 1.6. to future ages (Ex 315, Ps 106 3311
4911), It is mainly poetical.
The idea of eternity, like the idea of immortality,
was probably beyond the range of early Jewish
thought. It arose after the Exile, partly through
a natural development of the Hebrew conception of
God, and partly through the force of circumstances.
(1) The pious Jew, turning away more and more
from the anthropomorphism of cruder religions,
strove to difierentiate the infinite God from finite
man. God is transcendent—above the limitations
of earthly existence. Hence He is eternal, from
everlasting to everlasting. A thousand years in
His sight are but as yesterday. (2) With the Exile
came a decay of national ideals, and the Jew
began to consider more his own personality and
its relation to this eternal God. This thought
developed slowly, and was mixed with various
elements. The Jew found himself in an evil world.
His own nation was oppressed, almost blotted out.
Good men suffered ; wicked men seemed to prosper.
If the eternal, omnipotent God ruled the world, then
all this must surely end. The Day of the Lord
would come for oppressed Israel, for the oppressors,
for the whole world, and (in Apocalyptic literature,
Ps-Sol 3° 13° etc.) for the Jew himself. Then the
present evil world (17 ἘΦ») would give place to a
new and glorious era (x27 δὴν, see GENERATION).
Whether this 837 o)\y would be endless the Jew did
not at first stop to inquire. Sufficient for him that
it would come with countless blessings in ‘the end
of the days’ (ΟΠ pp, ef. Mt 1339 243). In the Book
of Enoch, however, ‘Time’ is followed by ‘ Eternity’
in the κππ σον. Later Judaism developed the idea,
probably borrowed from the Zend religion, of a
series of world epochs (ef. the world empires of
Daniel’s vision), followed by the Messianic age.
In the time of Christ, Jewish thought on the
future had developed very much, and had assumed
many forms (see ESCHATOLOGY).
Jesus must have
ETHICS
sifted the various elements. He retained and per-
haps developed the view of a new age (Nz oODy)
about to dawn on the world as opposed to the pre-
sent (ma odiy ; Mt 12°, cf. 13°28”). When ‘the king-
dom of heaven’ (Οὐδ m272) would be established.
Jesus endeavoured to concentrate the thoughts of
His hearers on their personal relation to this king-
dom, and the desirability of sharing it (see LIFE,
ETERNAL LIFE). Doubtless this kingdom would
be for ever and its members live for ever (ef. Dn 12?
ody “no ‘eternal life’). The vexed question of the
absolute endlessness of this kingdom, with its
rewards and punishments, would probably never be
raised in the minds of Jesus’ hearers. At the same
time, there is no evidence in the teaching of Jesus
of any limit to the x27 oD\y, and while the frequent
adjective αἰώνιος, ‘eternal,’ must be taken in the
Gospels as referring in the first place to this coming
kingdom, it may, so far as we know, be taken as
implying also that quality of absolute permanence
with which that kingdom has always been associ-
ated in the minds of men.
LITERATURE.—The subject is practically part of the larger
topic Eschatology, and all books dealing with this latter subject
refer more or less to Eternity. On the OT and Apocalyptic
views see Stade, Die Alttest. Vorstellungen voi Zustand nach
dem Tode; Schwally, Das Leben nach dem Tode; Schultz, OT
Theology, vol. ii. pp. 864-398 ; Salmond, The Christian Doctrine
of Immortality ; Orelli, Die hebr. Synonyma der Zeit und Ewig-
keit ; Marti, Geschichte der Israel. lteligion, pp. 270-310. On the
NT see the various NT theologies, especially those of Beyschlag
and H. Holtzmann. Cf. also Samuel Davidson, Doctrine of the
Last Things; Toy, Judaism and Christianity ; A. Beet, Last
Things?; Dalman, The Words of Jesus.
G. GORDON STortr.
ETHICS.—A very little reflexion will reveal the
unusual difficulties that lurk in a subject like the
yresent—the Ethics of Jesus, or, of the Gospels.
ven the uninitiated is aware that we cannot in
strictness speak of the ‘ Ethics’ of Jesus at all—in
the sense, that is, of a doctrine systematically de-
veloped according to principles, and exhaustively
applied to the facts of life. For His was no scien-
tific or methodical spirit; His significance lies
rather in the realm of personality, in the unique
quality of His moral feeling and judgment, in the
peculiar way in which men and things moved Him,
and in which He reacted upon them. Hence we
need not look for either an orderly arrangement of,
or even an approximate completeness in, His ethical
ideas. From the drama of His life we are unable
to compile a system of morals, but we may see how
a great Personality creates a moral standard by
what He does and suffers, and how He elucidates
it in His words.
But are we justified in connecting with Him the
term ‘ethical’ at all? We speak accurately of
Ethics or Moral Science only when we regard the
conduct of men in their mutual relations as some-
thing by itself, abstracted from religious feeling
and action, and when ethical ends and maxims are
disengaged from religion, in virtue of their in-
herent worth; and such an independent position
of Ethics, whether it appear worth attaining or
not, is simply beside the mark in the case of
Jesus. His moral and His religious principles are
so closely interwoven, His moral feeling, ¢.9- His
love for man, is so inseverable from the religious
basis of His belief in the Fatherhood of God, that
it would seem to be impossible to delineate His
‘Ethics’ without at the same time treating of, say,
the Kingdom of God, the Divine grace, or the final
judgment. And if, nevertheless, we venture upon
the task, we must never lose sight of the connect-
ing lines that run between His ethical teaching
and His religious principles.
Then there is the question whether our sowrces
are at all sufficient for the full and accurate repre-
sentation of the moral personality of Jesus. In
restricting ourselves to the Synoptic Gospels, we
{THICS
543
are doing nothing more than recognizing the
claims of historical science. But now, to what
extent can we regard the three older Gospels as
adequate sources for our theme? If we investigate
the oldest of all, viz. Mark, we tind that it nowhere
makes any attempt to portray the Ethics of Jesus
as such. In reporting His conflict and controversy
with the Judaism of His time, it casts but an in-
direct light upon this side of His character, and
that, moreover, in a series of isolated scenes. Of
these the most outstanding are the Rabbinical
disputations regarding the Sabbath (255. 30), purity
(7!-*3), divorce (101-13) 5. then come the important
passages narrating the conversation with the rich
man (10!"-*7) and regarding the ‘first command-
ment’ (12°84), Various other aspects of His con-
ception of life are vividly illustrated by such utter-
ances as that to the paralytic (25), about the
physician and the sick (317), the true kinship (3),
children (10), and tribute-money (12!%1"). In the
section dominated by the three predictions of His
death (877-10) we have a mass of admonitions
to the disciples—concerning readiness to suffer,
loyalty, courage, humility, reverence for childhood,
ete. We have here something of the nature of a
primitive Christian catechism ; not instructions (as
in the Didache, let us say) for tranquil seasons and
everyday life, but rather articles of war for the
ecclesia militans of the persecutions, a manucle
crucis.*
An entirely different kind of appeal is made by
the Sermon on the Mount in Mt 5-7. In its extant
form the Sermon is the promulgation of a great
programme, in which the Evangelist seeks to give
a definitive and approximately complete statement
of Jesus relation to the Law, witha reference, more-
over, to the representatives of the anti-legalistic
standpoint, who think that He is come ‘ to destroy
the law.’ It is the purpose of the writer to con-
vince these that Jesus, being in a general way the
Fulfiller of Prophecy, is, as a lawgiver, the ful-
filler of the prophecy regarding the second Moses,
whom God was to raise up in the last days (Dt
185), and who, so far from abrogating the Law,
will rather consummate and even transcend 1{.Ὁ
In our reading of the Sermon we cannot afiord to
ignore this design of the writer; we must draw a
distinction between what its words purported to
him, and what they meant in the tradition he
utilized. Similarly, in reading St. Luke’s ver-
sion of the Sermon on the Mount, we must bear
in mind that he has materially abridged his
material, not alone by discarding the Jewish and
preserving only the typically human elements,
but by considerably transforming it under the
influence of his pronounced ascetic view.{ Both
Mt. and Lk. thus throw us back upon the sovce
of our Lord’s words, in which the primitive Jewish-
Christian community had grouped the Logia of
Jesus for its own instruction. Hence we are forced
to distinguish between the Ethics of the Evan-
gelists and the Ethics of their source. Further,
we must make a searching examination of the
characteristically Lukan tradition as it appears in
the parables of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the
Good Samaritan, ete. ;§ only so shall we be justified
in attempting to answer the question, What was
the ethical position of Jesus? An extremely com-
plicated critical process must thus be gone through
before we use our present authorities as documents
for the solution of our problem. But as it is
impossible to reproduce here the details of such
investigation, only the results can be stated, with
references to other works of the present writer.
* Cf. J. Weiss, Das dlteste Evangelium (1903).
+ Cf. J. Weiss, Die Schriften des NT’, new tiberseta und fiir
die Gegenwart erklart (1905), 1 i. ». 236 ff.
§ Ib. p. 380.
t Ib. p. 413 ff.
ETHICS
544
In an account of the Ethics of Jesus, the reader
also looks for a comparison and contrast between
Him and His Jewish, perhaps also His Graco-
Roman, contemporaries. The fresh and original
elements in His moral thought and feeling must be
set over against traditional views. The favourite
srocedure in this connexion, that, namely, of placing
{is luminous figure on a background as sombre as
possible, is one we cannot follow. Above all, the
task of describing the ethical conditions of con-
temporary Judaism would take us beyond our
allotted space, and is, moreover, beyond our capa-
city. Often as it has been tried, in more or less
ingenious sketches, to reproduce some cross-section
through the moral conditions of later Judaism, it
has never been accomplished without subjective
caprice and violent tendency-interpretations, Nor
is this result to be wondered at; for it 15 quite 1m-
possible to describe faithfully, or estimate justly,
the characteristic ethical complexion of a period
so extensive as the two and a half centuries from
B.C. 180 to A.D. 70, of the inner history of which
we still know so little, which is represented by a
literature so multiform, and of which the dominant
currents veered so much—a_ period, moreover,
meagrely equipped with first-rate or distinctly
recognizable personalities. True, we can observe
the behaviour of the circles from which sprang the
Psalms of Solomon, we can lay our hand upon the
devout breast- of the pseudo-Ezra, we can enter
into the spirit of the author of 1 Maccabees or
Sirach ; but how diverse are even these few casual
types, and how impossible is it to make them fit
into one harmonious picture! What, again, do we
know of the Ethics of the Greek or Sadducean
party? What vogue had the Essenes among the
people? Are the Pharisees of the Psalms of Solo-
mon identical with those of the time of Jesus?
And, above all, what significance for our problem
has the Talmud, so often named, so little known?
Here, in sober truth, so many unsolved enigmas
await the historian, that one cannot but marvel at
the assurance of those who, in face of them all, are
ready to sketch the Ethics of later Judaism as a
foil for the Ethics of Jesus. We for our part
renounce any such design. We have not the daring
to institute a comparison between the Ethics of
Jesus and the complicated historical phenomena
of the period, and then, as impartial judges, to
proceed to measure out the light and shade. We
content ourselves with the question, How did Jesus
regard and estiinate the Judaism of His time? It
is beyond doubt that His moral sense was chafed
by many things, and in particular by Pharisaism,
and that a material part of His teaching was for-
mulated in antagonism to the Rabbis. We too
must feel this antagonism, if we are ever to under-
stand Him.
_If, again, we are required to answer the ques-
tion as to wherein consists the new and original
element in the Ethics of Jesus, we are brought to a
complete standstill. In His conflict with Rabbinism
He is in close alliance with the Prophets, and is
οι rtainly not outside their influence. But to
ime that a great gulf is fixed between the
religion of the Prophets and Psalmists and that of
late Judaism, is to forget that a goodly part of
both the Prophets and the Psalms was a contribu-
tion of the post-exilic period, and, above all, to
overlook the fact that these writings form the
| background, or, we might even say, the native soil
i. However profoundly they were mis-
understood, still it was not possible to prevent the
Ι intermittent welling up, from the soil, of many a
copious spring ; and many a document of the later
eriod bears clear testimony to their influence.
rhus we can do full justice to the nsoral creed of
Jesus only by giving adequate consideration to the
ETHICS
circumstance that He lived in intimate sympathy
and steadfast accord with the noblest and devoutest
thoughts of His people’s Bible. Hence, if in view
of these facts we inquire concerning the originality
of Jesus, the result will be a surprise. For we
shall find that of almost all His ethical ideas there
are anticipations, precedents, and even parallels
in the OT, as also in contemporary Judaism. A
mere glance at any collection of parallels, such as
that of Wetstein, will be sutticient to purge us
of the notion that the uniqueness or greatness of
Jesus consists in the novelty of His ethical teach-
ing. Theology is still tainted with the propensity,
inherited from Rationalism, to see in the produe-
tion of ideas the all but exclusive factor in the
making of history or the progress of man. It
often fails to realize how plentiful ideas are in
times that are spiritually alive, or how in all
ages humanity has been enabled to take a step in
advance only by the emergence of a personality who,
with unwonted energy, sincerity, and enthusiasm,
absorbed, elaborated, and formed anew from his
individual experience the choicest products of his
age. So with Jesus; His ideas as such are neither
so novel nor so revolutionary as to create a new
world ; they derive their procreative virtue solely
from the fact that He made them His own, lived
them, and died for them.
¥rom these preliminaries we turn to the exposi-
tion proper, premising that we shall on principle
forego any systematic or exhaustive development
of the material from a fundamental idea. Our
purpose is to survey the figure of Jesus in its
specific operation, and what better situation for
this can we find than the actual scene of His con-
flict with His environment? It was the friction
with that environment which kindled the fire
within Him; it was His unconformity with it that
gave Him the conviction of His peculiar heritage.
Just as His anger at the profanation of the Temple
moved Him to an involuntary display of a religious
feeling superior to, and more delicate than, that of
His fellows, so His collision with the leading repre-
sentatives of Judaism evokes from Him not merely
an indignant criticism, but also a manifestation of
His own inherent character. In this connexion
the great discourse against the Scribes and Phari-
sees in Mt 23 (cf. Lk 11°-5*) furnishes invaluable
testimony. Even if its artificial form (cf. the seven
Woes) be derivative, still the majority of the say-
ings grouped in it, so expressive of individual
feeling, so original in form, unmistakably show
the characteristic touch of Jesus. In any case the
discourse clearly reveals the distinction He drew
between Himself and the Rabbis, and the traits in
the latter by which the disciples, filled with His
spirit, felt themselves repelled. It is, above all
things, the insincerity of their practice, the contrast
between the reality and the appearance, which is
so vividly brought out in the metaphor of ‘ whited
sepulchres’ (23*7). The supreme business of the
scribes,—to which they apparently devoted them-
selves with surpassing zeal,—viz. the instruction of
the people in the law of God (234), they discharged
in such a way as to superinduce the very reverse
of what was intended: instead of bringing men
into the Kingdom (23!) they keep them out by im-
posing intolerable burdens, in the bearing of which
they render not the slightest help. It is, in fact,
evident that the work of leading men to God was
for them a matter of no consequence whatever. A
glaring light is thrown likewise upon the propa-
ganda of the Pharisees (23): under their tutelage
a proselyte becomes a child of hell, twice as wicked
as themselves (or, as it was probably spoken at
first, twice as wicked as he was before). These
severe verdicts show at a glance how highly Jesus
estimated the sacred and responsible office of the
ETHICS
ETHICS 545
eee
leaders of the people, which they so direly abused.
With keen moral indignation He passes sentence
upon the complacent and self-seeking father-
confessors, who, on the pretext of pastoral zeal,
with ‘long prayers’ devour widows’ houses (Mk
12”). He shows inimitably the unscrupulousness
of their over-scrupulosity : straining out gnats and
swallowing camels, they are squeamish and strait-
laced in regard to trifles, in the great moral matters
lax for themselves and lenient to others, even to
the point of apathy—and such has ever since been
the practice of a hierarchy clothed with authority
(23%). In these utterances Jesus reproves chiefly the
scribes’ insensibility to the primary moral sanctions;
they keep cup and platter clean, but are indifferent
to the nature of the contents ; non olet, even though
it has been accumulated by selfishness and greed,
and is gorged with unbridled self-indulgence (2335).
While with painful precision they attend to the
tithing of the meanest garden produce, they
neglect the weightiest matters of the Law—justice,
mercy, and faithfulness (23%). In harmony with
Mic 6° He enunciates the principle that the primary
imperatives of morality surpass all ceremonial pre-
scriptions in importance and urgency —a truth
which, though ancient, needs ever to be emphasized
anew. There can be no dubiety as to the purport
of ‘justice’ or ‘mercy’ in this passage; they are
meant to cover the great social obligations of the
ruling to the dependent classes—the non-perversion
of the Law, the succour of widows and orphans,
the relief of the poor. As to the third injunction,
the Evangelists do not seem to have been sure of
its meaning; for ‘faithfulness’ St. Luke (11%)
substitutes the ‘love of God,’ probably interpret-
ing πίστις as ‘faith’ (as EV). Without doubt,
however, Jesus intends this word also to connote a
social and moral duty, viz. trustworthiness and
candour in human relationships.
Mt. has in this verse inserted a clause (2378)
which should almost certainly be deleted from Lk.
(1153), as a gloss involving a certain modification of
the command. The preceding verses might lead us
to infer that Jesus did not only set less store by
the ceremonial law, but was willing to do away with
it altogether. This, however, says St. Matthew,
is not His meaning: ‘These (moral duties) ought
ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.’
The Evangelist is, in fact, keenly solicitous lest
Jesus be regarded as hostile to the Mosaic law, as
he shows also in 5" and the prefatory words 23*-
(neither passage in Lk.), implying that the teaching
of the scribes is good, but that their works are
evil, since they do not practise what they preach.
Taking into consideration the writer’s date and
point of view, we can quite well understand the
words ; but we naturally ask whether this con-
ciliatory and conservative attitude towards the
ceremonial law truly represents the mind of Jesus?
The words about the cleansing of cups and
platters, and about the tithing of mint, anise, and
cummin, certainly sound so contemptuous as to
compel us to ask whether Jesus set any value what-
ever upon the ceremonial side of the Law, and, in
particular, upon the special casuistical precepts of
the scribes. The question may be answered pro-
visionally and generally : Jesus was not a Pharisee,
and this means that His attitude towards many of
the scribal maxims was a dissentient one; He was
not a Judean, but a son of the Galilzean peasantry,
who knew how to evade the authority of Pharisaic
doctors and lawyers, and who were, in consequence,
liable to the curse merited by those who ‘ know not
the law’ (Jn 739); and, accordingly, He regards Him-
self and His followers likewise as above the Phari-
sees’ rules about purifying. But we also find ex-
plicit remonstrances against the ‘traditions of the
elders’ so dear to the scribes (Mk 75: % 18) ; He char-
VOL. I.—35
acterizes them summarily as the ‘prescriptions’
(EV ‘tradition ’) of men (75), thus contrasting them
with the commandments of God. In this He
evinces His independent attitude, for a genuine
Pharisee could live only by the belief that the
additions to and amplilications of the Law, even if
devised by human teachers, were yet expressive of
God’s will. But Jesus goes still further, affirming
positively that in their concern for these traditions
the scribes reject, pervert, and even make void the
commandment of God (75:1). He gives as an ex-
ample the gross case of one who evades the plain
human duty of supporting his parents by the
manouvre of dedicating to the Temple the money
he might have spared for them: once the fateful
word ‘Corban’ 1s spoken, then every penny so
consecrated belongs to God, and is, as sacred pro-
perty, interdicted from all secular uses, and so
trom that of the parents. It is bad enough that a
son should so act ; but that jurists and theologians
should permit him henceforward to turn his back
upon father and mother, should declare his pledge
to be inviolable, and refuse to ‘release’ him from
it, is neither more nor less than the disannulling of
the Fifth Commandment. *
Now the assertion that the great moral de-
mands of God’s law are of more importance than
any ceremonial obligations, is primarily directed
only against the traditions and prescriptions of
the Rabbis; in reality, however, it is a principle
which threatens the very foundations of the Mosaic
system. Already in the OT we see the strained
relations between prophetic piety and_ priestly
legality—brothers again and again at variance.
In the personality and preaching of Jesus the pro-
phetic religion reappears with unparalleled force
and clearness, and braces itself to the work of
overthrowing the fabric of Levitical ceremonialism.
To treat the ethical and the ritual law as of equal
validity belongs to the very nature of the priestly
theocracy : the moment the former is placed on a
higher level the whole edifice becomes insecure.
In this reference St. Mark preserves a short but
pregnant saying of Jesus (7:5), viz. ‘There is
nothing from without the man that going into him
can defile him, but the things which proceed out
of the man are those which defile him.’ As He
is here speaking of clean and unclean meats, He
says, ‘ Nothing going into the man,’ but He might
equally well say, and certainly means, ‘ Nothing
from without the man coming fo him,’ ¢.e. coming
into contact with him. But this is the reverse of
what stands in the Law. lor the whole complex
of the Mosaic-Levitical legislation rests upon the
postulate that a man is defiled by outer contact
and contamination, or by partaking of certain
foods, 1.6. that he thereby becomes separated from
God, is excluded from the sanctuary and segregated
from the sacred community. Now the principle
enunciated by Jesus cuts the ground from under
all the particular commandments of the ceremonial
law. It carries, indeed, a dissolving and explosive
force. But His standpoint differs from mere
rationalistic ‘illuminism~* by having a profoundly
religious basis. Jesus had so intense a conception
of man’s relation to God as an ethical one, that He
could not tolerate the thought that God would
exclude any one from His presence merely because
he had touched a corpse or eaten swine’s flesh. It
is the evil will, the impure heart, the false nature,
that separate men from God.
All this, of course, is self-evident to us; but
when Jesus uttered it, and acted upon it, He
found Himself at cross purposes with the most ex-
emplary personages of His generation, and com-
pelled to resist the drift of an age-long tradition.
He raised His voice not only against the scribes,
* Cf. J. Weiss, op. cit. i. 1, p. 124
546 ETHICS
but against the very spirit of the Law they ex-
pounded. Moreover, in actual practice, His bearing
towards the Law is quite unconstrained. He adds
to the exceptions already conceded by the Rabbis
(e.g. works of necessity on the Sabbath), and
allows both Himself and His disciples a certain
freedom, without taking counsel of the specialists.
When challenged, He appeals to the example of
David (Mk 2-4). It is manifestly gratifying to
the narrator that Jesus was able to justify His
action so adroitly by the methods of Rabbinical
exposition. But this is only an ex post facto
justification, of which the disciples certainly were
not thinking as they plucked the corn; they had
acted without deliberation, simply availing them-
selves of the freedom which their fellowship with
Jesus had made a matter of course. We learn the
true meaning of Jesus from the twofold declaration
subjoined by St. Mark (251). Doubtless what the
wrif2y means is that the ‘Son of man,’ 1.6. the
Messiah, is Lord of the Sabbath, and can absolve
His disciples from its observance ; but originally
the saying must have run thus: ‘Man has full
power also over the Sabbath,’ which, again, is of
essentially the same tenor as the other, viz. ‘the
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sab-
bath.’* This saying, too. is more than an article
in a confession; it is really a declaration of war
against Mosaism. Scribe and doctor regard the
Law as an end in itself, and obedience to it as the
final purpose of human life, even if such obedience
involve sacrifice, and indeed the surrender of life
itself. But the assertion of Jesus that the Law is
given for man’s sake, as something designed for his
benefit, and the inference that he is free from
it whenever its observance conflicts with his
welfare, proceed from an entirely different point
of view, and have far-reaching implications. The
rigid and doctrinaire aspect of the Law is thus
cancelled ; its behests are viewed as means for the
realization of God’s purposes of love towards men.
All this, however, shows but the birth-struggle of
an entirely new religious conception, destined in
its further growth to do away altogether with the
Law as law. A similar instance is the declaration
(Mk 10") that the Mosaie regulation regarding
divorce was a concession to the Israelites’ hardness
of heart, and that it stands in antithesis to the
statute originally promulgated in Paradise, which
alone is the will of God and the precedent for
man. Here the Mosaic ordinance is represented
as something adventitious, as merely marking a
stage meant to be left behind. ;
The boldness of Jesus in thus essaying to make
a distinction within Scripture itself, and to dis-
criminate between the law of God and human
accretions, is of great moment for us. He has re-
course to a mode of criticism which might be
called subjective, but which really merits the
attribute prophetic. This ‘ Prophet,’ filled with
Deity, this great religious Personality, ever di-
rectly conscious of His nearness to God, does not
shrink from giving judement as to what is the
actual purpose of the Most High. Just as He
fervidly announces the royal benignity of God
towards both the evil and the good, just as He
confident speaks to the contrite of the Divine
for eness and Without misgiving assures the
Wretched of the Divine succour, so He also under-
t In face of the law of Moses, ‘that which
\ poken to the fathers,’ to set forth a new
| in the glad conviction that He is thus ex-
ng thi llof God. Hence it is a misappre-
hension of the tenor and scope of the ‘antitheses’
in the Sermon on the Mount: to imagine that in
these Jesu Ss merely impugning the prevailing
exegesis of the ] or merely endeavouring to
J. Weiss, op. cit. i. 1, p. 87.
ETHICS
Sn ΠΝ
bring to light the real design of its promulgator.
No; the rhythmical repetition of the phrase, ‘ But
I say unto you,’ makes it abundantly clear that
Jesus is here reaching beyond Moses. And this
undoubtedly corresponds to the historical situa-
tion. Take, for instance, the first two enactments,
viz. regarding murder and adultery; it is clear
that what Jesus means is that God asks more than
mere abstention from these crimes: He demands
perfect self-control and integrity of heart. The
unheeded moments when the animal nature starts
up in a fit of anger or of impure desire are griev-
ously sinful in the eyes of God, as well as the
actual misdeeds.
The religious-historical situation is as follows.
The Jewish people were under a theocracy, and for
them the Law of Moses was by no means restricted
to religious or moral matters; it was at once a
civil and a penal code, an order of legal procedure
and a manual for the priesthood. Now it is the
bane of a theocratic constitution that the Divine
law, ingrafted as it is upon common life, tends to
lose its majesty and inviolability. It has to adapt
itself to the varied facts of existence by means of
saving clauses and casuistical methods ; and such
a régime fosters above all the notion that the will
and judgment of God reach no further than the
arm of the civil magistrate, and that it is only
the completed act, and not the intention, that God
brings to judgment. Thus the moral relation of
man to God sinks to the level of a legal one.
Such a deterioration and externalizing of the re-
ligious life must all but inevitably ensue when its
regulation and guardianship are committed to
priests and jurists. It is the ‘ Prophet,’ however,
who now takes up the word. With incisive force
He makes it clear that God looks upon the heart,
the thought, the secret motions of the soul, and
brings these things before His judgment-seat, and
that the sin of intention passes with Him for no
less than the overt act. To assert such equiva-
lence of thought and deed may seem to us almost
to overshoot the mark ; for we rightly place a high
value upon the self-command which keeps desire
from passing into action. But the apparently
partial view is to be regarded as the natural reac-
tion of the heart and the conscience against the
legalistic ossification and externalization of re-
ligion.
The verdict of Jesus upon divorce points in the
same direction. The argument upon which He
bases His prohibition of the separation permitted
by Moses merits our attention. The statute laid
down in Paradise is to be preferred, as the law of
God, not merely in virtue of its great antiquity,
but also on intrinsie grounds. When a husband
puts away his wife, he places her in a position of
moral jeopardy ; for, should she associate herself
with another man, whether in a second marriage
or in a passing act of immorality, she thereby
completes the dissolution of the first marriage,
which hitherto was legally binding. The note-
worthy element in this utterance is not that the
ruptured matrimonial union is still binding, but
in particular that the man is morally responsible
for his wife, even after his dismissal of her; he
must bear the guilt of her sin. Such is the only
judgment possible, if marriage is to be regarded
not merely as a legal bond, under the control of
the civil magistrate, but as a moral covenant, for
whose inviolability men are responsible, not to one
another, but to God. See DIVORCE.
The profoundly irreligious subtlety of the lawyers
is also exposed in Jesus’ prohibition of oaths.
First of all He shows that the evasions and _peri-
phrases by which those who swear hope to escape the
danger of profaning God’s holy name, are of no avail ;
every oath is and remains an adjuration of God.
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ETHICS
But more: to the finer religious feelings, every
oath is a gratuitous and irreverent bringing down
of the Most High into the sordid and trivial con-
cerns of the hour—the grossest case being that of
the impulsive Oriental who puts his head in pledge,
as if he had power over life and death, forgetting
his complete dependence upon God, and that life
and death proceed from Him alone. Thus Jesus
supersedes the scrupulous anxiety and the petty
evasions of the Rabbis by a much deeper religious
motive: the oath, in truth, is but an element in a
world under the domination of sin and Satan (Mt
5°7), and he who feels God’s majesty and purity in
his inmost soul will have a sacred fear of bringing
God upon such a scene, and will honour Him best
by the plain and simple word of truth.
Of an entirely ditferent character are the two
final antitheses, viz. those relating to non-resist-
ance and love of enemies, as given in Mt 5°8-4 43-48,
In the foregoing precepts we have simply the
utterances of a more earnest moral sensibility ;
here we have the language of exultant and heroic
enthusiasm, not meant to be judged by common-
place standards. In lieu of the typically Jewish
wrinciple of retaliation, which was applied both in
{πὶ and in personal affairs, viz. ‘eye for eye,
tooth for tooth,’ Jesus demands the entire renun-
ciation of self-defence or self-vindication. Nay
more ; it is not mere tranquil endurance that He
enjoins, but a readiness to present to the assailant
the other cheek, to give more than what is asked,
to surrender the cloak as well as the coat.
These injunctions differ from those of St., Paul
in Ro 12! in that they involve no thought of
shaming or overcoming the adversary by pliancy
and patience. St. Paul would seem, in fact, to
have interpreted the words of Jesus in the prac-
tical didactic sense of certain Stoic admonitions.
But the distinctive feature of the passage in the
Sermon on the Mount is that the demands are
made without any reason being assigned or any
subordinate aim proposed, precisely, indeed, as if
their authority must have been perfectly self-
evident to the disciples. A theological exegesis
has barred the way towards a right understanding
of them by always starting from the question
what these words mean for us, and how we shall
obey them. And as a literal obedience to them
seems to us impossible, recourse is had to new
interpretations and modifications, by which the
strength of their tremendous claims is sapped.
Instead of putting such questions, we would rather
ask how the words are to be understood in their
original setting, and how Jesus came to utter them
in that form. Now it is evident that their essen-
tial feature is a thorough aversion to the principle
of retaliation by which the ignobler instincts of
the Jewish national spirit were sustained and
intensified. This aversion on the part of Jesus is
so strong that the most emphatic utterance of the
opposite quality is for Him precisely the right
thing; a consummate zeal for forbearance and
renunciation whets His demands to their sharpest
point. But what is the source of this enthusiasm ?
It is no mere reformer of Jewish morals that speaks
here, no legislator for centuries yet unborn, but the
herald and apostle of the imminent dissolution of
the world and of the Kingdom of God already at
the door! Hence a man can prepare himself for
that day in no more worthy or more earnest way
than by the surrender of all the present life is
based upon—earthly repute, business capacity,
personal property ; all these are but obstacles and
fetters. Whoso renounces willingly, whoso suffers
gladly—he is truly free, and ready for the great
day that is at hand. We can appreciate and
vindicate the words only if we interpret them by
the mood appropriate to the twelfth hour.
EUNUCH 547
‘If so, they take our life,
Goods, honour, children, wife—
Let these things vanish all!
Their profit is but small :
The Kingdom still remaineth.’
The same enthusiasm pulsates through the
words about love to enemies. It is unnecessary
to paint the background of Judaism too black, to
cavil at the Jewish ‘love to one’s neighbour’ as
narrow and partial, or even to lay too great a
stress upon the ‘hatred of one’s enemies,’ in order
to feel that the demand of Jesus is not only some-
thing ‘new,’ but also a puissant, transcendent,
superhuman ideal. He says, indeed, that the man
who so acts will be perfect even as God is perfect,
a worthy child of the all-loving Father. Now it
cannot be sufficiently urged that this obligation to
love one’s enemies neither issues from nor can be
fulfilled amidst the normal emotions of everyday
life. If it is to be real to us, i.e. truly realized
and not merely assumed, then it demands an en-
thusiasm which, if not ‘contrary to the nature,’ is
certainly ‘beyond the power’ of the natural man.
None but the possessor of a spirit profoundly re-
ligions and animated by the love of God, could
possibly love his enemies, at all events according
to the special sense which Jesus gave to the uni-
versal command, viz. ‘Love them which hate you,
pray for them which despitefully use you.’
Our view of this supreme command of Jesus thus
brings us-to the twofold law of love (Mk 12”,
Lk 10”). It is beyond question that neither
this conjoining of love to God and love to one’s
neighbour, nor the focusing of the whole Divine
law in that ‘summa’ is a specifically original
thought of Jesus. According to the oldest form of
the narrative (Lk 10-'-),* He elicits it from ascribe.
Possibly enough there were earnest and _ pious
Rabbis who, amid the jungle of thousands upon
thousands of precepts, sought for some leading
idea, and found in the requirement of love to God
and man the nucleus of God’s primal revelation :
but none of them was ever able to carry such
unification and simplification into full effect. Here
again it is not the mere thought which matters,
nor the fact that Jesus gave it utterance. The
great thing is that, over and above, He furnished
in His own life such an embodiment of the Law as
carries conviction to all. In His personification
of the ideal He welded the love of God and the
love of man in an indissoluble union, in which
they might foster and strengthen each other. He
expressed the ideal in a perfect form, and stamped
it upon the soul of the race. Since His day it has
become obvious that the highest form of religion
is that from which there radiates the soothing,
genial, meek, and helpful love of mankind ; obvious
also, that that love of man is the deepest, the
truest. the most enduring, the most exacting, which
has its roots in the depths of a soul pledged to the
Most High, a soul which is permeated by His
truth, and has been apprehended by His holy and
gracious will.
LITERATURE.—J. Weiss, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes;
Bousset, Jesu Predigt in threm Gegensatz zum Judentum;
Jacoby, NT’ Ethik, bk. i.; R. Mackintosh, Christ and the Jewish
Law. JOHANNES WEISS.
EUNUCH (εὐνοῦχος ; σπάδων occurs sometimes in
LXX [see Gn 37* and Is 397, with which, however,
cf. the corresponding passage 2 Καὶ 20'5]).—From
the single reference in the Gospels (Mt 1913) to the
barbarous Oriental practice of mutilating indi-
viduals for certain purposes, we gather that the
existence and purpose of eunuchs as a class were
not unknown to the Jews of the time of Jesus.
The religious disabilities under which men, de-
formed in this way, lahoured, had the effect of
* Cf. J. Weiss, op. cit. i. 1, p. 172 ff.
EUNUCH
548
making the practice (.. - εὐνουχίσθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν
ἀνθρώπων) abominable to the Jews (Dt 231; ef. Lv
295-25) On the other hand, Josephus informs us
that eunuchs were a normal feature of the courts
of the Herods; and from him we also learn what
share they were at that time supposed to have
taken in the family intrigues (Ané. XV. vil. 4),
and what base purposes they often subserved (Ant.
aia, Ὑ111. 1):
The passage containing the reference to eunuchs
is peculiar to St. Matthew, and seems to be added
ἴο the Markan section, which deals with the
question of divorce (Mk 102-2=Mt 19°), from a
source unknown to the author of the latter (see
Tischendorf’s Synopsis Evangelica’, § 113, “ Inter-
rogantibus de Repudio respondet’ ; and Wright’s
Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek, ‘Anonymous
Fragments,’ p. 267). The remark made by the
disciples touching the difficulties arising out of
Jesus’ interpretation of the law of marriage, shows
the widespread influence of the lax teaching on
this subject characteristic of the school of Hillel
(see art. ADULTERY, p. 30*).
It matters not for our purpose whether in the
reply of Jesus τὸν λόγον (v.1!) be connected with
οὐ συμφέρει γαμῆσαι (v.!), or, which is more intel-
ligible to the present writer in the light of what
follows, with the primal law quoted in ν.ὅ (ἕνεκα
τούτου... οἱ δύο els σάρκα μίαν). All men are not in
a position to accept a hard and fast rule. Men are
constituted differently by nature, or adventitious
circumstances produce artificial dissimilarities.
There is no question as to the law of nature.
The married life is the norm of man’s condition ;
and the union effected thereby transcends every
other natural bond, even that of filial affection.
At the same time, Jesus would have His hearers
understand that there are cases, and these numerous
enough to be taken seriously into account, where
the rule does not hold. It is not granted * to
every man to be in a position to fulfil the functions
of the married state. Here it is of interest to note
that Jesus, in speaking of three classes of ‘eunuchs,’
was making a distinction well known to those He
was addressing. Moreover, the metaphorical use
of the word in speaking of the third class finds
also its place in the language of the Jewish Rabbins
27 OD, DIX OD, DY ‘Pa OND, ef. Lightfoot’s Hore
Heb.et Talmud.,and Schéttgen’s Hore Heb., inloc.).
The well-known case of Origen, who literally
emasculated himself ‘for the kingdom of heaven’s
sake,’ to which he afterwards seems to make
pathetic, though incidental, reference in his com-
mentary (in Matt. tom. xv. 1 ff.), was not the only
example of a perverted interpretation of these
words of Jesus. The Talmndie tractate Shabbath
(152) contains a reference to a eunuch of this class
(ef. Midrash on Ee 107), and the Council of Nica
(c. 1) felt called on to deal with the danger, as did
also the Apostolical Canons (ec. 21), and the Second
Council of Arles (ec. 7). The common sense which
thus prevailed amongst the guiding spirits of the
Church is enhanced when we remember that the
disabilities attaching to self-mutilation had no
reference to those who were eunuchs from their
mother's womb, or who ‘were made eunuchs by
men’ (see for examples of both, Eusebius, AZ vii.
82; Socrates, HE vi. 15; Sozomen, HE viii. 24;
ef. Bingham’s A nf. iy. 9)
It is
versal
not without significance that in the con-
ation of Jesus with His disciples no mention is
ἐς “wie ν᾽ any word ΟἹ condemnation by Him of the
ΤΟΥΤῚ ΠῚ f
a8 practice of emaseculation. The complete
ack ΟἹ the
. ense of the dignity of human life, so
‘ parai teristic of the ancient worid, and the absence
of the feeling of human brotherhood. feund ex-
pression in no more terrible way than in this con-
* The Lewis-Gibson Syriac Palimpsest adds ‘by God.’
EUNUCH
sequence of the laws of slavery. Yet Jesus refers
directly neither to the institution of slavery nor to
this, its result. He prefers the plan of instilling
principles which lead by the processes of thought
and application to the recognition that God hath
“made of one (ἐξ ἑνός) every nation of men for to
dwell on all the face of the earth’ (Ac 17°°; ef. Lk
10%. 4258. Mt 84=Lk 13%). Itisasif He had an
unconquerable belief in the power of the human
mind ultimately to accept the truth, and to reject,
finally and for ever, what has been false, in its
provisional solutions of life’s problems.
And as it was with His treatment of this form
of cruelty practised by the strong upon the help-
less, so it was with the mutilation of the body self-
inflicted for so-called religious purposes. To the
present writer it seems probable that Jesus made a
conscious and deliberate reference to this practice
(see Driver’s ‘ Deuteronomy’ in Internat. Crit. Com.
on Dt 231), Here, too, there is no condemnation
expressed of an inadequate and artificial method
which was the outcome of a legalistic conception
of moral purity. It is rather by His positive teach-
ing on the subject of purity that we are led to
understand (ὁ δυνάμενος χωρεῖν χωρείτω) What are the
lines along which we must move in order to reach
the goal of perfect self-renunciation. There is
another and a more excellent way of obtaining the
mastery of the sexual passion than by literaily
‘cutting off’ the offending fleshly member (cf. Mt
5!- where the words βλέπων and ὀφθαλμός point to
the radical character of the treatment insisted on
by Jesus). The peculiarity about His method of
treating this particular question is its loving
cautiousness. It is not possible for all, but it is
possible for some, to obtain as complete an ascend-
ency over this strong instinct as if they were
physically sexless ; while, of course, the resultant
moral victory is of infinitely more value than the
merely negative, unmoral condition produced by
self-emasculation. Those who adopt His method
‘make themselves eunuchs’ with a definite purpose
in view (διὰ τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν), and the in-
terests which are created by that purpose are so
absorbing that neither time nor opportunity is
given to the ‘fleshly lusts which war against the
Ξ0 ΠῚ {1 ΤΙΣ
The clear and definite teaching of Jesus on
the subject of marriage will help to elucidate the
words under review. The Divine idea (ὥστε οὐκέτι
εἰσὶν δύο ἀλλὰ pia σάρξ, Mk 108), on which He laid
special stress, involves mutual effort and restraint.
It is not possible but that even under the most
favourable circumstances duties will arise which
will prove irksome, and not less so because they
are peculiar to the married state. Indeed, the
Hebraistie ἔσονται eis (Heb. ? 7:7) emphasizes the
truth that perfect union does not follow at once on
the consummation of marriage. It is a gradual
process, and, because it is so, it involves some
amount of mutual self-abnegation. The cares and
responsibilities which follow in the wake of those
who are married necessarily mean absorption both
of time and attention which may clash with the
work given to some to do (ef. 1 Co 7"). It is for
this reason that these find themselves debarred
from ever undertaking the duties attaching to
marriage. They voluntarily undertake eunuchism
because they are completely immersed in, and en-
grossed by, the work of ‘the kingdom of heaven.’
There is no need to suppose, as Keim does, that
Jesus is here deliberately referring to Himself and
to the Baptist. At the same time, we are able to
see in His life the highest expression of that
‘blessed eunuchism’ (Bengel, Gnomon of the NT,
im loc.) which renounced all earthly ties for the
sake of the work He was given to do * (ef. Jn 174) ;
* See Clem. Alex. Strom. 111. ὃ 1ff.
EVANGELIST
and if St. Paul, in view of a stern emergency, felt
justified in enjoining upon even the married the
necessity of adopting this condition (see 1 Co 739),
we know that he was speaking from the plane on
which he himself stood (ef. 1 Co 9° 77). At the
same time, the apparent harshness of his asceticism
is softened by his repeated expressions of regard
for the gift peculiar to each (ἴδιον χάρισμα). See,
further, art. MARRIAGE.
LITERATURE. — Ency. Brit.9 art. ‘Eunuch’; Neander, Ch.
Hist. (Clark’s ed.] ii. 493 ; Morison, Com. on Mt. in loc. ; Wendt,
Teaching of Jesus, ii. 72 ff.; Expositor, 1v. vii. [1893] 294 ff.
J. R. WILLIS.
EYANGELIST.— Although the word ‘evangelist’
(εὐαγγελιστής) does not occur in the Gospels, it
justly finds a place in this work because it is the
name commonly given to the authors of the four
Gospels. The verb εὐαγγελίζεσθαι, from which the
substantive ‘evangelist’ is derived, signifies to
proclaim good tidings. The corresponding verbs
in Hebrew and Aramaic (Dalman, NHI B, s.v.
qv2, Words of Jesus, 103) sometimes bear only the
meaning ‘announce,’ but their prevailing import
is to announce good tidings. 'There is no reason to
doubt that the Aramaic word or words used by our
Lord concerning His message to mankind described
it as the proclamation of good news. Hence in
Christian circles the term acquired the specific
sense of announcing the gospel. The word ‘ evan-
gelist’ is not found in classical Greek or in the
LXX, nor has it as yet been found in any papyri.
So far as our present knowledge goes, it belongs
only to the NT and to ecclesiastical Greek. [0 is
used thrice in the NT, and in none of the instances
is its meaning doubtful. It is applied to Philip
(Ae 218), either because of the labours described in
Ac 8, or because he belonged to a class or order of
Christian labourers whose function was to go abroad
proclaiming the gospel to those who had not heard
it. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, ‘evangelists’
are mentioned (41) as an order or class, after
the Apostles and prophets, and before pastors and
teachers. Here, too, the most probable view is
that those spoken of were missionary preachers.
Again, Timothy is charged by St. Paul (2 Ti 4°) to
‘do the work of an evangelist.” Whether Timothy
is here called an evangelist is open to discussion,
but the nature of the work he is bidden to perform
is clear: he is to visit new communities in order to
preach the gospel to them. The force of the word
suggested by its etymology is, therefore, the mean-
ing attaching to it in the three passages of the NT
where it is found. This is the view of all modern
scholars of any note. Some of the Greek exposi-
tors, misled by the usage of their own time,
assigned, at least to the passage in Ephesians, the
sense which it came to bear subsequent to NT
times, that of author or writer of a Gospel; but
this interpretation has no supporters to-day.
How did this second sense arise? Can any links
of connexion be traced between the earlier and the
later signification? Is it possible to ascertain the
time at which the later usage began? These ques-
tions are best answered by studying the references
to the term in the Church History of Eusebius. It
is obvious at once that Eusebius had two senses of
the word before him; that he knew that its original
import was a preacher of the gospel, but that this
meaning had been largely displaced by another,
that of a writer of a Gospel. Speaking generally,
the Church in the age of Eusebius understood by
the word ‘evangelist’ the writer of a Gospel,
though scholars like Eusebius himself were aware
that in earlier times it had borne another meaning.
Accordingly the references of Eusebius to the
original force of the term are all associated with
the earlier history of the Church. Thus he relates
that the Apostle Thomas sent Thaddeus to Edessa
EVANGELIST 549
as a preacher and evangelist of the teaching of
Christ (HH τ. xiii. 4). Again he speaks of those
who in the age of Trajan atanted out on long
journeys and performed the office of an evangelist,
filled with the desire to preach Christ to those who
had not heard the word of faith, and to deliver to
them the Divine Gospels (III. xxxvii. 2). Once more,
he tells that Pantzenus was a herald of the gospel of
Christ to the nations of the East, and that he was
sent as far as India. For, he adds, there were still
many evangelists of the word who sought earnestly
to use their inspired zeal, after the example of the
Apostles, for the building up of the Divine word
(v. x. 2). In all these passages ‘evangelist’ evi-
dently denotes an itinerant preacher of the gospel.
On the other hand, when Eusebius names John the
evangelist (II. xxxix. 5), he is speaking of him as
the author of the Gospel, and the reference to the
voice of the inspired evangelists and Apostles
(II. ili. 1) is probably to be explained in the same
sense. How then was the transition effected from
the one of these significations to the other? How
was the title transferred from a preacher to a
writer? There are those who think that even
from the first the term denoted not so much a
travelling preacher in general as a preacher who
set himself to relate the life and words of Jesus.
Teaching and specific teaching regarding the ad-
dresses delivered by Jesus and the miracles He
performed was a characteristic of the evangelist
trom the first, hence there is little difficulty in
realizing how the title passed from those who
related to those who wrote our Lord’s life, the
latter meaning being only the natural development
of the former. Even a scholar like Meyer (in Ac
21%) affirms that the chief duty of the evangelist
was to communicate to his hearers historical inci-
dents from the ministry of Jesus, and some later
writers of all schools have embraced the same
view. It is believed to be corroborated by the
language just quoted from Eusebius regarding the
distribution of the written Gospels by evangelists.
But there is nothing to show that the first evan-
gelists of the Church made special use of the facts
of our Lord’s life, and that their teaching or preach-
ing differed in this respect from that of the Apostles.
The wide aeceptation in which the words ‘evangel’
and ‘evangelize’ are used in the NT is adverse
to this conclusion. The earliest gospel was not
the life of Jesus, but the message of salvation. To
preach the gospel was necessarily to preach Jesus,
ἐπι not to give any sketch of the life of Jesus such
as is found in our four Gospels. Nor is the view
probable in itself. A modern missionary relates
the life of Jesus as he sees it expedient, but he
does not make the communication of the details of
that life to his hearers one of his chief duties.
The same freedom was doubtless exercised in the
earliest ages of the Church. One evangelist would
tell less and another more of the life of Jesus as he
preached. Even the same evangelist would vary
the amount of detail he gave regarding the life and
words of Jesus according to the varying needs of
his hearers. Beyond all doubt most of the ad-
dresses delivered by the evangelists were largely
occupied by an account of the career of Jesus, and
especially of His sayings and His miracles ; but
this was true of every person who sought to propa-
gate Christianity, and not distinctive of the evan-
gelist as such. Further, it is difficult on this
hypothesis to explain the fact that the original
signification of ‘evangelist’ as a preacher was
current long after the Gospels had obtained the
fullest recognition within the Church. The evan-
gelists carried the Gospels with them if they were
fortunate enough to possess copies; they referred
to the Gospels as the authorities for the life of
Jesus, yet they retained their title. There is no
550 EVANGELIST
EVIL
evidence that the later meaning drove out the
earlier so long as the Church possessed evangelists
or called them by this name. Undoubtedly the
two meanings flourished side by side for a time.
If this argument is sound, the origin of the later
import of the term must be sought in another
quarter. That quarter is not remote. The Church
possessed from early days four narratives of our
Lord’s life, and to these first the term ‘Gospel’
and subsequently its plural ‘Gospels’ was applied.
It was necessary to refer to these writings indi-
vidually, hence there arose the practice of speak-
ing of the Gospel according to Matthew and
the like: Matthew being regarded as the author
of the Gospel bearing his name. Very soon it
became necessary to find a term to serve as a
common designation of the writers of the Gospels.
No more suitable word for this purpose could be
found than ‘evangelist.’ It was already in use in
the Church; it stood in the closest affinity to the
word ‘evangel’ or ‘gospel,’ which had acquired by
this time its new sense of a written work, and the
term once applied proved so useful that it imme-
diately became popular. Just as the term ‘gospel,’
which denoted a spoken message, an announce-
ment of good news, the Christian good news, was
eurrent long before the written books called Gospels
existed, and nevertheless gave its name to them,
so also was it with the term ‘evangelist.’ By a
similar transition it became the designation of the
writers of the Gospels. After the word ‘Gospel’
was used to denote a written narrative of the life
of Jesus, the extension of the meaning of the word
‘evangelist’ to designate the author of such a
work was only a question of time.
Is it possible to ascertain the date at which the
term was first used in this specific sense? The
evidence at present available shows that it was
thus employed by Hippolytus and by Tertullian.
The first occurrence of the word is in the de
Antichr. of Hippolytus (56), where St. Luke is
spoken of as ‘the Evangelist.’ The generally
accepted date of this treatise is about the year 201
(Harnack, Chronol. ii. 214; Bardenhewer, Altkirch.
Lit. ii. 521). Tertullian in his adv. Praz., which
has been assigned to the years 213-218 (Barden-
hewer, ii. 368; Harnack, 1i. 286), speaks of ‘the
preface of John the Evangelist’ (21, ef. 23). This
evidence shows that towards the beginning of the
3rd cent. the term was used to denote the authors
of the Gospels. The incidental manner in which
both writers employ the word suggests that its use
was not new. But this inference is precarious,
and it is possible that Hippolytus was the first to
employ it, and that Tertullian imitated his ex-
ample and gave it a Latin form. The absence of
the word from the opening chapters of the third
Book of Trenzeus will appear to some to confirm
the opinion that the use of the term is later than
his time, but the proper conclusion is that a
decisive verdict is impossible. All that can be
attirmed with confidence is that, as the term ‘Gos-
pels was admittedly used in the plural in the
time of Justin Martyr (Ap. i. 66), the employment
of the term ‘evangelist’ to describe the author of
a Gospel could have begun in his age, but that the
first occurrence of the word is half a century later.
In dealing with the topic ‘ Evangelist,’ it is desir-
able to add a brief notice of the animal symbols
by which the Gospels are designated. This sym-
bolism makes no appeal to us to-day, but it enters
so largely into early Christian art and poetry that
some acquaintance with it is necessary. The sym-
bolism is founded on the description of the four
living creatures in the Apocalypse (47). The first
creature 1s stated to have been like a lion, the
ve ay ] Ἷ } q 7
second like a calf, the third had the face of a man,
the fourth was like a flying eagle. It occurred to
Ivenzeus to compare, if not identify, these with the
four Gospels, and it was therefore necessary for
him to ascribe a particular symbol to each of the
Evangelists. To him John is the lion, Luke the
calf, Matthew the man, and Mark the eagle (Her.
lI. xi. 11). The mode of illustration pursued by
Irenzeus strikes us to-day as forced and _profitless,
but the example he set was followed by Hippolytus
(Hipp. τ. ii. 183, Berlin ed.; cf. Bardenhewer, <A/é-
kirch. Lit. ii. 532). Ina Syriac fragment he repeats
the comparison, but advances an interpretation of
his own. Now the lion is Matthew, the calf Luke,
the man Mark, and the eagle John. The symbol-
ism spread throughout the Church, but there was
no agreement as to the connexion between the
different living creatures and the separate Evan-
gelists. However, the authority of Jerome (Pre-
face to Matthew), despite the divergent opinion
of Augustine (Cons. Ev. i. 6), prevailed throughout
the West, and furnished the interpretation which
is best known, as most largely represented in
Christian art, and as embodied in the noble hymn
of Adam of St. Victor, ‘Psallat chorus corde
mundo’ (Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry, 67).
According to this view, St. Matthew is the man,
St. Mark the lion, St. Luke the calf, and St. John
the eagle.
LITERATURE.—Commentaries on the NT passages ; art. ‘ Evan-
gelist’ in Hastings’ DB ; works on the organization and history
of the Early Church; Suicer, s.v.; Zahn, ‘Die Tiersymbole der
Evangelisten’ in Forschungen, ii. ; art. ‘Evangelists’ in Dict. of
Christian Antiquities ; Farrar, Messages of the Books, 13.
W. PATRICK.
EVENING (ἡ ὄψια [sc. ὥρα], éorépa).—The Baby-
lonians divided the day into equal parts by sun-
watches. The ‘sixty system’ of minutes and
seconds was in vogue among them. Among Syrian
peoples also, it is likely, the same system pre-
vailed. No trace of this is found among the
Israelites, however, in the pre-exilic period. An-
other marked difference between the Babylonians
and the Israelites is noteworthy. With the
Israelites the day began at sunset, with the Baby-
lonians at sunrise. It is at least certain that the
reckoning from eve to eve became the exclusive
method in Israel with the triumph of the Law.
A kindred system prevailed among Arabs, Athen-
ians, and Gauls (Pliny, HN ii. 79). It was cus-
tomary, too, in ancient Israel to distinguish be-
tween the ‘ first evening’ and the ‘second evening.’
It is not certain just where they drew the line
(Edersheim). The phrase ‘between the two even-
ings’ (bén hd@arbayim), Ex 1613 29, as a designa-
tion of the time of the daily evening offerings,
clearly meant some period in the late afternoon.
The ‘first evening,’ it is generally thought, began
about 3 p.m. and extended to sunset; the second
began at sunset and continued into the nieht.
In Mt 14%: 33. we have the word ‘ evening ’ used
in both senses. ‘When it was evening’ (ν.15)
clearly refers to the first evening (cf. Lk 9! ‘and
the day began to decline,’ Bible Union Ver.). For
when the disciples suggested that Jesus send the
multitude away, that they might go into the
villages and buy themselves food, Jesus said they
need not depart; and the feeding of the five
thousand and the sending away of the multitude
followed before ‘he went up into the mountain
apart to pray.’ Then a second evening is spoken
of in the words : ‘And when the evening was come,
he was there alone’ (v.“*). In the latter case, Jesus,
after seeing His disciples otf (Jn 615), evidently
sought the mountain solitude, as He did on other
occasions, to spend much of the night in prayer
(v.°). This second evening, then, was evidently
verging on the night. Gero. B. EAGER.
EYVIL.—It is customary to distinguish three
EVIL
EVIL 551
kinds of evil: (1) what Leibnitz called meta-
physical evil, i.e. the incompleteness and imperfec-
tion which belong more or less to all created
things ; (2) physical evil, i.e. pain, suffering, and
death ; and (3) moral evil, which is a vicious choice
of a morally responsible being.
4. METAPHYSICAL EVIL.—The writers of the OT
were, for the most part, deeply impressed with the
doctrine of God’s transcendence; i.e. His unique
and unapproachable majesty, power, and holiness.
Hence the nothingness and transitoriness of all
earthly and visible things area constant theme with
them: ‘ Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens
cannot contain thee,’ ete. (1 Καὶ 87); ‘What is man
that thou art mindful of him?’ ete. (Ps 84); ‘All
flesh is grass,’ ete. (Is 40%) ; ‘The inhabitants of the
earth are as grasshoppers’ (v.™). Compared with
God’s ineffable holiness, the holiest of created
beings are, as it were, unclean. In heaven the
holy angels veil their faces in God’s presence (Is
6’). The holy sanctuary of Israel required to be
purged every year from its pollutions by the blood
of sacrifices (Lv 1016). All human righteousnesses
are as a polluted garment (Is 64°).
In the NT there is naturally less stress laid upon
the Divine transcendence. The theme of the NT
writers is the love of God shown in the Incarna-
tion. The eternal Son of God has taken upon Him
human nature, to raise it into fellowship with God,
to clothe it with the garment of the Divine right-
eousness, and to cause it to partake of the Divine
immortality. Yet the awful and unapproachable
character of God, and the infinite abyss which
separates the Creator from the highest creature,
are never lost sight of. He alone is the Absolute
Good (Mk 10!8); He alone may lawfully be wor-
shipped (Mk 1229. 2, Rev 19!°).
2. PHYSICAL EVIL.—(1) Optimism and pessimism.
—Christianity may be classed philosophically as
a moderate optimism. It is not an extravagant
optimism, like that of Leibnitz, who maintained
that this is the best of all possible worlds, or of
Malebranche, who regarded it as the best conceiv-
able. Christ would certainly not have endorsed
the hyperboles of Pope, that all discord is harmony
not understood, and all partial evil-universal good ;
yet He must certainly be classed among the most
pronounced teachers of optimism. As against all
{πῆ κα of Gnosticism and Dualism, He maintained
that the Universe, in all its parts, is the work of a
perfectly good Creator, and that, in spite of all
appearances to the contrary, it is under the guid-
ance of His fatherly Providence: ‘Behold the fowls
of the air,’ etc. (Mt 67°); ‘Are not two sparrows
sold for a farthing?’ etc. (Mt 10”); ‘He maketh
his sun to rise on the evil and on the good,’ ete.
(Mt 55). The optimism of Jesus is particularly
evident in His eschatology. He taught that in
the end good will triumph over evil, and evil be
absolutely excluded from the Universe: ‘In the
end of the world the Son of man shall send forth
his’ angels,’ etc. (Mt 132, cf. 24° 25-41). He be-
lieved that there is a glorious goal to which the
whole creation is moving. In one passage He calls
it Creation’s new birth (παλινγενεσία, Mt 1978); but
His usual term for it is the ‘Kingdom of God’ (or
of Heaven): ‘Then shall the righteous shine forth
as the sun in the kingdom of their Father’ (Mt
13%), For the coming of this Kingdom every
Christian is directed to pray (Mt 61°) and to watch
(2442 9513), That the material Universe will be
glorified along with the spiritual is not distinetly
stated by Jesus, but is a necessary inference from
the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, which
was undoubtedly held by Him (Mt 5” 1058 etc.),
though in a more spiritual form than was generally
current (22°°),
Gospels lend no countenance to the view that
moral evil is the only genuine evil, and that physi-
cal evil is not evil in the strict and proper sense.
Pain, sorrow, disease, and death were regarded by
Jesus as things which ought not to be, and He
spent much of the time of His publie ministry in
combating them: ‘He went about doing good, and
healing all that were oppressed with the devil: for
God was with him’ (Ac 10%). He committed the
ministry of healing to the Apostles and other be-
lievers: ‘Preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven
is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse
the lepers, cast out devils ; freely ye have received,
freely give’ (Mt 10’). Death was regarded by
Jesus as in an especial sense ‘the enemy.’ Its
ravages affected Him with acute distress (ἐνεβρι-
μήσατο τῷ πνεύματι καὶ ἐτάραξεν ἑαυτόν. . . ἐδάκρυσεν,
Jn 11°, where consult the commentators). Three
of His most striking recorded miracles were vic-
tories over death (Mk 5#, Lk 74, Jn 11%); and
His own resurrection, according to the energetic
expression of the Apostle, ‘abolished death, and
brought life and incorruption to light’ (2 Ti 110).
As to the causation of physical evil, there is a
great difference of point of view between the OT
andthe NT. The O'l upon the whole (Job 1. 2. is an
exception) regards physical evil as inflicted directly
by God. According to the NT, however, physical
evil is mainly the work of the devil. God tolerates,
permits, and overrules, rather than directly in-
flicts it. Pain and disease and death belong to the
devils kingdom, not to God’s; and their universal
prevalence is a sign of the usurped authority over
the human race of ‘the prince of this world.” The
preaching of the Kingdom of God and the emanci-
pation of mankind from the devil’s thraldom were
consequently accompanied by an extensive minis-
try of healing, and Christ appealed to His miracles
as evidence that ‘the kingdom of God is come
upon you’ (Lk 115. The NT does not, however,
deny that physical evil is often inflicted by God
for disciplinary or retributive purposes. He 12%
lays especial stress upon the wholesome chastening
of affliction which all the sons of God receive.
Examples of penal or retributive affliction are Mt
9? (palsy), Mt 2955 (war and massacre), Jn 5/4 (con-
stitutional infirmity), Ac 5° (death), Ac 13" (blind-
ness). Jesus, however, strongly protested against
the idea that every calamity is to be regarded as
a punishment for individual sin. This specially
Jewish idea, which Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar
develop at length in the Book of Job, is definitely
condemned (Lk 13+, Jn 95).
3. MORAL EVIL.—(1) /ts nature and origin.—The
only possible way of accounting for moral evil
without making God the author of it, is to attri-
bute it to the abuse of free will on the part of
created beings, angelic, or human, or both. The
doctrine of free will has been severely criticised in
all ages by the advocates of philosophical and
theological necessity ; but it has, notwithstanding,
held its ground, and is at the present time the
faith of all the most progressive races of mankind.
That it was held by Jesus does not admit of reason-
able doubt. Thus He habitually spoke of the
power which men possess to resist God and to frus-
trate His benevolent intentions: ‘O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, . . . how often would 1 (ἠθέλησα)...
and ye would not’ (kai οὐκ ἠθελήσατε, Lk 134; ef.
Jn 5”, Mt 11°8-). His general invitations to all
men to be saved imply the same doctrine: ‘Come
unto me, αὐ ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest’ (Mt 1135: ‘And 1, if I
be lifted up from the earth, will draw ald men unto
myself’ (Jn 1255).
The reality of Christ’s Libertarianism is not disproved by
certain passages in the Gospels which seem at first sight to
(2) Pain, sorrow, disease, and death. — The | speak the language of Predestination, or even of Determinism
EVIL ONE
es |
52
(Jn 637. 39, Mt 9024 etc.). _Predestination was ποῦ so held in
Christ’s time as to exclude free will. Josephus says of the
Pharisees : ‘ When they say that all things happen by fate, they
do not take away from men the freedom of acting as they think
fit; since their notion is that it hath pleased God to mix up the
decrees of fate and man’s will, so that man can act virtuously
and viciously’ (Ant. xviii. i. 3).
Jesus accordingly attributed the origin of evil
not to the will of God, but to the perversity of
God’s creatures. Mankind, according to Him, is
in rebellion against God; but the whole guilt of
rebellion is not his. Before man existed, there
were myriads of finite spirits, higher in the order
of creation than he, and of these some fell from
their original innocence and became devils. The
chief of these, Satan, is ever seeking to seduce the
human race from its allegiance to its Creator,
and is therefore emphatically called ‘the tempter
(ὁ πειράζων, Mt 4%, 1 Th 3°), and the slayer of men
(ἀνθρωποκτόνος, Jn 84). This last is the one certain
allusion to the fall of Satan to be found in the
Gospels (Lk 1018. is doubtful). From it we learn
that he once existed in a state of innocence (ἐν τῇ
ἀληθείᾳ), but did not persist in it (reading οὐκ ἔστηκεν
with WH).
The position of Satan in the Universe is so exalted, and the
power ascribed to him in the NT so great (cf. esp. Mt 48, Jn
1480), that some have regarded Jesus as a Dualist. But the
authority attributed to Satan in the NT, though great, is sub-
ordinate. The devils recognize the power of Jesus, and come
out at His word (Mk 1%4-34 30 etc.). If Satan is ‘the strong
man,’ there is a Stronger, who can bind him and spoil his goods
(Mt 12%9). At the Temptation the devil acknowledged that his
power is a delegated one (ἐμοὶ παραδέδοται, Lk 46). His kingdom
will surely come to an end; in fact its fall has already been
virtually secured by the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus
(Jn 1231). His final punishment has been determined, and it
will be fully adequate to his delinquency (Mt 2541),
(2) Original sin.—There is no recorded teaching
of Jesus about original sin. He recognized the fall
of man (Jn 852), and the general sinfulness of the
human race (Mt 74); but how He connected these
two facts does not appear. It may, perhaps, be
argued from Jn 9'°, that He would not have ap-
proved of any theory of original sin which regarded
men as obnoxious to punishment from God merely
because of an ancestral taint that they could not
help inheriting. See, further, artt. SIN and ETErR-
NAL PUNISHMENT.
LITERATURE.—Athanasius, contra Gentes; Augustine, Anti-
pelagian Treatises, etc.; Origen, de Principiis (esp. i. 5, 6);
J. Muller, The Christian Doctrine of Sin (tr.); Momerie, 7'he
Origin of Evil; Naville, The Problem of Evil (tr.); Butler,
Analogy ; Le Conte, Evolution, ix. ; Fairbairn, The Philosophy
of the Christian Religion, i. 3, 4: Tennant, The Origin and Pro-
pagation of Sin, and The Fall and Original Sin; Bull, The State
of Man before the Fall; Paley, Natural Theology, xxvi. ; Harris,
pro Fide, xiv; A. Moore, Science and the Faith, and Essays, i.,
ill., and Oxford House Papers, vol. ii. ; artt. ‘Sin’ and ‘Fall’ in
Hastings’ DB; Dixie, ‘The Necessity of Pain’ in Oxford House
Papers; E. A. Abbott, The Kernel and the Husk, ix. ; S. Laing,
A Modern Zoroastrian. The subject is discussed in most
systematic treatises on theology, ethics, and metaphysics.
C. HARRIS.
EVIL ONE. —See and Lorp’s
PRAYER and SATAN.
preced. art.
EYIL SPIRIT.—See Demon.
EVOLUTION (CHRIST AND).—The widespread
acceptance of the Ey olutionary philosophy, and the
endeavours of its leading exponents to inelude the
phenomena of religion within the sweep of its cate-
sories, have greatly accentuated the problem of the
place of the Incarnation in the cosmie order, and
of Jesus Christ, His Person, His work, and His
redemptive function, in human history.
4. The ba is of discussion.—At the outset we
Must distinguish sharply between the Materialistic
type of the Evolutionary philosophy on the one
hand, and the Tiieistie type on the other. The
former may be described as including all efforts to
explain the highest phenomena of the cosmos—in-
a
EVOLUTION (CHRIST AND)
cluding those of life, consciousness, and all forms
of spiritual activity—in terms of mechanical motion
and force. Such a philosophy rules out all recog-
nition of the Divine Personality, of the possible
independence of mind over matter, of the ethical
responsibility and free spiritual activity of man,
and of his capacity for immortal life. This disposes
of the problem of the Incarnation as irrelevant,
and throws us back on a purely ‘naturalistic’ ex-
planation of the Person and life of Jesus Christ.
The Theistic type of the Evolutionary philosophy,
however—the central idea of which is that the
goal of Evolution and not its beginnings provides
us with the principle of cosmic interpretation, and
that spirit and not matter furnishes the key to the
riddle of the Universe—leaves us free to deal with
the Supreme Person and Fact of history with open
minds. Theism presents us with a conception of
God as immanent in the Universe, but not as im-
prisoned within its material or psyehical manifes-
tations ; as transcendent, living a free, self-deter-
mined life in virtue of His own eternal Being, yet
not separated from the forces and phenomena of
the cosmos, which are manifestations of His creative
activity and expanding purpose. It also presents
us with a conception of man as a created but free
spiritual person, physically a part of nature, but
ethically above it, and capable of coming into
conscious personal relations with his Creator.
2. Theistic theory of Evolution compatible with
a process of Incarnation.—It is manifest that the
idea of Incarnation is not @ priori incompatible
with such a philosophy of God and man. It repre-
sents the Universe as God realizing His creative
purpose ; impersonally in Nature, personally in
Man. Creation awakes in man to the sense of its
own origin and the possibility of its own consum-
mation in a life of free spiritual communion with
God. Incarnation means that this fellowship is
actually sought after and objectively consummated
by an act of self-realization on the part of God. It
implies the special compatibility of the Divine
nature and the human personality. ‘God is, as
it were, the eternal possibility of being incar-
nated, man the permanent capability of incarna-
tion.’ ‘The nature that is in all men akin to
Deity becomes in Christ a nature in personal union
with the Deity, and the wnio personalis, which is
peculiar to Him, is the basis of the wnio mystica,
which is possible to all’ (Fairbairn, Christ in
Modern Theology, pp. 473, 475; see also Clarke’s
Outline of Christian Theology, p. 275).
3. The Person and work of Christ in such a
theory.—The historical realization of this possi-
bility of Incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth raises
the further question of His place in a philosophy
of history, and in Christian theology. 'The Chris-
tian contention is that in Him the Evolutionary
process finds its consummation on the one side—
He was the Ideal Man made actual; and that a
fresh Evolutionary start was made by the fusion
of the Divine and human natures in Him on the
other—He was the Son of God Incarnate, ‘mani-
fested to take away sin’ (1 Jn 3°), and to project
the race on the lines of its true development and
life, which had been interrupted and swerved aside
by the intrusion of sin into the world. This con-
ception of the Person and work of Christ, while it
falls into line with the Evolutionary idea in one
direction, appears to fall foul of it in another,
because of the claim it makes that there was in
the nature of Christ an incommensurable factor,
incapable of being explained by the laws of organic
life, or by human psychology,—manifesting itself
in a life of unique goodness and power, begun by a
free special act of God in the Virgin-birth, and
consummated by the objective Resurrection of our
Lord from the dead.
EVOLUTION (CHRIST AND)
EVOLUTION (CHRIST AND) 553
This difficulty, however, on deeper considera-
tion is not incompatible with a wider view of the
Evolutionary process. There were several stages
in the known pathway of the upward movement
from the star mist, in which the process began, to
man, in whom terrestrial evolution finds its con-
summation, when fresh phenomena appeared which
cannot be explained in terms of those that pre-
ceded ; 6... at the emergence of organic life, of
sentiency, and of ethical self-consciousness. So far,
no rational bridge of theory has been found to
span the gap between these diverse facts. It is,
therefore, not unthinkable that there was in the
Person of our Lord a superhuman element, which
in Him mingled with the stream of human life,
and started a fresh and higher line of evolution for
the race. The question whether this was so in
point of actual fact is thus purely one of evidence,
and, if historically substantiated, must be accepted,
whether we are able ultimately to ‘account’ for it
theoretically or not. Our canons of Evolution
must make room for all the facts of life and
history, or be finally discredited as inadequate and
obscurantist.
4, Jesus Christ not explicable on naturalistic
grounds.—It is certain also that, so far, the innum-
erable efforts which have been put forth during
the past century, from almost every conceivable
point of view, to give a naturalistic explanation of
the life and Person:of Jesus Christ, have not, in
whole or in part, disposed of this problem. There
is no single theory or combination of theories which
meets with general acceptance, even among those
who take up a purely critical attitude ; and when
we confront them with the Christian consciousness
which is the historical outcome of faith in the
Divine nature and mission and work of Christ,
they fail utterly to carry conviction. (This last
fact has so far not had its true place in the settle-
ment of the problem). The Personality of Jesus
Christ is thus still the unsolved problem of history,
and it is more than doubtful if any fresh treat-
ment of the question will succeed in bringing Him
within the categories of an Agnostic Evolutionary
Philosophy.
5. Cur Deus Homo ?—The Theistic Evolutionist
has next to face the old question of the purpose
and aim of the Incarnation in the cosmic order.
“Cur Deus Homo?’ becomes a more burning ques-
tion than ever in a scheme of Evolutionary thought.
Two hypotheses present themselves, according as
we take an ὦ priori or a posteriori standpoint, which
may be called the Evolutionary and the Redemptive.
The first makes the Christ the consummation and
crown of the process of cosmic Evolution, and
postulates the Incarnation as its necessary climax ;
the second occupies the old standpoint of Christian
theology from the beginning, that, whether the In-
carnation lay implicit or not in the process, 1t was
historically ‘conditioned by the fact of the sinful
and ‘fallen’ state of humanity. The two views
are not incompatible with one another, and both in
combination are quite consistent with the teaching
of Scripture. The upward striving of humanity
for union with its Creator as personal finds its his-
torical witness in (1) the universal function of
worship, prayer, and sacrifice, and (2) the Hebrew
prophetic vision of the Ideal Servant of Jehovah,
and the Messianic hope ; and it suggests, as God is
personal, a corresponding act of self-revelation in a
historical Person who would unite in himself the
human aspiration and the Divine manifestation ;
while the gradual revelation consummated in the
coming of Christ, and recorded in the Old and New
Testaments, is in line with all the known laws of
God’s evolutionary methods. On the other hand,
it is unquestionable that the Scripture doctrine of
the Incarnation is indissolubly associated with the
redemptive purpose of God. This is its historical
aim and character: ‘He was manifested to take
away sin?) (1 Jn 3°, οἵ. 1 Ὅο 5'* 8 ete.)> Wine;
therefore, we are justified on @ priort grounds in
believing that ‘the Incarnation was no_after-
thought’ (Dale, Fellowship with Christ, and Other
Sermons, pp. 10, 252f.), but that it would have
taken place even if sin had not entered the world,
the form which it took was historically conditioned
by the actual condition of humanity ; 1.6. it was
soteriological in its manifestation.
6. Three pregnant aspects of the historical In-
carnation.—More particularly, the significance of
the historical Incarnation as a redemptive and
perfective process may be described under three
pregnant headings. It was (1) the realization of
the perfect type of humanity—Christ as the Ideal
Man; (2) the achievement of a great restorative
or saving work—Christ as the sufficient Saviour ;
(3) the beginning of a fresh departure in the up-
ward Life of the Race—Christ as the Founder and
Head of His Church, and the source of the higher
spiritual movements of history. These three
aspects of His work are cndeialty related to His
human life as our great Exemplar ; to His Cross
and Passion as our Sacrifice and Reconciler; to
His Resurrection and Ascension into the unseen
world, and His influence through His Spirit on the
individual and wider life of mankind.
(1) As the Ideal Man, Jesus revealed the possi-
bilities and determined the type of perfect man-
hood for the race. This was done under special
conditions, and at a given moment of time and
place, race and environment. He was born in
Palestine, during the reign of Herod, ‘of the seed
of David’ (Ro 1°) ; 16. He was a Jew, conforming
to the special conditions and demands of His own
times, and limited by the intellectual and social
horizon of His day. There was much, therefore,
in the outward life of Jesus which was temporary
and local in its manifestations. Yet beneath all
this we see a true revelation of the Perfect Man,
universal in its scope, yet appealing to each indi-
vidual man as his exemplar; Ideal in its purity
and holiness, yet throbbing with contagious life ;
beyond the reach of literal imitation, yet quicken-
ing each of His followers to the realization of his
own individual life and personality. Looked at
from within, His life is depicted in the NT as one
of perfect and joyous obedience to the Father’s
revealed will (Jn 519), unbroken communion with
Him (10%), and supreme self-forgetfulness in the
service of His brethren (2 Co 8°). Whatever
transcendent elements may have been hidden (and
sometimes patent) in the spiritual consciousness
of Jesus, He is represented as truly temptable
(Mt 4! etc.), as depending entirely on Divine help
and grace for conquest over temptation (Jn 5” ete.),
and as having triumphed absolutely over evil, so
that He was ‘without sin’ (He 4:5. The impres-
sion left on those who knew Him.best by this life
of filial obedience and service was that it was of
unique beauty and attractiveness (Jn 115), and yet
capable of emulation by all, under their own in-
dividual conditions of life and service (1 P 951),
And this NT picture of Jesus as the Ideal Man
is one that the noblest minds of Christendom
throughout the centuries have accepted. There
is no historical character that has ever threatened
to divide the sovereignty of Jesus in the spiritual
homage of men; and such ‘detached’ thinkers as
Goethe and Carlyle, Strauss and Renan, Richter
and Lecky have borne unqualified testimony to
the solitary and unapproachable grandeur of the
moral ideal incarnated in Him.
‘In the fulness of the time.’—From the Evolutionary stand-
point the question is often asked, whether such an ideal life
must not necessarily have appeared as the consummation of
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(2) The Redemptive werk ef Christ finds its
in an Evolutionary νυν τ of ρον on
suate limes. It presupposes that a lapse, or at
lena a fatal halt, had oeeurred in the upward
spiritual development of the race, and that all
further s was barred by the poisoning of
ἢ
the wel by sin (see PALL). Before
humanity d be released frem this disability,
whieh had interfered with the free interflew ef the
Divine and human fellowship, in the unrestricted
action of whieh alone the spiritual life ef man ean
develop, ἃ ess of reconciliation and at-one-
ment with the source ef the spiritual Life must be
imitiated. Apart from this, the presentation of
an Ideal Life would be a mockery, for its realiza-
tien would be impossible. Thus, as already stated,
the historical Incarnation teok a redemptive ferm,
and it was consummated by an act ef supreme
saverifior,
The process af * by sacrifice ‘(see Bruce's Providential
Onter, ob, si. p 345M) is deeply embedded iu the organic
world. The so-called cruel Law of Netwral Sedection is bat
enother mame tor ὁ radimentany fact which finds its finest and
most perfect mealigation im the Crass of Christ. In nature we
inl three grades or stages of this process, (1) The sacrifice of
the weak the strom, as when
pore: out of existeuce by the vitally strong and efticient, and
dteande weed
every Lying species above the very low aad which gradually
atman. Here there is more or less conscious
denial on the part of the vigorous and ble eryanisn ea
beivalf of the helpless and the weak, (Ὁ) wil
own as δὰ “alomement’; bat they serve to link it with the
workd process, aid to make it miare or bess evoluGionatly intel-
κίας. (See further on this subject GrittithJones, Phe decent
thewogh Churist, bik, ii, oh. iii, pp. 283-306),
(3) The Risen Life of our Lerd initiates the final
“tage in the spiritual evolution of the race, and
completes the range of forees that werk fer the
perfecting of the human soul in its upward mareh,
The Resurrection and the Ascension indicate a
fresh epoch im the history of mankind, both in
the development of the individual seul and in the
progress of society, A new type ef eharacter
cuerees, and ἃ new community is berm; each
marking a hist ’
ver achievement and indicating a
further advance in spiritual life. Histerieal Christi-
amity rests on the faith that Jesus nose again and
pared into the unseen world, whence He continues
t send forth His personal influence and saving
grace by His Κ᾽ i
PUP sahwomge
beliey ers, ar e
them into the world at lar ad through
ve. This He does first
by quickening individual men in the New Life,
enabling them to conquer sin, and to forth the
distinetive Christian virtues ; oe
though it has so far net sueceeded Yop
ii 50 ed in permeating
it through and through with the Christian spirit,
it is demonstrable that its finest and most potent
elements are those derived from the Christian
and ennobled by the Christian |
ness of the world’s spiritual development
Christian lines is i 2 Se
ages of s and by periods of unt I
reaction ; this, however, is entirely consistent with
the laws of evolution through all its upward stages,
and is inevitable when we remember the potent
forces of spiritual degeneracy and inertia which
oppose its march. It is elear that there is no rival
directive or inspiring ideal among mankind that
could take the of Christianity without erying
halt to all that is noblest in the life of the race.
The future of the werld lies with Christ,
is te fall baek en a lower stage of ethieal and
spiritual develepment en its way to utter disinte-
jon and deeadenece. Sinee the lines οὐ cosmie
evelopment have so far been en the whole in
upward direction, and.sinee there is ne indication
that the Christian ideal has lest its held en
best minds ef the race, er is less
formerly in regenerating individual seuls
inspiring the Chureh te ever fresh activity and in-
fluence, there is reason fer confident belief f that
at last the race as a whole will be raised te the
Christian level, and that the future is with Him
ef whem it is that He shall reign in
undisputed sway over the affections and command
the obedience of all mankind (Ph 2°", Rey 11® ete.).
See, further, art. INCARNATION.
Lrrernarons.—Griftith-Jones, Asvent through Christ;
Bampton Lectures on The Jacernation ; H.
of Man. E. GRIPFITH-JONES,
EXALTATION.—1. The
the lowly in heart alene receive the true exaltation,
is exceedingly inent in beth the Old and New
Testaments. The life ef Christ was throughout
one of self-humbling, but He knew prophetically
that it weuld end in the highest exaltation. In
the Seng ef Mary at the Annuneiatien this prin-
ciple ef Divine ure is stated: ‘He hath
dewn the mighty from their seats, and
them of lew degree’ (Lk 1*), In Christ’s parable
of the Wedding Feast He insists on γυτ' spe.
as against the self-seeking and pride of seribes
and Pharisees, whe leve the chief seats in the
synagogue, and the foremost places at feasts. It
is better te take the lowest reem, and wait till
the hest shall give their preper to one’s
virtue and dignity, by saying, ‘Friend, come up
higher ᾿ (Lic δὴ the Baharia of a a,
among his fellows should have regard te this prin-
ciple. He is not te be forward to lay elaim to
that which may even be his right (ef. Mt 23” |
Lk μὲ ml ‘
2. One of the clesrest werds ef Jesus in regard
Greeks
te His ewn exaltation is Jn 12° Some
eame desiring te see Him. Our Lerd seeing in
this desire ef theirs something prephetie of the
_ future ingathering of the Gentiles inte His king-
| dem, opened up His heart te His disei as to
the way in which He heped te conquer hearts
οὗ θη. He made somewhat enigmatie reference
te Hisdeath. He knew that the hour had almest
_come for the suffering of the lewly Son of Man.
| But it is necessary that the seed which fe tp pee
EXAMPLE
EXAMPLE 555
duce a great harvest must first die. So it isa |
law of the Kingdom of God that life in this world
must be sacrificed, if need be, that life eternal may
be gained as a permanent possession. After the
Saviour’s life of service, the due reward will be
honour from God. When the heavenly voice |
ke, the Saviour was consoled and uplifted by
i thouzht that He would cast out the prince of
this world, and be lifted up (ὑψωθϑ) as a victorious |
conqueror. It wasa prediction of His final triumph
over evil, and His eternal reign over all men. The
outwardly shameful death of the cross would be
His true exaltation as the world’s Saviour. By |
the identification of outward events with their
inward meaning, He advances men’s thoughts to
the idea of His exaltation to heaven as the vic-
terious One. This anticipation of Jesus is the
starting-point for the Church’s fully developed
doctrine of the Exaltation. ‘He rose again from
the dead on the third day, He ascended up into
heaven, He sitteth on the right hand of God the
Father, He shall come to judge the world at the
last day.’ See artt. ASCENSION, JUDGMENT,
SESSION.
After the predictions of His suffering, He al-
ways spoke of His future glory. He would rise
again from the dead (Mt 16"). ‘In the regenera-
tion the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His
glory’ (19%). ‘The Son of man shall come in the
glory of his Father with his angels, and then shall |
e render unto every man according to his deeds’
(167). In the sayings in the Gospel of Jolin there
are many lofty statements as to His heavenly glory
(cf. 145 17+ ete.). Davin M. W. LAIRD.
EXAMPLE.—
A. Liseuistic vsace.—The word ‘example’ (or ‘ ensample’)
occurs 15 times in the AV and 17 times in the RV of the NT.
In the two versions it stands 7 times (1 Co 106, Ph 311,1 Th 1%,
2 Th 3, 1 Ti 422, Tit 27 RV, 1 P 5S) for τύτος, once (1 Τὶ 118 RV)
for ὑτοτύτως::, once (1 Co 1011) in adverbial phrase for τυτσῶς,
5 times (Jn 1315, He 411 85, Ja 520, 2 P 2) for ὑτεδειγεεα, once (Ac
2055) as partial rendering of i<e3ux2u, once (Jude 7) for δειγέρα,
once (Mt 129) as partial rendering of 3#7u2-.t#, and once (1 P
91) for i<eyz2uuez. For our present purpose Mt 129 falls quite
out of account. 3272 (Jude *)is a ‘ specimen,” ‘an (illustra-
tive) exhibit —in this instance set forth as a warning, though
of itself this simple form hardly suggests either imitation or
shunning, as ὑπόδειγμα does. The other passages all more or
less illustrate the topic in hand. Besides these, there are, of
course, many other passages which, though not employing the
term ‘example,’ are no less relevant and significant than
Τύτο:, whether tr. ‘ example’ or ‘ pattern, ‘type,’ has gener-
ally an important bearing upon our topic. Primarily the
‘mark,’ ‘impression’ of a stroke or blow (Jn 9055 ‘ print’),
hence * figure,’ ‘image’ (Ac 7#), s:<e is generally ‘ pattern,’
‘type,’ ‘example.’ Sometimes the example is by way of warn-
ing, as 1 Co 10% 11. Generally, however, it is an example to be
imitated. A corresponding sense is to be ascribed to ὑτοτυτωτσις
(Ti 6, 2 Ti 15) [In the latter passage Hofmann’s and
Cremer’s interpretation ‘ Abbild’ seems hardly warranted.
Timothy is to hold fast the ‘type’ of doctrine which he had
received from Paul, and this ‘ type’ is not regarded as Timothy's
copy of Paul's, but as something which had now become com-
mon to both).—<s3s;,uz is a concrete illustration or exhibi-
tion, designed for imitation or for warning — generally the
former. In one instance in the NT ὑτόξεγεεα is used for after-
tation (Ger. Abbild).—iseysxuus is a ‘ writing-copy’
(model), to be imitated by the pupil. Hence an example-set
before one for close imitation. This is perhaps the most vivid
of the NT terms indicative of Christ’s exampleship. The term
itself implies the strictest imitation ; though both the context
and the general teaching of the NT will save us from the error
of conceiving Christ’s example as something formal and ex-
Among the other terms which give expression to the idea of
Christian example, the most prominent are ἐκ: σία, and wuntzs
(AV ‘follow’ and ‘follower,’ RV ‘imitate’ and ‘ jmitator ’).
The verb occurs 4 times in the NT (2 Th 37 9, He 137, 3 Jn 11),
in one of these instances in connexion with τῦτος. The noun
occurs 6 times (1 Co 416 111, Eph 5!, 1 Th 16 214, He 6!2—at 1 =
313 the reading wsurrzi is to be rejected), in every instance
signifying ‘imitator’ in the ethico-religious sense. In Eph 5!
we wusurzai τοῦ θεοῦ, in He 6!2 it is the exemplary saints
who are to be imitated, in 1 Co 416 St. Paul exhorts to the
imitation of himself, rather than to turn away from him, inas-
much as he was their father in the faith. In 1 Co 11! he bids
his readers imitate him as he imitates Christ. In 1 Th 1° itis
‘imitators of us and of the Lord,’ while in 1 Th 31} it is ‘the
churches of God in Judza,’ of whom the Thessalonians had
become imitators.
Jesus in gathering His disciples about Him generally bade
men ‘follow’ Him (ἀπολουδξω; in one imstance, Mt 429, δεῦτε
ézic»). Primarily the expression means no more than ‘to ac-
company’ as a disciple, and yet manifestly it became, in our
Lord’s use of it, one of the most characteristic and intensely
| Significant expressions of the idea of discipleship in all its
deepest import. So where Christ bids the mich young ruler
sell all that he has and ‘come, follow me,’ or in the words on
‘taking up the cross and following,’ and elsewhere (see esp. Mt
192 1653 164, Jn 1235 9739). The verb is not found in the
Epistles, except at 1 Co 103.
Christ is represented as the ‘ image ’—:iza»—which Christians
are to resemble (Ro 539, 1 Co 1549, 2 Co 314, Col 319). But those
ges also which represent Christ as the image of God must
be taken no less into account ; for Christ’s-claim to an uncandi-
tional personal authority is expressly based upon the fact that
He is the image—the apprehensible representation—of the
invisible God (Jn 138 14%, 2 Co 44, Col 14, He 18. τη the
last ge the word is χαραχτί»). In this connexion men-
tion must be made also of the expressions ‘ children of God,’
: of your Father,’ ‘ of the Highest’ (Mt 52 >, Lk 6 2056). Also
in the Epistles the filial relation is made to imply the following
of the example of God in Christ (¢.g. Eph 51.8, 1 P 14, 1 Jn 52).
Besides the terms already considered, which give more or less
formal expression to the Christian idea of exampleship, there
are many more, which—some of them in the most elementary
and untechnical terms—no less definitely express the same
thought. The very idea of discipleship in our Lord's teaching
involved the idea of the personal exampleship of the Master (see
esp. Mt 103.5, Lk 1335. 27-33, Jn 13355158). The same thought is
expressed in Eph 420 ‘Ye have not so learned Christ.’ In He
6 Jesus is called our ‘Forerunner. His temptations are
typical (He 2425 415), and He is our example in the enduring of
temptation (He 31 1555) Trne believers have the ‘mind of
Christ’ (1 Co 216, Ph 25, cf. Ro 86 27 122) Christ is the ‘life,’
and as such is the ‘light’ of men (Jn 142.1418, ef. 819 815 95
1235.36.46, 1 Jn 115). He is Himself ‘the way,’ etc. (Jn 146).
Believers are to ‘put on’ Christ (Ro 134, Gal 37, 433, Col
31). The Christian’s ‘walk’ is to be according to Christ (see
esp. Jn 1255, 1 Jn 17 26, Eph 52-8, Col 26). Finally,—for an ex-
haustive study of the linguistic usage is not intended,—many of
the most characteristic expressions of the thought of example-
ship in Christianity are effected without the use of any i
terms. The word ‘as,’ or something else equally simple and
direct, often best serves the purpose (¢.g. Mt 545, 1 P 115, Eph
482 52,1 Jn 3? 47-2).
B. Tue Docrrinr.—i. THE EXAMPLE OF
CHRIST.—1. In the teaching of Jesus no truth is
more essential than that God the Father Himself
is the original and absolute example for all per-
sonal life. The Law is holy, for it is the expres-
sion of the will of God. But the letter apart irom
God’s immediate personal will is dead. As Jesus
expounds the Law, the disciples learn to look
through the particular commandment to the χὰ
sonal will of the living God. It is not enough to
keep the commandment in the most scrupulous
fashion, as if it were something standing apart and
complete in itself (Mt 53). We have to do directly
with God Himself. His will and personal nature
are our sole and absolute standard (Mt 5#-*). In
answer to the young ruler who asked what good
thing he should do in order to have eternal life,
Jesus refuses to be regarded as one who might
propose some novel good—some good other than
that which is already known from God. A
from God there is no good (Mt 197"). To love
God is the first commandment ; and the coming of
His kingdom and the doing of His will should be
man’s first concern (Mt 22% 6? 33).
But Jesus does more than .pojnt to God as’the
absolute standard for personal life. He comes to
make God known. It is not enongh to know that
God is the standard, so long as God’s nature is un-
known. So Jesus was sent as the perfect revela-
tion of the Father (Jn 14*-**). Not that God was
hitherto unknown: what the Jews worshipped
they knew (Jn 4"). Jesus came to complete the
revelation of God. He gives a perfect interpreta-
tion of the mind and will of God, and in His own
Person perfectly exemplifies that mind and will.
He is conscious of perfect accord with the will of
the Father (Mt 12° 5-4, Jn 5% 4% ΟἿ §> 14%).
His words and acts He has learned from the
Father, even from the Father’s example (Jn 855
511-19). This principle determines His whole treat-
|
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EXAMPLE
We eee Eee
556
ment of the Mosaic Law. The inevitable limita-
tions of mere statutes He overcomes by an appeal
to the Divine example and order (as in the case of
the law of the Sabbath and the law of marriage,
Jn 517, Mt 194°, in the latter case appealing also
to Scripture as well as to fact). And because He
knows God as the Son knows the Father—immedi-
ately and perfectly (Jn 7” 855 10%, Mt 11%), and
because He perfectly fulfils the will of God, Jesus
demands an unconditional following, which shall
consist, not in copying the outward form, but. in
the most inward appropriation of the 2 ruling
principle of His life (Mt 7212} 28° 10% 11°: 59 204%
16%: 25 2022 2639 919-22 1922, Jn 158-10 812 1985. 36. 44-50
1312-17 1547 1721-23 21%). He does not set Himself
forth as a substitute for the Father, but as the
One who knows God and teaches us to know Him.
He is the Light of Life, the Way, the Truth, the
Life, the visible manifestation of God (Jn 813 14°).
Christ’s claim to absolute authority (which ex-
pressly included the judgment of the world, e.g.
Jn 5%) is based not upon His prophetic office alone,
but upon that unity of word and deed which con-
stituted the perfect revelation of the will of God.
Jesus’ own Person was not left out of His gospel
(cf. Harnack’s statement, Wesen des Christentums,
p. 91: ‘Nicht der Sohn, sondern allein der Vater
gehort in das Evangelium, wie es Jesus verkiindigt
hat, hinein’). Not, indeed, as one doctrine among
many, nor as an addition to the doctrine of the
Father, did Jesus present the truth concerning
Himself. But He claimed to be the perfect and
unique embodiment and exemplification of the
Father’s will. Yet He is more than mere example.
He does not merely show the way ; He is the Way.
At the same time He is the Truth and the Life.
He gives not only the perfect example but also
life-power. In this sense, therefore, Jesus, even
according to His own teaching, is more than an
element in the gospel: He is the very essence of
the gospel.
2. Christ’s demand of an unconditional personal
following is reproduced in the Apostolic preaching.
But after Christ’s passion, resurrection, and exalta-
tion, the thought of His exampleship is expanded
and heightened. The Christ who died for the sin
of the world is the perfect revelation of God’s holy
love (e.g. 1 Jn 4*'°), while His exaltation, coupled
with the gift of His Spirit, affords assurance that
the coveted likeness to Christ and the promised
sharing of His glory shall be realized (e.g. Ro
85. 85) The thought of Christ as our example
is so variously and abundantly applied by the NT
writers, that it will suffice here to notice particu-
larly only the more characteristic passages. The
concreteness of the revelation in a personal life is
most frequently and most strikingly set forth by
St. John (Jn 144-38, 1 Jn 15 42-3), Jesus is the
perfect example of the life of faith, even its Author
and. Perfecter (He 12?).. He was tempted like as
we are (25:18 4), and is the perfect pattern of
patient endurance of all temptation, even unto
death (3' γ 96. 1 Ῥ 111 921-23 318 41. ef. Gethsemane
and Calvary in the Gospels). He is our example
of merey and forgiveness ( Eph 432, Col 3, 2 Co 910)
,
in self-denial and humble service (Ph 25%, 2 Co 8°,
Ro 15** 7); in meekness, gentleness, and forbear-
ance (2 Co 10", Col 315, Eph 4°, 1 P 2); in the love
. 511 iers, labours, and dies for others (1 Jn 8316,
2 Co 4 vo, Eph 5? *, Gal 6?, Ph 25#-); in holi-
ness and purity (Eph 4°, 1 p15 1 Jn gif. 417)
And then, more broadly, believers are exhorted to
put on Christ,’ or ‘the new man,’ renewed after
Christ’s image (Ro 19: Eph £18-15..24° Co] 3-1 Gal
~); and to ‘walk’ in. or according to, Christ
(Eph δ, Col 2°, 1 Jn 17 28). The highest destiny
ot believers is to be made like Christ-(Ro 89, 1 Jn
“ἢ, In this connexion the significance of those
ee
EXAMPLE
passages in which Christ is called the image of
God (Col 115, He 1°, ef. Jn 14) should not be over-
looked ; for God has given us this perfect revela-
tion in a Person just in order that we might find in
Him our true example and archetype.
In addition to these and all other specific ex-
pressions of the thought of Christ’s exampleship,
there stands the great fact that the whole picture
which the Evangelists drew of Jesus was made
under the powerful influence of the twofold con-
viction that He was the image of the Father, so
that by Him we know the ‘ Christ-like God,’ and
that He was the Ideal Man—not an ideal creation
of human fancy, but the Ideal-Real come from God
Himself.
3. It has already been briefly noted that Christ
Himself as well as His disciples bore witness that
He was to His own much more than mere example.
The relation of His followers to Jesus is something
more than that of those who are striving to copy
a model. Christ isexample in a deeper sense. He
is not only ‘type,’ but also ‘archetype’ (e.g. 1 Co
15208. τ 0822 Elen 22-17). Antexamip lev [ΘΕ
personal life must in any case be something better
than a mould for the multiplication of its own
form. Personality is interested in inward traits
and principles, which are to be independently de-
veloped in the greatest variety of forms. But
Jesus’ relation to us lies even deeper than this. Heis
the ‘archetype,’ the ‘ original,’ of our personal life.
Now an original is not passively there to be copied ;
it sustains some sort of active causal relation to
the copy. So Christ is our example in this more
vital sense: He is at once example and original
(admirably expressed in Ger. Vorbild and Urbild).
As our ‘original,’ Christ not only (as in the case
of mere examples in personal life) mysteriously im-
presses us, but also imparts life and power through
His Spirit (Jn 116 17 54°26, Ro 82, Gal 2, Col 3% 4,
1 Jn 5", and many more passages). He who,
having fulfilled the Law, is henceforth Himself the
Law (Ro 104, Gal 374, 1 Co 971), has engaged to work
likeness unto Himself in all who believe. So we
may say with Augustine: ‘Give what Thou com-
mandest, and command what Thou wilt.’ ΤΠ Christ
is to us mere example, without renewing power,
we are, after all, ‘under law,’ and noé¢ ‘under
grace.’ ‘But the Word became not only flesh, but
also spirit’ (Kihler, Wessensch. αἰ. chr. Lehre®, p.
610. ΘΟ πὶ ϑύ 25. 069 739. Corsa'5) υ 6
inward operation of the Spirit in producing likeness
to Christ has constant and express reference to the
historie Christ (Jn 164, 1 Jn 4:5).
4. The actual validity of the picture of Christ as
example implies the genuine humanness of the
life and the adequate fulness and clearness of the
picture. Furthermore, the example must be cap-
able of universal application. As to the human-
ness of the life of Jesus, it is sufficient in this con-
nexion to point out that. the Biblical witness is
without a trace of questioning as to its reality.
Even the highest confessions of Jesus as the Son
of God are never at the expense of the patent
fact that He is truly man. As to the pictures of
Christ in the Gospels, while these are not biog-
raphies, as that term is commonly understood,
they do give a wonderfully luminous and vivid
portrait of the personal life of our Lord. Using
the historical material for the sake of its content
of truth, they show us Jesus the Witness, in word
and deed, of the holy love of God, and as the
Bearer of love and truth and life to the world.
Affirming love to God and man as the supreme
law, He Himself fulfilled that law, gladly laying
down His life that He might glorify the Father
and bring salvation to the world. ‘And this life
of unimagined self-sacrifice He led to the end, in
spite of manifold and tremendous temptations, with-
———
EXAMPLE
out once deviating from the path appointed by |
the Father. And with it all there was no ascetieal |
denial of the values that are primarily temporal ; |
nor did He lose either joy or repose of soul through
His sufferings and conflicts. A marvellous open-
ness in word and deed was ever characteristic of
Him who came a Light into the world. Besides
all this, here is a life that manifestly reached its
goal. The course of that life had been one con-
tinual renunciation of proffered worldly advantage |
and success ; nevertheless its end was a unique
triumph. For the real end was not Calvary, but
the exaltation to the right hand of God. However
hidden this end may be from the unbelieving
world, Christian faith sees in the resurrection and
exaltation of Christ the one supreme proof that
righteousness cannot fail. This is the ‘conviction
of righteousness,’ because Jesus has gone to the
Father (Jn 16°). Without such a revelation of the
appointed end of faith and righteousness the ex-
ample would be incomplete, and Christian ethies
could not maintain its ideal.
This picture of Jesus is capable of universal
application. It is true the vocation of Jesus was
unique. And yet the principles which controlled
that life—perfect trust in the Father, and perfect
love to God and man—are manifestly applicable
under all possible circumstances. Such love as
Christ’s is the fulfilling of the Law. In one respect
only is there a seeming limitation—for it is only
seeming—to the universality of Christ’s example:
He is without the struggle with inward sin—He can
be no model for the transformation of a sinful life.
Inasmuch, however, as the processes of renewal
are not our affair—we need only to be joined to
our Lord in faith and to follow Him—this is no
lack. Although ‘a Jew of the first century,’ Jesus
is the Son of Man, in everything essential to
personality free from the limitations of His own
time and people. He is not less the kinsman of
all peoples; He is ‘the contemporary of every
age.’
5. We have further to consider the practical
relation of the disciple to the example of Christ.
We are commanded to ‘follow,’ to ‘imitate,’ to
‘put on Christ,’ to ‘follow in his steps.’ But how
are we to conceive the problem of discipleship?
For, while the Church has never failed to hear
the call of Jesus, ‘Follow me!’ the conception of
discipleship has sometimes been much distorted.
In the Middle Ages the dominant thought was
asceticism. The ascetic imitation of Christ, of
which St. Francis is the most noteworthy example,
selects certain traits in His life, and by undue
emphasis upon these, together with a neglect of
others, produces a distorted image. Then there
have been enthusiasts who thought to be able to
follow Christ in sharing His redemptorial work—
exaggerating and perverting such passages as
Ph 3”, Gal 62, 1 Jn 36 Again, rationalism has
made of Christ simply a model of virtues to be
copied. These three are perhaps the most im-
portant types of perversion of the NT idea of
Christ’s exampleship; but the three appear in
various modifications and combinations. The only
safeguard against such errors seems to lie in a con-
sistent emphasis upon the integrity of the Biblical
picture of Christ. wie
Among evangelical theologians the term ‘imita-
tion’ of Christ is very commonly objected to as
implying merely a formal copying of the Lord’s
example. The word, of course, can be so under-
stood ; but so also may the word ‘following.’ In
any event it must be insisted upon that the words
‘imitate’ and ‘imitator’ in the NT (RV) have no
such unevangelical meaning.
The believer’s practical attitude to the example
of Christ may be profitably studied in the light
EXAMPLE 557
of a few characteristic passages: (a) Answering
to the frequent declaration of the absoluteness of
Christ’s authority (e.g. Mt 238 1°, Eph 1”, Ph 29-14),
there are many passages which emphasize the
obligation of exclusive loyalty to Him (e.g., 2 Co
10° 11°, Col 317, Eph 4°). (6) We are to have the
mind of Christ, and to set the mind on the things
above, where Christ is (Col 34, Ro 122, Eph 45).
(c) We shall be transformed into the image of
Christ by beholding Him, though the energy that
produces the result comes from ‘ the Lord the Spirit’
(2 Co 3!8—see also Drummond, The Changed Life).
(4) Complementing the thought of meditation as a
means to Christ-likeness, there are various passages
which set forth the more strenuous elements in the
following of Christ (e.g. Ph 31°18), (6) Several
passages bid us ‘put on Christ’ or the ‘new man’
(Ro 134, Eph 474, Col 3:08.) This relates to the
JSormation of a Christian character. (7) Jesus left
us an example, that we should ‘follow in his
steps’ (1 P 271). Just as ‘the mind of Christ’
means inward renewal, and ‘putting on Christ’
means character-building, so ‘to walk in his steps’
may fairly serve as a motto for the exercise of Chris-
tian love in all social relations. (g) The example of
Christ in His personal consummation is the be-
liever’s most glorious hope (Ro 8”, 1 Jn 3? 3, ef.
Eph 3"). And the hope set within us is guaranteed
by the earnest of the Spirit. We already have a
measure of Christ-likeness—we are now sons of
God, and His power is working in us to finish the
work begun (Ro 8”, 1 Jn 91. 4", Eph 342, Col
ot -Phelé):
But all these various aspects of our relation to
our Example presuppose the vital fellowship of a
personal faith. No ‘imitation’ of Christ is accord-
ing to the gospel if it is anything else than an
essential aspect of the life of faith. With all its
rare beauty and power, the Imitation of Christ by
Thomas a Kempis (?) is hardly conceived in the
plane of the perfect law of liberty. And yet, over
against the widespread questioning of the universal
applicability of Christ’s example, as well as the
ethical shallowness and indefiniteness of a religion
of mere feeling, too much stress cannot be laid
upon the vocation of the Christian to take up the
cross daily and follow the Lord. ‘This is the love
of God, that we keep his commandments’ (1 Jn 5°).
The full gospel principle of the freedom of the Spirit
being presupposed, the question, ‘What would
Jesus do?’ (see Sheldon, /n His Steps), is not un-
warranted. But to walk in the Spirit implies that
we are not seeking merit or virtue for our own
satisfaction, but are seeking to glorify God. Todo
all ‘in the name of the Lord Jesus’—no more com-
prehensive or profound expression of the funda-
mental law of Christian living could be conceived ;
and just this, after all, is what is meant by follow-
ing Christ. Our task is not in the narrower sense
to copy Him, but to receive His Spirit, to under-
stand His mind, to let Him be formed within us.
So we shall also ‘walk’ in Him.
ii. THE EXAMPLE OF THE FOLLOWERS OF
CHRIST.—‘One is your Teacher—one is your
Master, even the Christ’ (Mt 23°-*°). ‘Other foun-
dation can no man lay than that which is laid,
which is Jesus Christ’ (1 Co 3"). This relation of
our Lord to us is unique and exclusive. He is our
life. We have been renewed after His image.
But just because this is so—just because He does
beget in His followers a likeness to Himself—those
who bear His image are fitted to be examples;
only, of course, their exampleship is relative and
mediate. He who said concerning Himself, ‘I am
the light of the world’ (Jn 8! 9°), said also to His
disciples, ‘Ye are the salt of the earth, ye are
the light of the world’ (Mt δ15:-|ὸ. But they are
this just because they are His followers, and in
EXCLUSIVENESS
virtue of what they have from Him. In various
ways our Lord recognizes the value of good ex-
ample; for instance, where He warns against the
bad example of the scribes and Pharisees (Mt ΒΟ):
He prays for His disciples: ‘As thou didst send
me into the world, even so sent I them into the
world’ (Jn 1718). They were to be His witnesses ;
they were to do nothing in their own name, And
yet, in order that they might be true witnesses,
they must be sanctified in the truth. Their minis-
try for Christ must be, like Christ’s own ministry,
an intensely personal one. And when the Lord
wives to His disciples that ‘example’ of humble
service in washing their feet (Jn 13°"), and else-
where (172! 13) shows that they shall preach Him
through a life of love as well as by word, it cannot
be doubted that He places a very high value on the
example of His followers.
The NT writers generally, especially St. Paul and St. Peter,
lay great stress upon the salutary effect of Christian example
(1 P 9116’. 31.2.15.16, Ph 215, 1 Th 17-8, 1 Co 716, 1 Ti 61), with
special emphasis upon the example of those who are in authority
in the Church (1 Ti 412, Tit 27-8, He 137, 1 P 5%). On the other
hand, the danger of an example not positively evil but only
doubtful is clearly set forth (e.g. 1 Co s7it, Ro 1415), St.
Paul shows the peculiarity of repeated reference to his own
example. Reckoning the passage Ac 20% as an authentic
report, and including all the Epistles that bear his name, there
are not fewer than eight passages (Ac 9095, 1 Co 416 77.8 111,
Ph 317 49, 2 Th 37-10, 2 Ti 113) which distinctly commend to the
Churches his own example, and a ninth (1 Ti 116) in which the
element of specific commendation is lacking. This fact is all
the more striking because St. Paul is pre-eminent in the energy
with which he repudiates all human merit. ‘Christ is all in all.’
It is St. Paul, moreover, who declares: ‘We preach not our-
selves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants
for Jesus’ sake’ (2 Co 45). There is, however, no real incon-
gruity here. An examination of the passages in question will
show that St. Paul nowise assumes authority in his own person.
‘ Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ’ (1 Co 111).
This is thoroughly characteristic. It is but another way of
atfirming that his sole purpose is to lead them to purest,
simplest devotion to Christ. ‘What then is Apollos? and what
is Paul? Ministers through whom ye believed; and each as
the Lord gave to him’ (1 Co 3°). St. Paul does not refuse to be
judged as a minister of Christ and steward of the mysteries of
God (1 Co 4!). He is but a servant and a witness. And if there
is anything exemplary in him, it is only the faithfulness and
sincerity of his own discipleship and service. ‘By the grace of
God Iam what I am’(1 Co 1519). Glorying is excluded. And
neither St. Paul nor any other NT writer ever makes the
vil tuous life of believers a principal proof of the doctrine ; it is,
however, powerfully confirmatory. The Apostolic doctrine thus
outlined is of such simplicity, that its universal acceptance in
the Church is hindered only by the same carnal mind that
caused many even in St. Paul’s day to ‘walk according to man’
(1 Co 3%).
LiTERATURE.—The leading recent treatises on Christian ethics,
especially Martensen, Frank, Smyth, Kahler (Wissenschaft der
chvistlichen Lehre ὃ, 3 Teil, 1905), Herrmann®, 1904, and Haring,
1902; Luthardt, Gesch. der christl. Ethik, 1888, 1893 (Eng. tr.
of vol. i. 1889); Bosse, Proleqomena zu einer Gesch. des Beqriffs
* Nachfolge Christi,’ 1895; Kahler, Der sogenannte historische
Jesus,® ete., 1896, and Dogmatische Zeitfragen, 1898 (2 Heft,
pp. 75-155); Herrmann, Der Verkehi des Christen mit Gott4,
1003 (Eng. tr. of an earlier ed.); J. Weiss, Die Nachfolge
Christi, ete., 1894; Schlatter, Der Glaube im NT3; Liiteert,
Die Liebe im NT, 1905; Feine, Jesus Christus und Paulus,
1902; Scholz, ‘Das personliche Verhaltnis zu Christus und die
1
Ἢ
religidse Unterweisung’ in Z7'hK, 1893; Ullmann, The Sinless-
ness of Jesus; Fairbairn, Philosophy of the Chr. Religion,
12, and The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, 1893;
Laidlaw, art. ‘Image’ in Hastings’ DB, vol. ii.; J. R. Seeley,
/ Homo, 1865; Hughes, The Manliness of Christ, 1879;
Stalker, Jmago Christi, 1889; Drummond, Natural Law in the
ritual World, and The Changed Life; Sheldon, In His
! 1507: F. G. Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Christian
Character, 1905 ; Thomas ἃ Kempis(?), he Imitation of Christ.
J. R. VAN PELT.
EXCLUSIVENESS.—The term is here employed
to denote that ¢ hrist s earthly ministry was con-
fined to the people of Israel. The passages bear-
ing on the subject leave no doubt that Christ
“ rded the Messianic mission entrusted to Him
ν the Fath 5. limited to the Jewish nation, and
in practice He kept within the limits imposed by
the Divine d cree, Only on one oceasion do we
find Him cros the borders of the Holy Land
into heathen territor 1
Mk 7*4), and’on that oeca-
sion His object was not to extend the sphere of
EXCLUSIVENESS
ee ---..--ς---- -ο----------------
His work, but to secure an interval of rest and
leisure for the private instruction of His disciples.
When the Syrophcenician woman, seizing the
opportunity presented by His presence in the neigh-
bourhood, appealed to Him to heal her demoniac
daughter, He justified Himself at first for refusing
by the statement, ‘I am not sent but unto the lost
sheep of the house of israel’ (Mt 15%). At an
earlier date, in His instructions to the Twelve in
view of their missionary Journey, the area of their
work was sharply defined in the words, ‘Go not
into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into
any city of the Samaritans: but go rather to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Mt 10°). It
has been alleged that this restriction of His work
was occasioned by want of sympathy with those
outside the Jewish pale, in proof of which appeal
is made to some οἱ His sayings, such as those
in which He characterizes Gentiles as ‘dogs’ (Mt
1536 ||), directs His disciples to treat an impenitent
offender as ‘an heathen man and a publican’ (Mt
1817), and enjoins them to ‘ use not vain repetitions,
as the heathen do’ (Mt 6°).
The fact of Christ’s attitude of aloofness toward
the Gentile world throughout His earthly ministry
is quite evident. In explanation of it various con-
siderations have to be taken into account. (1) His
vocation as ‘a minister of the circumcision ’ (Ro 15°)
led Him to avoid as far as possible work among
Samaritans and Gentiles. As the Messianic King,
who came in fulfilment of OT prophecies, His
appeal would naturally be, in the first instance, to
‘His own’ (Jn 14), (2) The whole history of the
Jewish people having been a preparation for the
Kingdom of God, He recognized in its members
‘the children of the kingdom’ (Mt 815. By virtue
of possessing the oracles of God, Israel alone was
fitted to appreciate the message of the Kingdom,
which could not be presented to the world at large
without a preparatory training, involving more or
less delay. (3) ‘To secure a favourable reception
for His message it was necessary to avoid, as far
as possible, arousing the prejudice and alienating
the sympathy of His Jewish hearers, who would
have resented any teaching or practice tending to
place Gentile communities on a level of privilege
with themselves (Lk 4°”), (4) The shortness of
His earthly ministry made it imperative that He
should restrict the field to be evangelized, and not
be diverted from His immediate purpose of estab-
lishing the Kingdom among the chosen. people by
the claims of those outside, however urgent and
undeniable. (5) Assuming that the Kingdom was
destined ultimately to be universal, its triumph
among the Jews would evidently be the most
successful method of securing its extension to
other nations. Asamatter of fact, it was Jewish
adherents who afterwards became the agents of
spreading it among the Gentiles.
Among the reasons why Gentiles were excluded
from the scope of Christ’s personal ministry, want
of sympathy cannot be included. The evidence,
instead of proving want of sympathy, is all the
other way. He granted the request of the Roman
centurion who sought the healing of his servant,
eulogizing at the same time his faith as something
without a parallel even in Israel (Mt 8). The
apparent coldness of His demeanour toward the
Syropheenician woman was due to the embarrass-
ing nature of her petition, which required Him to
violate the principle by which His conduct had
been governed hitherto. He was anxious to help,
if He could do so without sacrificing the interests
of those who had the first claim upon His services.
The term ‘dogs’ has been objected to on the
ground that it is insnlting. The woman herself
did not view it in this light, and her quick wit
turned it into an argument in her own favour.
i) ee
EXCOMMUNICATION
The term (κυνάρια), moreover, does not denote the
ownerless dogs which act as scavengers in the East,
but the household pets which serve as the children’s
laymates. The scruples which led Christ to with-
1014 for a moment the help sought, were in the end
overcome by the woman’s faith, which won His
cordial approval.
There is no trace of racial or religious bias in
Christ’s references to the heathen. Any repug-
nance implied in His language is toward what is
evil in their system or in their conduct. It is their
method of prayer with which He has no sympathy,
and which He stigmatizes as unworthy of imitation.
Their lives were often such as to make close
association with them unadvisable. and the im-
penitent offender is regarded as on a par with them
in this respect. Christ's attitude toward publicans,
who are bracketed with heathen, was anything but
unsympathetic ; and if He felt toward heathen in
the same way, they were objects not of dislike,
but of the deepest compassion. See also artt.
GENTILES, MISSIONS. W.S. MONTGOMERY.
EXCOMMUNICATION denotes the exclusion,
either temporary or permanent, and _ specifically
on moral or religious grounds, of a member of a
religious body from the privileges which member-
ship in that body ordinarily carries with it. The
word does not ocenr in EV, but we have in the
Gospels several references to the practice as it
existed among the Jews in the time of Christ,
while certain words of Christ Himself supply the
germs of the usage of the Christian Church as it
meets us in the Apostolic age und was subse-
quently developed in the ecclesiastical discipline
of later times.
i. JEWISH EXCOMMUNICATION. — Passing over
the segregation of lepers, though this generally
implied exclusion from the synagogue (Mt 8?|| Lk
174),* and coming to excommunication of the more
specific kind, we find that it is certainly referred
to four times in the Gospels, viz. Lk 653 (‘ blessed
are ye... When they shall separate you from
their company ᾿--ἀφορίσωσιν ὑμᾶς), Jn 955 (‘for the
Jews had agreed already that if any man should
confess him to be Christ, he should be put out of
the synagogue’—dmosuvdywyos γένηται), Jn 12”
(‘they did not confess him, lest they should be
put out of the synagogue ’—iva μὴ ἀποσυνάγωγοι
γένωνται), In 167 (‘they shall put you out of the
synagogues ’—drosuvaywyous ποιήσουσιν ὑμᾶς). It is
not unlikely, however, that a fifth reference
should be found in the ἐξέβαλον αὐτὸν ἔξω of Jn
934-35 (so AVm and many commentators). Meyer
and Westcott (Gospel of St. John) object to this
that no sitting of the Sanhedrin had taken place,
and that the persons who cross-questioned the for-
merly blind man were not competent to pronounce
the sentence of excommunication. It is true, no
doubt, that excommunication properly denotes a
formal sentence passed by the officials of the con-
vregation (Schiirer, HJP It. ii. 60),—though in
Talmudic times a minor form of excommunication
by an individual, and especially by a rabbi, was
also recognized (Jewish Encyc. vol. v. p. 286 f.),—
but as it was ‘the Jews,’ i.e. in the language of
the Fourth Gospel the Jewish authorities, who
expelled the man, it seems quite possible that the
examination described in Jn 9 was of a formal
nature. This is confirmed by the expressions,
‘they bring to the Pharisees him that aforetime
was blind’ (ν.13), ‘they called the parents’ (v."),
‘they called a second time the man that was blind
* Being forbidden to enter a walled town, they could not
worship in the synagogue in such places ; but in unwalled
towns a corner was frequently reserved for them in the syna-
gogue, on condition that they were the first to enter and the
last to depart (see Hastings’ DB iii. 97+).
EXCOMMUNICATION 559
(v.44), which suggests an authoritative summons
before an official-body. And when we read in v.”
‘Jesus heard that they had cast him out,’ this
seems to imply that some grave act of formal
censure had been passed upon the man.
Of the fact that excommunication was practised
in the Jewish synagogue in the time of Christ,
these passages leave us in no doubt. But now
comes the question whether at that time there
were (different kinds of excommunication. In the
Talmud two degrees are recognized, a minor,
γα (173), and a major, hérem (073); the former
being a temporary exclusion from the synagogue
together with a restriction upon social intercourse
with others, while the latter amounted to a ban of
indefinite or permanent duration.* It must be
remembered, however, that as an authority upon
Jewish usages the Talmud does not carry us back
to the earliest Christian age, and that for the
practice of Jewish courts in the time of our Lord
the NT itself is our only real source of information.
And while it has sometimes been fancied that in
the Gospels we have an indication of two kinds or
degrees of excommunication—the ἀποσυνάγωγος of
Jn 9535 12” 16? being distinguished either, as some-
thing more severe, from the ἀφορίζειν of Lk 67, or,
as something more mild, from the ἐκβάλλειν of Jn
9% %°_the truth is that there are no adequate
grounds for such discriminations. It is, of course,
quite possible, and even likely, that in the time of
Christ there were distinct grades of exclusion from
the privileges of the Jewish community, corre-
sponding to the later niddi and hérem,t+ but the
NT cannot be said to testify to anything more
than the fact of excommunication itself.
For the immediate origin of the practice of
excommunication as it meets us in the Gospels, we
have only to go back to Ezra and the days after
the Exile, when the strictest discipline was abso-
lutely essential to the solidarity, indeed to the
very existence, of the Jewish Church and nation,
Ezra insisted that those Jews who had married
foreign wives should either put away both their
wives and the children born of them, or forfeit
their whole substance and be separated from the
congregation of Israel (Ezr 10%). But the ultimate
roots of the practice are to be sought in the Penta-
teuchal legislation, with its exclusion of the cere-
monially unclean from the camp of the congregation
(Ly 13%: 4, Nu 52°), and its devotion to destruction
(029, whence orn) of whole cities or tribes as enemies
of Israel (Dt 274 3° 72; ef. Jg 21, where the men
of Jabesh-gilead themselves fall under the ban- of
extermination for not coming up to Mizpeh along
with their brethren).
With regard to the grounds on which, in our Lord’s
time, sentence of excommunication was passed, the
Talmud speaks of twenty-four offences as being
thus punishable—a round number which is not to
be taken too literally (Jewish Encye., art. ‘ Ex-
communication’)—though later Rabbinical autho-
rities have carried out the list into its particulars.
When we read that the rulers decreed that any one
* The attempt has sometimes been made to discover in the
language of the Talmud a third and more awful kind of excom-
munication named shammatta (NA2v) ; and in accordance with
this it has been supposed that there may be a reference to the
three presumed degrees of Jewish excommunication in Lk 622—
‘they shall separate you from their company (niddii), and
reproach you (hérem), and cast out your name as evil’ (sham-
matta). But it is now generally acknowledged that the idea
of this threefold distinction is due to a mistake, and that,
as used in the Talmud, shammatta is simply a general designa-
tion for both the niddwi and the hérem (see Buxtorf, Lexicon,
8.υ. NEw; Schiirer, HJ P 11. ii. 60).
+ It is perhaps suggestive that zvafleze is the constant LXX
rendering of the OT 077 (Jos 617-18 7 passim 2229, 1 Ch 27), and
that ἀνάθεικα and ἀναθεικατίζειν meet us frequently in the NT as
expressive of a curse or strong form of banning (Mk 147], Ac
2312. 14.21, Ro 93, 1 Co 123 1622, Gal 18.9),
EXCOMMUNICATION
who confessed Jesus to be Christ should be put out
of the synagogue (Jn 953 12”), this may show that
they possessed a large discretionary power of
fixing the grounds of ecclesiastical censure. But
if the later lists of Talmudical writers rest on
traditions that go back to the time of Christ, there
were certain recognized categories of offence, such
as ‘dealing lightly with any of the Rabbinic or
Mosaic precepts,’ under which it would be easy for
the Jewish casuists to arraign any one who called
Jesus Master or acknowledged Him to be the
Messiah.
ii. CHRISTIAN EXCOMMUNICATION.—It lies be-
yond the scope of this Dictionary to deal with
excommunication as practised in the Apostolic
Church, and as it meets us especially in the Pauline
writings. Butin the teaching of our Lord Himself
we find the principles at least of the rules which St.
Paul lays down in 1 Co 5, 2 Co 2°", 1 Ti 1”, Tit 31°.
In Mt 16" Jesus promises to St. Peter the keys
of the Kingdom of heaven, so that whatsoever he
shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and
whatsoever he shall loose on earth shall be loosed
in heaven. In Mt 18'-!8 He makes a similar pro-
mise to the Church generally, or to the Twelve as
representing the ecclesia—not ‘qua apostles with
ecclesiastical authority, but gua disciples with the
ethical power of morally disciplined men’ (Bruce,
Expositor’s Gr. Test., in loc. ; οἵ. further Jn 20”).
And in the immediately preceding context (vv.?""’)
He gives directions as to the way in which an
offending brother is to be dealt with in the Church.
The injured person is first to go to him privately
and endeavour to show him his fault. If he will
not listen, one or two other Christian brethren are
to accompany the first as witnesses—not in any
legal sense, we must suppose, but because ‘ con-
sensus in moral judgment carries weight with the
conscience’ (Bruce, op. cit., in loc.). If he is still
obdurate, the Church is now to be appealed to:
‘and if he refuse to hear the Church (ἐκκλησία)
also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the
publican.’ That ἐκκλησία in this passage means
the community of Christian believers, and not, as
Hort, for example, thinks (Christian Ecclesia,
p- 10), the Jewish local community, seems in
every way probable. Jesus had already spoken at
Cresarea of the ἐκκλησία that is built on Christian
faith and confession (Mt 1618), and it was altogether
natural that on this later occasion He should refer
to it again in speaking of the relations between
Christian brethren. But it would be a mistake to
find in this passage any reference to a formal
process of excommunication on the part of the
Church. The offender of whom Christ speaks
excommunicates himself from the Christian com-
munity by refusing to listen te its united voice,
and the members of the community have no option
but to regard him as an outsider so long as he
maintains that attitude. That Jesus meant
nothing harsh by the expression ‘as the Gentile
and the publican,’ and certainly did not mean a
permanent exclusion from the Christian society,
may be judged from the way in which He treated
a Noman centurion and a Syropheenician woman,
and trom the name given Him by His enemies—
‘the friend of publicans and sinners.’ No doubt
In an organized society a solemn and formal act
uch as St. Paul prescribes in 1 Co 5+* is a natural
tteduction from the words of Christ in this passage ;
but 16 cannot be said that such an act is definitely
enjoined by the Lord Himself. It is the attempt
to find here the authoritative institution of excom-
mani ation as a formal act of ecclesiastical disci-
pline that gives a colour of justification to the
ech cham oF some critics (e.g. Holtzmann, Hand-
ommentar =um \ Τ᾽ in loc.) that what: we hate a
this passage is not an actual saying of Jesus, but
EXCUSE
a reflexion of the ecclesiastical practice in the
Jewish-Christian circles for which the Gospel of
Matthew was written. ;
From our Lord’s teaching in this passage it
seems legitimate to infer that, though excom-
munication may become necessary in the interests
of the Christian society, it should never be resorted
to until every other means has been tried, and in
particular should be preceded by private dealing
in a brotherly and loving spirit. From the two
parables of the Tares and the Wheat (Mt 1374-32
6-43) and the Draw-net (Mt 13*7-°") we may further
gather that Christ would have His people to
exercise ἃ Wise patience and caution in the use
even of a necessary instrument. Mt 18-!7 shows
that there are offences which are patent and
serious, and are not to be passed over. But from
the two parables referred to we learn the impossi-
bility of the Donatist dream of an absolutely pure
Chureh. Not even those who have the enlighten-
ment of the Spirit are infallible judges of character.
The absolute discrimination between ‘the good’
and ‘the bad’ (Mt 13%) must be postponed till
‘the end of the age’ (v.#*). Only under the per-
sonal rule of the Son of Man Himself shall all
things that offend (πάντα τὰ σκάνδαλα) be gathered
out of His Kingdom (ν. 3).
LITERATURE.—Artt. on ‘Excommunication’ in Hastings’ DB,
Eneyc. Bibl., and Jewish Encyc.; Schtrer, HJ P τι. ii. p. 59 ff. ;
Weber, Jiid. T'heol.*, Index, s.v. ‘Bann’; Martensen, Christian
Ethics, iii. p. 330ff.; the Commentaries of Meyer, Alford,
Westcott (Guspel of St. John), and Bruce (Expositor’s Gr.
Test.) on the passages referred to; Bruce, Parabolic Teaching
of Christ, p. 42 ff. J. C. LAMBERT.
EXCUSE.—‘To make excuse’ (παραιτεῖσθαι), Lk
1418, means to avert displeasure by entreaty, to
crave indulgence, to seek to be treed from an
obligation or duty. (Cf. the use of ‘excuse’ in
Dampier, Voyages, ii. 1. 99: ‘In the evening he
sent me out of the palace, desiring to be excused
that he could not entertain me all night’). παραι-
τεῖσθαι 1s used by Josephus exactly as here of
declining an invitation (Ané. VII. vill. 9). ἔχε pe
παρῃτημένον (vv.1%1%) may be a Latinism for habe
me excusatum, but see Meyer and Weiss contra.
These guests had evidently received a previous
invitation, as is customary in the East, which
they had accepted (vv.!* 1”). Their unanimity, the
absence of an adversative ἀλλά or δέ, and the order
of the words, combine to make παραιτεῖσθαι a sur-
prise when it comes (contrast v.!°). They did not
give a direct refusal, they were detained by certain
hindrances which were not wrong in themselves,
but they all showed the same spirit in rejecting
the invitation because they preferred to follow
their own inclinations. The first had bought a
field, he was elated by his already acquired pos-
sessions (Trench, Parables), and alleged a necessity
(ἔχω ἀνάγκην) ; ‘seepe concurrunt tempora gratie
acceptissima et mundana negotia urgentissima’
(Bengel). The second may illustrate the anxiety
of getting ; he alleges rather his plan and purpose
(πορεύομαι). The third was detained by pleasure ;
his marriage seemed a sufficient reason, and he
simply said οὐ δύναμαι. Gerhard sums up the
hindrances as ‘ dignitates, opes, voluptates,’ ef. Lk
84. ‘His omnibus mederi poterat sanctum illud
odium v. 26’ (Bengel).
‘Excuse’ is also used in RV for πρόφασις (Jn 15°),
so Wye., Vulg. (excusatio); AV follows Tindale
‘cloke.’ Cf. Ps 140 (141)4 τοῦ προφασίζεσθαι προ-
φάσεις ἐν ἁμαρτίαις ; Vulg. ‘ad excusandas excusa-
tiones in peccatis.’ The Jews had no longer any-
thing to plead in their own defence, as was pos-
sible in times of ignorance.
LITERATURE.—Comm. of Meyer and Plummer, in loc. ; works
of Trench, Bruce, and Dods on Parables ; Thomson, LB p. 125.
W. H. DUNDAS.
EXORCISM
FACE 561
EXORCISM.—See Demon.
EXPIATION. — See ATONEMENT, DEATH OF
CHRIST, RANSOM, RECONCILIATION, REDEMPTION.
EXTORTION (apray7).—The word is used by
Christ in His terrible arraignment of the scribes
and Pharisees, on account of the way in which, by
their methods of plunder, they openly violated the
Scriptures they knew so well (Mt 2375, Lk 11°),
Isaiah (164) had predicted the cessation of the
extortioner as one of the signs of the Messianic
reign. Ezekiel (22) had inveighed against this
sin as one of the transgressions of Israel which
called forth the Divine wrath. Yet they, who
claimed to keep the Law to the letter, and who
professed to be the teachers of the Law, fattened
themselves on extortion and filled their cups by it.
For the methods of extortion practised by the
publicans see art. PUBLICAN.
HENRY E. DOsKER.
EYE.—The OT usage of ‘eye’ (jy), with its
material and figurative senses, is found to be faith-
fully continued in the Gospels.
The almost invariable word used in the Gospels is ὀφθαλμός 5
in two passages (Mt 2034, Mk 82%) cuu« is found, but used only
in the plural. The difference in meaning between the two
would appear to be that ovu« refers to the material organ as
distinct from its function, while ὀφθαλμὸς is not only the vehicle
of vision but that which sees.* The most usual verb used in
connexion with the eyes is βλέτω (e.g. Mt 73, Lk 641), with its
compounds διαβλέτω (Mk 82) and ἀναβλέτω (Mt 2034, Jn 912);
more rarely we find ὁράω (Mt 1315, Lk 230 1623, Jn 1240) and
θεάομαι (Jn 495 6°). A fairly frequent phrase is that of ‘lifting
up (éraipw) the eyes,’ t e.g. Mt 175, Lk 1673 1813, Jn 435; in every
ease in which the eyes of Christ are mentioned this word is used
(Lk 620, Jn 65 1141 171).
The word ‘eye’ is used—4. In the ordinary,
literal sense: as illustrating the /ex talionis, Mt
5°3;+ of the eyes being heavy with sleep, Mk 14” ;
of the multitude fixing their eyes on Christ, Lk 4°° ;
especially of Christ giving sight to the eyes of the
blind, § e.g. Mt 979 3 20% 4, Mk 8%, Jn 9. 2. Ina
literal sense, but with a figurative sense implied :
e.g. the words of Simeon, ‘ Mine eyes have seen thy
salvation’ (Lk 2%), where there is primarily the
literal looking down upon the babe before him, but
also, by implication, the mental vision of God’s
salvation of which the visible child was the pledge ;
again, in the words, ‘Blessed are your eyes, for
they see...’ (Mt 1316, see also Lk 1059), where we
have both the literal seeing of Christ and the see-
ing, in the sense of understanding, His teaching ;
δ᾽ . . . . . . «
further, a striking instance is contained in Lk 24",
* Perhaps somewhat in the same way that one can differenti-
ate between a musical instrument and the music it gives forth.
+ It occurs very rarely outside of Lk., Jn., and Acts.
1 Cf. in this connexion the Code of Hammurabi, ὃ 196, ‘If a
man has caused the loss of a gentleman's eye, his eye one shall
cause to be lost’ (see Johns’ The Oldest Code of Laws, p. 45).
§ Regarding methods of curing blindness see Encyc. Bibl.
col. 1455 f.
where it is said of the two disciples to whom Christ,
after His resurrection, became known by the break-
ing of bread, that ‘ their eyes were opened, and they
knew him.’ There appears here (however it may
be accounted for) an extraordinarily close connexion
or correspondence between weakness in the bodily
and the mental vision, for it is certain that their
eyes were open, in the ordinary sense, before they
recognized Christ. Another example is that in Jn
4® Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that
they are white already unto harvest.’ What the
bodily eye saw here was evidently intended by
Christ to be a symbol of the great work of evan-
gelization which He desired the mental vision of
the disciples to discern. Under this head would
come also Mt 5° ‘Tf thy right eye causeth thee to
stumble, eut it out and cast it from thee.’ From
the context the ‘eye’ is clearly used here in a
material sense, while the ‘cut it out’ is equally
clearly used in a figurative sense (cf. Mt 19).
3. In a purely figurative sense it is found in Mt
τ and Lk 65: 5. (the mote in the brother’s eye) ;
also in Mt 655 53, Lk 114 (‘The lamp of the body is
the eye’), where the eye is spoken of as reflecting
the spiritual condition of the heart, though even
here it is possible that the thought of the expression
of the material eyes may also have been in Christ’s
mind. Again, in Mt 20% ‘Is thine eye evil because
I am good ?’ the eye is used figuratively to express
an attitude of envy (see below). Lastly, it must
obviously have been used in ἃ purely figurative
sense in Lk 16% ‘In Hades he lifted up his
eyes...”
4, There remains the strange expression ‘ evil
eye’ (ὀφθαλμὸς πονηρός, Mk 7°). The meaning of
this no doubt approximates to that of the similar
expression in Mt 6% 9015, and, generally speaking,
denotes envy;* but it also implies demoniacal
possession [see Demon, ili. (0)],t and the ‘evil’
referred not only to the possessed himself, but also
to the harm which might be done to others who
came under the influence of the ‘evil eye.’ Ὁ
W. O. E. OESTERLEY.
EYE-WITNESSES (αὐτόπται, Lk 1°; ef. ἐπόπται
in 2 P 1!6).—We have the assurance of the Third
Evangelist that the Gospels are founded not upon
second-hand reports, but upon the direct testimony
of those who were present. Similarly in Jn 19”
21% (where the words μαρτυρεῖν and μαρτυρία are
used), the record of the Fourth Gospel is certified
to be reliable. (See Lightfoot on ‘The Internal
Evidence for the Genuineness of the Gospel of
John,’ in the Expositor for Jan.—-Mar. 1890, pp. 1,
81, 176; and cf. art. GOSPELS). T. GREGORY.
* Cf. the expression ]’Y ΜῈ Pr 236; see also Dt 159, 1S 189.
+ Among the Jews there was a special formula for use against
the ‘ evil eye.’
t For examples of the belief in, and effect of, the ‘evil eye’
in Syria at the present day, see PEF'St, 1904, pp. 148-150.
Ε
FABLE.—See PARABLE.
FACE.—Of the words tr. ‘ face,’ ‘countenance,’
the Heb. panim indicates the front, that which 15
presented to view, while mar’ch and the NT terms
πρόσωπον, ὄψις, and ἐνώπιον correspond to view,
visage, that which can be seen. ;
4. Physical appearance. — Beauty of face is
frequently alluded to in the Bible in connexion
with both men and women as a distinguishing per-
VOL. I.—36
sonal charm, and a powerful influence for good or
evil. ‘The underlying thought is that a noble and
| beautiful face should be the index of a noble and
| beautiful spirit. There is a resemblance among
| the children of a king (Jg 88). Along with this
recognition there are intimations that the Lord
; seeth not as man seeth (1 8 167), and that beauty is
vain (Pr 31%). In the mysterious personality out-
|lined in Is ὅθ. one of the arresting features is the
| absence of such beauty in a face singularly marred,
eee
562 FACT AND THEORY
FACT AND THEORY
NNN —— ο-- ------------
and according to common standards confessedly un-
attractive. While there is a dark type of comeli-
ness (Ca 15), yet, as might be expected among a
people accustomed to olive and sunburnt tones of
complexion, it is the exceptional characteristic of a
fair and lustrous face that marks the highest form
of beauty. In the poetry of the Arabs, when
beauty of face is referred to, the usual and ever-
sufficient simile is that of the full moon (619), and
in the descriptions of Paradise in the Koran the
female attendants of the ‘faithful’ are called
houris, ‘the white-faced ones.’ The illumination
on the face of Moses is ‘still recalled in the Jewish
synagogue when the officiating Levite, in pronounc-
ine the benediction (Nu 6”) at the close of the ser-
vice, veils his face with the ¢a//ith, or prayer-cloth.
Similarly in the sacred art of the Church, the
Transfiguration light on the face of Christ was per-
petuated in the halo around the faces of the saints
who sutfered as His witnesses. In 2 Co 4° the con-
summation of the gospel is described as the hope
of beholding and sharing the manifestation of God’s
glory as it had been seen in the face of Jesus Christ.
2. In the expression of character and feeling.—
Although the face was understood to be only a
medium or channel for the manifestation of inward
thought and emotion, a more vivid impression was
often gained by alluding to it as having the essen-
tials of personality. Thus it has its own health
(Ps 42"), it produces gladness in others (21°, Ac
2°5), and pronounces rebuke (Ps 801°), it falls (Gn
4), is lifted up (Ps 4°), emits light (445. All emo-
tions are rare upon it: it is impudent (Pr 715),
harder than a eae (Jer 5°), and may be a face of
fury (Ezk 3818), In Lk 12% the face of the sky is
referred to as conveying to those who could read
it a sign of its intentions. The face being thus
closely identified with the person, any violence
cifered to the face was in the highest degree
affronting (1S 115, 2S 104, Mt 2687). As the ex-
pression of the face was regarded as a trustworthy
indication of the life within, the Pharisees eculti-
vated an aspect of religious absorption ; and Christ
showed that the thought behind this device was
essentially blind and irreligious, inasmuch as the
true service of the Kingdom required the spirit of
the Beatitudes (017). As the emblem of perfected
sainthood and ordered harmony, the Church in its
final form is represented as having the beauty of a
face without spot or wrinkle or any such thing
(Eph 57"). ἢ
The figure of the averted or hidden face (Dt 317,
Is 53°) that declines to meet the look of supplica-
tion, owes its origin to the fact that Orientals are
largely swayed by the strongest feeling of the
moment, and can be moved from their previous
purpose by well directed emotional appeals. When
one man is seeking to appease or persuade another,
10 1s customary, when the right moment has been
reached, to put the hand quietly and tentatively
under the chin, and thus turn the face so that eye
no ene Gree es aly Sonia aera
ha aster ee all 1s to Antercept such emo-
persuasion of prostration, pleading, and
tears, and means that all hope must be abandoned.
G. M. MACKIE.
a AND THEORY.— Christianity is a religion
Vhich οἱ es ς i ‘ =i
lara i ss ahi? oan ow ce It has to do with
Any ἡπειίίο ἐο od, and with God's will for man
my ledge, tl ore, of the nature of Christi-
ΠΝ ὃ be one Fa til fe sb lon, This would still
vat Chris - i : tk 19 tact of sin and the fact
lanity 15 a religion of redemption. For
& personal Spirit; and the only way by which
ee aM abe heed ‘sasha about MS is
fur ἴ her. a ο hes ὁ τὰ 1 τῷ = | t} . 1 When,
Ι Lime ie truth that God is an
\
‘od is
re can
themselves: to us.
infinite Spirit, and that we men are finite, it at |
once becomes obvious that all knowledge of God as
well as of His plan or purpose must rest upon a
revelation by God. This revelation may be general.
Thus the creation of the Universe and of man, with
God’s image in his heart and able to see God in
the work of His hands, is to be regarded as an act
of self-revelation on the part of God. But sin is
a reality in this universe, and the noetic effects of
sin have rendered necessary a special revelation of
the holy God to sinful man. Sin has not only
made man blind to spiritual realities, it has dis-
torted the purity of the Divine image in man’s
heart and in nature. Accordingly special revela-
tion must be external, consisting in supernatural
acts of God to restore the image of God, and must
also consist in a supernatural word-revelation or
communication of knowledge to explain the mean-
ing of these acts. Special revelation, then, being
soteriological, accompanies the redemptive activity
of God. This Divine redemptive activity is his-
torical, and has entered this world of time and
space. This was necessary, because sin, the effects
of which the redemptive activity was to counteract,
is a historical force at work in the world. Since,
therefore, special revelation accompanies God’s
redemptive acts, it too is historical, taking place
under the category of time. Hence we have, first
of all, God’s redeeming acts, culminating in the
Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus
Christ. These redemptive acts are also revealing
acts. Thus God’s Son came into this world in the
flesh in order to save sinners, as St. Paul tells us
(1 Ti 115. But His incarnation is also a revelation
of God, as we learn from the prologue to St. John’s
Gospel. But we have also ἃ word-revelation
accompanying the Divine redemptive facts or acts,
and giving us their meaning. Indeed, that which
rendered necessary the fact-revelation, viz. the
noetie effects of sin, also makes necessary an
authoritative word-revelation to explain to us the
meaning of those acts. Christianity, therefore,
consists in facts which have a meaning, or in the
meaning of the facts, whichever way we choose
to put it. Take away either the facts or their
authoritative interpretation, and we have no Chris-
tianity left. The mere external facts apart from
their meaning are, of course, meaningless, and
therefore do not constitute Christianity ; while the
abandonment of the facts no less destroys the
Christian religion, reducing it to a mere natural
religion, or religious philosophy. Neither can the
abandonment of the facts be justified because of
the co-ordination of revelation and redemption,
and of the historical character of the latter, to
which we have already alluded.
This is the conception of revelation which the
Scripture writers themselves give us. They claim
that they were spoken to by God, and not merely
that they had their religious intuition aroused by
the facts of God’s revelation. Hence their inter-
pretation of the meaning of the great facts of
Christianity, according to their own account of the
matter, is not mere human reflexion upon the
facts. If, therefore, we reject their interpretation
of the facts as itself immediately from God, and
therefore authoritative, we shall not be able to
trust them for the occurrence of the supernatural
facts, and shall be driven logically to deny the
immediacy and supernatural character of the
Divine activity in the facts themselves. The mean-
ing of the term ‘revelation’ will have been changed.
It will no longer signify the communication of truth
by God’s acts and words,* it will designate a product
*In speaking of word-revelation, we are not confounding
revelation and inspiration; the former denoting the Divine
supernatural communication of truth to the Scripture writer,
the latter the Divine influence accompanying its record. The
term ‘word-revelation’ is meant to denote especially the com-
FACT AND.THEORY
of the religious life of man.
the absoluteness of Christianity, and is in direct
contradiction to the account given by the Scripture
writers themselves of the way in which Divine
This does away with
truth came to them. The question, therefore,
really resolves itself into that of the trustworthiness
of Christ and His Apostles as teachers of doctrine.
The evidence for their trustworthiness is just the
evidence for Christianity as a supernatural religion,
which, of course, takes us far beyond the limits of
this article (cf. Warfield, art. ‘The Real Problem
of Inspiration’ in Pres. and Ref. Rev. iv. p. 177 1...
But if we accept their authority (as we do, resting
it on the above mentioned evidence), then Christi-
anity consists in certain great facts, and in the true
meaning of those facts. The meaning of a fact is
its meaning for a mind. By their true meaning,
of course, is meant their meaning for God. This
meaning, therefore, He must authoritatively make
known to us if we are to have any Christianity.
In the first place, then, to attempt to hold to the
great supernatural facts of Christianity and to give
up their meaning, 1s not only impossible, but, were
it possible, would result in taking from the facts
just that which makes them Christian facts, and
which makes them constitutive of the essence of
Christianity. There has been an attempt to dis-
tinguish between the facts of Christ’s life as the
permanent Divine element in Christianity and
‘theories’ as relative, human, and changing. This
general tendency to separate between fact and
theory in Christianity has assumed two forms: on
the one hand, it is said that the Bible contains no
explanation of the great facts of Christianity ;
on the other hand, it is admitted that the Bible
does contain an explanation of the facts ; but, while
a special revelation in a series of supernatural acts
of God is recognized, a special word-revelation
is denied, and the whole doctrinal content of
Christianity as contained in the Bible is reduced
practically to human reflexion upon the acts of
God.
In the former position, it is said that Christianity
consists in facts, not in doctrines. We have in the
Bible the fact of Christ, but no theory as to His
person. We have the fact of the Atonement, but
no theory or doctrine of its meaning.
This position has been held by R. J. Campbell and F, W.
Farrar in their essays on the Atonement in a volume entitled
The Atonement and Modern Religious Thought, 1900. For ex-
ample, Farrar maintains that any attempt to explain the
nature of the Atonement is a ‘futile endeavour to be wise above
what is written, and to translate the language of emotion into
that of rigid scholasticism.’ So also R. F. Horton, in his essay
on the Atonement in a volume entitled Faith and Criticism,
1893, says that the NT contains no theory of the Atonement.
(Horton has given up this position in his essay on the same
subject in the same volume with Farrar’s essay). A similar
osition seems to have been maintained by Astié, who is quoted
Ee H. Bois in De la Connaissance Religieuse, p. 342; οἵ, War-
field, The Right of Systematic Theology, p. 30.
In regard to this position we should note, first of
all, that ‘bare facts,’ i.e. meaningless facts, are
impossible, for every fact has a meaning whether
we know it or not. And still further, a ‘ bare fact’
being a meaningless thing, there is no atonement
in the ‘bare fact’ of Christ’s death, and no Chris-
tianity in the events of His life regarded as ‘bare
facts.’ If we clearly understand that a ‘bare fact’
is simply an event in the external world appre-
hended by the senses, or a subjective fact of some
self-consciousness, then it may be the statement
of a ‘ bare fact’ to say that a man called Jesus was
born some 1900 years ago, but we are not to say
that He was God’s Son made flesh for our salvation ;
we can say that He died on the cross without
going beyond ‘bare fact,’ or even that He expressed
munication of truth to the Scripture writer in a supernatural
manner. Of course, it should not*be forgotten that*inspiration
is also necessary in order to render the truth infallible to us.
PACT AND THEORY 563
certain feelings, but we cannot say so much as that
He died for our sin. It is not necessary to salvation
that we should know the full and true meaning of
Christ’s death; we are not speaking, however, of
the conditions of salvation, but of the essence of
Christianity. And this lies in the meaning of the
great redemptive facts of the Christian religion, or
in the facts because of their meaning. We may
conceive some false meaning of these facts, but
like all facts they must have some meaning, and
their true meaning is their meaning for God.
Hence, as was said, if we are to know their true
meaning, God must tell it tous. If, therefore, we
were simply to hold to the facts of Christ’s life
considered as ‘bare facts,’ we should have taken
away from them that which makes them Christian
facts and redemptive facts. In short, this method
of treating the facts of Christianity takes from
them all that makes them constitutive of the
essence of Christianity.”
We should observe, next, that the modes of
statement of all those who hold this position suggest
the impossibility of holding to ‘bare facts.’ They
speak constantly of the ‘fact of the Atonement.’
But this is quite ambiguous. If it means that the
atonement is real, then it is a true statement, but
a statement which involves a theory or interpreta-
tion of the fact of Christ’s death as atoning for sin.
But, taken as they appear to mean it, the statement
involves an error. We may speak of the fact of
Christ’s death, but in this as a ‘ bare fact’ there is
noatonement. As soon as we call it an atonement
we have interpreted it by a theory. So, when
Farrar says it is a ‘landmark of the death of
Christ,’ that it is ‘not only the declaration, but
the ground of pardon,’ he has gone a long way
toward understanding its meaning, and, according
to his position, has made the mistake of ‘translat-
ing the language of emotion into the rigidity of
syllogisms.’ And this same ambiguity often at-
taches to the language of those who do not hold
this position. Thus the late Dr. Dale, in his book
on the Atonement, first seeks to establish its fact
and secondly its theory. In reality, however, the
first part of his book contains more general, and
the latter part more specific, statements of the doc-
trine or theory. Precisely the same ambiguity is
seen in the article ‘The Fact of the Atonement,’
by R. Mackintosh (Hxpos. Times, May 1903), who
speaks of the ‘fact of Christ’s death’ and the ‘ fact
of the Atonement’ as equivalent terms, and again
of the ‘fact that Christ died for our sins,’ which
statement, of course, contains a doctrine.
But we must observe, finally, that it is not suffi-
cient to show the necessity of an interpretation
of the facts of Christianity. The question of an
external authority in religious knowledge cannot
be evaded by saying that the Bible contains
no explanation of these great facts. Whatever
may be said as to the authority of Scripture,
it is evident that the Bible does contain an inter-
pretation of the great facts of Christ’s life. And
whatever interpretation be put upon the language
of Christ and His Apostles, it is plain that they
had definite ideas as to who Christ was, why and
how He came into this world, why He died, and
what His death means. To take only a few in-
stances, and those only in regard to one fact, viz.
Christ’s death, it is scarcely a matter for dispute
that, when He speaks of giving His life ‘a ransom
in the place of many’ (Mk 10%, Mt 2038), or of His
blood as Covenant-blood ‘shed for many unto the
remission of sins’ (Mt 2058), He intended to convey
* The necessity for an interpretation of the facts of Chris-
tianity has been shown by Denney, Studies in. Theol. p. 106,
and. The Death of Christ, Introd. ; cf. also J. Orr, The Christian
View of God and the World, p. 25; H. Bois, Le Dogme Gree, pp.
110-117 ; Warfield, The Right of Syst. Theol. pp. 29-46.
FACT AND ‘THEORY
a definite view as to the meaning of His death.*
The same thing could be shown in regard to all our
Lord’s statements as to His Person and Work.
The whole of the Pauline letters are occupied to a
large extent with the interpretation of the facts of
our Lord’s Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection.
It is not possible, then, to assert that the NT con-
tains no interpretation of the facts which 116 at
the basis of Christianity.
We must therefore face the question of the
authority of this interpretation. If we are un-
willing to yield to its authority, and still insist
upon the distinction between the facts as Divine
and the theory as merely human, we shall be in the
second position mentioned, that of those who recog-
nize a supernatural revelation in a series of facts,
but who reduce the whole doctrinal content of
Christianity, as contained in the Bible, to human
reflexion upon these facts (see Rothe, Zar Dog-
matik, pp. 54-120; Weiss, Bibl. Theol. des NT*,
81 ὁ, also note 3on p. 4. For other instances of this
see Warfield, art. ‘ Revelation’ in Johnson’s Encycl.
vol. vii. p. 79). But this position is not a logical
one. For it is not the account which the Scripture
writers give of their interpretation of the facts of
Christianity. They claim a direct supernaturalism
in the communication to them of truth. Hence, if
by reason of an anti-supernaturalistic philosophy
we reject this claim, and regard their interpreta-
tion of the facts as relative and conditioned by the
conceptions of the time, we shall also be led logic-
ally to reject their statements as to the occurrence
of supernatural facts. The consequence of this
will be to regard the facts of Christianity, 1.6. its
whole historical basis, no less than the Scripture
doctrine, as the mere ‘husk’ which contains the
‘kernel’ either of rational truth or of Christian
life ; and thus Christianity will have been reduced
to a mere religious philosophy or a mystical life.
For, we are asked, can a history long past be the
object of religious faith any more than a doctrine
of a bygone age? Is not the whole of the histori-
cal and dogmatic element of the Scripture relative
and temporally conditioned? Accordingly the logic
of this position of recognizing a revelation only in
fact, is to drive us to Rationalism or Mysticism.
his is the result of abandoning the principle of
external authority in religion. But rational truth
and religious sentiment are not Christianity. If
we are to have any Christian religion, we must
have the great supernatural facts of Christianity
and an authoritative interpretation of them.
Whereas on this view revelation is only a product
of the religious life of man.
Accordingly we are brought to a position opposite
to that which we have been discussing, i.e. to the
position which does not do justice to the facts
of Christianity, subordinating them to a purely
human theory. This tendency reduces Chris-
tianity to a philosophy of religion ; the historical
element being regarded as the ‘husk’ which con-
tains the ‘kernel’ of eternal truths of reason.
This question of the importance of the historical element in
a Ἢ lity phe prominent in the 18th cent. (cf. Lipsius, ‘ Die
ee ung des Historischen im Christentume’ in his Glauben
issen), The difficulty which was felt with historic facts
Wee DOS, (5 more recently, that of attaining historic certitude.
© clearest, most undisputed fact, it was held, could not
pport or be the content of religious belief. The objection
sheretore a metaphysical, not a historical one. Hence all
positive reli
the pur reli
* It is oft oul
on the
us utter
no external avid
δὲν ἐπ ΗΜ ‘against them, and, as Denney has shown,
idea t] cuy in keeping with the context. So also Spitta’s
is admitt 1} | rls Mt 26% have no reference to Christ’s death
sacdimitted by hit to be quite differe = τυ 5
Evangelist (see Denney, The oh eect from the view of the
Death of Christ, pp. 38 and 40).
ee
FACT AND THEORY
p. 30ff.). Lessing also gave utterance to his famous saying that
‘accidental historical truths’ can never be the ground of
‘eternal rational truths.’ And he seemed to regard all of the
historical element in Christianity as ‘accidental,’ for the ideal
kernel of Christianity was just rational religious truth. In the
same way Kant (Die Relig. innerhalb ἃ. Grenzen d. blossen
Vernunft) considered pure moral truth as the abiding kernel of
all religions. Historical Christianity, he held, had clothed this
with accretions which are symbolical representations of eternal
truth. Fichte held practically the same position (see Anwei-
sung zum seligen Leben) Thus by distinguishing between the
‘kernel’? and the ‘husk,’ and by finding the former in the
truths of reason, the whole of Christianity was relegated to the
category of husk. Christianity, accordingly, was reduced to a
religious philosophy and destroyed, for it is not the product of
human reflexion. An attempt at a more adequate view of
history is seen in Schelling and Hegel, but with much the same
result so far as historical Christianity is concerned, because of
their adherence to the distinction between kernel and husk.
History is regarded by them not as an ‘outer’ ‘ empirical’
history, but as the history of God’s life in the finite spirit.
Thus the history of Christ is not important as the history of an
individual, but in these symbols faith sees the eternal course
of the Divine life. Christ’s death is simply a symbol of some-
thing which must be repeated in every man’s inner life, and His
bodily Resurrection a symbol of the return of the finite spirit to
the Infinite. Thus historic Christianity is but one of the forms,
albeit the highest, of bare natural religion, in this case con-
strued upon a pantheizing basis.
In England, T. H. Green has given a Neo-Hegelian construc-
tion of Christianity which subordinates its facts and the
Scripture interpretation of them to a philosophical theory
(Miseell. Wks.2 vol. iii. pp. 160-185, 230-276). God and man are
identified. God is the ideal self of each man. Sin is self-asser-
tion, and salvation consists in ‘dying to live,’ ὅ.6. giving up
this individualistic self-assertion. This is held to be the revela-
tion of Christianity, but no value is attached to the historic
Christ apart from the idea which He exemplified. This, it goes
without saying, is Neo-Hegelianism and not Christianity. The
claim, also, that faith which has a historic element in its con-
tent is therefore psychologically a ‘historic faith’ in the sense
of a dead faith, isspecious. Faith may have a historical element
in its content without being changed as to its psychological
character as trust in God. (For a critique of Green’s religious
philosophy see Kilpatrick in The Thinker for 1895; Rainy in
the Theol. Review tor 1899; Forrest, The Christ of Hist. and of
Experience, Lect. 8).
From the standpoint of NT criticism, the art. by Schmiedel on
‘The Resurrection and Ascension Narratives’ in Eneyc. Bibl.
vol. iv. p. 4040f., illustrates the same distinction between
kernel and husk, and the giving up of the fact of the bodily Re-
surrection of Christ. Here an anti-supernaturalistic bias governs
the whole discussion, though Schmiedel asserts that he does
not presuppose the impossibility of a miracle.
The extreme result of this tendency to give up the authority
of Scripture, and the consequent subordination of the facts of
Christianity to a theory, is seen in an art. in the Hibbert Journal,
Jan. 1905, entitled ‘The Christ of Dogma and of Experience,’
by W. A. Pickard-Cambridge. According to the author, the
fundamental error in Scripture is its identification of Jesus
Christ with the Spirit of God, communion with whom is the
essence of religion. The Apostles were confronted with a per-
sonality of ‘overwhelming attractiveness,’ and so made this
mistake. This, indeed, is Christianity without Christ. The
author’s Christ is a mere man idealized by emotion.
In doing away with the historical element in
Christianity, these thinkers have done away with
Christianity itself. This is only to say that the
great facts of Christ’s life are a part of the essence
of Christianity. The Christian religion is not a pro-
duct of human ideas, but of a direct revelation of
God to men, accompanying God’s direct interfer-
ence in the downward course of the world caused
by sin, which is a historic force. Thus, having
abandoned all external authority, we lose the fact-
basis as well as its Scripture interpretation, and
are left with a philosophy of religion. But these
so-called eternal truths are either purely human,
in which case they cannot be eternally valid truth ;
or else man’s thoughts about God must be held to
be God’s thoughts about Himself, in which case
even natural religion vanishes in Pantheism. This
type of religious philosophy may not admit the
authority of the Scripture, but it should frankly
admit that what it leaves us is not Christianity.
It is, however, simply the logical result of the
entire abandonment of the principle of external
authority in religious knowledge.
When we turn from the philosophers to the
‘liberal theology’ represented by Biedermann,
Lipsius, and Pfleiderer, we find that, notwith-
standing the greater emphasis which they lay
FACT AND THEORY
upon the historic Christ, their difference from the
philosophers is not so much one of principle as of
degree, i.e. of how much of Christianity they will
retain as kernel and how much they will throw
away as husk. This is determined largely by
their philosophical standpoint. Hence in their
case also there is a subjection of Christian fact
and doctrine to an unauthoritative theory. That
they do not differ so much in principle from the pre-
ceding philosophical solvent of Christianity can be
seen from the following considerations. Wherever
the principle of external authority is given up, we
are sure to meet with the same distinction between
kernel and husk in reference to Scripture fact and
doctrine. And whenever this takes place, the
Scripture idea of revelation has been changed,
revelation being simply the product of religious
thoughts and feelings in the mind of man. ‘This
makes it the product of natural development, and
subjects it to the laws of psychic life. Accordingly
we find that, while these theologians differ from
the preceding construction of Christianity in lay-
ing greater emphasis upon Christ and in insisting
that the essence of Christianity lies not in eternal
truth so much as in Christ Himself (see esp. Lip-
slus, op. cit.), they nevertheless regard the Scrip-
ture facts as Scripturally interpreted, i.e. both fact
and dogma, as but the ‘sensuous representation’
of rational religious truth.
Christ is probably of least significance in the theology of
Biedermann, who held that Jesus is simply the first realization of
the idea of Divine Sonship(Dogmatik, ii. $815). Whereas Lipsius,
though an opponent of the Ritschlian school, resembles it in the
emphasis laid upon Christ. Thus in the essay already cited he
says that the Christian religion is historical, and that the eternal
good which it offers is bound up with the person of Christ.
Christianity, he says, consists not in ideas which Christ illus-
trated, but in Christ Himself. But Lipsius distinguishes be-
tween kernel and husk, and between some facts and others.
Thus he says that ‘faith has to do not with single historical
facts as such, but with their religious value,’ and that ‘there are
facts about whose historicity there is little doubt, and which
are of no importance for our religious life, and there are others
about which there may be much doubt, and yet, as sensuous
representations of religious truths, they are of the greatest value.’
Obviously, if facts about whose occurrence there is doubt are of
such importance as ‘sensuous representations’ of religious
truth, the really essential thing is the rational truth which they
are supposed to represent. And this is actually the case with
Lipsius’ treatment of the great Christian facts. Thus the Cross
is ‘the symbol of the eternal truth that the old man in us must
die, in order that man be born of God’ (p. 138), though Lipsius
does recognize in Christ’s death more than a mere symbol
(p. 139). At the same time the all-important thing is the idea
symbolized. So also the Resurrection of Christ need not be
true in its literal Scriptural form, but at the same time it
symbolizes the truth of the entrance of Christ into the heavenly
world. The ‘form’ in which we conceive it is expressly said to
be of no importance. This is sufficient to show the complete
subordination of Christian fact to philosophic theory in this
movement. But not only are the great facts of Christianity
put into the category of ‘husk.’ The dogmatic interpretation
of them in the Scripture is also regarded as the external null
or symbol of rational truth. For, unlike the Ritschlian school,
who hold that the Greek influence is largely later than the NT
writings, the liberal theology carries this influence, and conse-
quently the critical process of separating the kernel of truth
from its husk, back into the NT. Thus Pfleiderer (Glaubens- τι.
Sittenlehre, p. 4) says that it is the business of Dogmatics to
‘work over critically’ the Scripture as well as the Church
dogma in order to reach its abiding truth. The Scripture
doctrine is said to contain a ‘sensuous’ element which is not
rational and which must be rationalized.
It is evident that the principle of external
authority in religious knowledge having been
abandoned by this school also, the historic facts
of Christianity as well as the Scripture interpreta-
tion are given up. Again, facts are subordinated
to a human theory, and we have left a religious
philosophy.
The subjection of the Scripture facts and doc-
trines to a subjective norm has taken also a more
mystical form. This, indeed, is a natural conse-
quence of the attempt to find a permanent basis
for religious knowledge after the principle of ex-
ternal authority has been given up. For this
kernel of rational truth seems to differ with each
OS Se ee Ὁ Ξ ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΖ
FACT AND THEORY
theologian, and does not afford that permanency
which should characterize the essence of Christi-
anity. These so-called eternal truths are tempor-
ally conditioned just as are the Scripture dogmas.
To hold to them, therefore, is a species of dogma-
tism. Accordingly it is natural that a demand
for a truly undogmatie Christianity should arise,
seeking to be rid not only of Scripture doctrine,
but also of the rational element into which it had
been distilled.
This demand was made by Dreyer in his Undogmatisches
Christentuin, the first edition of which appeared in 1888.
Coming from the camp of the liberals, Dreyer directed his
polemic against ‘liberalism’ and ‘ orthodoxy’ alike. The liberal
theology fails to satisfy the demands of the ‘ pious heart,’ while
orthodox dogma is in conflict with modern culture. We are
therefore bidden to turn from dogma to the life of faith.
Christianity is a life, not a series of facts or doctrines. Dogma
is religious experience put into the form of concepts (Ὁ. 11). It
is therefore put into a form of relative validity, and one that
is continually changing. When these concepts are no longer
valid, they no longer serve to express religious life, and must
be rejected. The facts of Christianity fare no better at Dreyer’s
hands. He will not allow our idea of history to be governed by
any dogmatic supernaturalism, and consequently, at the de-
mand of an equally dogmatic anti-supernaturalism, he tells us
the ‘myth-forming process’ is seen in the Gospel record of the
life of Christ. Although something of external fact may remain,
we can find no religious certitude in any historic fact, and are
told to fall back on Christ's holy character, which is exalted
above all the changes of theological science and historical criti-
cism. This arouses life in us, and this life is the essence of
Christianity, which is a life, not fact or doctrine.* A some-
what similar position has been taken in France by A. Sabatier.t
His idea is that religion is life, not doctrine. External autho-
rity, whether of Scripture or the Church, kills religion. The
essential thing in religion is life.. But this life must express
itself outwardly in institutions and symbols. Christian doctrines
are but symbols of Christian life. They are higher than those
of other religions because the life is higher The essence of
Christianity, therefore, is neither a series of facts nor a sum of
dogmas, but a spiritual life.
We have not space to show the inconsistency of
Dreyer’s supposed escape from historical criticism,
when he falls back on the inner life of Jesus as the
ground of the life which constitutes the essence of
Christianity ; or to discuss the philosophy which
underlies Sabatier’s books. We can only stop to
indicate briefly that when we have separated
Christianity from all external facts and have made
its doctrinal content entirely the product of the
religious life, we have done away with Christianity,
because we have done away with all that distin-
guishes it from natural religion. Of course it is
true that Christianity is a life hid with Christ in
God. It is also true that Christian doctrine can
never produce Christian life. St. Paul has taught
us this. Man is dead in sin, and the revelation of
Divine truth in the Bible will fail to produce
spiritual apprehension or life ; for ‘the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit’ (1 Co 24).
These great truths are emphasized in the Re-
formed Theology. But the type of thought we
are discussing means that the essence of Christi-
anity consists in a life which precedes and is inde-
pendent of facts and doctrines, and that doctrine
*In some respects Dreyer’s position resembles that of the
Ritschlians. Thus, e.g., Kaftanin his Glawbe τι. Dogma replied
to Dreyer that instead of an undogmatic Christianity we need
a ‘new dogma’ which grows out of Christian faith. Dreyer re-
joined, in a later edition of his book, that he admitted a ‘ science
of faith’ (Glaubenslehre), and so did not differ from Kaftan.
Kaftan again replied, saying that Dreyer held that this science
of faith contained a symbolic element, and was only of relative
validity. This seems to be the most essential point of difference
between Dreyer and Kaftan, viz., the latter claims absolute
validity for dogmatics as ‘the science of faith,’ while the former
admits a relative element in this ‘science of faith’ which he
refuses to call a dogma. Dreyer’s view of the inner life of
Christ, as independent of historical criticism, and as the source
of Christian life, resembles that of Herrmann in his Verkehr des
Christen mit Gott. But Dreyer is a mystic, while Herrmann is
not. Seealso, Dreyer, Zur undoqm. Glaubensl. [posthum.], 1901.
t Esquisse dune Phil. de la Relig. @apres la Psych. et U His-
toire, 1897 [also Eng. tr. 1897]. This book includes a lecture,
‘The Vitality of Christian Dogmas,’ published separately [also
Eng. tr.]; also Les Religions d’ Autorité et la Religion del’ Esprit,
1900 [also Eng. tr.].
FACT AND THEORY
566
is the product of life. Thus to eliminate fact and
doctrine from Christianity is to leave nothing but
bare natural religious sentiment. And it is a
mistake to suppose that Christianity is the product
of the religious sentiment (see Wartield, The Rigit
of Syst. Theol.). It is nomore the product of this
than it is of rational reflexion.
Furthermore, there is now left no basis for the
affirmation that Christianity is the final religion,
and its doctrine absolute truth. For we can never
be sure that Christian life may not reach higher
levels and embody itself in more elevated doctrinal
symbols. Writers of this type might and do reply
to this, that, even apart from fact and doctrine, the
Christian life is not the bare religious sentiment,
but the product of God’s Spirit, and, that it is
therefore the true life, and its doctrinal product
final truth. But when they affirm this, they
abandon their position. For it cannot be proved
that this life is the true life if the norm of truth
be drawn from the life itself. We believe that
Christian life is the true life because of a fact and
a doctrine independent of this life, viz. that it
ywroceeds from the regenerating activity of the
foly Spirit. But in affirming this we have as-
serted a great fact as well as a doctrine, each
independent of, as well as at the basis of, Christian
life. In short, if Christianity is separated from
the great supernatural facts of Christ’s life and
from the great supernatural facts of the action of
God’s Spirit on men’s hearts, as well as from its
authoritative doctrinal content, then that which
differentiates it from mere religious sentiment is
gone. What, then, to sum up, is the attitude of
this type of religious thinking to the question of
‘fact and theory’ in relation, especially, to Christ?
This question may be answered by saying that the
facts and doctrines of Christianity have been sub-
ordinated to a psychological theory that feeling
and sensation precede and condition thought. And
as a consequence, we are left with a human Christ
whose portrait is the product of the religious senti-
ment.
At this point we are met with a reaction from
the neglect of the historical element in Chris-
tianity, and also from the demand for an undog-
matic Christianity. This has come from members
of the Ititschlian school. Thus, e.g., Harnack (ef.
his address, Das Christentum u. die Creschichte,
1896) and Herrmann (besides his Verkzhr and
Begriff der Offenbarung, see esp. his Warum
bedarf unser Glaube geschichtlicher Thatsachen ?
1584) have attempted to defend the importance of
the historical basis of Christianity against Lessing
and Kant; and Kaftan (Glaube εἰ. Dogma 2, 1889)
has written a reply to Dreyer, showing that the
dogmatic element is essential to Christianity, and
that what we need is a ‘new dogma.’ But this
demand must be judged in the light of the motive,
principles, and results of this theological move-
prae ; eae Se ee Ritschlianism
certitude in ( ‘hristianity hie is ny sea heesae
dent of the results of histori : ic ἐξ era ve
metaphysics and ἜΣ { ἜΝ criticism and of
Christian fait h that it te ; la ie i βίψο Ἢ aie
Fea isos hoe ¥ ὉΡΈΠΑΙΙ be independent in
ΠΣ Le fs ; or er to accomplish this,
agen he ‘ ΟΕΙΒΆΝ ΟΕ this school to lay
lyse ae ey ἐν : ee. in the historic
ean ential ple mi WA the ground, as
hristian faith. Thi om αἵ τε 16 content, of the
ntent. are held to be independent of
historical criticism ov jee? ς be independent of
ue an aphysics, by means of
their explan ες a ne abies dealing VW ith facts and
ere ie orme "With religious values,
) n, to the historical element in Chris-
FACT AND THEORY
tianity or the Christian facts, this school empha-
sizes its importance as part of the essence of
Christianity ; but in order to maintain its inde-
pendence ot the results of historical criticism, falls
back upon one fact, viz.—the so-called ‘historic
Christ.’ It is not meant that Christianity is
independent of the results of historical criticism
in such a sense that, if there were no basis for
their historic Christ in the Gospels, Christianity
could still survive. Their idea is that the ‘his-
toric Christ’ stands fast after historical criticism has
done its work. But since this criticism is largely
determined by an anti-supernaturalistic bias, it
is evident that the historic Christ of the Ritsch-
lians is not a Christ who is independent of histori-
cal criticism, but the Christ which a naturalistic
criticism has left us. This shows that independence
of the results of criticism is impossible, since Chris-
tianity isa historical religion. ‘The supposed inde-
pendence of its results turns out to be a surrender
of all that is difficult to defend against a criticism
which is determined by naturalism. Accordingly
Harnack says (Das Christentum u. die Geschichte)
that ‘the tradition as to the incidents attending
the birth and early life of Jesus Christ has been
shattered.’ This makes necessary the old rational-
istic distinction between ‘kernel’ and ‘ husk,’ and
so in his lectures on the Lssence of Christianity
we are told that we must distinguish between the
Easter message of the empty tomb, which is not
essential to Christianity, and the Easter faith that
Jesus gained a victory over death and still lives.
Of course, if we follow this method, not only will
all the external supernatural events of Christ’s
life have to be surrendered, but also those elements
in His inner life which involve the supernatural
must go. And so we find Herrmann in the Verkehr
falling back upon the inner life of Jesus reduced to
a merely ethical content.*
Thus the Ritschlian attempt at independence of
historical criticism results really in a surrender to
a criticism determined by naturalism. The virgin-
birth and the bodily resurrection of Christ are
given up, and we have no longer the Christ of the
Gospels, but the Christ of a Gospel reconstructed
by the critics. It is the subordination of Chris-
tian facts to a human theory.
When we turn to the demand for a, ‘new dogma,’
which we saw was emphasized by Kaftan (Glaube
u. Dogma), we find the other principle of the school
at work, viz.—the separation of theology from
metaphysics, and the distinction between religious
and theoretic knowledge. The watehword ‘theo-
logy without metaphysics,’ however, does not mean
simply theology which shall be free from a specu-
lative reconstruction as in the Hegelian school. It
means a theology without any metaphysical ele-
ments, ὁ. 6. with nothing that transcends experience.
Hence we must not only distinguish the ‘historical
Christ’ from the Christ of an uncritical tradition ;
we must also distinguish Him from the Christ of a
metaphysical dogma of Greek origin. Accordingly
the doctrines of the Trinity and of the two natures
in one person in our Lord are to be abandoned as
metaphysical. The new dogma expresses itself in
ΟὟ ΤῸ is true that both Herrmann and Reischle (‘ Der Streit iiber
die Begriindung des Glaubens auf dem gesch. Christus,’ Zeitsch.
J. Theol. w Kirche, 1897) make a sharp distinction between the
‘ground’ and the ‘content’ of faith ; and what they seek is an
independent ground of faith. But it is also true that the
ground of faith once determined becomes in their hands a
norm for distinguishing between kernel and husk in its ‘con-
tent.’ Accordingly their idea of the ‘content’ of faith is one
that fits in with their idea of its ground. Kahler (Der sogenannte
historische Jesus uw. d. gesch., biblische Christus 2, 1896) has
criticised this distinction between the ground and the content
of faith. But it is more important to note that the idea which
these writers have of Christ as the ground of faith determines
absolutely its content by acting as a principle by which to dis-
tinguish the abiding content of faith from its historical form,
and thus makes room for endless subjectivity.
FACT AND THEORY
religious knowledge which springs from faith, and
not in metaphysical propositions. Christ, there-
fore, is not Divine in a metaphysical sense as in
the doctrine of the two natures, but simply in the
religious sense that in the man Jesus we have the
perfect revelation of God, or else that the term
‘Divinity’ expresses His value for the believer.
This latter is Ritschl’s position, and members of the
school who have taken a more positive: attitude
than Ritschl have fallen short of asserting Christ’s
Divinity in any metaphysical sense (cf. Kaftan,
Dogmatik ; Lobstein, Lehre v. d. ubernat. Geburt
Christi. Harnack, op. cit., and H. Schultz, Lehre
φ. εἰ. Gottheit Christi, occupy much the same posi-
tion as Ritschl).
We must conclude that in the Ritschlian theol-
ogy we have again the subordination of the great
Christian facts and dogmas to a phenomenalistic
philosophy and a historical criticism subject to a
naturalistic bias. This amounts to their subjec-
tion to a human theory. For the fundamental
question is—Upon what does this theology rest?
Has it a more objective basis than rationalism and
mysticism? It seeks to base revelation on Christ.
The source of its dogma is not the individual
Christian consciousness but the Christian life, or
the revelation of God portrayed in the Bible. But
its Christ is a human Christ who can give no abso-
lute revelation of God; and the Scripture is not
regarded as authoritative in any objective sense as
containing a supernatural revelation, but simply as
the record of the revelation by the human Christ.
The Scripture is subjected to the Christian con-
sciousness to such an extent that the Christian
doctrines are not to be taken directly from Scerip-
ture as ‘external revelations,’ but only as ‘appro-
priated’ and ‘authenticated’ by Christian faith
(ef. Kaftan, Dogmatik, § on the Scripture, p. 48).
Thus the idea of revelation has changed its biblical
sense of a supernatural communication of truth,
and becomes the product of the religious life of
those who stood nearest Christ. But the Christian
life does not remove the noetie effects of sin all at
once, and consequently this idea of specie revela-
tion does not meet the demand which made a
special revelation necessary. In short, if we aban-
don the principle of external authority, we cannot
escape the subjection of the facts and doctrines of
Christianity to a philosophical theory.
The logical results of the abandonment of an
external authority in religious knowledge have
been recently exhibited in the new theological
school which follows the method of Comparative
Religion. For if Christ is only human, and the
Christian revelation not supernatural, it will be
impossible to maintain the absoluteness of Chris-
tianity as the Ritschlians sought to do. It will be
impossible to maintain that Christianity consists
in Christ and not merely in a principle of which
He is the illustration. We thus have the distine-
tion between the ‘Christian principle’ and the
person of Christ. It is the distinction of the old
rationalism, only now in quite a different form,
since this school insists that principles can never
be separated from their historical embodiment.
Therefore the distinction between the ‘kernel’
and the ‘husk’ must be given up, since the kernel
is always inseparable from its historical manifesta-
tion. All history is relative, yet not at all unim-
portant, for we cannot have religious truth except
in a historically conditioned form. Thus, while a
ereater significance attaches to Christ than in the
old rationalism, the great facts and the dogmatic
content of Christianity have only a relative value,
and are frankly given up at the demands of an
avowedly naturalistic philosophy. This can be
seen in T'roeltsch, the dogmatician of the school (cf.
his art. ‘Geschichte u. Metaphysik’ in Zeitschr. f.
FAITH 567
Theol. wu. Kirche, 1898, pp. 55-67. Cf. also Die
Absolutheit des Christentums u. die Religionsges-
chichte, 1902). Troeltsch admits the significance of
personality in the religious sphere, and that Christ
is the souree of our communion with God; but in
view of the power of development in Christianity,
he holds that it is not possible to limit God’s reve-
lation to one person at the beginning of Christian
history. Therefore the first form of Christianity,
as connected with Jesus, is to be regarded along
with later forms simply as illustrations of the
Christian principle. Thus we have again the
entire subordination of the facts and doctrines of
Christianity to the theory of the naturalistic evo-
lution of religious ideas.
We conclude, then, that Christianity consists in
a series of supernatural facts together with their
meaning ; that their true meaning is their mean-
ing for God, and that therefore He must tell it to
us ; that the noetic effects of sin make it necessary
that this be in a special and supernatural manner.
The abandonment of the authority of Scripture
for the interpretation of the facts leads logically
to the abandonment of the facts themselves, 7.e. to
their subordination to a theory which distinguishes
their accidental Scriptural form from their abid-
ing philosophical content. The Ritschlian endeav-
our to stem the tide of this logic is unsuccessful,
and the newest development in theology has cast
aside the Ritschlian claim as to the absoluteness
of Christianity and the Divinity of Christ, and
has subjected Scripture fact and doctrine to an
avowedly naturalistic philosophy. If, therefore,
we are not to lose the supernatural facts and their
authoritative interpretation, 1.6. if we are not to
lose Christianity, we must abide by the Scripture
as an external authority.
LITERATURF. — ἢ. W. Dale, The Atonement, Introd. Lect.;
Faith and Criticism, Essay on the Atonement by Horton ;
The Atonement in Modern Religious Thought, Essays by Camp-
bell, Farrar, Adeney, Horton ; Forrest, 16 Christ of History
and of Experience, Lect. viii. ; H. Bois, Le Dogme Giec ; War-
field, The Right of Systematic Theology ; Denney, The Death of
Christ, Introd.; Griffin, ‘ Facts, Doctrines, and Ideals’ in Pres.
and Ref. Rev., July 1901; R. A. Lipsius, ‘Die Bedeutung des
Historischen im Christentume,’ pub. in Glauben τι. Wissen. Ὁ.
111; A. Sabatier, The Vitality of Christian Dogmas and their
Power of Evolution, cf. also Part 3 of his Outlines of the Phil.
of Relig.; Dreyer, Undogmatisches Christentwm ; Harnack,
Das Christentum u. die Geschichte; Herrmann, Warum bedarf
unser Glaube geschichtlicher Thatsachen? ; Kaftan, Glaube wu.
Dogma; Kirn, Glaube u. Geschichte; Kahler, Der sogenannte
historische Jesus τι. der gesch. biblische Christus; Troeltsch,
‘Geschichte τι. Metaphysik’ in Zeitschr. f. Theol. w. Kirche,
1898, esp. pp. 55-67; E. Cremer, ‘Der Glaube τι. die That-
sachen’ in Greifswalder Stud. p. 261 ; Minchmeyer, ‘ Die Bedeu-
tung d. gesch. Thatsachen ἢ. den Glauben’ in Neue kirehl.
Zeitschr. 1895, p. 349; Seeberg, ‘Brauchen wir ein neues
Dogma?’ ib. 1891; W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, ‘The Christ of
Dogma and the Christ of Experience’ in Hibbert Journal, Jan.
1905 ; ‘Romanus,’ art. ‘The Historical Jesus and the Christ of
Experience,’ ib. Apr. 1905 ; Schanz, ‘Geschichte τι. Dogma’ in
Theol. Quartalschr., 1 Quartalheft 1905.
Compare also—Kant, Die Relig. innerhalb d. Grenzen d.
blossen Vernunft ; Fichte, Anweis. zum seligen Leben; Hegel,
Lectt. on Phil. of Relig.; T. H. Green, Miscell. Works, iii. pp.
160-185, 230-276; Pfleiderer, Glawbens- u. Sittenlehre, §§ on
Christ ; Biedermann, Chr. Dogmatik, ii. § 815; A. Sabatier,
Esquisse Wune Phil. de la Relig. etc., also Les Religions
@ Autorité et la Relig. de VEsprit ; Harnack, Wesen des Chris-
tentums, Lectt. i.-iii.; Herrmann, Verkehr des Christen mit
Gott., also Der Begriff d. Offenbarung ; Kaftan, Das Wesen d.
Chr. Relig., Absch. 2, Kap. 3; Reischle, ‘ Der Streit uber die
Begrtindung des Glaubens auf dem gesch. Christus’ in Zettsch.
f. Theol. τι. Kirche, 1897 ; Troeltsch, Die Absolutheit_ des Chris-
tentums u. die Religionsyesch, C. W. HODGE.
FAITH (Heb. 72x, Gr. πίστι:).---
1. Introductory.
2. The idea of ‘faith’ in the OT.
3. Later Jewish idea of ‘ faith.’
4. ‘Faith’ in the Gospels: (1) in the Synoptics; (2) in the
Fourth Gospel.
5. Some characteristics of the Johannine conception of ‘ faith.’
6. The Johannine and Pauline conceptions of ‘faith’ con-
trasted.
7. The place of ‘ faith’ in the teaching of Jesus.
Literature.
568 FAITH
troductory. | a,
he ae main τς ΡΗ which may ee poe
ouished as active and passive senses, Ψ1Ζ: {1ὴ 6 veh
“the frame of mind which relies on another, ant
(2) fidelity, ‘the frame of mind which can be reliec
on” Of these the former is the predominant use,
and is marked by a rich, copious, and distinctively
Christian development.
ὁ senses—the active and passive—both logically and
ς ΩΣ pase τὰ an easy transition from one to the other,
and are not always clearly distinguishable, or are actually com-
bined (as, @.g., in of πιστοί, ‘the faithful,’ applied to the Chris-
tian fellowship). In the OT the quasi-active sense of ‘trust,’
with the meaning ‘exhibit faithfulness 07 confidence,’ is ex-
pressed by the Hiphil ]%287 (constr. with 2=‘to believe in
reliance on or in,’ followed by the object or ground of the
belief ; with bin a weaker sense, ‘ to believe,’ the object here
denoted by ὃ being not so much that in which the confidence is
reposed, as that on the (attesting) strength of which it is
reposed in the absolute object). No noun-derivative from the
Hiphil occurs in the OT (denoting ‘faith’ as an active principle).
The substantive 398 ‘firmness,’ ‘steadfastness,’ ‘fidelity ’
(notice the passive form) is the nearest equivalent for ‘faith’ ;
but it always occurs with the passive sense, with the possible
exception of Hab 24 (‘the just shall live by his faith’).* In this
passage the active principle of trust in God seems to be con-
trasted sharply with arrogant self-sufficiency.
The Gr. πίστις (τιστεύω), seems to have followed the reverse
order of development (from active to passive). Here the pre-
dominant meaning is active ‘faith,’ ‘trust,’ ‘belief’ (in Classical
usage, however, with the slightest possible association with
religious ideas). The LXX use of the word (τίστις τε ΠΝ
usually ; sometimes ΠΣ and 72x) probably reacted upon the
Hebrew, and on this supposition it is possible to explain the
active sense which is certainly present in Rabbinical Hebrew,
and which may be seen in the late Hebrew of Sirach (e.g. 4619). ¢
In the Aramaic of the Targums the active sense is fixed in a
substantive derived from the Aphel, 87)12°7 (used in Gn 156 of
Abraham’s faith). Cf. the Syriac equivalent of πίστις in the NT
{Za28o.01.
2. The idea of faith in the OT.—Faith as an
active religious principle is relatively far less pro-
minent in the OT than in the NT. The solitary
instance in which the active meaning certainly
emerges in the Heb. substantive 7,228 has already
been referred to. But even the verb (j>xq) is by
no means common with a religious connotation.
Trust or confidence in God and the unseen are, of
course, essential to spiritual religion, and receive
manifold expression, especially in the Psalms (note
the use in this connexion of (3, Sy)$x naa with God
as object). But, as Lightfoot ᾧ has remarked, ‘it is
indeed a characteristic token of the difference be-
tween the two covenants, that under the Law the
“fear of the Lord” holds very much the same place
as “faith in God,” ‘faith in Christ,” under the
Gospel. Awe is the prominent idea in the earlier
dispensation, trust in the later.’
_ The object of ‘faith,’ as expressed (with a re-
ligious connotation) by the verb (ΝΠ) in the
OT, is sometimes the words or commandments of
God, or a particular word or work of God, or
the Divine revelation, or the Divine messengers
the prophets, or God Himself in His own Person.
Of this last usage the examples are the most im-
portant Gn 15°, Ex 1438: Ny 140 202, Dt [ER 5) }ς
Li, 2 Ch 20”, Ps 78%, Jon 35).§ Here the verb is
construed with a2. The classical instance is, of
urse, Abraham’s faith (Gn 155), which, with a
ie Instinet, has been recognized, both by Jewish
πὰ ( hristian religious exegesis, as the ‘supreme
unple of faith in its active exercise as a religious
πὶ αν εἰ
3. Later Jewish idea of ‘faith.’—In early Rab-
Par I er, POY pM paweryp ὅν. Perhaps, as Light-
Ρ >) Suggests, the ‘transitional or double
110 16 passage
pions; Heb. AIM w(I73 InN) 3
I 4 l 9016 Pa Where it is construed absolutely :
FAITH
Τὴ the NT the term ‘faith’ | binical and other Jewish literature the term for
‘faith,’ besides its Biblical meaning of ‘faithful-
ness,’ also denotes active trust in God. This as a
religious principle is emphatically praised by the
Rabbis, and regarded by them as highly meri-
torious. ‘The classical example is, as has alread
been stated, the faith of Abraham (Gn 15°), whic
became one of the commonplaces of theological dis-
cussion not only in Rabbinical circles but also in
the Hellenistic school of Alexandria,* while its
occurrence in the NT is, of course, a familiar fact.
The most instructive example in Rabbinical litera-
ture is to be found in the early Midrashie work
the Mekhilta (on Ex 14°").+ The passage runs as
follows:
‘The people feared the Lord. So long as they were in Egypt
they did not fear God, but now: the people feared the Lord, and
they believed in the Lord and His servant Moses. If they be-
lieved in Moses, much more did they believe in the Lord. From
this thou mayest learn that whoever believes in the faithful
Shepherd is (regarded) as if he believed in the word of Him who
spake and the world was. ... Great is faith whereby Israel
believed in Him who spake .and the world was; for because
Israel believed in the Lord, the Holy Spirit abode upon them,
and they sang the song: for immediately after the words: they
believed in the Lord and in Moses His servant, follow the words
(Ex 151): Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song to
the Lord. In like manner thou findest that Abraham our Father
inherited this world and the world to come only by the merit
of faith (7328) whereby he believed in the Lord, as it is said
(Gn 156): And he believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him
for righteousness. . . . R. Nehemiah says: Whoever receives
unto himself one precept (of the Law) in true faith (57,1282) is
worthy for the Holy Spirit to abide upon him ; for so we find in
the case of our fathers that because they believed in the Lord
they were deemed worthy that the Holy Spirit should abide
upon them, and they uttered the song. For it is said: they
believed in God and in Moses His servant; and (immediately
afterwards) it is said: then sang Moses and the children of Israel,
ete. And so thou findest in the case of Abraham that he in-
herited this world and the world to come solely by merit of
faith (7:28 m2iz), whereby he believed in the Lord, as it is said
(158): Abraham believed, ete. And in the same way we find in
the case of Moses, David, and Deborah that they (by reason of
faith) sang a song, and the Holy Spirit abode upon them. And
in like manner thou findest that solely by merit of faith was
Israel redeemed from Egypt, as it is said: And the people be-
lieved, etc. And so it is said (Ps 3128): The Lord preserveth the
JSaithful, making mention of the faith of the fathers... . Of
the righteous it is said (Is 262): Open ye the gates that the
righteous nation, which keepeth the faith, may enter in. Into
this gate all the faithful (ΠΣ ΝΣ 5553) enter. David sings (Ps
921): It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and
to sing praises unto Thy name, O Most High: to show forth
Thy loving-kindness in the morning and Thy faithfulness in
the nights, with an instrument of ten strings and with the
psaltery, with a solemn sound upon the harp. For Thou, O
Lord, hast made me glad through Thy works, and in the opera-
tion of Thy hand will I exult. What is the cause of his joy
here? Τῦ is the reward of faith which our fathers showed in this
world, wherewith they trusted by day and night. For thus is
it said: to show forth thy loving-kindness in the morning and
thy faithfulness in the nights. And in like manner is it said of
Jehoshaphat (2 Ch 2020): And they rose early in the morning
and went forth into the wilderness of Tekoa; and when they
went forth Jehoshaphat stood up and said: Hear ye me, O
Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem! Have faith in the
Lord your God, and so shall ye be established ; and have faith in
His prophets, and so shall ye prosper. . And (so) it is written
(Jer 58): O Lord, do not Thine eyes look upon faith? And (Hab
24): The righteous liveth of his faith. Also (La 323): They
are new every morning, Thy faithfulness is great. Also thou
findest that the (Divine) intercourse is only accorded as the
reward of faith, as it is said (Ca 43): Come with me from
Lebanon, my bride (‘ Bride’= Holy Spirit), come with me; of
Jaith shalt Thou be the familiar companion altogether (lit. ‘from
the head’).t In like manner it is said (Hos 219-20): J will
*In Philo the career of Abrahani is made the subject of
elaborate and frequent comment and allegory. Lightfoot (op.
cit.) remarks: ‘If we look only to the individual man, faith
with Philo is substantially the same as faith with St. Paul. The
lessons drawn from the history of Abraham by the Alexandrian
Jew and the Christian Apostle differ very slightly.’
t The original can be seen in Weiss’ ed. of the Mekhilta, 25b, 26.
The Mekhilta is a halakhic midrash on part of Exodus, dating
in its present form from the first part of the second Christian
century, but containing much earlier material. It is invaluable
for illustrating early Jewish ideas and religious thoughts of the
Apostolic age.
{ So the words of the original ("328 ΟΝ. Ὑ Ὁ) are under-
stood here. ‘Bride’ (773) is a mystical designation of the Holy
Spirit or Shekinah.
er —
FAITH
betroth thee unto me for ever ; yea, I will betroth thee unto me
with faith (IHOX3). Great is faith before God, for on account
of faith it is that the Holy Spirit abides (upon Israel),’ etc.
In the early Rabbinical literature ‘ faith’ wavers
in meaning between ‘belief’ and ‘fidelity (to the
Law). The former is prominent in the Apocalypse
of Baruch (1st cent. A.D.) But the latter is char-
acteristic of the later period, ‘faith’ and ‘works’
being co-ordinated or combined.* ‘ Faith’ (7,10)
in the sense of fixed dogmatic belief is quite late in
Hebrew literature (medizeval times).
In Rabbinical Hebrew, besides the nouns A3DN, AON, a
Hiphil-substantival form 73287 (= Aram. xm3°7) occurs
(Tosefta Baba bathra ν. 8). For the Gospel-expression ὀλιγό-
πιστοί a Heb. parallel occurs in Mekhilta (on Ex 151) “D1nDdD
7398 ‘those lacking faith.’ So in the Pal. Targ. (on Nu 1182)
Γ᾽ OND (‘Then rose up those who had lacked faith and
gathered the quails,’ etc.); and Gen. Rab. § 32, 7AMN ΣΡ ‘men
of little faith’ (an exact parallel). In the Mishna, Sota ix. 12,
the decline of the world is ascribed to the disappearance of
‘men of faith’ (7328 102).
ἃ, ‘Faith’ in the Gospels. —The terms for
‘faith’ and ‘believe’ in contrast with those of
the OT are characteristic of the whole NT lan-
guage, and occur almost entirely with a directly
religious connotation. In Philo the religious con-
tent of the terms had decidedly been heightened,
but suffered from a certain vagueness in the con-
ception of the object of faith, due to his trans-
cendental philosophy. Faith, in Philo’s conception,
rests rather upon the abstract Divinity than upon
the personal God of grace and salvation, and is
rather the fruit and crown of righteousness than
its antecedent. In the NT it is all-important to
distinguish the different connotations of the terms
according as the object is (α) God ; (4) the promises
of God ; (c) Christ ; (6) some particular utterance,
claim, or promise of God or Christ.
‘The last of
these senses is the one most common in the Syn-
optic Gospels.’ +
(1) In the Synoptics.—In its active sense of
‘faith,’ πίστις usually means here belief or trust in
God or God’s power as manifested in Christ (the
so-called ‘miracle-faith’).t The response of faith
conditions the granting of relief to those in bodily
distress (Mk 5% ||, 10°? ||), the effect being propor-
tionate to the degree of faith exercised (Mt 95
‘ According to your faith [kara τὴν πίστιν ὑμῶν] be it
done unto you’; οἵ. 158, Lk 79: ; and for degrees
of faith see Mt 8° ||, Lk 175 ete.).
nexion Mt 13% is instructive. We are told that
‘He did not many mighty works there [‘in his
own country,’ Nazareth] because of their unbelief’
(‘lack of faith,’ ἀπιστίαν) ; cf. Mk 66, The term
‘faith’ is also applied to the confidence of the dis-
ciple that the power conferred upon him will be
effective (in the performance of miraculous works),
Mk 11224, defined by Christ as ‘faith in God’
(v.22). Possibly, however, this passage (as has been
suggested by Menzies §) is intended simply to bring
home to the disciples the power of faith in accom-
plishing the seemingly impossible. ‘Jesus sum-
mons those who look to Him to have faith in God
when they are in great danger, or when they are
seeking with all their heart some boon which out-
ward appearances declare to be all but hopeless’ ;
the special and (apparently insurmountable) diffi-
culty here being the insensibility of the Jewish
people as a whole to the message of the gospel
* Cf. Charles’ note on Apoc. Bar, liv. 21: ‘ Faith in the Talmud
is in one of its aspects regarded as a work which, as the fulfil-
ment of the Law, produces merit.’
+ Sanday-Headlam, Romans, p. 31f. The passive sense of
αίστις (‘faithfulness,’ ‘ fidelity’) is very rare in the NT. The
only instance in the Gospels seems to be Mt 2325 (‘ the weightier
matters of the Law, judgment and mercy and faithfulness’ [zz
σὴν riot).
t Nowhere in the NT is it used of man’s faith in man.
§ The Earliest Gospel, p. 211.
In this con- |
FAITH 569
(symbolized by the withered fig-tree). Cf. the
words of Christ to Jairus (Mk δ᾽ ‘Fear not, only
believe’), to the father of the epileptic (9” ‘If it be
ae All things are possible to him that be-
ieveth’), to the disciples in the storm (429 ‘Why
are ve fearful? Have ye not faith ?’).
The words about the power to remove mountains
(Mk 11° |) Mt 217!f-) occur also in a different con-
nexion in Mt 173 (and in the rebuke administered
to the disciples for their ‘lack of faith’ in dealing
with the epileptic—a case of special difficulty).
They have a proverbial ring,* and may easily have
been used by our Lord more than once (ef. Lk 17°
‘if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye
would say to this sycamine tree, Be thou rooted
up,’ ete.).
_ In one instance ‘faith’ is used in the Synoptic
Gospels in a way that suggests the technical sense
so frequent in the Epistles, viz. Lk 188 (‘ When the
Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the
earth’?) Here ‘faith’ = faith in Himself as Messiah
and Redeemer.
In the Acts and Epp. σίστις, used absolutely, constantly
occurs in a soleriological sense=‘ saving faith.’ It rapidly
became a Christian technical term, and practically stood as a
synonym for Christianity, marking out the new religion as essen-
tially characterized by faith or belief in Jesus as Redeemer.
‘Believers’ becomes the designation of Christians ; ‘to believe’
=to become a Christian. As contrasted with this usage, the
term in the Synoptics is, to some extent, undeveloped in mean-
ing. Yet how near the soteriological lies to the ‘ miracle-faith’
comes out clearly in such a passage as Ac 316 (the healing of the
lame man at the Gate Beautiful) ‘By faith in his name hath
his name made this man strong, whom ye behold and know ;
yea, the faith that is through him hath given him this perfect
soundness in the presence of you all’; here ‘ faith in the Name’
(of Jesus) is described as ‘faith brought into being by Him’
(4 πίστις ἡ δι’ αὐτοῦ), 1 and the same conclusion results from a
comparison of the language of Mt 92, Mk 25, Lk 520 (‘ Thy sins
are forgiven thee’), as well as from the language of Lk 759, Mt
922, Mk 524.t
(2) In the Fourth Gospel the absence of the sub-
stantive (icris)—which does not occur at all—is
made up for by the frequent use of the verb (πισ-
τεύειν).
πιστεύειν rarely occurs in the NT in the weakened sense ‘to
credit,’ ‘give credence to’; only once apparently of a non-
religious act (Mt 2423.25, Mk 132!—in the warning about false
Christs, ‘believe it not’); elsewhere of assent given to some
definite act, event, or fact in the religious sphere : of believing
prayer (Mt 2122 ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing
ye shall receive); of belief in the fact of the resurrection of
Christ (Jn 208. 25. 29 bis); in God’s word of promise (Lk 14°; ef.
Ac 2627), in the declarations of Jesus whether regarding earthly
or heavenly things (Jn 312 150. Lk 2267); of faith generally in
the word of salvation (Lk 812 ‘ that they may not believe and be
saved,’ cf. Jn 17).
The usual sense of the verb in the Fourth Gospel
is a soteriological one. It expresses saving faith
directed to the Person of Christ. In some instances,
it is true, the immediate object of the faith is the
wonder-working power of Jesus (the ‘miracle-
faith’): Jn 4% (‘Except ye see signs and wonders,
ye will in no wise believe’), 11*°.§ But here also
the same remark apples as to the similar cases in
the Synoptics, that the soteriological meaning lies
very close to, and is sometimes almost indistin-
eguishable from, the other (cf. Jn 4% with ν. Ὁ and
98, and 11 with v.! and 12°). In the following
instances, however, the direct soteriological sig-
nificance is clear and unmistakable : 31:18 441. 42. 53
54 625. 47. 64 G38 1035. 26 1115 1289 1429 162" 192 9031, Of
these passages the two last are particularly instrue-
tive: ‘That ye may believe’ (1935), and ‘ These are
written that ye may believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing ye may
have life in his name’ (2051), Here faith occupies
* For the possible interpretation of the words ΠΝ M7 472
(Gn 2214) as a proverb=‘ In the mountain (i.e. when perplexity is
at its height) Jahweh will provide,’ see C. J. Ball in SBOT
note, ad loc. Cf. Zec 47.
{ Cf. also Ac 149,
t Cf. also the use of σπιστεύειν for saving faith in Christ, in Mk
942 1532,
§ Cf. Mt 818, Mk 536 928. 24, Lk 850,
=
570 FAITH
FAITH
a fundamental place. Its essential object is defined
to be the belief that Jesus is ‘the Christ, the Son of
God.’
Once again the conclusion is reinforced that the undefined ‘to
believe’ is practically a synonym for ‘to be a Christian.’ In-
deed, it may be inferred from the NT usage generally of τιστεύειν
that before the disciples were called ‘Christians’ (Ac 1126), they
were designated ‘ believers’ * (οἱ πιστεύοντες is used as a participle
in Mk 942, but as a subst. perhaps in Ac 514b ‘ And believers were
the more added to the Lord’). Sometimes οἱ τίστοι is used in an
equivalent sense (6... Ac 104°, 1 P 121, Rev 17144; cf. the use of
αιστος in Jn 127), and ἀπιστοι occurs in the opposite sense of
‘unbelievers’ (e.g. 2 Co 46 614f ; cf. Jn 2027, Mt 1717, Mk 919, Lk
941). Cf. the cognate use of ἀτιστία, ‘unbelief’ (Mk 974 1614, Mt
1358, Mk 66; also in the Epp.); ἀτίστεω, ‘disbelieve’ (Mk. 1611. 16,
Lk 2411 41, Ac 28°4, 1 P 27); and ὁλιγότιστος, ‘of little faith’ (Mt
630 826 1431 168, Lk 1228); ὀλιγοτιστια, ‘little faith,’ occurs Mt
17:0,
5. Some characteristics of the Johannine con-
ception of ‘faith.’—The fundamental conception
of ‘faith’ in the Fourth Gospel coincides with that
of the other NT writers; it consists essentially in
trustful self-committal to Christ and His salvation.
Only it is concerned less than in the Synoptics
with the appropriation of directly physical relief ;
it moves rather in the sphere of spiritual and
eternal facts, and directs itself more exclusively
to the Person of Christ. Trust in God and in Christ
are equated (14'); faith characterizes those who
recognize His Divine mission (cf. also i6”), and
they are described as those ‘who believe in his
name.’ The result of faith is an acknowledgment
of Christ’s unity with the Father (1058. 1410),
Faith (πιστεύειν) and knowledge (γιγνώσκειν) are
interchangeable ideas in the Fourth Gospel (cf. 6%
1058. 175), or rather they express the same truth
looked at from different sides. ‘To know’ (γιγνώσ-
xew) in the Johannine language expresses the per-
ception of eternal truth ; ‘to believe,’ its temporal
(discovery and appropriation. The former is there-
fore the fruit a the latter (cf. esp. 1098 ‘ believe
that ye may know’). The intellectual ele-
ment is thus the product of a moral act, and is
conditioned by it. Taith is not the result of logical
operations, but is due to the Divine working (6#
‘No man can come to me, except the Father which
sent me draw him’). Where faith is not attained,
this is due to the distraction exercised by lower and
earthly ambitions or ideals (‘glory one of another,’
54), or the deliberate choice of darkness rather
than light (315, cf. v.2!). Trust is also shown. to be
characteristic of a real faith, which does not need
‘signs, and has risen above the necessities of
‘sight’ (20°). The boon which faith appropriates
is eternal life (5%).
There is evident in the treatment of faith char-
acteristic of the Fourth Gospel a spirit of protest
against the false and exaggerated views of know-
ledge that were beginning to affect the Church.
The subtle and pervasive danger of Gnosticism,
with its dangerous glorification of a merely in-
tellectual knowledge, and its contempt for simple
faith, had to be met. This was effected in the
Fourth Gospel, ‘on the one hand by deepening the
idea of knowledge to the knowledge of experience’
(which is the fruit of simple faith), ‘and on the
other by insisting upon the immediate entrance of
every believer into the possession fof salvation.’ +
The writer of the Fourth Gospel ‘would indeed
have believers know what they believe, and who
He Is In Whom they put their trust, and what He
has done for them, and is doing, and will do in and
through them ; but this is not that they may know
these thines simply intellectual propositions,
but that they m I and know
as
| ay rest on them in fait
them in personal t Nothing is more
ay ] erience,’ 3
(=th se who had turned to Christ in trustful
liane verhay t. In such passages as Ac 244
433. 5 Τῇ 110, He 43, .
t B. B. War lin Hast ’ DB i. 836 (art. ‘Faith’
l ig D1. So art. LU
+ Wari ld. ib, ) t Faith ).
|
characteristic of the Johannine conception than
the insistence on the present experience and partici-
vation in eternal life of believers. ‘He thiat be-
Reveth hath eternal life’ (38° 574 64-54; ef. 1 Jn
31415 611-15), The inheritance of the true Christian
was not merely a future boon,—though the future
had in store for him a greater glory than that of
the present,—but the simple believer, by the mere
act of faith, was already placed on a plane of life to
which no knowledge could attain.’
It is worth noting in this connexion that ἀλήθεια (which like
πίστις is employed in the LXX to translate 73128) seems to be
used in the Fourth Gospel in the sense of faithfulness, rightness,
rectitude, rather than with the meaning of intellectual truth.
6. The Johannine and Pauline conceptions of
‘faith’ contrasted.—This is not the place for an
extended review of the Pauline view of faith, but
one or two salient points of contrast with the
Johannine may be briefly indicated. The different
method of presentation in each case is explained by
the different circumstances nnder which each was
formulated. In the interests of spiritual religion
the Apostle of the Gentiles was forced to wage un-
compromising war with Jewish legalistic concep-
tions of religion, and prejudices in favour of their
own privileged religious position, which (naturally
enough) were ingrained in the Jewish conscious-
ness, and threatened to pass over into the Christian
Church.t As against Jewish privilege and advan-
tages, St. Paul vindicated and maintained the great
principle that in the domain of salvation there is
no distinction between Jew and Gentile, and that
the Jew has no other righteousness than that which
comes through faith in Jesus Christ (Gal 37"), being
in this respect in exactly the same position as the
Gentile (cf. Ro 3°). From this certain important
results follow: (1) That ‘no man is justified by
the law’ (Gal 916 34, Ro 339), and (2) that ‘a man
is justified by faith alone, apart from works of law.’
This thesis was splendidly developed by St. Paul
in his great dialectic. The absolute sufficiency of
this saving faith is above all shown in the contem-
plation of its object. ‘It is because faith lays hold
of Jesus Christ, who was delivered up for our tres-
passes and was raised for our justification (Ro 4”),
and makes us the possessors of the righteousness of
God through Him, that there is no room for any
righteousness of our own in the ground of our
salvation (Ro 10°, Eph 28)’ (Warfield). See, further,
JUSTIFICATION.
On the other hand, the Johannine presentation is
determined by an environment of different cireum-
stances. The false emphasis laid on a merely
intellectual knowledge had to be met. Hence the
insistence in the Fourth Gospel on the true know-
ledge of Christian experience which is the fruit of
a simple faith. It is regarded as a precious and
permanent present possession. Briefly, it may be
said that ‘faith with St. John is rather contem-
plative and philosophic, where with St. Paul it is
active and enthusiastic.’ +
7. The place of ‘faith’ in the teaching of
Jesus.—Christ no less than St. Paul combated the
prevailing tendency among the Jews to rest in a
* Teaching of Jesus, i. p. 259 (Eng. tr.). God’s faithfulness to
His promises, as shown esp. in blessing His people, is an attribute
constantly insisted on in the OT.
t As has already been pointed out above, ‘faith’ was regarded
in Jewish circles as of the highest religious significance and
value ; only, in the background of the Jewish mind there always
lurked the consciousness of privilege and superiority.
¢ Sanday-Headlam, Romans, p. 32.
FAITH
position of privilege (cf. Mt 3%, Ro 2"). But the
dominant characteristic of His teaching, as reported
both in the Synoptics and in the Fourth Gospel, is
the consistent way in which He strives to draw all
faith te Himself. Even when His language is
general in character (Mk 11”, Mt 21°, Mk 9%, Lk
188), He speaks in a way that necessarily fixes
attention upon His own Person as God’s unique
representative on earth. The soteriological signi-
ficance of the so-called ‘ miracle-faith’ has already
been pointed out above. This comes out especially
in such a passage as Mt 95, where healing of the
body is conjoined with the claim to forgive sins.
That Christ is the proper object of this soterio-
logical faith is sufliciently attested even in the
Synoptic account (Lk 8! 15 22%, Mt 18° [|| Mk 951,
Lk 7%; cf. Lk 2455. 5), It isin the Fourth Gospel,
however, in the intimate discourses of Jesus which
are there preserved, that the fullest account is
given of the teaching of our Lord on this subject.
Here, as is natural, faith in its higher aspects is
consistently and abundantly set forth, as reflected
and mirrored in the recollection of the ‘ disciple
whom Jesus loved.’ In the Fourth Gospel we are
confronted with the personal testimony of the dis-
ciple who was uniquely fitted both by temperament
and by character to receive and assimilate the
deepest thoughts of his Master.
The testimony of the Fourth Gospel on this sub-
ject cannot be more adequately summed up than
in the words of Warfield :*—
“In these discourses, too, Jesus’ primary task is to bind men
to Him by faith. The chief difference is that here, consonantly
with the nature of the discourses recorded;.much more _prevail-
ing stress is laid upon the higher aspects of faith, and we see
Jesus striving specially to attract to Himself a faith consciously
set upon eternal good. In a number of instances we find our-
selves in much the same atmosphere as in the Synoptics (421f 488.
935) ; and the method of Jesus is the same throughout. Every-
where He offers Himself as the object of faith, and claims faith
in Himself for the highest concerns of the soul. But every-
where He begins at the level at which He finds His hearers, and
It is so that He deals
declaring that faith in Him is the certain outcome of faith in
their own Scriptures (539. 47), is demanded by the witness borne
Him by God in His mighty works (1055. 36. 37), is involved in and
is indeed identical with faith in God (525-38 640. 45 847 1244), and
is the one thing which God requires of them (629), and the
failure of which will bring them eternal ruin (318 538 664 823).
When dealing with His followers, His primary care was to build
up their faith in Him. Witness especially His solicitude for
their faith in the last hours of His intercourse with them. For
the faith they had reposed in Him He returns thanks to God
(178), but He is still nursing their faith (1631), preparing for its
increase through the events to come (1319 167%), and with almost
passionate eagerness claiming it at their hands Gala 11:12);
Even after His resurrection we find Him restoring the τα ἢ of
the waverer (202%) with words which pronounce a special--bless-
ing on those who should hereafter belicve on less compelling
evidence—words whose point is not fully caught until we realize
that they contain an intimation of the work of the Apostles as,
like His own, bringing men to faith in Him (1130. 21),” é
The fundamental position of faith in the Chris-
tian religion, which is so strikingly expressed and
implied throughout the whoie NT literature, justi-
fies the distinction of the old and new covenants as
the ages before and after the ‘coming of faith
(Gal 3%). At the same time the way had been
prepared for this historically by the circumstances
of the time. The more the fulfilment of Israel’s
national hopes by special Divine interposition
seemed to recede, the more stress was laid upon
the necessity of trust and faith in the Divine order-
ing as a religious duty.
LITzRATURE.—A comprehensive treatment of the whole sub-
ject will be found in B. B. Warfield’s art. ‘Faith’ in Hastings’
DB. To the literature there cited add R. J. Knowling, Ep. of
St. James (1904), p. xlii ff., 53 ff. ; R. St. J. Parry, Discussion of the
Ep. of St. James (1903), p. 43 ff. : J. R. Wlingworth, Reason and
Revelation (1902), p- 204ff., Christian Character (1904), p.
63ff.; G. Ferries, Growth of Christian Faith (1965); W. Herr-
mann, Faith and Morals (1904), p. 7ff. See also artt. BELIEF,
Dovust, JUSTIFICATION, RIGHTEOUSNESS. G. H. Box.
* Op. cit. ib.
FALL 571
FAITHFULNESS.—The quality of being faith-
ful. ‘Fidelity,’ in the sense of trustworthiness, is
a synonym; so also ‘loyalty,’ ‘constancy.’ The
thought is not primarily of belief entertained
(although that is latent); rather of right conduct
which, emanating from right motive, demands and
receives confidence and approval. Thus George
Eliot (Span. Gipsy, v.)—
‘The deepest hunger of a faithful heart
Is faithfulness.’
The noun does not occur in the Gospels. There
is, however, allusion to those in whom the quality
(πιστύτης) is conspicuous; they are the ‘faithful’
(πιστοί) of Mt 24% 25:1. 9. Lk 12# 16!°1-_where the
word πιστός has the meaning of being trustworthy in
the discharge of duty. It is their conduct, not
their creed, to which attention is specially directed.
At the same time it should be remarked that the
morirns implied (certainly in Mt 24% 2571-8) Lk
12#) is closely bound up with an allegiance owned
and recognized. It is suggestive of faith which,
because genuine, compels to loyal obedience, and
cannot but issue in works (‘ La foi qui nagit point,
est-ce une foi sincere?’ Racine). The trusty are
the trustful (cf. Lightfoot, Gal. p. 155) ; and it is
precisely those who feel themselves able to cling
to something external to themselves who are most
solicitous that their lives should be spent in useful
service. See FAITH. H. L. JACKSON.
FALL.—The various questions suggested in re-
gard to the relation of the Fall to Jesus Christ may
be treated under-the following heads:
i. The Messianic element in the story of the Fall.
ii. The Fall in its bearing on the work of Christ in (1) the
Incarnation, (2) its redemptive aspects.
iii. The Fall in its bearing on the Person of Christ.
iv. Our ae own teaching (or that of the Gospels) on the
Fall.
i. THE MESSIANIC ELEMENT IN THE STORY OF
THE FALL.—It is not within the scope of this
Dictionary to discuss the general character of the
OT narrative of the Fall. We may here simply
assume as accepted the view that in Gn 3 we have
an account, cast in the pictorial form character-
istic of the period to which it belongs, of the begin-
ning of human sin, with its attendant evils of
suffering and death. Whatever opinion may be
held as to the literary materials and composition
of the narrative, it commends itself as in all essen-
tial features a unique and authoritative record of
great fundamental tacts of human life and history ;
and its Divine inspiration is sufficiently attested
by the profound truthfulness and significance of
its moral and religious teaching.
In the midst of this story of sin and judgment
we find the first promise of restoration, and thus
the Divine purpose of redemption is brought into
association with the very beginnings of human
evil. ‘I will put enmity between thee and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it
shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his
heel’ (Gn 3”). That this utterance contains the
eerm of Messianic prophecy cannot be doubted ;
but care must be taken to make neither too much
nor too little of this element in it, and to interpret
the passage in accordance with sound principles of
historical exegesis, with due reference to the con-
text, and to the general characteristics of OT pro-
phecy. The embodiment of this Protevangeliwm
in the primitive religious tradition, and in the in-
spired record of it, is a testimony to the fact that
the Divine purpose of redemption is coeval with
the existence of human sin. From the time when
the consciousness of guilt and corruption first
dawned in the human heart, there was also present
the hope of restoration, and of man’s ultimate
triumph over those powers of evil by which he had
572 FALL
FALL
been temporarily vanquished. This is the germ of
which all the redemptive promise and prophecy of
the OT are the development. Three progressive
ideas may be traced in the teaching of the passage.
(1) Under the symbolism of the repulsion with
which the serpent species is regarded, there is con-
veyed the truth that there would be continual and
deadly conflict between the human race and the
powers of evil, each seeking to destroy the other.
(2) The hopeful element in the struggle is indi-
vated, and man’s final victory suggested, by the
specifie way in which the conflict is described—‘ It
shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his
heel.’ (3) There underlies the statement with re-
gard to mankind in general the remoter and deeper
significance applicable to the representative Man,
in and through whom the warfare was to be brought
to a crisis and a victorious issue.
The order of these points may also be taken as
indicating the line along which the full meaning of
the saying would unfold itself. It is one of those
pregnant utterances of revelation whose content is
gradually realized and defined by the progress of
events. The Messianic ideas contained in it are as
yet vague and general, yet real ; rudimentary, but
fundamental ; implicit rather than explicit; yet
enough to keep a spark of hope alive, and to inspire
faith and effort till clearer light came in the provi-
dential unfolding of God’s redemptive plan.
ii. THE FALL IN RELATION TO THE WORK OF
Curist.—The fact of man’s fallen condition, of
which the narrative of Gn 3 is the historical ex-
planation, is the raison @étre of redemption, and
thus the Fall is very closely related to the whole
work of Christ at every point. But it is with the
effects rather than with the manner or history of
the Fall that the gospel is supremely concerned,
and after the story has once for all been given at
the beginning of revelation, it is thereafter but
little referred to in Scripture, and is scarcely
ever brought into direct relation with redemption,
except in two classical passages in the writings of
St. Paul, viz. in Ro 5 and 1 (Ὃ 15. Our attention
will here be confined to those points in which the
Fall comes into more direct relation with the work
of Christ, or in which the fall of man in Adam and
his restoration in Christ serve to illuminate each
other.
1. The relation of the Fall to the Incarnation.
—The question here raised is between the two
views expressed respectively by the words of
Augustine, ‘Si homo non pecasset, filius Dei non
esset incarnatus, and of Andreas Osiander, ‘ Ltiamsi
homo non pecasset, Deus tamen incarnatus esset licet
non erucifizus.’ The common belief has hitherto
been that the whole mission and work of Christ
were solely conditioned by the Fall. But the other
view with regard to the Incarnation, maintained
by the Seotists in the Middle Ages and by other
distinguished thinkers, has of late gained fresh
currency, especially in connexion with modern
evolutionary philosophy. The relation of the Fall
to the Incarnation determines the place of the
latter in the plan of redemption, and opens up the
question whether the Incarnation was subsidiary
to the Atonement, or the Atonement a develop-
ment and modification of the Incarnation.
1.) The view that an Incarnation was, independ-
ently of sin, the consummation of God’s purpose
in relation to mankind, has been supported by argu-
ments which can here only be briefly mentioned.
t) The metaphysical argument that a possibility of becoming
; mu ave ex ste d eternally in the being of God, otherwise
near ion could have taken place. In other words, there
in God a ‘self disposition
ὃ for incarnation, a necessity
fethi l. not met hi wal wits \ ᾽ ῳ
τοι taph il) tor God, who is love, to make a per-
~~ Ormmmunication to His moral and spiritual creatures.
(6) The very conception «
f the Mediator in redemption i ies
eibeieers gates ition implies
ral relation both to God and to man, which,
ee ee
even apart from sin, would have found its issue in incarnation.
The Mediator is necessary for the perfecting of the world no less
than for its redemption, and has a cosmical significance wider
and deeper than His work as Redeemer.
(c) As Christ is necessary for the world’s perfection, the
Incarnation may be held to be involved in the ‘ eternal idea of
the world.’ This is the counterpart of the preceding argu-
ments, and is as old as Ireneus. It means that man has in his
very nature a need and a capacity for Christ, corresponding to
God’s self-communicating love, and this quite apart from sin.
(d) To base the Incarnation solely on the need of redemption,
is to make Christ a means and not an end in Himself, or, in more
modern language, to reduce the most glorious manifestation of
God for the perfecting of humanity to an expedient contingent
upon the untoward incident of sin. In Christ alone, as the
centre and end, is the highest possible for man realized ; if this
were dependent on the Fall, then sin would be a ‘felix culpa’ in
the most emphatic sense.
(e) These somewhat speculative lines of reasoning are not
without Scripture warrant. In such passages as Col 1158. and
Eph 19. 10f we have at least a suggestion of a grand Christo-
centric plan for the universe, antecedent to, and occupying a
plane quite above, the contingency of human sin. Christ is
here presented in relation to the Universe as ‘the firstborn of
all creation,’ 7 whom and unto whom all things were created,
in whom all things hold together, and who becomes also ‘the
head of the body, the Church,’ and ‘the firstborn from the
dead.’ It was God’s eternal purpose ‘to sum up all things in
Christ,’ ‘in whom also we were made a heritage’ (cf. also Jn 13,
He 12, 1 Co 86, Rev 314 etc.). Redemption is here presented as
something which forms a harmonious part of a larger plan.
Christ is at once the Alpha and the Omega, the medium and the
end of creation, the beginning and the consummation of God’s
eternal purpose.
(ii.) The commonly received view that the Incar-
nation is simply a necessary part of the work of
redemption, is supported by the prima facie teach-
ing of Scripture. ‘The Son of man came to seek
and to save’ (Lk 1910), ‘God sent forth his Son
... that he might redeem’ (Gal 4“f.). These are
examples of innumerable passages which represent
the mission of Christ in this light. But to this it
may be answered that, though historically and
actually the Incarnation has taken this redemptive
aspect, and is naturally and properly so presented
in the Gospel, another view of it, under different
conditions, is not excluded, of which, as we have
seen, we are in fact permitted brief glimpses in a
wider field of vision.
(ili.) Both the foregoing views may be united
and harmonized in what is really the truest and
deepest conception, viz. that God’s purpose is an
eternal and unchangeable unity, and every part of
it, as Wrought out in history, must be regarded as
having its proper place in relation to the whole.
It is by a misunderstanding of the absolute being
and counsels of God that we discuss at all questions
as to what might have been done under other con-
ditions. The view of the question before us which
is most worthy of a true conception of God, and
which at the same time agrees with the broad
teaching of Scripture, is that in the infinite coun-
sels of Him who sees the end from the beginning,
tedemption is wrought into the very fabric of
God’s eternal purpose, all parts of which—Crea-
tion, Redemption, Incarnation, Atonement. the
Final Consummation,—hane together harmoni-
ously as integral and correlated elements in one
homogeneous, perfect, and unchangeable unity.
The question as to the relation of the Fall to the
Incarnation thus resolves itself into that of the
place of the Fall in God’s plan of the world; and
we need not hold with hyper-Calvinists that sin
was foreordained, in order to believe that the Fall,
foreseen and permitted, enters into an intimate
and essential relation to the whole of the Divine
plan. In this plan Incarnation holds a central
place, and its redemptive significance is one aspect
of a wider relation to the world, as the means for
perfecting as well as for redeeming the human
race. This view preserves the place of Redemption
in the foreground of God’s revealed plan, avoids
the necessity of conceiving any change in the
Divine purpose contingent upon sin, and at the
same time gives the Incarnation that cosmical
"
{
FALL
significance worthy of its transcendent character.
Thus Christ is central and supreme, and the whole
scheme of Redemption is presented in a true per-
spective, more in harmony with the requirements
of modern thought.
2. The relation of the Fall to the redemptive
work of Christ.—In the distinctively soteriological
aspects of Christ’s work, we are brought at once
into close relation to the Fall. We have here
to consider (i.) the reality and general nature of
the Fall, as seen in the light of Redemption ; and
(ii.) the main points of detail in which the Fall and
the redeeming work of Christ explain and illustrate
each other.
(i.) The doctrine of the Fall is vital to the Chris-
tian system ; the reality and general nature of the
Fall, as a great downward and retrograde step in
the history of mankind, are confirmed and illustrated
by the redemptive work of Christ. This aspect of
Christ’s work, which occupies in Scripture the fore-
most place, is everywhere represented as rendered
necessary by something grievously abnormal in the
condition of the human race. The Scripture doc-
trine of sin as absolute evil; man’s universal sin-
fulness, helplessness, and state of spiritual death,
which form the very basis of Redemption; the
representation of mankind as ‘lost,’ ‘alienated’
from God, and yet capable and worthy of being
redeemed and restored ;—all this, as so abundantly
presented and emphasized in connexion with the
atoning work of Christ, affords the strongest con-
firmation of the doctrine that man has fallen from
a higher condition. Whatever may be said as to
the Incarnation (see 1, above), it is clear that the
creat outstanding fact of the Atonement, with all
the suffering and sacrifice which it involved, can
only be accounted for at once by the dignity and
the degradation of man,—in other words, by the
Fall.
(ii.) This is borne out by the more specific teach-
ing in regard to the Fall in its relation to the work
amehrist: am Ko 52" and 1'Co 157 =. “The
general and clear line of argument in the former
passage brings out the following points :
Adam’s act of disobedience involved all men in
(a) Sin, and (6) Death. By sin is here meant both
actual sinfulness (‘for that all sinned,’ v.!*), and a
condition of liability to penalty even apart from
personal transgression (v.!4). This latter, however,
is not to be held in any sense as personal participa-
tion in or responsibility for Adam’s offence, though
it is the transmitted effect of it (see below). Death
here apparently means physical death in the first
place (as in v.'4), but most probably includes also
spiritual death. On the other hand, though the
analogy is not fully expressed, it is clearly implied
that in the same way Christ’s act of obedience
brings (a) Justification and (ὦ) Life ; and in view
of the emphatic reiteration, in various forms, of the
surpassing fulness of Redemption in Miva we
may include under these terms: negatively, de-
livéerance from guilt, from sin itself, and from
death; and positively, the bestowment of judicial
and actual righteousness, and of spiritual and
eternal life.
Another question raised in this connexion is
concerned with the precise moral relationship
between Adam and his posterity on the one hand,
and between Christ and His people on the other.
Adam and Christ (‘the second Adam’) are re-
presented as standing in an analogous relation to
mankind, forming the basis in the one case of uni-
versal sin and death, and in the other of restora-
tion for believers. In regard to Adam it has been
variously held (1) that the relation between him
and his posterity was virtually one of identity ;
mankind sinned in him and therefore share his
guilt; (2) that the relation is representative or
FALL
Jederal, Adam acting on behalf of his descendants ;
and (3) that the relation is natural, the evil effects
of Adam’s fall being communicated to the race
through the ordinary channels of heredity. The
third view preserves any elements of truth in the
other two, while it best explains the facts in har-
mony with true ethical principles. The transmitted
effect of Adam’s sin consists mainly of the loss of
moral balance, an inborn tendency of heart and
will towards evil, a disability, though not a total
inability, for goodness. Though men are not per-
sonally implicated in the guilt of Adam’s trans-
gression, their condition involves demerit and
necessitates redemption.* Turning to the other
side, though we are not warranted in carrying the
analogy too far, we find on the part of Christ (1) a
relation of identity with the race through the In-
carnation ; (2) a representative or covenant relation
with His people (see 2 Co 57! ete.), based on the one
side on God’s free grace, and on the other on
believers’ voluntary acceptance of it (Ro 5'); and
(3) a vital union between Christ and believers by
which new life is imparted and the evil effects of
the Fall counteracted (Jn 15! ete.).
Christ is thus a new beginning for the fallen
race, a fountain of life and righteousness, as Adam
was of death and sin. Adam was a true ‘figure of
him that was to come,’ a type based not on mere
analogy, but on deep and real correspondences
between his relation as ‘psychical’ parent to his
natural descendants, and Christ’s relation to His
people as the ‘second Adam,’ the ‘spiritual’ ori-
ginator of a regenerated race.t
iii, THE FALL IN RELATION TO THE PERSON OF
CurIstT.—The Fall of Adam, as we have seen, in-
troduced into the nature of all descended from him
a fatal taint of sin, an insuperable moral dis-
ability. The question now before us is, How did
Jesus Christ, the new Adam, as a true member of
the fallen race, escape this evil influence? That
Christ in His nature and Person was absolutely
free from sin, is one of the clearest and most gener-
ally admitted as well as most vital facts of the
gospel. Born into the world in the line of human
descent, sharing human nature otherwise in its
fulness, how was Jesus alone unattected by the
common heritage of sin ?
The full answer to this question lies hidden in
the mystery of the Incarnation ; but an indication
of the line in which the solution lies is given in the
great fact of the Virgin Birth of our ‘Lord. The
historical reality of this part of the Gospel narra-
tive has been assailed by modern criticism, but the
doctrine still retains its place in the best philosophy
of the Incarnation, and the truth has been rather
confirmed than otherwise by impartial study of the
records. As ἃ fact, the birth of Jesus in a super-
natural manner commends itself as peculiarly in
keeping with the whole scheme of redemption. (1)
It indicates a new departure, a fresh beginning,
the introduction into the human race of a new
element, and marks a break in the normal and
fatal continuity of spiritual helplessness and decay.
(2) It suggests, though it does not fully explain.
means by which Christ could become true man and
yet be preserved from the hereditary effects of the
Fall. ‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and
the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee :
wherefore also that which is to be born shall be
called holy, the Son of God’ (Lk 1%). Those who
deny the Virgin Birth have still to explain the
equally miraculous fact of the appearance of this
single exception to the universal sinfulness of
mankind. The manner of Christ’s birth, as re-
* Note ἁμαρτωλοί in Ro 519 and ταράπτωμα, παράβασις in
vy.14. 15.18; see Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, p. 312.
t See full and suggestive drawing out of the analogy in Fair-
bairn’s Christ in Modern Theology, pp. 311-313.
FALSE CHRISTS
corded in the Gospels of Mt. and Lk., is so fully in
harmony with His unique personality and charac-
ter, that, though we cannot fully understand, we
may at least be satisfied that all form parts of one
Divine plan, and thus the moral miracle and the
physical mutually support one another. See art.
VIRGIN BIRTH.
iv. THE TEACHING OF CHRIST AND OF THE
GOSPELS ON THE FALL.—Our Lord makes no refer-
ence to the story of the Fall in all His recorded
teaching, His only allusion to our first parents
at all being the general statement in connexion
with marriage (Mt 194, Mk 10%). But the doctrine
of the Fall underlies the whole teaching of Christ
on sin and redemption, and is particularly con-
firmed and illustrated in the following points: _
(1) The universal sinfulness of man. This 15
taken for granted. ‘If ye then, being evil, know,’
ete. (Mt 74, Lk 1138). This truth is involved in the
whole character of our Lord’s mission and teaching.
See also Jn 1% 87. (2) The inwardness of sin.
‘Out of the heart come forth evil thoughts,’ ete.
‘.. These are the things which defile the man’ (Mt
1519. 20 and ||). Cf. also Mt 5?!-3, Mk 10°, Lk 65.
(3) The deep radical character of human evil. ‘Ye
must be born anew’ (Jn 37 and v.%). (4) The
hereditary disability of human nature. ‘That
which is born of the flesh is flesh,’ ete. (Jn 3°; ef.
113). (δ) Jesus everywhere indicates clearly His
view as to the original dignity and value of man.
‘What shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the
whole world, and forfeit his life?’ (Mt 1635. Cf.
Lk 15", Mt 1913, ete. ; and the general teaching of
Jesus as tothe Fatherhood of God. (6) The Fall
may be said to be pictured for us more specifically
in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15"*-), and
the corresponding parables of the Lost Sheep and
the Lost Piece of Money in the same chapter.
(7) Generally the whole mission of Christ to ransom
men (Mk 1045), to save (Mt 151, Lk 1910 ete.), and
to restore to Divine Sonship (Jn 113), is founded
upon the doctrine of the Fall and the state of ruin
resulting from it, combined with splendid possi-
bilities of restoration through grace.
LITERATURE.—On OT narrative and Messianic elements : Ryle’s
Early Narratives of Genesis; all good Commentaries, such as
those of Dillmann, Gunkel, and Driver.
On Fall and Incarnation: Dorner, Person of Christ, vol. iii.
pp. 361-369, vol. v. pp. 236-248, also the same author’s Christian
Doctrine, vol. iii. pp. 283-299 ; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics,
pp. 258-263; Orr, Christian View of God, etc., pp. 319-327 ;
Westcott, The Gospel of Creation.
On Adam and Christ: Relative sections of treatises on Syste-
matic Theology, such as Dorner, Hodge; Orr’s Christian View ;
Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology; also Sanday-Headlam,
Romans (on 512-1), and other good Commentaries ; Beyschlag,
NT Theology, vol. ii.
On Virgin Birth and Sinlessness of Christ : Sanday, Bampton
Lectures; Gore, Bampton Lectures ; all critical Lives of Christ ;
Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ; and for trustworthiness
of Luke's narrative, Ramsay, Was Christ born at Bethlehem 2
On Christ’s teaching: all good treatises, such as Wendt’s ;
and works on NT Theology, as those of Weiss and Beyschlag.
J. E. M‘Ouat.
FALSE CHRISTS.—The term ψευδόχριστοι or
pseudo-Christs occurs only in Mk 13% (ef, 136)=
Mt 244 (cf. 24°). Despite its omission in Mk. by
1), ete., it probably belongs to the original text of
the eschatological discourse. But this discourse
forms one of the sections in the Synoptic narrative
Which are specially permeated by reflexions of the
Apostolic Church ; and even after a small Jewish
or Jew ish-Christian apocalypse has been disen-
tangled from the discourse, the remaining logia
of which this forms one, require to be carefully
scrutinized. They do not belong to the primitive
tradition of Christ’s sayings. Over them lie traces
of the experie neces of the early Christians during
the latter half of the seventh decade in Palestine,
when the political convulsion of the country was
accompanied by religious agitation and moral
crises of a strange nature. The Ist cent. of our era
FALSE CHRISTS
As
was full of unrest for the Jews of Palestine.
the pages of Josephus testify, one rival Messiah
followed another, each and all succeeding more
or less in kindling the passions of the people
against the Roman authorities. These popular
leaders of revolt worked on the religious feeling
of the nation. Messianic fanaticism became un-
controllable, and enthusiasts seduced the ardent by
semi-political hopes (ef. Schiirer, HJP I. ii. § 20,
and Volz, Jud. Eschatologie, 209-210).
If the words ‘in my name’ (Mk 13°=Mt 24°)
mean ‘in the name of Jesus,’ it is difficult to
understand them. For it is hard to think of any
Christians claiming to be Jesus. Christian false
prophets there might be, and were, but we have
no evidence during the Ist cent. of pretenders to
the name of Jesus. False Christs in this sense
of the term are scarcely credible, though later
ages have furnished specimens of the type, as,
6.6.» among some of the followers of George Fox
the Quaker, who was himself accused of claiming
to be Christ. Either, then, we must suppose that
the phrase ‘in my name’ has been inserted by the
Evangelists in order to stamp as Christian what
was originally a Jewish prediction, or the phrase
must be taken as equivalent to ‘in the name of
Messiah,’ as is implied in ‘I am he.’ False Christs
would thus be equivalent to false Messiahs (so Mk
1374, Mt 24%), and the logion would be a warning
against the claims and pretensions of the numerous
impostors who swarmed in Palestine down to the
days of Bar Cochba (181-135 A.D.), their last repre-
sentative. It is in the light of this retrospect that
Justin Martyr (about 155 A.D.) quotes this saying
in his Dialogue (82. 308 C) thus: ‘Our Lord said
many false prophets and false Christs would come
in His name and deceive many ; which is the case.’
The false prophets, of course, are the heralds of the
false Messiahs; they guarantee the movement in
question by means of miracles. But occasionally
a false Messiah may have been, as Theudas was,
a false prophet as well. The Didache, curiously
enough, omits all mention of false Messiahs,
though it notices the danger of false prophets
(xvi. 3; οἷν, however, what is said in xvi. 4 about
the appearing of the world-deceiver as Son of God).
The locale of the false Messiahs (Mt 245) is
either the wilderness (cf. Ac 9198), as in the case
of Simon son of Gioras, or the inner chambers,
as in the case of John of Giscala (cf. 1 K 2030). -
alluding possibly to the current idea that the
Messiah was to remain hidden for some time pre-
vious to His appearance in public. But whether
the one or the other happened to be chosen, the
salient point is that in either case the elect are
to be kept right by a wholesome scepticism.
‘Christians, at Israel’s great crisis, were to be
saved by unbelief in pseudo-Messiahs and pseudo-
prophets’ (Hapos. Gr. Test. i. 294). The situation
would also manifest the difference between cre-
dulity and faith. Desperate situations foster an
avid appetite for deliverance, which is too often
indifferent to the particular quality of the aid
offered. But faith keeps its head. Belief in Christ
imparts a sanity of judgment which makes men
cool even in emergencies. Finally, there is the
thought that miracles of themselves are no
guarantee of Divine authority.
The allusion in Jn 5* may be, but is not neces-
sarily, to a single anti-Christ or pseudo-Christ,
who, however, comes in his own name (ef. Loisy,
Le Quatriéme Evangile, p. 410). Neither here nor
in Rev 13" 2010 have we to do with an epitome or
individual incarnation of the deceivers foretold in
the Synoptic narrative. The plane of thought is
at once later and different.
LITERATURE.—In addition to the literature cited above, con-
sult the critical editors on the passages in question; and see
FALSE PROPHETS
FALSE WITNESS 575
V. H. Stanton, The Gospels as Historical Documents, i. 125 ;
Keim, Jesus of Nazara, v. 238f.; and Bousset, The Antichrist
Legend, p. 103. J. MOFFATT.
FALSE PROPHETS.—1. For the understanding
of this expression in the NT, we must correctly
apprehend the character of the false prophets of the
OT. To earlier writers these men were essentially
and consciously false, either prophets of false gods,
holders of opinions which did not agree with the
revealed character of Jehovah the God of Israel,
or men who knowingly spoke falsehoods in the
name of Jehovah. Modern biblical science takes
a more lenient view. It does not deny the exist-
ence of such as either possible or actual (Jer 35,
Ezk 131-59), though in the matter of creed many of
them were probably ‘syncretistic’ rather than
simply ‘anti-Jehovistic’ (A. B. Davidson). The
majority may be regarded rather as men accus-
tomed to the outward signs of the prophetic cftice,
the hairy mantle (Zec 13, cf. 1 Καὶ 19”), the
methods of prophetic instruction (Jer 281°), and the
use of the prophetic formula, ‘Thus saith Jehovah’
(Jer 2955. 5: Ezk 13°), but .who had never come
under the influence of, or had failed to remain in
personal contact with, the revealing Spirit ‘who
spake by the prophets.’ Hence the message they
gave was merely one that was agreeable to the
common thought of the people, whether it.con-
cerned the internal condition and life of the nation |
It was prin- |
or its relation to surrounding States.
cipally in the later prophetic period of Micah,
Jeremiah, and Zechariah that these prophets of
smooth things, subject to no true and Divine
revelation, came to be regarded as professional
tricksters, making a living out of their false pre-
dictions (Mic 85, Zec 13°). But whether from the
desire of gain or of public favour, these false
prophets expressed the optimistic, what would be
regarded as the patriotic, view of the state and
future of their country, and have been described
as ‘nationalistic rather than false.’ It is this optim-
istic, nationalist outlook that particularly explains
the reference in Lk 625, ‘in the same manner did
their fathers (speak well) to the false prophets.’
The false prophets, as declaring the things the |
nation wished to hear, naturally succeeded in
gaining general approval and credence. This is
particularly shown in Jer 6 and Mic 2", and is
confirmed by instances, not a few, in which the
apparently unpatriotic attitude of the true prophet,
compared with that assumed by the false, resulted
in disfavour and even in persecution (1 Καὶ 22°7, 2 Ch
16, Jer 902). It was the false prophet, repre-
senting the national ‘wish that is father to the
thought,’ of whom ‘all men spoke well.’ Our
Lord therefore takes such as types of that ill-
deserved general approval which may be won by
flattery, by concealment of the truth, by the
denying or minimizing of danger and of retribu- |
tion: methods denied to those who ‘are of the |
truth.’ This view of false prophecy as the saying
of things men wish to hear ‘for the hire of wrong-
doing,’ is to be discerned in 2 P 2°, where the false
prophet is the analogue of the false teacher, him-
self guilty of ‘lascivious doings’ (cf. vv. for the
character of this teaching).
2. The false prophets in the Christian Church.—
In the NT as in the OT, the prophetic ministry
must be regarded in its two branches as interpre-
tative of God’s mind and as predictive. False
rophets of both these classes were to be expected |
in the Christian community. To grasp the signifi-
cance of the warnings against these men, the |
importance of prophecy in NT times must be |
borne in mind. Prophecy was a more important
gift than tongues (1 Co 14), and the prophet is |
in the list of officers associated with the Apostles,
taking, with this one exception, precedence of all
other ranks. The prominence of the prophet may
be seen in the Didache (ec. 11), and in the part
played by him in the Montanist movement.
tence their truth or falseness, their faithful use,
or their abuse of the spiritual gift, was an im-
portant factor for the infant Church. Hence our
Lord warns against them as ‘wolves in sheep’s
clothing’ (Mt 715), and St. John at the end of the
Apostolic age repeats the warning (1 Jn 4!). In
the former case the reference is apparently to
their unethical teaching; in the latter to their
denial or misinterpretation of the fact of the In-
carnation. Without using the name, our Lord
warns also against such men, as falsely predicting
or announcing the Parousia (Mt 24°‘). In 2 P 2!
stress is laid upon false teaching of an antinomian
character, the authors of which: are called ‘false
teachers,’ but find their analogy in the ‘false
prophets’ of the OT.
LITERATURE.—Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Prophecy and Prophets’
(p. 111); Bonwetsch, Die Prophetie in apost. und nach-apost.
Zeitalter ; Harnack, Lehre der Zwolf, ad xi. 5; Expositor, y. ii.
[18951 1; Expos. Times, v. [1893] 122.
J. T. L. MAGGS.
FALSE WITNESS.—The prohibition in the Deca-
logue of bearing false witness was endorsed by
Christ (οὐ ψευδομαρτυρήσεις, Mt 1981). Originally
it dealt, not with lying in general, but with lying
against one’s neighbour, perhaps because this is the
most frequent form of falsehood (see Dale, Zen
Commandments, p. 208): Was it merely for brevity
that the limiting clause was dropped by Christ ?
or did it not rather imply a broadening and
deepening of the commandment? Like other sins,
ψευδομαρτυρίαι come from the heart (Mt 15").
At the preliminary investigation before Caiaphas,
the chiet priests and the whole council sought
(ἐζήτουν) false witness on which such a capital
charge might be based as would demand Pilate’s
attention (Mt 26°, Mk 14°); ws μὲν ἐκείνοις ἐδόκει
μαρτυρίαν, ws δὲ τῇ ἀληθείᾳ ψευδομαρτυρίαν (Kuthym.
Zig.); but the Evangelists seem to mean more than
this. ‘Hie (ἐζήτουν) illa falsorum testium exorta
copia’ (Bengel). While nominally judges, they were
really prosecutors, as they showed by disregarding
the rule that witnesses for the defence should first
be called (see Westcott on Jn 1871). Though many
false witnesses came (Mt 26°) and bore false wit-
ness (Mk 14"), yet their witness agreed not together
(ἴσαι ai μαρτυρίαι οὐκ ἦσαν, vb.), v.e. they were not con-
sistent with each other, since it was necessary that
two at least should agree (Dt 17°), and witnesses
were examined separately, not in the presence of
each other (see Edersheim, Jesus the Messiah, ii.
560). Some (Erasmus, Grot. ete.) take ἴσαι in the
sense of ‘sufficient for the purpose, equal to the
demand for weighty evidence, and justifying con-
demnation.’ The parallel words in Mt 2059: © lend
some support (‘sought false witness against Jesus
that they might put him to death; and they found
it not, though many false witnesses came’); but it
is a strong objection that οὐδὲ οὕτως ἴση is used
of the witness of those°who perverted His words
concerning thetenrple (Mk 14°"), which constituted
a very grave charge; cf. Ac 6%" (cf. Expositor’s
Greek Testament on Mk 14**),
Even the spies who constantly laid wait for Him
had caught up nothing to serve their purpose ; but
at last two false witnesses (Mt 26%; τινες, Mk 1457)
came, who perverted certain words spoken at the
beginning of His ministry (Jn 239); but their testi-
mony also was not ἴση. Taking the meaning as
‘did not agree together,’ the ditference may per-
haps be traced in Mt. (δύναμαι καταλῦσαι) and Mk.
(ἐγὼ karahvow).; certainly the perversion is evident,
since they ascribed to Him that destruction which
He ascribed to the Jews. It has been inferred
576 FAME
from Mt 27° that the rulers knew the true mean-
ing; but perhaps this is better referred to a know-
ledge of Christ’s words in Mk 8* ete. This false
witness might have sufficed ; no other charge could
be so effective before the Roman Procurator as
that of being a fanatical seducer of the ignorant
populace, who might lead them on to wild tumul-
tuous acts; while the claim that He would, or was
able to, rebuild the temple within three days
might be made to imply Divine or magical pre-
tensions (see Edersheim, op. cit. ii. 559); but it also
broke down (οὐδὲ οὕτως ἴση ἣν ἡ μαρτυρία αὐτῶν), ef.
Ps 277 35".
On the law concerning false witness see Hastings’
DBivy. 351*; Edersheim, op. cif. 11. 558. Witnesses
who contradicted each other were not considered
in Rabbinic law as false witnesses in the sense of
being punishable. The Sadducees were less severe
than the Pharisees in the interpretation of Dt 19';
they held that the punishment should be inflicted
only if the falsely accused had been punished,
whereas the Pharisees demanded punishment if the
sentence had been pronounced, whether it was
executed or not.
LITERATURE.—Besides the works cited above, ref. may be
made to Taylor Innes, Trial of Jesus Christ ; and Rosadi, Trial
of Jesus, ad loc.; Schurer, HJP τι. i. 194; Eapositor, τ. xii.
[1880] 276 f. W. H. DUNDAs.
FAME.—This term has had three meanings,—
rumour, reputation, and posthumous renown. The
last is modern ; the Elizabethan usage lies between,
or may include, the other two. Bacon, who left a
Fragment on the subject, and who loved to quote
the mythological idea of Fame as the daughter of
the angry Earth and the sister of the warring
Giants, understood by the term disturbing Rumour
—a thing dangerous to governments. Milton, who
in an early poem (Lycidas, 70 ff.) described ‘the
last infirmity of noble minds,’ in a late poem
analyzed the temptation to seek fame or glory, and
poured scorn on human judgments (Par. Leg. iii.
21-151). In the Gospels the meaning is simpler.
The term describes the spreading talk of the
admiring multitudes. It is a thing unsought, but
unrestrainable, and in no small degree disquieting
to the authorities.
We are told that early in the ministry of Jesus
a fame of Him went through Galilee and the sur-
rounding country, including Syria (Mt 44, Lk 411),
Special occasions were the restoration of a demoniae
(Mk 1%, Lk 45 and the cleansing of a leper (Lk 51,
cf. Mk 1”). The First Gospel uses the term also
in connexion with the restoring of Jairus’ daughter
and the giving of sight to two blind men (Mt 976-31),
And, finally, this Gospel tells us that the fame
of Jesus affected Herod (Mt 14! RV ‘report,’ ef.
Mk 64, Lk 97).
_ An examination of the Greek text shows that
in no two parallel passages is the same term used.
lhe term of the first two Gospels (except in Mt
9°5) is ἀκοή (lit. “ hearing’; RV ‘report’), used also
tor ‘rumours’ in the eschatological discourse (Mt
24", ΜῈ 137). St. Luke, however, eschews this word,
and in his three passages uses three others: φήμη
(lit. ‘speech’ ; RV ‘fame,’ Lk 44, so Mt 9); ἦχος
ἐν ‘report,’ Lk 457), and λόγος (lit.
(lit. ‘sound’; 1
‘A : ae arog = 3 515
discourse’; KV ‘report,’ Lk 5%). And elsewhere
each Evangelist uses periphrasis. Thus we may
conclude that the idea expressed by these terms
was ol ain indefinite character. It included, in
varying degrees, such elements as curiosity, attrae-
tion, wonder, faith, worship. :
rhese passages, taken along with others that
ke dire tly express admiration or astonishment
(Mt 77 127315 ) or that relate the conceurse and fol-
lowing of multitudes (Mk 37-9 G34. 55 10%), show that
during His whole public ministry the acts of Jesus
FAMILY
arrested the gaze of men. Not only in Galilee,
but in all the provinces of Palestine, and in cities
of Syria, men talked and speculated regarding a
new Figure that was in their midst. A few who
cherished sacred tradition believed that the Messiah
had come (Jn 141: 49 7%, Mt 164 219). Others less
instructed talked wildly as if Elijah had descended,
or the Baptist had risen (Mk 64-1», Mt 161% 14), or
some prophet of local tradition or expectation had
appeared (Jn 7”, Mt 21"). Doubtless the multitudes
that hung around Him were very mixed crowds.
Vanity and selfishness mingled with their motives.
They loved display. They desired a succession of
palpable benefits. Some had political aims or
ambitions. The majority failed to appreciate the
renunciation and pure spirituality of the Teacher.
And few were able to sustain the devotion of their
higher moments. To Jesus it was often a relief to
find a place of solitude for meditation and prayer.
Yet He acknowledged the true instinct of the un-
tutored worshipper (Mt 211%). And it is to the
honour of human nature to remember that the
common people heard Him gladly (Mk 1257, and
that not the nation at large, but the constituted
authorities and their tools—a suspicious officialism,
a proud and jealous priesthood—rejected the true
Leader and Lord of men, the Shepherd and Bishop
of souls. See, further, artt. AMBITION and GLORY.
R. Scorr.
FAMILY.—1. Membership.—Jewish family life,
while having many points in common with that of
the Gentiles, was marked by a higher standard of
purity, the avoidance of infanticide, and the con-
demnation of the selfish cruelty that in human
sacrifice gave the fruit of the body for the sin of
the soul (Mic 67). The father was the head of the
house, exercising restrictive authority over the
wife, having complete disposal of the children,
and giving his name to the family inheritance.
Although living for years in another locality, he
was regarded and registered as belonging to the
place of his ancestral origin (Lk 2).
The wife, as being legally the purchased posses-
sion of her husband, was under his law,—the bé7ah
to her δα αἷ, or rightful possessor. Hence the land
of Israel could be called the bédlah of Jehovah
(Is 624). Betrothal (Mt 118), asa covenant, was equi-
valent to marriage; it prevented the woman from
being married to any other man until she had
received a writing of divorce. Among the duties
of the wife, apart from the maternal charge of the
family, was the daily preparation of the bread .
(Mt 24"), and the carrying of water from the village
fountain (Jn 47. The desire for male children
was universal (Jn 167), as these preserved the
name and upheld the interests and rights of the
family, and in due time enlarged its circle by
bringing in daughters from other households. The
pre-eminence of the father carried with it a corre-
sponding responsibility of watching over the life
and honour, the rights and welfare of his family.
See artt. Divorce, MARRIAGE.
2. References to the family.—It was out of such
relationships that Christ drew examples that were
familiar to all, when He spoke of fathers who knew
how to give good gifts to their children (Lk 115),
of sons who obeyed or disobeyed the father’s
command (Mt 9153) ; and when, beyond the attach-
ments of unselfish devotion fostered by the sacred
institutions of the family, He set the higher claim
of what was due to Hiniself from His disciples
(Mt 105). The Lord’s Prayer was a transfiguration
of the family relationships.
3. Leligion in the family.—\t was especially in
the superiority of its religious training that the
Jewish home differed from the family life of the
See artt. BoyHoop, CHILDHOOD.
G. M. MACKIE.
Gentiles.
FAMILY
FAMILY
577
FAMILY.—
1. Jesus as the member of a family.
2. Teaching of Jesus on the family.
(a) Marriage.
(Ὁ) Position of women.
(c) Filial obedience.
(d) The family and the Kingdom of God.
1. Whatever be the force of the phrase ‘the
brethren of the Lord’ (see article s.v.), it is evident
that Jesus took His place as a member of a human
family in the fullest sense of the word. Such was
the impression of His fellow-townsmen who saw
Him in His daily life. The reticence of the Gospels
about the childhood of Christ is in itself an indica-
tion that there was nothing which so differed from
the ordinary family life of a Jewish household as
to create a special tradition about His early years.
It was not till a later age had forgotten the com-
pleteness with which the Lord identified Himself
with human conditions that there appeared the
painful attempts of the Apocryphal Gospels to |
break the silence of their Canonical prototypes.
In the one authentic account of any event in the
boyhood of Jesus (Lk 251-51), received perhaps from
the Virgin herself (see Ramsay, Was Christ born
at Bethlehem? ch. iv.), He is seen to be as others
‘among their kinsfolk and acquaintance.’ For the
rest we only know that ‘the moral perfections of
God were being translated into those unosten-
tatious virtues which constitute the dignity and
the happiness of a human home’ (Dale, Laws of |
Christ for Common Life, xi.).
When we come to the history of the Ministry,
two stages can be discerned in the change which
came over the relations between Jesus and His
earthly kinsfolk. (1) The calling of the first dis-
ciples, narrated in Jn 1, did not lead at once to
the withdrawal of the Lord from His family. His
mother was present with Him at the marriage at
Cana, and after that event He went down with her
and His brethren to Capernaum and made a short
stay there (Jn 2", cf. Mt 4°1*). (2) But when the
Apostolic band was complete and the work of
training them began in earnest, then He sub-
ordinated the claims of His family to the higher
claims of His mission, and no longer lived con-
tinually in the home of His youth. Immediately
after the final-choice of the Twelve occurred the
incident near Capernaum, when those from His
house (οἱ παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ) went out to stop Him from
preaching, under the impression that He was mad;
shortly afterwards His mother and His brethren
try to call Him away, apparently for a similar
feason (Mk 321). From this it may be gathered
that they were now living at Capernaum. From
Mk 65 it has been mistakenly concluded that they
were still living at Nazareth, but the verse plainly
draws a distinction between them and His sisters
(named, ace. to Epiphan. Her. Ixxviii. 9, Salome
and Mary), who, either because they were married,
or for some other reason, had settled down in their
native town. Some have supposed that when the
Lord left His family He dwelt in a house of His
own in Capernaum. The Gospel of St. Matthew,
it is true, speaks in a vague way of ‘the house
(910. 28 131-36 1725) but a comparison of, ¢.g., 97°
with the corresponding passage in Lk 5” shows
that it is not a house of Jesus which is meant.
After leaving the family home, when He entered
into a city, He depended on the hospitality of His
friends. It was this literal homelessness which
drew from Him the saying recorded in Mt 8” || Lk
98 ; for it is unnecessary to give these words, with
Augustine and others, a figurative sense. It is not
possible to discover the precise moment at which
they were uttered, as the two Evangelists give
them in different connexions, but they must belong |
to the period when the total failure of His kindred
for Him to dwell with them any longer. The
position given to them by St. Luke is the more
probable. According to him, they were pronounced
as the Ministry was entering upon its last stage
(cf. Lk 9%). Now in Jn 71: the Lord’s ‘ brethren’
are found arguing with Him as if He still lived
with them. ‘The incident there alluded to took
place just before the Feast of Tabernacles in the
second year of the Ministry. From this we may
accept the conclusion suggested by St. Luke’s
order, that the Lord’s home was closed against
Him towards the end of the Ministry, rather than
near its beginning, as the position given to the
saying in St. Matthew might imply. Perhaps it
is not without significance that in the next chapter
of St. Luke is introduced another home, that of
Lazarus and his sisters at Bethany, in which the
Lord was an honoured guest.
The reconciliation which the Lord’s Passion won
for all mankind was first reflected among His own
kinsmen after the flesh. We cannot suppose that
His mother had ever been parted from Him in
any absolute sense, and after His resurrection His
brethren also cast in their lot with those who
believed in Him. According to the tradition
which St. Paul received, the Lord Himself ap-
peared to James (1 Co 15’). This moment was
probably but the last in a series during which the
surrender to the claims of Jesus had been steadily
replacing previous unbelief. Such at least was
the interpretation of later days, when the story
was told that beneath the Cross (or even at the
Last Supper, 860. to the version of Jerome, de Vir.
Iilus., quoting the Gespel of the Hebrews) James
swore that he would neither eat bread nor drink
wine till the Lord rose from the dead. With his
conversion came that of the other brethren, ard
they with the Virgin are found at the opening
of the Acts (14) among those who were waiting
for the fulfilment of the promise of the Spirit.
Thus the earthly family of Christ fittingly finds
its place in the foundations of His spiritual family.
2. In the teaching of Christ, although the word
‘family’ does not occur, yet the institution is
everywhere presupposed and its laws emphasized,
as it is also connected with the first miracle re-
corded in the Fourth Gospel. (a) The pivot on
which family life turns is marriage, and this sub-
ject holds a unique place in the teaching of Christ.
On all other social topics He left no particular
detailed instructions, but only general rules. On
marriage His words are distinct and afford specitic
guidance about details. He lays it down that
monogamy is not the result of any code of law, but
a primal fact instituted ‘in the beginning’ (Mt 10).
True marriage rests ultimately upon a spiritual
basis, the physical aspect is but an accident.
This is implied in the answer to the Sadducees
(Mk 1218: No human law, not even though it
have the sanction of the name of Moses, can alter
this. The possibility of ground for divorce is con-
fined to the case of one offence (or even abolished
altogether, if we regard the exceptive clauses in
Mt 199 and 5* as later glosses on the Lord’s words ;
see Wright, Synopsis of Gospels, on Mk 10", and
ef. artt. ADULTERY, DIVORCE, and MARRIAGE).
(6) The attitude of Jesus towards marriage was
necessarily reflected in His treatment of women.
In spite of all that can be urged to the contrary,
it is clear that contemporary Judaism assigned to
women a position far inferior to that of men. The
tendency was rather to fall away from than to
advance upon the standpoint of the OT. There
woman is often found in a prominent and honour-
able place (e.g. Miriam, Nu 12?; Deborah, Jg 4+;
Bathsheba, 1 K 1), but the days were now approach-
ing when it could be said that he who talked with
to understand His mission had made it impossible | a woman was qualifying for Gehenna (Pirke A both,
VOL. 1.—37
FAMILY
ed. Taylor, p. 29), an expression in which Judaism
contrasted unfavourably even with the low estimate
of women current among the Greeks (cf. Aristotle,
Poetics, 15; Nic. Eth. vii. 7). In the treatment
which Christ accorded to women is found the very
antithesis of this harshness. This is sometimes
(e.g. Jn 24) obscured in the EV by the employment
of ‘woman’ as a rendering of γύναι, a translation
which is far from reproducing the respectful tone
of the Greek. Jesus readily accepted the help of
women, an aspect of the Ministry on which St.
Luke seems to desire to lay special stress (cf.
Plummer, Internat. Crit. Com. on ‘St. Luke,’
Introd. p. xlii). He gave them equal rights with
their husbands, implying that as far as divorce
was lawful at all, a wife might put away a hus-
band as much as a husband a wife, a doctrine
tolerated rather than accepted by His countrymen.
A like care to secure justice for women appears in
the narrative preserved in Jn 811, This story,
whether Apostolic or not, certainly reflects the
teaching of Jesus by inferring that in such moral
downfalls the crime is not always to be imputed
to the woman alone.
(c) In another region of family ethics—the sphere
of filial duty—our Lord again attacked contem-
porary Jewish conventions. Nominally, filial obedi-
ence was exalted to a high place by the teachers
of the day, but in practice it might be reduced to
a mere shadow by such vows as those alluded to
in Mk 7". By sweeping away the sophistries with
which these vows were defended, Jesus made
parental claims absolute and inviolable.
(d) The family and the Kingdom of God.—Not
only is life in a family the normal life of a disciple,
as pictured in the Gospels, but the family supplies
the analogy by which men are led to the better
understanding of the Kingdom of God. In the
First Gospel especially we constantly see on the
throne of the Kingdom the ‘Father who is in
the heavens,’ while the ideal of the citizens is to
be His true ‘sons.’ This aspect of the Kingdom
is made familiar to all Christians by the Lord’s
Prayer. In its clauses are represented successively
all the integral elements in the relations of a
father to his children, the reverence and obedience
which he expects from them, the support, for-
bearance, and protection which he extends to
them (cf. Robinson, Church Catechism Explained,
ch. 11.).. The exclusion from the Kingdom, which
results when they are lost, is exhibited in the
parable of the Prodigal Son.
This fundamental conception erects an insuperable barrier
between the teaching of Jesus and those varieties of Socialism
which aim at the abolition of the traditional form of the family
which rests on the assumption that marriage is a life-long
obligation. ‘An association terminable at the will of either
party” (Morris and Bax, Socialism) is diametrically opposed to
the Gospel doctrine. Christian Socialism, if it is to be true to
the will of Christ, must work for the removal, not of the family
but of those forces which are injurious to its perfect develop-
ment. But this does not make it impossible for circumstances
to arise in the lives of particular individuals which demand the
postponement of family claims to those of the Kingdom of God.
it is implied in Mk 1028" that the Twelve had put the following
‘f Christ before the claims of home, and the reply which the
reu inder of this drew from Jesus makes it clear that the Chris-
tian must not draw back even from this if his own special call
requires 10, It is noteworthy that the First and Second Gospels
ein to shrink from including the wife among the objects
me Fa a be renounced, but both in the parallel passage
patos 2 sewhere St. Luke inserts this also (cf. Mt 1087 with
sae). Δ} disciple is to ‘hate’ domestic claims if there is
that they may lessen the reality of his service, as
s when ‘not only have we family and friendship,
» have ᾿ (Martensen). But such a conflict of
ἢ the eyes of Christ only when devotion to
‘. ΤΆ a man cannot combine surrender to
ng oF the Gospel with the love of a wife, then he is right
ἱ nm rriec (Mt 1013), This is far from the exaggera-
} irreconcilable difference. between the love
In the life of Christ Himself the
“proportions. forthe correct view is
, Who saw in such passages as Lk 819-21 a
rand brethren of Jesus for their anxiety
I
1 Oo pa
}
SS
---τ- << ___
about Him (adv. Mare. iv. 19; de Carne Christi, vii.), but
rather that of Bengel: ‘Non spernit matrem, sed anteponit
Patrem.’
LITERATURE.—Westcott, Social Aspects of Christianity ; Pea-
body, Jesus Christ and the Social Problem, ch. iii. ; Shailer
Mathews, The Social Teaching of Jesus, ch. iv.; Gore, I'he
Sermon on the Mount, pp. 68-73 (for the teaching on marriage) ;
Harnack, What is Christianity 2 Lect. v. (Eng. tr.); Stalker,
Imago Christi, ch. ii. C. T. Dimon.
FAMINE.—Though the general fertility of Pale-
stine is frequently alluded to in the Bible, yet the
country was, as we know, by no means free from
the danger of famine, whether brought about by
drought or by the devastations of locusts and other
pests, or by the destructive hand of man. Our
Lord refers to the familiar instance of famine in
the days of Elijah (Lk 455), Τὴ order to illustrate
the truth that no prophet is best received in his
own country, He reminds His hearers that Elijah
was at that time sent not to one of the many
widows in Israel, but to the widow of Sarepta in
the territory of Sidon.
In the parable of the Prodigal Son, it was ‘a
mighty famine’ (λιμὸς ἰσχυρά) in the land of his
distant exile that helped to bring the wanderer
to his senses (Lk 161. He had squandered all his
patrimony by the time it arose, and in his distress
he had to seek a living by feeding swine. Even
thus, food was so searce with him that ‘he would
fain have been filled with the husks that the swine
did eat.’
Lastly, in the eschatological discourses of our
Lord recorded by the Synoptists (Mt 247, Mk 13%,
Lk 2111), ‘famines in divers places’ are included
among the signs of the end. In St. Luke’s account
they are joined with pestilences, and in all three
accounts with earthquakes. This portion of the
prophecy at all events seems clearly to refer in
the first instance to the approaching destruction of
Jerusalem by Titus (A.D. 70), and only in a second-
ary sense, if at all, to the final end of all things.
Josephus (BJ vy. and VI.) again and again tells
us that famine and pestilence were the terrible
accompaniments of the city being taken by the
toman army; and these were no doubt in great
measure due to its crowded state on account of
the many pilgrims who had come up to keep the
Passover. C. L. FELTOE.
FAN.—The fan (πη mizrch, the πτύον of Mt
32 and Lk 3!) was an implement used in the
winnowing of grain (Is 3074 [where it is mentioned
along with the nm rahath, EV ‘shovel’]). It was
either a wooden shovel (Hastings’ DB i. 51*;
Smith, DB i. 31; van Lennep, Bible Lands, p. 83)
or a pitchfork (Hastings’ DB iv. 509°; Eneye.
Bibl. i. 84; Mackie, Bible Manners and Customs,
p: 42). The balance of probability is in favour of
the latter.
We get no help from LXX and Vulgate. LXX
omits the word ; the Vulg. renders by ventilabrum,
which was, according to some, a shovel (Ramsay,
Roman Antiquities, p. 482), and, according to
others, a fork (Smith, Lat.-Eng. Dict. s.v.).Pesh.
has raphsho’", which means ‘shovel.’ There is,
however, the significant fact that down to the
present day two winnowing implements are used
in Palestine which bear practically the same names
as those which occur in Is 30%. These are the
midrad and the raht, and there is no substantial
reason for doubting that they correspond respec-
tively to the mizreh and the rahath. The midra,
which we accordingly identify with the ‘fan’ of
Scripture, is a simple wooden fork about six feet
long. It has from five to seven prongs, which are
set in separately and bound together with a
wrapping of fresh hide. The natural shrinkage of
_ the hide renders it a very effective ligature. The
' raht is a wooden shovel about five feet in length.
FARM
x
FATHER, FATHERHOOD 579
The winnowing of the mixed mass of grain, | nor by precept did He lay any stress on this form
chatt, and short straw produced by threshing is
begun by tossing it into the air with the midra.
This process frees most of the chaff and straw,
which are carried away by the wind (see AGRICUL-
TURE, p. 40), but a good deal still remains mingled
with the pile of grain. A second winnowing is
therefore needed, and for this the raht is used.
See also CHAFF.
LITERATURE.—On the meaning of Christ’s winnowing-fan see
Seeley, Hece Homo, ch. vi. HUGH DUNCAN.
FARM.—See AGRICULTURE, and HUSBANDRY.
FARTHING.
FASTING.—In the time of Christ, fasting ap-
pears to have been a prominent characteristic of
Jewish piety. The fasts were both public and
private. Of public fasts only one in the year was
ordained by the law of Moses, the Day of Atone-
ment; in Ac 27" it is called simply ‘the fast’
(ef. Jos. Ant. Xiv. iv. 3; Pluilo, Vit. Mos. ii. 4 ;
Schiirer, HJP 1. i. 322). The four annual fasts,
established in memory of national calamities and
referred to by Zechariah (8.5), had fallen into
desuetude, and were not revived until after the
destruction ef Jerusalem by the Romans. The
late ‘fast of Esther,’ on the 13th of Adar (Est 951,
cf. 43-16), was not at this time observed. But occa-
sional public fasts were ordered from time to time
during seasons of drought and public calamity.
They were held on the second and fifth days of the
week, — Monday and Thursday, — because Moses
was believed to have gone up Mt. Sinai on a Thurs-
day and to have returned on a Monday. They
always began on the second day, so that a three
days’ fast would fall on the second, fifth, and second
—Monday, Thursday, Monday (see Didache, viii. ;
Const. Apost. vii. 23; Epiphan. Her. xvi. 1).
Apart from these public occasions, however, many
individuals were in the habit of imposing extra
fasts upon themselves (Lk 2°, cf. Jtl: 8°) ;and some,
articularly among the Pharisees, fasted on Mon-
ays and Thursdays all the year round (Lk 18”;
Lightfoot and Wetstein, ad Joc.). Religious teach-
ers, moreover, were apparently accustomed to lay
down rules about fasting for the guidance of their
disciples (Mk 218, Mt 913, Lk 5**). The ‘frequent
fasts’ of the Jews are alluded to by Tacitus (//ist.
v. 4); and Josephus, speaking of the spread of
Jewish customs among the Gentile cities, men-
tions fasting (c. Apion. ii. 40; cf. Tert. ad Nat.
i. 13). Among the Romans a mistaken idea
seems to have been current that the Jews fasted
on the Sabbath (Sueton. Awgq. 76).
The manner of fasting differed according to the
degree of strictness of the fast. Thus, on less
strict fasts, while abstinence from food and drink
from sunrise to sunset was enjoined, washing and
anointing were still permitted. The strictest fast,
however, lasted from one sunset till after the next,
when the stars appeared ; and during these hours
not only food and drink, but washing, anointing,
and every kind of agreeable transaction, even
salutations, were prohibited (Schiirer, 11. ii. 119;
Edersheim, Life and Times,’ i. p. 663, Temple,
pp. 297-300). Fasting was generally practised in
an ostentatious manner; on this point the testi-
mony of Mt 6'6 is confirmed by the Mishna.
Passing on to consider the attitude of Jesus
towards fasting, we remark that, while on the
one hand there is no reason to doubt that He
observed the prescribed public fasts, and while He
may even have undertaken a voluntary fast of
forty days at the commencement of His ministry
(Mt 42; but see art. ASCETICISM), yet, on the
other hand, it is evident that neither by practice
See MONEY.
of devotion. His ordinary mode of life was so un-
ascetic as to bring on Him the reproach of being
a ‘gluttonous man and a wine-bibber’ (Mt 11,
Lk 7*). In His teaching He directly alluded to
fasting only twice. ‘The passages are as follow:
(2) Mt 6°18. Here voluntary fasting is presup-
posed as a religious exercise, but the disciples are
warned against making it an occasion for a parade
of piety. ‘Thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy
head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not
unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is
in secret.’ Jesus thus sanctions fasting, but only
as the genuine expression of a devout and contrite
frame of mind. Its whole value depends on the
purity and sincerity of the motive with which it is
undertaken. As for the pretentious externalism
of the Pharisees, that has its own reward.
(0) Mik 2183220" Mit: 9M ke δὴν Ὁ; Im reply, to
the question of the disciples of John and of the
Pharisees, Jesus deliberately refuses to enjoin
fasting on His followers. Alluding to a Rabbinic
ordinance that all mourning be suspended during
the marriage-week, He says that fasting, which is
a sign of mourning, would be inconsistent with the
joy which ‘the children of the bride-chamber’
experience ‘while the bridegroom is with them.’
But He adds that the days of bereavement are
coming, and then the outward expression of sor-
row will be appropriate enough. Here, as in the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus certainly sanctions
fasting as a form through which emotion spon-
taneously seeks expression. But to the form
itself He attaches very shght importance. This
is brought out clearly in the succeeding parables
of the Old Garment and the Old Wineskins. Τύ is
futile to graft the new liberty of the gospel on to
the body of old observances and practices, and yet
more futile to attempt to force the whole new
system within the ancient moulds. The new
piety must manifest itself in new forms of its own.
Nevertheless, while Jesus seems to suggest that
the Jewish regulations are not in harmony with
the Christian spirit, He can sympathize with the
prejudice of conservatives who still cling tena-
ciously to the custom of their fathers. ‘No man
also having drunk old wine straightway desireth
new: for he saith, The old is good.’ :
The allusions to fasting in Mk 959 and Mt 177! are
corruptions of the text; for similar combinations
of prayer and fasting see To 12%, Sir 84:8, Lk 2°.
The second Logion of the Oxyrhynchus fragment
discovered in 1897 commences with the words, Λέγει
᾿Ιησοῦς, ἐὰν ph νηστεύσητε τὸν κόσμον, ov μὴ εὕρητε τὴν
βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ. Here, however, the fasting
spoken of is obviously metaphorical. Another
reference to fasting occurs in the fifth of the
New Sayings of Jesus, published by Grenfell
and Hunt in 1904, but the Logion is ‘ broken
beyond hope of recovery’ (op. cit. p. 18 f.).
On the general bearings of this subject see
art. ASCETICISM. F. Homes DUDDEN.
FATHER, FATHERHOOD.—The one subject on
which Jesus claimed to have unique and absolute
knowledge was the Father (Mt 115. Yet, in say-
ing this, He evidently did not mean that He knew
all that God knows. He confessed or implied
that His knowledge was limited (6... Mk 13, Mt
921.22); and the very fact that He looked up to
God as His God is sufficient evidence that, by
knowledge of the Father, He did not mean com-
prehension ef the Infinite. The record of His life
and teaching makes it plain that His unique
knowledge of God was knowledge of the Divine
character and purpose. This was the sphere in
which He lived and moved and had His conscious
being. This was the sphere of His revelation.
-
580 FATHER, FATHERHOOD
In setting forth Jesus’ conception of the lather-
hood of God, we shall consider (1) the use of the
name ‘Father’; (2) the meaning of Fatherhood ;
(3) the Fatherhood of God in the Fourth Gospel ;
(4) the place of Fatherhood in the teaching of
Jesus; and (5) Jesus’ conception of God conpared
with that of the OT and of His contemporarics.
1. Use of the name ‘ Father’ by Jesus.—The first
recorded sentence of Jesus (Lk 2%), and that which
was probably the last (Lk 23%), both contain the
name ‘Father.’ The boy of twelve felt an inward
constraint to be engaged in the things of His
Father, and twenty years later, expiring on the
cross, it was into the hands of His Father that He
commended His spirit. Throughout His ministry
His use of this name is what we might expect
from the scene which St.-Luke’ records from His
boyhood. ‘The child is father of the man.’ When-
ever the personal relation between Him and God
is involved, Jesus employs no name but ‘ Father,’
if we except a single passage where He quotes
from the 22nd Psalm (Mk 15*4). In each of the
five prayers where the words of Jesus are given,
He addresses God as ‘ Father’ (Mt 1175-27 26° 42, Lk
23": 45) ; and in the longest of these, which includes
only three verses, the name is repeated five times
(Mt 11-27). When speaking of God in the third
person, Jesus refers to Him once as ‘the Great
Kine’ (Mt 5*), and once as ‘ Lord of the harvest’
(Mt 9338); but in almost every case He uses the
name ‘God’ or the name ‘Father.’ He never
eiploys such cireumlocutions as ‘the Blessed
One’ and ‘Holy One,’ and never uses abstract
designations such as ‘Place,’ all of which were
common in the synagogue. It is significant to
compare with this usage that of Philo, whose
commonest titles of God are abstract (e.g. τὸ ὄν, τὸ
ὄντως ὄν, τὸ πρὸς ἀληθινὸν ὄν, ὁ dv—Drummond, Philo
Judeus, ii. 20). The name by which Jesus Him-
self addressed God was also the name which He
put on the lips of His disciples. It was their
privilege to share His communion with God (Mt
6° 23°).
2. The Meaning of Fatherhood.—What Jesus
meant by the term ‘ Father’ is to be learned both
from His words and from His life. From His
words we infer that He chose this term to describe
the character of God. Thus He teaches that, as
it is the very nature of a father to give good gifts
to his children, so it is the very nature of God to
give His good things to those who ask Him (Mt
7, Lk 11%). Earthly fathers, though evil, give
to their children ; much more will God give, who is
absolutely and unchangeably good (Mk 1018). He
is ready to bestow the Kingdom of heaven upon
the poor in spirit, and to give the vision of Himself
to the pure in heart (Mt 5% 8); that is to say, He
gives the best He has to any who will receive it.
And even upon those who will not receive the
best, He bestows much ; for He maketh His sun to
rise on the evil, and sendeth rain on the unjust
(Mt 5*). Jesus exhorts His hearers to have this
spirit in order that they may become sons of the
heavenly Father and share His perfection (Mt
om"). Accordingly the term ‘Fatherhood’ de-
ibes what God is in Himself. It does not
neern merely or chiefly His relation to men,
" ares His very spirit, that which lies
elationships.
ει ry of the Lost Son perfectly interprets
neeption of Fatherhood (Lk 151-32), The
! Ἢ «does not stand for a lost Israelite merely, a
iber of the theocratie people, but repre-
I) ( ἡ
γος Whether Jew or Gentile. For, in
si the parable was spoken to justify
n of publicans (Lk: 15+ 2), and pub-
lies ΟἹ ited as no better than Gentiles (Mt
1510 und 16
FATHER, FATHERHOOD
Jesus in the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost
Coin, which are manifestly parallel to that of the
Lost Son, is perfectly general. He there declares
that there is joy in heaven over one sinner who
repents (Lk 15’). Therefore, when Jesus, in the
story of the Lost Son, says that the father watched
and longed for his son’s return, and welcomed him
at last with kisses and a joyful feast, He teaches
that the Fatherhood of God is essential, and there-
fore a fact of universal significance. It is in keep-
ing with this when Jesus, addressing the mu/ti-
tud2s as well as His disciples, said to all who heard
Him, ‘Call no man your father on earth: for one
is your Father, who is in heaven’ (Mt 23°). If we
had more of the addresses of Jesus to the multi-
tudes, we should probably have more instances of
this same usage.
Again, the very life of Jesus shows what He
meant by the Fatherhood of God, for He surely
felt that the spirit of this Fatherhood was mani-
fested through Him. He portrayed His own atti-
tude towards the lost when He drew the picture of
the father and his lost son. His brotherhood in-
terpreted the spirit of the Divine Fatherhood. But
the brotherhood of Jesus describes what He was.
He did not simulate brotherliness. It was by the
very necessity of His holy and loving will that He
was the friend of sinners. It is impossible, there-
fore, to suppose that, in His thought, the Father-
hood of God was something less than essential, a
figure setting forth His gracious relationship to
certain favoured people. As His own love flowed
out to men irrespective of all merely outward cir-
cumstances, and as He believed that He knew the
Father and was in harmony with His will, He
must have believed that God loves men irrespective
of all outward circumstances ; in other words, that
His Fatherhood is essential, and hence of universal
significance.
It is true that Jesus considered Himself sent to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel, and that He confined His labours chiefly
to them; but it is equally true that this was solely a matter of
order. He told the Canaanitish woman that the children should
be fed jirst (Mk 727), which plainly suggests that the gospel was
for all, but that for some reason it was to be offered first. to the
Jews. Moreover, He granted the woman’s request, though He
thus spoke ; and in no case did He turn a Gentile away empty
who came to Him for help. He healed a Samaritan leper (Lk
1718), and the servant of a Gentile centurion (Mt 818). There is
no indication that they were less dear to Him than were the
We conclude, therefore, both from the words and
the life of Jesus, that He called God our Father,
not because God created us,—a view common in
Philo,—or because He rules over us, or because of
the covenant which He. made with Abraham, but
simply and only because He lovesus. The abstract
statement that ‘God is love’ (1 Jn 48) is a true
interpretation of the word ‘Father’ as used by
Jesus.
3. The Fatherhood of God in the Fourth Gospel.
—The Fatherhood of God is more conspicuous in
John than in the Synopties, the word ‘Father’
occurring about 90 times as against 5 in Mark, 17
in Luke, and 45 in Matthew. Here also, as in the
Synoptics, the word is found only on the lips of
Jesus, with the exception of three passages where
the author speaks from his own Christian point of
view (Jn 118 827 133), and one passage in which he
attributes his Christian usage to the Baptist (3°).
The new feature of the subject in the Fourth
Gospel is the emphasis laid on the universality of
Fatherhood. Thus it is the world (κόσμος) which
God is represented as loving up to the point of the
highest sacrifice (Jn 3%). It is all men whom
Jesus will draw unto Himself (12%). In offering
| life to a Samaritan, Jesus feels that He is accom-
plishing the Father’s will (410. *), and a visit of
certain Greeks brought before His soul the vision of
FATHER, FATHERHOOD
Still more noticeable, and more divergent from
the earlier usage, is the employment of ‘ Father’
in an absolute sense. The extent of this usage in
John is not altogether clear. In the conversation
with the Samaritan woman, Fatherhood is plainly
universal : ‘The hour cometh and now is when the
true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit
and truth: for such doth the Father seek to be his
worshippers’; ‘ Believe me, the hour cometh when
neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall ye
worship the Father’ (Jn 4° *5), Another passage
which admits of no doubt is Jn 207 1 am not yet
ascended to the Father. But go to my brethren
and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your
Father, and my God and your God.’ It is quite
clear that the word ‘ Father’ in the first clause is
unlimited ; for, in the later clauses, He who is here
called ‘the Father’ is called by Jesus ‘my Father
and your Father.’ Two other cases of what ap-
pears to be the same use of the word are Jn 67: 15,
In about one quarter of the passages where God
is called ‘ Father,’ He is so called in reference to
Jesus, and the language is ‘my Father’ (e.g. Jn
216 517 6). Since, now, there are some passages in
which the absolute sense of ‘ Father’ is required,
and since in the majority of the other passages,
where the expression ‘the Father’ is nsed, there is
nothing which requires us to adopt a limited idea
of Fatherhood, it must be regarded as probable
that the author always employed the word in an
unlimited sense when he did not associate a per-
sonal pronoun with it. Thus the Fourth Gospel
would place a very striking emphasis on the
thought that the Fatherhood of God is essential
and universal. Such emphasis on this point in the
teaching of John was, of course, made natural by
the missionary activity of the early Church, which
had gone forward many years before the Fourth
Gospel was composed.
The meaning of Fatherhood in the Fourth Gospel
is the same as in the primitive tradition. It de-
scribes the character of God, and is expressed in
love. It is perhaps probable that the author of
the Fourth Gospel occasionally used the term
‘Father’ in a metaphysical sense (1'+78), but he
has put no words on the lips of Jesus which
require to be taken metaphysically. He often
represents Jesus as saying ‘my Father,’ but it is
unquestionable that Jesus would have every man
address God in just this way. He taught His dis-
ciples to say ‘our Father,’ which, of course, implies
that each individual may say ‘my Father.’ When
Jesus, to comfort His disciples, is represented as
sending them the message, ‘I ascend unto my Father
and your Father, and my God and your God’ (Jn
2017), He does not separate Himself from them by
claiming a unique relationship to the Father, even
God, but rather joins Himself closely with them
by the thought that one and the same Father is
theirs and His alike, one God the God of both.
The Fatherhood of God according to Jesus, even
in the Fourth Gospel, is one and ethical, but His
appreciation and appropriation of that Fatherhood |
are unique.
4. The Place of Fatherhood in the teaching of
Jesus.—In accordance with the fact that the sole
subject on which Jesus claimed to possess unique
knowledge was the character of God, or, as we
may now say, the Futherhood of God, we find that
this truth is central and determinative in all His
teaching. His conception of the Kingdom of heaven
was dependent on His conception of the character
of God. The Kingdom which He wished to see
come on earth was the Kingdom of the Father (Mt
6°), a Kingdom in which the will of the Father
should be done. Therefore the conception of the
Kingdom of heaven is not the fundamental thought
Nor was His teaching determined by:
of Jesus.
"77>? STS
FATHER, FATHERHOOD _581
His sense of the imperfections of the Law. These
imperfections He saw clearly, but not because of a
critical analysis of the Law such as a philosophical
student of history might make. He considered
the Law from above, as one who possessed in Him-
self a higher standard, a more perfect knowledge
of the Divine will. His work was, indeed, to fulfil
the Law, and to establish the Kingdom of God on
earth ; but the inspiring and ruling thought in
all His work was the truth of God’s Fatherhood.
What He teaches of man’s relation to God is deter-
mined by this truth. It is gathered up in the
thought of sonship. The lost son is to return to
the Father. His life is to be one of filial service
in the Father’s presence. And it is the goodness
of the Father that draws him back.
The Fatherhood of God requires that the spirit
of the religious life shall be love, out of which will
be born perfect trust. It invites and draws man
to communion with God, and determines the char-
acter of his devotion. What Jesus teaches of
man’s relation to man is also determined by His
consciousness of the character of God. His morality
is purely religious. The ethical life of His dis-
ciples is to be controlled by the fact of their son-
ship to God. The standard of that life is the very
auality which constitutes the perfection of God (Mt
5%). It is one and the same quality that makes
Him the Father and makes man His son. Thus
the entire teaching of Jesus is but the interpreta-
tion of the fact of God’s Fatherhood. This is the
sun in His heaven which lights and warms the
broad field of human life.
5. Jesus’ conception of God compared with that
of the OT, and with views of His contemporaries.—
The new revelation which Jesus gave of the char-
acter of God was put into a term which had long
been applied to Him in Israel. The first of the
great prerogatives of the Jewish people which are
enumerated by St. Paul is the adoption (Ro 92),
that is, the appointment of Israel to be in a peculiar
sense God’s son. This thought was derived from
the OT. God’s message to Pharaoh by Moses in-
volved a paternal relation to Israel, for Moses was
to say in God’s name, ‘Israel is my son, my first-
born’ (Ex 4”). Again, Deuteronomy. represents
Moses as saying to the people, ‘As aman chasteneth
his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee’ (Dt
8° 32°); and the Lord says in Hosea that when
Israel was a child He loved him and called His son
out of Egypt (Hos 11! 119). In these passages, and
in a few more, God is thought of as a Father to
the people of Israel as a whole; and He is the
Father of Israel because He made them a naticn
and established them by His mighty power (Dt 32").
So far His Fatherhood is wholly national. There
are, however, other passages in which we have an
individualizing of the thought of Fatherhood.
Thus the Lord says of the theocratic descendant,
of David, ‘I will be his father, and he shall be my
son’ (28 74); and the Messianic king puts the
decree of Jehovah concerning himselt in these
words, ‘Thou art my son; this day have I be-
gotten thee’ (Ps 27). There is also an individual-
izing of God’s Fatherhood with reference to other
persons, for the Psalter calls Him the Father of
the fatherless; and His pity for those who fear
Him is like the pity of a father for his children
(Ps 68? 103°). Yet in all these passages we see only
the relation of God to His chosen people, or to a
particular class among them, or to His chosen
king. ‘Father’ is a word of relation, not yet a
description of God’s very character. It marks an
advance upon that conception of Fatherhood which
is derived from the fact of creation, but it is still
far removed from the view of Jesus. The OT
gave to Jesus the name ‘ Father’ for God, but He
filled it with a new content,
FATHERS
When we come down from the OT to the time
of Jesus, we find among the Jews a conception of
God that is far more widely unlike that of the
gospel, and which by contrast serves to bring out
the thought of Jesus into strong relief. This Jewish
conception of God was based on the traditional
interpretation of the Law, not on the spiritual
teaching of the Prophets. God was put further
and further away ; the conception of Him became
increasingly abstract and transcendental.
Even as early as the translation of the OT into Greek (8rd
cent. B.c.) this tendency towards a more abstract conception of
God is manifest. The translators sought to remove the thought
that God had come into actual contact with men. They do
not, with Ex 153, call God a ‘man of war,’ but render the pas-
sage by ‘the Lord who makes war.’ Moses no longer goes up
‘to God in the mount,’ as the original reads (Ex 19%), but he
goes up ‘to the mount of God.’ Moses and those with him did
not see the God of Israel (Ex 249-19), but they saw the place
where He stood. ς
Asin the Greek translation of the OT, so in the Targums of
Onkelos and Jonathan (1st cent. B.c.) appears the tendency to
safeguard the holiness of God by removing Him far from men.
An illustration may be cited from Gn 188. It is said there that
the heavenly visitants ate of the repast which Abraham had
provided, but Onkelos changes it to ‘it seemed to him as though
they ate.’ Such was the method of the Targumists. With the
removal of God far from men there came to be associated in the
course of time an elaborate doctrine of angels—a natural if
not necessary correlate of the transcendental conception of
God.
But though the scribes removed God far from
contact with man and the world, their conception
of Him was unspiritual.
He is pictured in the Talmud of Jerusalem as a great Rabbi.
He studies the Law three hours each day, and observes all its
ordinances. He keeps the Sabbath. He makes vows, and on
their accomplishment He is released by the heavenly Sanhedrin.
He also fulfils the injunction to rise up before the hoary head
(see Gfrorer, Das Jahrhundert des Heils, i. 276; Weber, Jiid.
Theol.2 pp. 17,18). Thus the external, ceremonial conception of
religion at last took complete possession of the future world,
and threw the mesh of its enslavement to the letter even around
God Himself. The prophet’s spiritual conception of ‘Jehovah
was lost ; the glow of lovingkindness which they beheld in His
face faded out utterly, and there remained a Being who was
called ‘the Holy One,’ interesting perhaps to the scribe, but
whom no one could really love.
To this conception of God the revelation of His
Fatherhood by Jesus formed an absolute contrast.
The scribes put God in the seventh heaven ; Jesus
taught that He is near. The scribes held that He
is intensely concerned with outward ordinances ;
Jesus taught that He is full of love, and cares only
for the heart of man. To the scribal mind God
was the God of scribes ; to Jesus He was the Father
of all men. The religious teachers of Jesus’ time
fell very far below the prophetic conception of
God ; Jesus rose still further above it.
For the application of the term ‘father’ to
Joseph, see artt. BirTH OF CHRIST and JOSEPH.
LITERATURE. —The works on NT Theology by Holtzmann
(Η. J.), Bey schlag, Stevens, and Gould; Wendt, Die Lehre
Jesu; Gilbert, The Revelation of Jesus; Bousset, Die Religion
des Judenthums; B, Weiss, Die Religion des NT; Fairbairn,
Christ in Mod. Theol. 440 ff. ; Dale in Expositor, v. vii. [1898]
56, 150. GEORGE H. GILBERT.
FATHERS.—The plural of ‘father’ is found in
l4 passages in the Gospels, once (in the Greek)
with no determining word (Lk 117), twice with the
article only, ‘the fathers’ (Jn 6° RV 7%), and 11
times with a pronoun: ‘our’ (Mt 23%", Lk 155. 7
>
Jn 4° 6%); <your’ (Mt 23%) Lk 1147 8 Jn 67°) ;
‘their’ (Lk 6*-*5), With one exception (Lk 117)
where it ‘parents,’ as contrasted with
: means
‘children,’ it is always employed in the sense of
ancestors,’ as in innumerable passages in the OT
(Gn 47°, 1 K 114 143! 158 ete.), the Apocrypha
and the Ps udepigrapha (2 Es 798. Ps-Sol 825 919 ete.)
. . 3
and the ] istorical Assyrian texts (Sarrant abi-ia=
the kines my fathers,’ AJB ii. 170, 172, ete.).
As early as abeut B.c. 200 the Heb. word ’a&béth |
came to have |
enuished ancestors.’
Sir 44-49 opens Heb.) :
the narrower meaning of ‘distin- |
Che long historical review in |
FATHER’S HOUSE
Let me now praise godly men,
Our fathers in their generations.
The fathers praised are Enoch, Noah, Abraham,
Isaac, Israel, Moses, Aaron, Phinelias, Joshua,
Caleb, the Judges, Samuel, Nathan, David, Solo-
mon, Elijah, Elisha, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Josiah,
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Job, the Twelve, Zerubbabel,
Joshua the priest, Nehemiah. In a sort of ap-
pendix (49446) are given Enoch (again), Joseph,
Shem, Seth, Enos, Adam. The Hebrew heading
of these chapters, ‘ Praise of the fathers of the
world,’ or, as Cowley and Neubauer render, ‘ Praise
of the patriarchs,’ cannot be urged, as it may be
of much later date. The Greek heading πατέρων
ὕμνος is of more value, as it may be pre-Christian.
Among these distinguished ancestors or ‘ fathers’
a group of three was early singled out for special
notice—A braham, Isaac and Jacob. God is several
times described in the OT as ‘ the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob’ or ‘Israel ’?(Ex 3% 16, 1 Kk 18%,
1 Ch 2938, 2 Ch 30°). In a tradition preserved in
the Babylonian Talmud (Berak. 166) it is said:
‘Only three are called fathers.’ It is assumed that
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were ‘ the fathers’ par
excellence. The group is referred to 5 times in the
Gospels (Mt 8! 22, Mk 12%, Lk 138 20°), and
probably, without the names, in one of the passages
cited above (Jn 7% ‘not that it [circumcision] is of
Moses but of the fathers’). The ‘ fathers,’ then, in
the language of our Lord and His contemporaries,
could mean ancestors in general, or the ancestors
of some particular period, as, for example, the
wandering in the wilderness (Jn 6%: °8), or an-
cestors of notable piety or renown, more especially
the three patriarchs who were regarded as the
founders of the people.
The thought that the great goodness of some of
the fathers, especially of Abraham, was helpful to
their sinful descendants, which found expression
in the phrase zakkith ’abéth ‘merit of the tathers’
so often met with in the Talmud, can be traced as
far back as the time of Christ and the Apostles.
It probably underlies the words of St. Paul: ‘ they
are beloved for the fathers’ sakes’ (Ro 11°’); and
evidently lurks in the proud boast of being the
seed of Abraham or children of Abraham (Mt 3%,
Lk 3°, Jn 8®-*% ete.). The phrase, however, is
never met with in the Gospels. The allied belief
that the holy fathers could effectually intercede
for their wicked descendants, which is distinctly
attested in some of the Pseudepigrapha (Syr. Apoc.
of Bar. 8513, Sib. Oracles ii. 330-333), is implied in
the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The
rich man in Hades appeals, not to God, but to one
of the fathers (Lk 16%). Still there is no direct
mention of their intercession in the Gospels.
The use of the term ‘fathers’ in the sense of
‘distinguished teachers of the Law, who prolonged
the line of tradition’ which has become so widely
known through the famous Talmudic tractate
Pirke Abéth or Masseketh Abéth, is unrepresented
in the Gospels, unless it is alluded to or echoed in
the title ‘father’ applied to a living rabbi
(Mt 939).
LITERATURE.—R. H. Charles, Book of the Secrets of Enoch,
| pp. 69-70, note ; Weber, Jiid. Theol. auf Grund des Talinud,?
etc. 292 ff. ; Schurer, GJ V ὃ ii. 317.
W. TAYLOR SMITH.
FATHER’S HOUSE (οἰκία τοῦ πατρός uov).—The
name applied by Jesus in Jn 14? to the eternal
home, whither He goes to prepare a place for His
disciples. To their fear lest they might never
| rejoin Him after the impending separation, He
answers that in His Father’s house there are many
abodes (uovai)—a place, therefore, for every one who
believes in Him. See art. MANSION.
The expression occurs twice elsewhere in the Gospels, with
‘ reference to the Temple, and in both cases bears an emphatic
FATHER’S HOUSE
meaning: (@) In Lk 249 the words ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός (βου,
although capable of the translation ‘about my Father’s busi-
ness’ (as in AV), are more properly rendered ‘in my Father’s
house’ (RV). This rendering is supported by the context. See
Business. The first recorded utterance of Jesus has an all-
important bearing on the question of the development of His
Messianic consciousness. His visit to the Temple, in the dawn
of manhood, awakened in Him the sense of a peculiarly close
relation to God, whom He recognized henceforth as His Father.
(ὁ) In Jn 216 the words which appear in the Synoptic narrative
as a quotation from the OT (‘It is written, My house shall be
called,’ etc.) are given as a direct saying of Jesus, ‘Make not
my Father’s house a house of merchandise.’ The Speaker thus
declares by what authority He cleanses the Temple. As Son of
God He has the right of ordering His Father’s house and casting
out the intruders who have dishonoured it.
The ‘Father’s house’ of John 14? has been ex-
plained (on the analogy of the above passages) as
the heavenly Temple, of which the Temple at
Jerusalem was the earthly type (cf. Is 6], He 9).
Apart, however, from the particular difficulty that
a temple could hardly be described as a place of
povai, the whole tone of the passage demands a
simpler explanation. Jesus thinks of the ‘house’
as a home, to which He is Himself returning, and
in which He will be reunited at last with His
disciples. The expression ‘ Father’s house’ has
already been used implicitly with this larger mean-
ing in Jn 855 ‘The servant abideth not in the
house for ever, but the Son abideth for ever.’
Theologically, the passage Jn 142% marks a de-
parture from the prevailing type of Johannine
thought. It withdraws into the future that com-
munion with Christ and participation in His
eternal life which are elsewhere regarded as
present realities. It further identifies the παρουσία
with the coming of Christ to the believer in the
hour of death (v.*), not (as in the sequel of the
discourse) with His abiding spiritual presence.
The divergence, however, does not necessarily
involve a contradiction. While maintaining that
Life is given in the present, St. John looks to a
future in which it will become fully manifest
(cf. 578: 29 69 ete.). For the believer, as for Christ
Himself, death is the transition to a larger ‘ glory.’
The allusion to the ‘ Father's house’ is obviously
figurative, and we cannot even infer from it that
St. John conceives of the future world under forms
of space. Such a conception seems, indeed, to be
debarred by the great declaration (452 of the
spiritual nature of God. The essential thought in
the saying is simply that the believer will enter
after death into that perfect communion with God
which is impossible under the conditions of this
world. In more than one Synoptic passage this
communion is described by Jesus under the imagery
of a feast (Mt 26% 8", Lk 14%), This image
is replaced in the Fourth Gospel by the less vivid
but more adequate one of a perpetual sojourn with
the Father in His house. But in both cases the
image is only the vehicle, necessarily imperfect, of
the spiritual idea, that the crowning blessedness
of the believer will consist in nearness to God and
perfect fellowship with Him. Ἷ
This main idea is combined, in the Johannine
passage, with several others which serve to render
it more complete and definite : (1) The communion
with God is mediated by Christ, who is Himself
the Son, and therefore has the right to bring His
chosen friends into His Father’s house (cf. 8%: %
174). (2) It will be a lasting communion, not fitful
and interrupted like that which is granted to us in
the present. Those who were formerly servants
will ‘abide in the house for ever,’ like the Son
Himself. ‘They will not be strangers, tarrying for
an hour, but will have μοναί appointed to them—
fixed places which they can eall their own. (3) The
emphasis on the ‘many mansions’ would seem to
suggest that the perfect communion with God does
not involve a mere absorption in Him. Each life
will maintain its own identity and receive its
FEAR
583
separate fulfilment. Jesus will be the same in the
higher world as He was in this, and the disciples
likewise will find themselves again, and resume
their fellowship with each other and with Hii. A
certain resemblance can thus be traced between
the thought of this passage and that of St. Paul in
2Co5'4. The Apostle anticipates for each belicver
‘a house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens,’ which will take the place of the ‘earthly
house of this tabernacle.’ The saying in the Gospel
declares that there will be room for all these
separate mansions within the one ‘ Father’s house.’
LITERATURE.—The various commentaries on St. John’s Gos-
pel, ὧν loco, e.g. Holtzmann, Loisy, Weiss, Bugge, Calmes,
Godet ; Schrenck, Die johann. Anschauung vom Leben (1898),
p. 157f; Grill, Entstehung des vierten Evangeliums (1902), p
360, etc. ; Titius, Die johann. Anschauung der Seligkeit (1900),
ch. vi. ; Ker, Sermons, ii. 247 ; Maclaren, Holy of Holies, 12.
ν Ἐπ F. Scort.
FATLINGS.—See ANIMALS, p. 63°.
FAYOUR.—See GRACE and GRACIOUSNESS.
FEAR (φόβος, φοβοῦμαι ; in Mt 853 and Mk 4* ‘ fear-
ful’ =decds).—4. In many passages in the Gospels
fear is a motive restraining or compelling action in
the ordinary course of human relationships. Men
fear others, and shape their conduct, at least in
part, by their fears: e.g. Mt 2% (Joseph is afraid to
return to Judzea) ; 14° (Herod would not put John
to death because ‘he feared the people’) 21:0. 4;
Mk 11°, Lk 22? (where the Pharisees ‘fear the
multitude’); Mk 9%, Lk 9 (the disciples are
‘afraid to ask’ the meaning of a saying); Mk 1118
(scribes and Pharisees wished to destroy Jesus, ‘for
they feared him’); Jn 7! 9535 1038 2019 (men are
silent or secret ‘for fear of the Jews’). Similar
passages are Mt 25%, Mk 679 12, Lk 192! 20” ete.
This fear sometimes restrains bad men from carry-
ing out their evil purposes; but quite as often
turns others aside from the straight path of right.
2. The Gospels also mention frequently the fear
which men feel in the presence of what they
believe to be supernatural or superhuman. This
is often an accompaniment of the miracles of
Jesus. It is mentioned of the disciples, at the
stilling of the tempest (Mk 41), Lk 8%), when Jesus
walked on the sea (Mt 1450, Mk 6°, Jn 619: 2°), at
the Transfiguration (Mt 17° 7 and parallels). So
the people of Judea were afraid when they saw the
demoniac healed (Mk 5); so ‘fear took hold on
all’ when the widow’s son was raised (Lk 710);
and in the same way the centurion at the cross
(Mt 2754) and the witnesses of the Resurrection
(Mt 28+: 8) were afraid ; cf. also Lk 115- © 29 5°6 ete.
3. Especially worthy of notice are those passages
in which Jesus exhorts His hearers not to fear.
He reassures Jairus when word comes that his
daughter is dead (Mk 5**, Lk 859) ; and Peter when
the miraculous draught of fishes fills him with a
sense of sin (Lk 5!°); He meets the terror of the
disciples on the sea with, ‘It is I, be not afraid’
(Mt 1457 ; and touches them at the Transfigura-
tion, with similar words (Mt 17"). When He sends
the disciples out to preach, it is with reiterated
injunctions against fear. The servants will meet
with hostility from the enemies of their Lord ; but
they must face such opposition without fear, ‘ for
there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed’
(Mt 107-2"), They are to be fearless preachers of
the gospel, because no hostility of men can prevent
the triumph of truth. They are not to fear even
those who can kill the body, for their power is
strictly limited to the body (Mt 10°, Lk 124);
they are to remember God’s thought for the
sparrows, and to be assured of the greater value of
the servants of His Kingdom, and so to escape from
fear (Mt 1081). If they are few in number facing a
hostile world—a little flock surrounded by wolves
584 FEAR
—they are to remember the sure purpose of the
Father and not to be afraid (Lk 12%). Sig:
Moral courage is a vital necessity of Christian
discipleship. The Master is keenly conscious of
moral paralysis which comes from the fear of
man. Rev 218 reflects His judgment when it
groups ‘the fearful’ with ‘the unbelieving’ and
‘the abominable’ who are cast into the lake of
fire which is the second death. And in our
Lord’s teaching faith is the antidote of fear. A
true knowledge of the Father is the unfailing
source of moral courage. ‘ Acquaint thyself with
the Father and be delivered from fear’ 15 the bur-
den of His teaching. See COURAGE, COWARDICE.
4. The almost complete absence of direct exhor-
tation to fear God is a very noticeable feature of the
Gospels. The fear of God is, indeed, mentioned in
the Magnificat (Lk 159), in the parable of the Unjust
Judge (Lk 185 4), and by the penitent thief on the
cross (Lk 23%); but in a direct injunction of Jesus
only—if at all—in Mt 1058 and the parallel passage
Lk 12°. Here, as already mentioned, Jesus is sending
out the disciples with the exhortation not to fear—
even those who kill the body. But He adds to the
negative a positive injunction, ‘ Rather fear him
who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell’ ;
or, as Lk. puts it, ‘ But 1 will warn you whom ye
shall fear: fear him which after he hath killed
hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you,
fear him.’ It is most natural to think with the
majority of commentators that God is the object
of fear in this exhortation; but there are some
who urge, on the contrary, that the devil is in-
tended.
A. B. Bruce (‘St. Matthew,’ in Expositor’s Gr. Test.) says:
‘Would Christ present God under this aspect in such close con-
nexion with the Father who cares even for the sparrows? What
is to be greatly feared is not the final condemnation, but that
which leads to it—temptation to forsake the cause of God out
of regard to self-interest or self-preservation. Shortly, the
counsel is: fear not the persecutor but the tempter, not the
man who kills you for your fidelity but the man who wants to
buy you off, and the devil whose agent he is.’ Weymouth (The
NT in Modern Speech) urges against the reference to God that
ἐξουσία (Lk 12°) usually denotes ‘delegated authority,’ ‘ power en-
joyed on sufferance’; and refers to Lk 2253, Jn 1911, Ac 2618, Col 113,
and Rey 137 for illustrations of the ascription of power to Satan.
On the other side Plummer (‘St. Luke’ in Internat. Crit. Com.)
says: ‘There is little doubt that this refers to God, and not to
the devil. The change of construction points to this. It is
no longer φοβήθητε ἀπὸ τούτου but τοῦτον φοβήθητε, ‘fear without
trying to shun,” which is the usual construction of fearing God.
Moreover, we are not in Scripture told to fear Satan, but to resist
him courageously.’
It may also be urged that the extreme punishment of the
wicked is nowhere described as an exercise of Satan’s authority.
Gehenna is ‘the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his
angels’ into which in Mt 2549. 41 those on the left hand are sent
by the King. The ultimate ‘destruction’ of wicked men,
whatever that may actually mean, must be conceived as an act
of God and as the exercise of His authority : cf. Mt 9110. 41 ‘The
Lord of the vineyard . . . will miserably destroy those wicked
men.
8. Looking at the teaching of Jesus asa whole,
xe ee that, while He constantly urges men to
fait 1 rather than to fear, and to a trust in God’s
fa me ly goodness, such as makes filial love the
ates pee ate ot religious life, He does not alto-
| ἘΠ τς oo the appeal to fear as a motive for
| cat ἘΣ uct. ‘There is a severity of God which
ia ep le ignored. _Such parables as the Rich Man
ΠΡ; ie Dane the Unmerciful Servant, the Wheat
ah aes pe and others, whatever interpretation
᾿ may oe upon their details, at least suggest a
ivine ane ( r sternnace ἢ " aay
τὶ τ ἊΝ tloly sternness in regard to which men
ep Ἢ] ᾿ pit +N holesome fear. Nor is it only in
ee aie sf arse we find this element of our Lord’s
ΠΗ ὩΣ 6 have in the Sermon on the Mount
SUCH passages as Mt 551-30 718. 14 and 21-297. , 1 witl
these we mav camnar = Ἢ : and with
| ἂν compare Mt 1] 20-74 1282 7055. 26 9) 44 9624
av —_ la .
ane sees pa rs Che normal relation of the
anak ap rod to the Heavenly Father should be
| oh a hs ad contidence and loving obedience. It
I a be ever approachine that perfect love which
=
FEASTS
casts out fear ; but men who are trifling with great
moral issues have no right, according to the teach-
ing of Jesus, to this happy emancipation. For
them fear is wholesome and necessary ; for God is
the Holy Father, and persistent defiance of His
will must be visited with stern and righteous
doom.
LITERATURE.—Cremer and Grimm-Thayer, s.vv. φόβος, φοβέω;
Hastings’ DB, art. ‘Fear’; Maclaren, Serm. pr. in Manchester,
ij. 194; Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian’s talk with Hope-
ful after Ignorance was left behind.
EK. H. TITCHMARSH.
FEASTS.—The religious Feasts of the Jews in
our Lord’s time were not so many as the religious
Feasts of the Christian Church of to-day as enu-
merated in the English Book of Common Prayer,
but they meant very much more in the way of
outward observance. In the first rank — like
Christmas, Easter, Ascensiontide, and Whitsun-
tide—there stood out the three great Feasts of
Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Not unlike
the Holy Days of the Church’s Calendar, com-
memorating as they do various victories of the
past, there were the annual Feasts of Dedication
and of Purim, to which must be added the Feast of
Trumpets together with its smaller counterpart in
the monthly Feast of the New Moon. Correspond-
ing to the Christian Sunday there was the weekly
Feast of the Sabbath. Of these, Passover, Taber-
nacles, and Dedication are all specially mentioned
in the Gospels, as well as the Sabbath, to which
there are very many references, some merely inci-
dental and some meant to show that it was our
Lord’s purpose to free the observance of that day
from the artificial rules that had grown up about it
in tradition. The Feasts are most prominent in
the Fourth Gospel, where they are so mentioned as
to form a framework into which the events of our
Lord’s Ministry fall. Three Passovers are there
recorded: (1) Jn 9215, when our Lord cleansed the
Temple almost at the beginning of His Ministry ;
(2) 64, just after the feeding of the 5000; (3) 13)
(cf. Mt 262, Mk 141, Lk 22'), at the time of the
Crucifixion and Resurrection.
It has indeed been contended that the reference to Passover
in Jn 64 is a mistake, and that really there were only two Pass-
overs in our Lord’s Ministry, the one at the beginning and the
other at the end; it has also been contended that there may
have been other Passovers, which are not mentioned, and that
our Lord’s Ministry may have included so many as ten or twelve,
lasting over 10 or 12 years ; but neither of these contentions can
be made good, and it seems more likely that the record as it
stands is both accurate and complete (see Turner in Hastings’
DB, art. ‘Chronology of NT’).
Besides these three Passovers, mention is made
of the Feast of Tabernacles in Jn 72, of the Feast of
Dedication in Jn 10”, and of some Feast not parti-
cularized by name in Jn ὅ᾽. To these St. Luke
adds mention of an earlier Passover, when our
Lord was 12 years old and was for the first time (?)
allowed to accompany Joseph and Mary as they
went up to Jerusalem year after year for the Feast
(Lk 251),
The Feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Taber-
nacles were all of them Pilgrimage Feasts, that is
to say, Feasts at which all male Jews above the age
of 12 years were required to appear before the Lord
in Jerusalem. It is noticed in Lk 2" that Joseph
and Mary were both in the habit of going up to
Jerusalem for the Passover every year. There was
no requirement that women should thus attend at
the Feasts, but Hillel seems to have encouraged the
practice, and it was adopted by other religious
women besides Mary (Edersheim, Life and Times,
vol. i. p. 236). St. Luke in the same passage speaks
of our Lord as going up at the age of twelve;
that, too, was in excess of what was required by
law, but was apparently in accordance with custom
(so Edersheim, op. cit. p. 235 ; but ef. Schiirer, .7P
II. 11. p. 51, who represents that, strictly speaking,
FEASTS
FEEDING THE MULTITUDES 585
every boy who could walk ought to have attended,
and that it was only by custom that boys who lived
at a distance were allowed to wait till their twelfth
year before going). Attendance at the Feasts was
not confined to those who lived within easy reach,
but Jews came as well from great distances,
although naturally they could not attend so often
as three times a year.
Schirer writes (op. cit. p. 290f.): ‘There was nothing that
contributed so much to cement the bond of union between the
dispersion and the mother country as the regular pilgrimages
which Jews from all quarters of the world were in the habit of
making to Jerusalem on festival occasions.’ He quotes Philo
(de Monarchia, ii. 1) as saying: ‘Many thousands of people
from many thousands of towns made pilgrimages to the Temple
at every festival, some by land, some by sea, and coming from
the east and the west, from the north and the south,’ and refers
to Josephus’ estimate of the number of Jews in Jerusalem at
the time of the Feasts as being so many as 2,700,000 (BJ νι.
ix. 3).
In accordance with this it is definitely stated in
the Gospels that four times during His Ministry
our Lord went up to Jerusalem to keep the Feasts,
twice for Passover, once for Tabernacles, and once
for an unnamed Feast. Possibly He went up quite
regularly three times a year, for the notice that He
was in Galilee shortly before the second Passover
(Jn 64) does not preclude the possibility of His
having gone upa little later. At the first Passover
mention is made of His disciples being with Him
in Jerusalem (Jn 2!" 23), evidently having journeyed
from Galilee with the same purpose as Himself, to
keep the Feast. Similarly at Tabernacles it is
stated that His brethren went up from Galilee to
keep the Feast (Jn 7’). In all the Gospel references
to Passover and Tabernacles the impression is given
of large crowds of Jews in Jerusalem. At the Feast
of Dedication also our Lord was in Jerusalem, but
that was Sony because His work at that time lay
close by. He did not go up to Jerusalem on pur-
pose for it, since no pilgrimages were made except
at the three great Feasts ; but being close at hand
He liked to mark the occasion by a visit to the
Temple, and there found a considerable number of
Jews resident in the neighbourhood who had been
attracted thither like Himself. See, further, the
sep. artt. on DEDICATION, PASSOVER, etc.
As regards the unnamed Feast of Jn 51, it is impossible to
reach any certainty as to what Feast is intended. If the correct
reading ‘were ἡ ἑορτή, it would most naturally be the Feast of
Tabernacles, which was above all the Feast of the Jews (Cheyne
on Is 3029); but if the article be omitted, as almost, certainly it
should be, the expression is quite indefinite, and might refer to
either Tabernacles or Passover or Pentecost, or to any of the
smaller Feasts. :
In attempting to decide between these, guidance may first be
sought from the general sequence of events, so far as it is indi-
cated by the following notes of time :
(1) Passover, ἴ.6. March or April, Jn 213,
(2) A reference to harvest, Jn 495,
(3) This unnamed Feast, Jn 51.
(4) A second Passover, Jn 64. Kak
Thus it appears that the unnamed Feast fell between the inci-
dent connected with the harvest in Jn 439 and Passover. _ This
does not, however, give very much help, because Jn 495 may
mean either that that was the actual time of harvest or that it
was four months before harvest, so that it is impossible to tell
whether the incident there described happened in the month of
April or in midwinter. If that happened in midwinter, then
Dedication (Dec.) and Purim (Feb.) are the, only Feasts possible
chronologically ; but if, as_is equally likely, that incident
happened at harvest, then the chronology would admit almost
anv of the Feasts, either Pentecost (May), or Trumpets (Sept.), or
Tabernacles (Sept.), or Dedication (Dec.), or Purim (Feb.). Thus
the setting of the incident is quite indeterminate. In the
description of the incident itself there are two points that need
to be noticed. The one is that the introductory words are such
as to suggest that the only reason for mentioning the Feast ati
all is to explain our Lord’s presence 1n Jerusalem,—‘ After these
things there was a Feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to
Jerusalem.’ Since there were only three Feasts at which even
the strictest Jews went up to Jerusalem, it appears that this
must be one of those three, 7.e. must be either Passover, Pente-
cost, or Tabernacles. At the smaller Feasts many of those Jews
who were in or near Jerusalem would naturally congregate in
: ri i bit of
the Temple courts (cf. Jn 1072), but none were in the ha of
going ἊΣ on these occasions from other parts of the country. |
Accordingly, though Purim may seem suitable in other ways, it |
quite fails to explain the one fundamental fact, our Lord’s visit |
to Jerusalem, and the same objection lies against all the smaller
Feasts. The second point to be noticed is that St. John’s use of
so vague a phrase in reference to one of the three great Feasts
can mean only that he was himself unable to recall the exact
occasion. The events recorded were quite clear in his mind, and
he remembered that they had happened on one of the occasions
when our Lord went to Jerusalem to keep the Feasts, but at
which particular one he could not recall. This being so, it is
useless to try now to discover the secret from his writings, but
there is no need to feel disappointment at the absence of infor-
mation on this point, as if some part of the significance of the
incident were lost through ignorance of its occasion, for the
circumstances would not have dropped out of St. John’s memory
as they did, if they had been essential to the understanding of
our Lord’s words or actions. See also art. MINISTRY.
C. E. GARRAD.
FEEDING THE MULTITUDES.—The Gospels
give us two accounts of multitudes miraculously
fed by our Lord. In the first instance (reported in
Mt 1415-21, Mk 6-44, Lk 9!2-17, Jn 67-8) the number
is given as 5000, exclusive (so Mt.) of women and
children. In the second instance (reported in Mt
15°59, Mk 81°) the number is given as 4000, Mt.
again adding women and children.
1. It will be better to consider these instances
separately, and to treat the feeding of the 5000 in
the light of the first three Gospels. The Synopties
agree that the place was a desert one on the east
side of the Sea of Galilee; and Lk. fixes it at
Bethsaida Julias (see CAPERNAUM). Mk. and Lk.
connect the withdrawal to this place with the
return of the Twelve and their report, Mt. with
the execution of John the Baptist. Mk. seems to
be correct, since he gives the specific reason that
they needed rest, which they could not otherwise
secure. All agree that a vast multitude followed
them to their place of resort, thus defeating their
purpose, and that it was the disciples who called
the attention of Jesus to the needs of the people.
Jesus then commanded His disciples to provide
food for the multitude. One feels that He was
preparing their minds for what He was about to
do. Their astonishment at His command led them
to point out the impossibility, if not absurdity, of
the requirement, since they had but five loaves
and two fishes. Then follows the astounding order
to seat the people in groups easily accessible to the
disciples, the blessing of the loaves and fishos, the
distribution of the meagre supply, the satisfaction
of the hunger of all, and the gathering up of the
fragments.
Attempts have been made to rob this account
of its miraculous character, the favourite method
being to assume that the evident determination of
Jesus to assuage their hunger induced those in the
vast company who had supplies of food, to share,
in the spirit of Jesus, with those who had none.
The difficulty with this explanation is that the dis-
ciples, who had every opportunity of seeing what
was done, thought that the multitude was fed
with the five loaves and two fishes only. Against
this, neither Mk 6” nor Jn 6° is evidence, as
Beyschlag will have it (Leben Jesu, i. 330). The
immediate context in both passages shows that
both Jesus and the Twelve thought of the trans-
action as miraculous. Admitting the miracle,
some have thought to explain it as a miraculous
satisfaction of hunger with a little, rather than as
a multiplication of the loaves and fishes. This is
contrary to the text in all four of the Gospels,
which unite in saying that twelve baskets of
fragments were taken up. This would be more
than there was at the beginning (see art. BASKET),
thus virtually affirming the multiplication. We
are shut up, then, to the alternative of regarding
the account as legendary, or else as a miraculous
multiplication of their food supply. There are
some difficulties in the way of believing it mirac-.
ulous. (1) The question of Jesus, ‘How many
loaves have ye?’ reminds one of the question of
Elisha (2 Καὶ 45), ‘What hast thou in the house ?’
586 FEEDING THE MULTITUDES
and so suggests an imitation of Elisha’s miracle, as
in fact the whole process of multiplication suggests
the miracle of the meal in the jar and the cruse of
oil of 1 K 17-16, (2) The record is a trifle obscure.
The whole stress is on the loaves, both in the
gathered fragments, especially in Jn., and in the
subsequent references of Jesus (see Mk 8”), while
the fish are ignored. (3) Usually, also, when such
a miracle was performed, the observers are said
to have been profoundly impressed (see Mk 45
5* 737), but here no comment follows. (4) Besides,
it seems to be in contradiction of His avowed pur-
pose not to give the Jews what would be to them
a convincing sign. As to all but the last of these
difficulties, it may be said that they are, in them-
selves, not serious. The fourth assumes that the
miracles of healing would not, but that a miracle
such as the feeding would convince the Jews, and
so be just the kind of sign the Jews demanded.
But, in fact, the sign the Jews required and Jesus
refused to grant was some miracle performed to
order, and regardless of human need. Such a
miracle as the feeding lacked these two character-
istics. It was spontaneous, and it met a human
want. In favour of the historicity of the miracle
is the further fact that it is recorded in all the
Gospels. The tradition was not open to question
in the mind of any one of the Evangelists.
2. With regard to the second recorded instance,
the feeding of the 4000, the case is quite different.
It is found in but two of the Gospels. Lk. and Jn.
evidently thought of but a single feeding. It is
easy to see how the second account might have
grown out of the first, and the similarities are so
great as to suggest that it did have its origin there.
The question of Jesus concerning the number of
loaves, the remarkable circumstance that a second
time the disciples had so little food with them, the
seating of the people on the ground, the distribu-
tion to the Twelve for redistribution among the
multitude, the eating until they were filled, the
gathering of the broken pieces into baskets, are
suspiciously like the feeding of the 5000. It is
difficult to see how the disciples, with the memory
of the feeding of the 5000 fresh in their minds,
could have questioned Jesus as to the source of
supply for this second company. And here it is
that the narrative as given by Jn. sheds light on
the question under consideration. Jn. betrays the
fact that the same narrative was difierently told,
since he combines elements of both narratives as
related by Mt. and Mark. Mt. places the second
feeding on a mountain ; Jn. loeates the feeding on a
mountain. Jn. and Mt. and Mk. (second instance)
agree that Jesus proposed the feeding. Mk.,
according to his usual custom of emphasizing the
teaching as primary, and of making the miracles
secondary, makes Jesus teach the shepherdless
sheep out of sympathy, while Mt. makes this
sympathy prompt Him to heal them, and Lk.
combines the two; this in the first feeding. In
the second this sympathy was elicited by their
unger. In the second the point of difficulty with
the disciples (according to Mt. and Mk.), or with
J us (according to Jn.), was not the expense, as in
the first, but that of securing so much food in a
desert place. This certainly looks as though Jn.
had heard both accounts and deliberately under-
took to combine them into one, or else as though |
flerences
. in the account of the same story
Mk. to believe that there were two
feedings. In any case Lk., by implication, and |
Jn., almost directly, favour the sinele feeding—
that of the 5000. The only serious difficulty in
this elimination of the second feeding is the record
in Mk 82 (cf, Mt 16% 19). according. to which
Je 1} Is made to refer to the two feedines as
separate events. The denial of the second would |
FLEET
.
make it necessary to affirm that the words of
Jesus are incorrectly reported. But here Mt.
is evidently dependent upon the collection of
narratives by Mk., not Mk. upon the collection of
sayings made by Matthew. Mt. and Mk. are not
two independent witnesses. We may not be able
to account satisfactorily for the misunderstanding
of Mk. in this case, but his testimony could hardly
offset that of Jn., unless we were obliged, which
we are not, to suppose that Mk. got his informa-
tion on this point directly from Peter. Even if
this were so, we should have to make our choice
between Peter and Jn., which, in view of all the
facts, would turn out in favour of the latter.
The significance of the feeding of the multitude
for the humaneness of Jesus is not less great than
that of the healings. The power was His, and He
used it for the good of His tellow-men in whatever
way was needful for their immediate welfare, and
for setting an example of helpfulness in the every-
day affairs of life to His disciples in all the cen-
turies to follow.
LITERATURE.—Trench and Taylor on Miracles; Edersheim,
Life and Times, i. 675 ff., ii. 63 ff. ; Andrews, Life of our Lord
[1893 ed.], 320ff., 333ff.; Bruce, Training of the I'welve, 118;
Westcott, Gosp. of St. John, in loc. 2
C. W. RISHELL.
FEET.— The word occurs frequently in the
Gospels. Figuratively it has a wide range of
meaning. It 15 employed in phrases which express
worthlessness (‘to be trodden under foot,’ Mt 5%),
supplication (‘fell at his feet,” Mk 57? 7%), great
honour or reverence (Lk 7°*46 the woman who
kissed Jesus’ feet; Jn 115 Mary; Mt 289 ‘held
him by the feet’), ignorant or blasphemous con-
tempt (Mt 76. ‘trample under foot’), righteous
condemnation or rejection (Mt 10! ‘shake dust
off feet’), salvation through sacrifice (Mt 1858: Mk
9 cutting off hand or foot), discipleship (Lk 8*
cured demoniac sitting at Jesus’ feet ; 10° Mary),
helplessness (Mt 22'° ‘bind hand and foot’), com-
plete triumph (Mt 2244) Mk 12°°| Lk 20% enemies
of Messianic King put under His feet), absolute
safety (Mt 4°\|Lk 411. ‘lest thou dash thy foot
against a stone’), subjection (Mt 5 earth the
footstool of God's feet). In washing the feet of
the disciples Jesus inculeates lessons of humility,
mutual service, and the need of daily cleansing
from sin (Jn 1351, See artt. BASoN, Foor.
Of the feet of Jesus Himself mention is made in
the NT very frequently. Before His feet suppli-
ants fell down (Mk 7”, Lk 8*), and also a
Samaritan who returned to give thanks (Lk 1710).
At His feet sufferers were laid to be healed (Mt 15°”).
Neglectful of the courtesies of a host, Simon the
Pharisee gave Him no water to refresh His feet
(Lk 7*); but a sinful woman on the same occasion
wet His feet with her tears, wiped them with the
hair of her head, kissed them, and anointed them
with ointment (738. 4"); and Mary of Bethany
showed her great love and gratitude in a similar
fashion, when she lavished the contents of her
alabaster cruse of precious spikenard (Jn 11? 12°;
οἵ. Mt 267, Mk 14%) upon the feet which had
brought the Lord from beyond Jordan (Jn 10% 117)
to speak the life-giving word at her brother’s grave
(11*%") At Jesus’ feet the restored demoniac sat
(Lk 8%), like Mary afterwards when she ‘heard his
word’ (1059). The two angels who guarded the
sepulchre were seen sitting ‘the one at the head,
and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus
had lain’ (Jn 202). It was His feet that the
by)
52
_ two Marys clung to when they first met Jesus on
the Resurrection morning. [Though love prompted
them to lay hold of Him, did reverence forbid
them to touch more than His feet?]. When
Jesus in the upper room showed His hands and
His feet to His disciples (Lk 24°F), it was doubtless
FELLOWSHIP
FELLOWSHIP 587
to prove to them that He who now stood before
them was the same Jesus who by hands and feet
had been nailed to the cross (cf. Jn 207: 35." St.
Paul says of the ascended Christ that all things
are put under His feet (Eph 133), and that beneath
His feet death itself shall be destroyed (1 Co 15°"),
And in the Book of Revelation, when the heavenly
Jesus appears to the seer of Patmos, the place of
His feet has been made glorious (cf. Is 0019). Those
feet which were dust-stained in the house of Simon
the Pharisee, and weary by the well of Sychar (Jn
4%), and pierced with nails on the cross of Calvary,
are now ‘like unto fine brass, as if they burned in
a furnace’ (Rev 115, cf. 218),
It has been questioned whether the feet of Jesus
were nailed to the cross. The doubt is based on
the facts that in the Fourth Gospel Jesus men-
tions only His hands and side (Jn 20”), and that
sometimes in crucifixion the feet were simply tied
to the cross. The nailing of the feet of Jesus
would not have been disputed were it not part
of an argument to prove that He did not really
die on the cross. ‘That the feet were usually
nailed (in crucifixion), and that the case of Jesus
was no exception to the general rule, may be
regarded as beyond doubt’ (Meyer on Mt 27°).
There is a difference of opinion as to whether the
feet of Jesus were nailed to the cross separately,
with two nails, or the one over the other with the
same nail. In early art the feet are more fre-
quently represented as separately nailed, but in
later art as nailed together, the one over the other.
Tradition favours the opinion that the feet were
nailed separately. See art. CRUCIFIXION.
LITERATURE.—Meyer’s Com. on St. Matthew; Ellicott, His-
torical Lectures on the Life of Our Lord, p. 353; Andrews,
Bible Student's Life of Our Lord?, p. 462 f.
FELLOWSHIP.—
Neither the word ‘fellowship’ (χοινωνία) nor any equivalent
term occurs in the Synoptic Gospels, but the reality in faith,
love, and joy is diffused like the fragrance of the flowers of
Galilee through that bright spring of the world’s life. As we
pass to the Acts and Epistles, especially the Pauline, the word
is found in a variety of meanings. Most frequently it is trans-
lated ‘fellowship’ (Ac 242, 1 Co 19, 2 Co 614 84, Gal 29, Ph 15 21
310). It is rendered ‘communion’ in 1 Co 1016 (RVm ‘ participa-
tion in’) and 2 (Ὁ 1314; ‘contribution’ (AV ‘distribution’) in
2Co 913, cf. Ro 1526; ‘communication’ (RV ‘ fellowship’) in
Philem 6, cf. He 1316, Though zivavic occurs-only three times
in the Johannine writings (1 Jn 18. 6-7), they are peculiarly rich
in the religious ideas which give the term its content. The con-
ception of fellowship in the NT is not exhausted by the varied
significations of any one word; it becomes plain only as we
comprehend the meaning of the life of the Early Church.
i. INHERITED FORECASTS. — Like most of the
great religious conceptions of the NT, this idea
has its roots deep in the OT. Isaiah proclaims
that the religion of Israel can find its truest ex-
ression only in a spiritual fellowship of faith,
independent of a national framework. In Israel
there is an imperishable remnant, a stock from
which new life will spring forth after desolation
has swept over Jerusalem (Is git-i8 379!) ). By.the
time of Jeremiah the disaster of the nation had
become so irretrievable that the prophet hardly
dares to hope for more than the salvage of indi-
viduals from the wreck; but these rescued ones
will form the true Israel under a new covenant
(Jer 23%8 313%), The Messianic blessedness which
those prophets foresaw consisted of an intimate
fellowship which, in the coming days, the redeemed
company of Israel would enjoy with Jehovah (Is
49°13 Jer 3151), It was to be a fellowship of
Israelites because it was primarily a fellowship
with Israel’s God (Is 52°}? 60). This thought. of
fellowship finds nowhere more vivid expression
than in the Psalter.
JOHN REID.
devotion is filled with prayers of communion with
Jehovah, the supremely moral Person, righteous,
holy, yet full of loving-kindness, who
faithful,
That storehouse of religious |
satisfies the needs of man by bringing him into
fellowship with Himself (Pss 16. 34. 40. 68).
Though many of the psalms seem to be the utter-
ance of individual yearning for God’s presence,
others express the religious desires cf corporate
Israel, a fellowship of saints with a common thirst
for the springs of its life.
A special term lad been coined for Israel in her
religious rather than her national function—/ahdl,
which was rendered in the LXX by ἐκκλησία
(‘church’). It signified the religious assembly of
God’s chosen people ; but as this could never be
completely realized, even in the great temple
gatherings, the conception remained largely ideal.
A rich spiritual legacy was transmitted from the
OT in the words Israel, ecclesia, Kingdom of God ;
and though the Jewish heirs were unable to ap-
preciate their inheritance, these two truths of the
prophets and psalmists could never have quite
perished—that there is an eternal commonwealth
of saints, and that this fellowship of Israel is
based upon fellowship with Jehovah.
ii. THE SyNopPTIC GOSPELS.—Jesus not only
claimed to fulfil prophecy ; by His words of grace
He did much more than the most. spiritually
minded Israelite could have hoped. The spirit of
the Lord which was upon Him awoke prophetic
thoughts that had long lain in the hearts of those
who were waiting for the consolation of Israel.
He brought spring and quickened the seed sown
in the past. He calls men to Himself and forms
them into a new society, within which are to be
enjoyed the blessings foretold by the prophets. In
this company is found religious fellowship, based
upon forgiveness of sins and eternal life through
the knowledge of God revealed by Jesus as Father,
of which the OT saints had but partial enjoyment
or glad anticipation. He places Himself at the
head of this society, claiming that He alone can
impart the knowledge of God which will give rest
to the souls of men (Mt 11°7-*°). Thus His followers,
constituted into the society of the Messiah, become
a Divinely ordered fellowship not dependent on
outward organization, but united by a common
faith in Jesus as the Revealer of God to them.
They are the New Israel, the imperishable ecclesia
(Mt 1616-9),
This society is no closed circle. Associating
Himself more or less intimately with groups of
disciples, Jesus sends them forth with the know-
ledge they have gained concerning Him, to pro-
claim to the people that the new epoch of Divine
rule is about to be inaugurated, and that they
should prepare for its advent. The condition of
membership in this brotherhood is to follow Jesus,
even though this may seem to the man of the
world to be nothing less than to lose one’s life.
Fellowship with Jesus costs much. Family ties
may be severed, the hatred of the world may be
vented upon His disciples, billows of persecution
may sweep over them, but in this society is life
indeed (Mk 873-38, Lk 142%). Jesus offers His
followers a fellowship in this new brotherhood,
which more than compensates for any ΝΌΤΟΥ
friendship that they may have to renounce (Mk
1036 Their trne kindred, even like that of
Jesus Himself, will be found among those united
by spiritual affinities in this new circle. New
virtues abound in this brotherhood. Love working
in helpful ministries for others is of the essence
of fellowship in Messiah’s company. Rank is
assigned, not as in worldly kingdoms, but by the
degree of service rendered by each to all (Mk
10°>-*),
In time Jesus announces to His followers that
His society, as the true Israel, is to take the place
of the Jewish nation, which as such is becoming a
massa perdita. Out of this perishing world His
588 FELLOWSHIP
disciples are saved into the eternal Kingdom, and
as heirs of salvation they are in reality, as they
were afterwards called, ‘the saints of the New
Covenant’ (Mk 12'”). Before His death the
Messiah gave concreteness to this fellowship by a
solemn communion with His disciples in the Last
Supper, which became the means of making real
to them the blessings of the New Covenant. The
connexion of the Supper with the Paschal meal,
which may here be assumed as having existed,
either by anticipation or directly, would suggest
to the minds of the participants that in this New
Yovenant they were entering into fellowship with
Jehovah, and that they were also binding them-
selves together as brothers in a new covenant with
God (Mk 142%), A promise of enlarging fellow-
ship fitly closes the Gospel of Matthew in the
words, ‘Lo, I am with you to the end of the ages’
(9839), and gives us a glimpse of the transition
from the earthly to the heavenly life of Jesus.
To sum up, the Synoptie Gospels show us the
conception of an eternal Divine Commonwealth,
made actual by Jesus in a society welded together
by fervent loyalty to Himself as the Christ of (rod,
and pervaded by a life of mutual service to the
members. He brings His followers into true
fellowship with Jehovah by revealing Him and
pardoning their sins. They enjoy the life of a
brotherhood, which is true life, in His company.
iii. THE PRIMITIVE J EWISH-CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
Fellowship is the most real definition of the
unity which was a constituent quality of the
Early Chureh. Intercourse, intimate and uni-
versal, among brethren, whose life was consecrated
by a gracious Divine presence, and thus free from
everything secular, constituted the Church as dis-
tinctively one. This unity was not expressed by
any rigid cohesive organization, not even primarily
by the leadership of the Apostles. Indeed, the
disciples had been warned by their Lord not to
allow themselves to be called ‘ Master’ (Mt 23%).
A company of baptized brethren, they had received
the Holy Spirit from their risen Lord, who had
welded them into one. His personal gifts were
manifest in each brother passionately devoted to
his unseen Lord, and so on terms of friendship
with all who loved Him.
The Church appears on the stage of the public
world as a new sect, holding to the belief that
Jesus is Messiah. Outwardly the brethren were
probably indistinguishable from good Jews, and
such organization as they had would follow the
lines of their former life. But it would seem that
they did not think of themselves as a new or-
ganization. They were slow to cast loose their
hawsers and swing out into the stream as an inde-
pendent Church. Led by powerful personalities,
Peter, John, and James, who had been either
intimate or of close kinship with Jesus, they re-
garded themselves as the true Israel, and for a
while hoped that the nation would repent. Before
St. Panl’s time, however, there was a change, for
we find that the brethren throughout Juda were
organized into distinctive communities, not as
‘synagogues,’ but as ‘churches’ (Gal. 122). But
in these churches the utmost freedom of the indi-
vidual, which is essential for true fellowship,
prevailed ; for the Chureh grew not by official
iniflative, but by the prophetic power of the Holy
Spirit impelling the brethren to spread far and
wide the good news of their gospel.
| ittle as the primitive Christians differed out-
wardly from the Jewish world, their inner world
was anew creation. It was a brotherhood of
Divine origin; for not only were they baptized
into the name of Jesus the Lord of lifé, but they
had received the Holy Spirit. How sacred this
οἶτον ship was is manifest from the terrible punish-
FELLOWSHIP
ment meted out to Ananias and Sapphira for
violating the mutual trust that made the brother-
hood possible (Ac 5).
There were various manifestations of this fellow-
ship. (a) It was a house-cburch. Brethren met
as sons round the common board in the homes of
those who could best provide accommodation, and
partook of a daily meal consecrated to the memory
of their unseen but present Lord. They held
communion with one another because they held
comimunion with the risen Jesus. Common prayers,
songs, and thanksgivings rose to Jehovah trom
these family groups (Ac 2” 4°),
(6) This fellowship (κοινωνία) found further ex-
pression in a life of mutual service,—t.ie rich for
the poor, the strong for the weak. They rejoiced
with those who rejoiced; they wept with those
who wept. In fact, true κοινωνία could not be
better defined than in the words of the Golden
Rule—‘ Whatsoever ye would that men should do
to you, do ye even so to them’ (Mt7"). No torvmal
ordinance, such as the community of goods, was
enjoined on the brethren ; their love welled forth
in such a pure and powerful stream that it made
its own channels. All blessings, earthly and
spiritual, were spontaneously shared with those
who were in need (Ac 24#-47 482-59),
So we have in the earliest days a true fellowship,
a brotherhood united by love to a risen Lord,
whom many of them had known on earth, and led
without rivalry by favourite disciples of Jesus,
enjoying gifts and graces from the ever present
Spirit of their Lord. But that brotherhood
gathered in the carthly Zion was nationalistic in
sentiment. It was provincial in spirit, especially,
it would seem, throughout Juda, where tie
churches were in villages remote from the world of
men.
iv. THE GENTILE CHURCHES OF THE PAULINE
WORLD. — With the rise of Antioch ἃ peril
threatened the prestige of Jerusalem. Could the
fruit of the Spirit thrive equally well in the valleys
and on the plains of Syria and Asia as on the
isolated plateau of Judzea? If so, it was bound to
be very much more abundant. Fortunately, Paul
the Apostle to the Gentiles was a man of varied
culture. While his world was in cities and he
thought imperially, he never treated the Jewish
mind lightly, and he knew what that mind was.
He understood its worth and its rights. He could
discern every wave of feeling, every gust that
shivered duskily across it. So St. Paul was him-
self the greatest power of his day making for the
unity of the Church. It was a passion with him
to avert a breach which would be fatal; and he
was successful, for the other Apostles responded
nobly as brethren, and gave him the right hand of
fellowship (Gal 2”). But the sections thus united
had to be cemented; so he devotes much energy
to effecting a durable κοινωνία by organizing the
collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem. In
2 Co 849! and Ro 15° the word κοινωνία is trans-
lated (RV) ‘contribution’ ; but ‘ there is always at
the root of κοινωνία, in the NT, the idea of Chris-
tian communion in one form or another. Those
who bestow make common cause with one another
and with the recipients’ (Waite). The collection
is a religious act, because it is a mark of Christian
fellowship. Indeed, the Macedonians regard it as
a signal token of Divine favour to be allowed thus
to help those from whom they had received the
gospel; and the poor Jewish Christians, who had
made experience of the liberal Christian kindliness
of the Gentiles, could hardly refuse to call them
brethren (2 Co 8!-5 911-14),
The Christian fellowship was world-wide. This
brotherhood was one everywhere (1 P 5%), and in
writing to the Corinthians St. Paul assumes that
λα i hae tien
FELLOWSHIP
FELLOWSHIP 589
what he says will be of interest not only to them,
but ‘to all that in every place call upon the name
of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours’
(1Co 1*). The Church of God which is in Corinth
is a visible but partial manifestation of the larger
whole. This idea persisted after the Apostolic age ;
for ‘ Brotherhood alternates with Ecclesia in the
oldest sets of ecclesiastical canons, while omnis
fraternitas and πᾶσα ἡ ἀδελφότης are used to de-
note the whole of Christendom’ (Lindsay). This
world-wide brotherhood was not held together by
any outward organization, though the Apostle Paul
does group his churches by provinces. But organ-
ization is local: it does not follow the lines of
provincial units. Of course, Christian life had to
be expressed in outward fellowship wherever it
was possible, so that.all the brethren within a con-
venient radius, such as a city, would Le grouped
together to form the Church of God in that place.
And the Spirit of God supplied these local churches
with leaders who had the necessary gifts for the
conduct of their life. This became the basis of a
permanent ministry.
Krom the world they became outwardly separate,
‘saints’ chosen out of it and consecrated to God
(Ro 17, 1 Co 1°, Gal 14), and so forming one family,
‘the household’ of faith (Gal 6, Eph 215), chraweh
out the empire of this world. Hence great stress
is laid upon the grace of hospitality (He 131-23). In
that busy world with its tlhronged highways, the
Christian was always sure of a warm welcome
wherever there was a church or a group of brethren
(see per contra ὁ. πὶ 5"), and the sufferings of the
saints were made the occasion of active sympathy
(He 6” 10*-* 13%). St. Paul experienced many
such marked tokens of fellowship, especially at the
hands of the Philippians, for whom he cherished
the deepest affection. They were unremittingly
active in co-operation with him for the spread of
the coer and whatever his needs, bodily or
spiritual, might be, they were ready to do their
best by gifts or sympathy to supply the lack.
This was true fellowship (Ph 15: 7 218 44). Phile-
mon also was a real Christian, whose faith in,
and love to, the Lord Jesus was manifested in his
kindly oftices towards all the saints; and the
Apostle delicately suggests that he should not stop
till his benevolence becomes complete and embraces
even the slave Onesimus (Philem δ: 15: 1°).
This religious idea of brotherhood issues in a new
grace, ‘love of the brethren’ (φιλαδελφία), Which is
to be cherished as an especial sign of Divine life
(1 Th 49, Ro 12, He 13!, 1P 1%). A fine word,
ἁπλότης (‘singleness’), is used by St. Paul to denote
the quality of the man in whom fellowship (κοινωνία)
is aruling motive. He is ἁπλοῦς, ‘ single-minded,’
‘liberal.’ He does not serve God and Mammon.
His eye is single. Looking only at the needs of
his brother, he realizes the truth of the Lord’s
words that it is more blessed to give than to
receive (Ac 20), Among the brethren there is no
almsgiving. All that is sordid in almsgiving 1s
removed, and generosity becomes a choice token
of fellowship (2Co 83 911-15). ‘When men thank-
fully receive God’s gifts, and in imitation of His
bounty use them for the good of others, so that
the recipients also thank God for the benefaction,
it is as far as it goes the re-establishment of the
right relation between God and men, and men and
men.’ The slave is not only made partaker of such |
bounty, but as he possesses this spirit he pays an |
angrudging service to his master (Eph 6”).
The fellowship of church with church was further
increased by the visits of Apostles and teachers, as
well as by the interchange of correspondence.
What was of interest to one was of interest to all
inso far as it touched their common gospel. While
we do not find any uniform creed or liturgy in ' there should
these Epistles, there was almost certainly a sub-
stantially similar form of worship, and in their
prayers and hymns the brethren gave utterance to
the same faith in Jesus Christ, and in their teach-
ing they adhered to the common truths which the
Apostles taught (Ro 617, Gal 18). We cannot fail
to be impressed by the combination of a sense of
unity with great individual freedom. The Spirit
took the life of believer or church, and produecd
in it some distinctive grace or function, which
brought diversity without disharmony, enrichment
without lack ot proportion. Manifold, however,
as these gifts were, the greatest of all and that
which lay at the root of their fellowship was love ;
for not only was it the best because the commonest,
but it tempered and restrained the more individ-
ualistic-endowments, which might easily destroy
the harmony of the Christian company (1 Co 12°!
13). True fellowship demands variety in unity,
individual freedom working at the impulse of a
common spirit.
The noblest exposition of Christian fellowship,
outside the Gospel of John, is contained in the
Epistle to the Ephesians. In that prose poem in
praise of unity, the Church is described as one
body of which each Christian is, or should be, a
perfect member. A Divine creation purposed from
all eternity by the Father’s love, it was made actual
in history through Jesus Christ. The Church is
one because of the unities on which it is based.
Its members are baptized into the name of the one
Lord whom they confess. They are inspired by
the same Spirit, and there is one God and Father
of all, who is above all and through all and in all
(Eph 4*°), Historically the Church became one
when, in Christ, Jew and Gentile were both recon-
ciled unto God,in one body by the cross (217) ;
and in the ages to come each individual with variety
of function will reach his perfection in this per-
fect organism, and contribute to the completeness
of the whole (4718). A fellowship so sublime in its
ideal must be undisturbed by selfish desires. Only
where love, patience, long-suffering and humility
reign will there be on earth ‘a communion of the
saints.’ ‘In the Apostle’s eyes all true life in an
Ecclesia is a life of community, of the harmonious
and mutually helpful action of different elements,
so that he is giving instruction on the very essence
of membership when in each of the nine Epistles
addressed to Ecclesiz he makes the peace of God
to be the supreme standard for them to aim at,
and the perpetual self-surrender of love the com-
prehensive means of attaining it’ (Hort, Christ.
Ecclesia, 123).
All the manifestation of fellowship among the
brethren, the very brotherhood itself, is possible
only because the individual members of the com-
munion of the saints are in personal fellowship
with Jesus Christ. He indeed is the fountain and
source of communion. All human fellowship is
derivative. The word κοινωνία is used by St. Paul
only in 1 Co 1016 to express this personal fellowship
with Christ, the thought being that in the Lord’s
| Supper believers are united in close communion,
because through the cup and the bread they are
enabled to participate in the life of Christ Himself.
3ut the idea is central in St. Paul’s religion—‘I
no longer live, but Christ liveth in me’ (Gal 2”) ;
‘For me to live is Christ’ (Ph 15. However, this
fellowship of the individual is no selfish enjoyment.
Only those who are ‘rooted and grounded in love’
are ‘able to comprehend with all saints what
is the breadth and length and depth and height ;
and to know the love of Christ which passeth
knowledge,’ that they may be filled with all the
fulness of God (Eph 3'7!%). Now the Apostle
expects that even in his own imperfect churches
be some real enjoyment of this fellow-
en ὁ“ “-“ β '8.
=
πο A at ae a ο--.--- οκασο κα
|) er SS ------οῬρῬ----.-ςς-ος.-ςςς-ς-ς--- Ὁ το τς Ll eo
FELLOWSHIP
ς΄ ooo
590
ship with Christ. He reminds the Church of
Corinth that they ‘ were called into the fellowship
of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord’ (1 Co 19), ae. the
fellowship of which He is the soul. Fractured
though the Church is by schism and marred by
impurity, it is a society of redeemed sons, whose
destiny is to be conformed to the image of Him
who is the firstborn among many brethren (Ro
8% 30) and even now it must reflect with real truth
some of the glory of that future fellowship. The
same conception is conveyed in 2 Co 13" in the
words, ‘the communion of the Holy Ghost. ; for
the Spirit who unifies the Christian society into a
body of redeemed men who have experienced the
unnierited favour of Christ and the love of the
Father, is the Spirit of Christ (2 Co 3 18), The
Philippian Church also, pervaded by love and
comforted by reciprocal compassion, has enjoyed
fellowship because of the presence of this Spirit
who brings the consolation of Christ Himself
ΡΨ):
ν. THE JOHANNINE WRITINGS.—Assuming that
the books which bear the name of John came from
the Apostle, we may consider them together, for
they bring before us the conditions of a later
period. The Gospel and the Epistles at least
are the mature work of one who seeks to set
before his readers the mind of Christ, after the
attempt had been made for half a century to work
His teaching into actual life. Much must be taken
for granted. The visible Church is one; the old
problem of Jewish and Gentile sections is a dead
issue. Now the Church is face to face with the
world. Two spiritual forces are opposed —the
realm of light over which the Son of God rules,
and the world of darkness organized and directed
by the Prince of Evil. Error concerning the Person
ot Christ, and lack of love of the brethren, are
disintegrating the Christian society. So the author
takes his readers to the fountain of Christian
fellowship, and allows them to taste its quality
as it was enjoyed by the disciples of Jesus, whom
having loved He loved unto the end (Jn 13-17).
These discourses illuminate the Lord’s Supper, and
the feet-washing serves as a noble approach to it.
There are two prominent aspects of the Eucharist
as interpreted by John: (a) hae it is a feast for the
spiritual nurture of the faithful (643-53) ; (4) that it
sets forth the love of the Lord, and so becomes a
love-feast of brethren. Love is the note of the
conversations. Only through the clear atmosphere
of love can they see their absent Master. If they
obey Him and love one another, He will come to
among brethren here, and perfect sonship here-
aiter,
eva conceptions dominate the First Epistle
eRe ont cllowship with God is the goal of the
‘hristian life (1 Jn 13-4), Such fellowship comes
through kn wledge, which is only another aspect
Ἢ God (47-8), But sin is a barrier to
Mean hip, which would therefore be lmpos-
re were 1t not that it has been removed by the
propitiator sacrifice of Christ (91. 2). No sin is
God r than hate; and since all love comes from
God eR nates his brother cannot love
rod. If he God, that love must. first have
come from God, and stre; ; rouge
» and stream forth through the
who
lov Θ
----- ὁ ὁ τ΄ Οὐ
FEVER
heart of the believer upon his brother. To live in
loving fellowship with the brethren is at once the
proot of fellowship with the Father and the ethical
condition for receiving it, for only to hearts
broadened and deepened by love can God reveal
Himself and bring fellowship (413. 1% 2 21),
This mystic, whose spirit was more responsive
than any other to the mind of the Master, opens
up the profound depth of that fellowship which the
early Christian Church enjoyed, as we have seen,
in no inconsiderable measure. Since Christ is the
soul of Christian fellowship, it is impaired by lack
of truth concerning Him. but truth and love are
inseparable. ‘Therefore when we seek for the true
unity of the Church of Christ, we must begin by
keeping our Lord’s great command to love the
brethren, and thereby advance with all saints to
a true knowledge of Christ.
Looking back through the dim distance we dis-
cover the foreshadowings of prophet and psalimist
erowing clearer, till in these latest books of the
NT we can almost touch the reality on earth in
this ideal of the Apostle whom Jesus loved. The
supreme poetic description of that fellowship is
the city of the King of Love in Revelation, whose
citizens see the face of the Lord (Kev 22!-), the
beatific vision for which the psalimists strained
their eyes.
The Christian fellowship as it existed on earth
in the Ist century was a stupendous creation.
Philosophers had dreamed of Utopias. Humane
Stoics had taught the brotherhood of man. But
all attempts to realize these ideals had been com-
paratively ineffective. In the Christian Church,
however, aliens and the disfranchised found fellow-
ship with those who inherited religious promisés
and social privilege. Roman and Greek stooped
to love the hateful Jew, and the Jew was willing
to transfer the sacred name of Israel to Gentiles
whose past was unclean. Well-born and slave
greeted one another as brethren, without thereby
disturbing social order. A love so compelling as
to reverse the national and social values, must
have been derived from a Presence altogether
transcending the measurements of ordinary human
life. Christian fellowship is not to be defined as
intercourse glowing with human love at its highest.
It is primarily a spiritual communion with the
Supreme Person, whose love recreates life and
makes it a complete expression of love. So the
goal must be, as the writer to the Hebrews says,
in the world to come, when Jesus shall have intro-
duced His many brethren into the Holy of Holies,
where they will, as a company of the redeemed,
hold fellowship with the Father (He 2°: 10. 11. 725
12°2-24), See, further, art. COMMUNION.
LiTERATURE.—Hort, The Christian Ecclesia ; Weizsiicker, The
Apostolic Age; Lindsay, The Christian Ministry in the Early
Church; v. Dobschiitz, The Early Christian Churches; art.
‘Communion’ in Hastings’ DB; Herrmann, Communion with
God, pp. 49-183; Dale, Mellowship with Christ, Serm. i., also
The Living Christ and the Four Gospels, Lects. 1.-1v. ; Harnack,
Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries.
R. A. FALCONER.
FETTERS.—See CHAIN.
FEVER (ὁ πυρετός, and in Ac 288 οἱ ruperol, with
corresponding participle in Mt. and Mk. srupéc-
σουσα). There are only five passages in the NT
in which fever is spoken of, and three cf these,
viz. Mt 84, Mk 1°", and Lk 4° are parallel pas-
sages. One cannot say with certainty what specific
fever is alluded to in these passages, or in Jn 4°,
where the healing of the nobleman’s son is spoken
of. It may be, indeed, that St. Luke, whose
training as a physician naturally led him to speak
with exactness about medical matters, does specify
the fever from which Peter’s wife’s mother was
It has been
suffering (συνεχομένη πυρετῷ μεγάλῳ).
FIELD
contended that there was a specific fever known as
‘the great fever,’ and that it was this, whatever
it may have been, from which the sick woman in
Capernaum suffered. This, however, has been
questioned, and perhaps it is rather the intensity
of the fever than its specific character that is indi-
cated by the word ‘ great.’ Probably both Peter’s
wife’s mother and the nobleman’s son sutiered from
malarial fever. Professor G. A. Smith tells us
that the region about Tiberias is a very feverish
region, and Dr. Cunningham Geikie says that
malarial fever was common at Capernaum. It is
very likely that there has always been a good deal
of malarial fever about the shores of the Sea of
Galilee, and especially about the more northerly
portion of these shores. The fever from which
the father of Publius suffered (Ac 28%) was fever
accompanying or accompanied by acute dysentery.
See also artt. CURES, p. 403”, and DISEASE,
Ρ. 463°.
LITERATURE.—NT Commentaries; artt. ‘Medicine’ in Hast-
ings’ DB and ‘ Diseases,’ Encyc. Biblica; G. A. Smith, HGHL 1,
p. 449; Cunningham Geikie, Life and Words of Christ, ii. Ὁ ἢ,
GEORGE C. WATT.
FIELD.—
The three Greek words (&ypos, χώρα, χωρίον) rendered ‘field’
in the Gospels are distinguishable in meaning, and sometimes
require more specific renderings. ἀγρός in general means ‘ficld’
in the sense of cultivated land, or open country thought of as
subject to cultivation : e.g. ‘sowed good seed in his field’ (Mt
1324), ‘lilies of the field,’ ‘grass of the field’ (628.30), etc. χώρα
denotes generally a region, or district of country, as ‘the region
of Trachonitis’ (Lk 3!), ‘the country of the Gadarenes’ (Mik 51).
χωρίον is more distinctly locative, as ‘a place called Gethsemane’
Git 2006), ‘the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to Joseph’ (Jn
4°), etc. But, on the other hand, we find ἀγρός used also of the
country in distinction from the city (Mk 514 656, Lk 834 912 2326),
χώρα used of fields of ripened grain, as in Jn 4°5 ‘Look on the
fields, for they are white’ (cf. Ja 54 ‘who have reaped down
your fields’); and where St. Matthew uses ἀγρός of ‘ the field of
blood’ (278), St. Luke uses χωρίον (Ac 119),
* A knowledge of certain peculiarities of the ficlds
of Palestine is helpful to the full understanding of
severad of the parables of our Lord and some other
passages in the Gospels. There are now, as there
were of old, numerous fields in Palestine where
‘the lilies’ and many other flowers grow in gor-
geous profusion without human care or culture,
and where ‘the grass of the field,’ including fibrous
weeds as well as shortlived flowers, when dried by
the tropical sun, are still gathered as fuel, and used
to heat ovens for baking bread (cf. Mt 6%: **). The
argument of the Master, drawn from ‘the grass of
the field which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into
the oven,’ still holds good, and still finds abundant
illustration. It is true occasionally now, also, that
after the owner of the land has ‘sowed good seed
in his field,’ an enemy will in sheer spite creep in
secretly and ‘sow tares,’ the noxious darnel (Loliwm
temulentum) ; but see TARES. ᾿
In Palestine, as in all unsettled countries, it
was common, and in parts of the land it is still
common, to resort to the field (the cultivated jand
or the open country) as a fit place in which to hide
treasure (cf. Mt 13") In ancient times the land
was peculiarly subject to revolutions, exposed to
raids from wandering tribes, and, in some districts,
liable to plunder from rebbers at home. So, in the
absence of safety vaults and the like, owners of
treasure who feared robbery or thievery (Mt 25”),
or who were setting off on a journey to a distant
country, would bury their money, jewellery, etc.,
in the field. Then, if the owner were killed in
battle, or died in a far country, no one might know
where his treasures were hid; and, according to | }
| a speaker of smooth things.
usage, such valuables when found, if no owner
appeared to claim them, belonged to the owner of
the land—a fact which gives point to the parable
of the Hid Treasure (Mt 13“, ef. Job 371, Pr 2%).
Many persons are found digging for hid treasure
in Egypt and Palestine to-day, and not a few! demnation fade from the memory. His ‘judge
FIERCENESS 591
spend their last farthing in the efiort (οὗ, Thomscn,
LB ii. p. 640).
In the parable of the Sower (Mt 134, Mk 44, Lk
8°), where the AV has ‘some (seeds) fell by the
wayside,’ the picture is really of grains of wheat or
barley which fell on the trodden pathway leading
across the field, and so were left exposed where
the birds could see and devour them (οἵ, Lk 8°
‘trodden under foot’). It is still common in Pale-
stine to see flocks of birds following the peasant as
he sows his seed, eagerly picking up every grain
that is not covered by the quick-following harrow.
And where it is said ‘some fell upon stony places’
(AV), the real allusion is to the underlying rock of
limestone. The traveller finds numberless places
where a broad, flat, limestone rock lies just
beneath the surface of the field, with only a thin
layer of earth upon it (cf. Lk 80 19. ‘the rock 2):
‘Stony ground’ (AV, following eariy English ver-
sions) suggests a soil abounding in loose stones,
such as is often found there producing good wheat ;
but the picture is rather of a soil into which the
seeds could not sink deep, and, the film of earth
being readily heated because of the underlying
rock, they would come up sooner than elsewhere,
and at first would look uncommonly flourishing ;
but, not being able to send roots deep into the
moist earth (ef. Lk 86), when the hot, dry weather
came the stalks would wither, and thus show that
the fair promise of a crop there had been deceptive
(cf. Ps 129% ‘grass upon the house-tops’).
In the fields of Palestine, too, there are still
found spots that are rich, but are peculiarly in-
fested with briars and thorn-bushes, where one
may see the wheat in scattered and _ spindling
stalks struggling for life (cf. Mt 1317). In Mk 2"
and Lk 6! (AV) we have ‘corn-fields’ where the Gr.
word (σπόριμα) is the same as in Mt 1921, where it is
rendered simply ‘corn,’—‘ through the corn’ (after
Tindale). It is literally ‘through the sown (places),’
z.e. the grain-fields, as Noyes and Bib. Un. Vers.
render it, fields of wheat or barley, not of maize or
Indian corn, of course. The picture is of Jesus and
His disciples going along, either through the stand-
ing grain, or by a footpath which bounded the fields,
the grain in either case being within easy reach.
It was customary then, as it is now, in Palestine,
for the lands of different owners to be separated,
not by fences or walls, but usually only by crude
individual stones set up at intervals on the surface
of the ground as landmarks (cf. Dt 194); and the
roads, mere footpaths as a rule, were not dis-
tinct from the fields, as they are with us, but ran
through them, so that the grain grew right up to
the edge of the path. We are not meant to think
of Jesus and His disciples as going ruthlessly
through the fields and trampling down the grain,
but as following one of these paths over or between
the fields. But neither plucking the ears of wheat
to eat, nor even walking across a pathless field,
was, according to Jewish ideas (ef. Dt 23”), a vio-
lation of the rights of property any more than it is
to-day among the Arabs. It was not of this, but of
Sabbath-breaking, that the Pharisees complained.
GEO. B. EAGER.
FIERCENESS.—The word ‘fierce’ oceurs twice
in AV (Mt 838 of the two demoniaes [χαλεποί], Lk
23° of our Lord’s accusers [ἐπίσχυον RV ‘urgent’]).
But the purpose of the present article is to
examine in what sense and to what extent this
attribute may be attributed to Christ. The popu-
lar conception of Him is perhaps too much that of
It is forgotten that
He could utter on occasion words of fierce energy.
The beauty of the unanswering innocence of the
Passion, that type of silent suffering and enduring,
has made His outbursts of fieree reproach or con-
FIG-TREE ~
not’ (Mt 7'), or His parable of patience that has its
part in the ‘wheat and tares’ being allowed to
erow together (13%), or His doctrine of unlimited
forgiveness (Lk 17!4),—these are thought to be
entircly representative. Yet, while they undoubt-
edly indicate the prevailing elements, something
would be lost in our understanding of Jesus if we
overlooked the impassioned fierceness with which
He sometimes acted and spoke.
Of recorded deeds the incident of the driving
out of the vendors and money-changers from the
temple precincts (Mt 21°, Mk 11”, Jn 2:5) is the
most notable: but it is in the vigour of His
language that the possibilities of fierceness in
Him are most revealed. He has small patience
with certain failings, such as the lack of an
apprehensive faith, or worldliness, or hypocrisy,
or vanity. There is a denunciatory strain in Him
much resembling the force of the Baptist’s ‘off-
spring of vipers’ of Lk 37. It is present in the
Nazareth sermon in His OT illustrations οὗ
prophets not honoured in their own country (Lk
4); in His declaration of war with evil, —‘I am
come to send fire on the earth’ (12%), and ‘I
came not to send peace but a sword’ (Mt 10%) ;
it even finds expression in the very phrase
γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν used by the Baptist (Mt 129}.
None of the mildness of diplomacy is in the
message to Herod—‘ Go ye, and tell that fox ’ (Lk
1392. When He encounters men or communities
incapable of the heavenly vision, His words are
swords. To trouble about them is to ‘throw
pearls before swine’ (Mt 7°). They are a ‘ faith-
less and perverse generation,’ or ‘a wicked and
adulterous generation’ seeking after a visible and
tangible sign of spiritual things (164); they shall
lose the Kingdom of God (21%); the heathen of
Nineveh shall show themselves better judges of
eternal realities (Lk 11°); there is more hope for
Tyre and Sidon (10) or for Sodom and Gomorrah
than for the spiritually blind (Mt 10"); ‘Ye are
of your father the devil’ (Jn 8#!). The fierceness
which marks His rejection of the third temptation
(Mt 4°) is paralleled in the ‘Get thee behind me,
Satan’ with which Peter’s proffered intervention is
repelled (Mk 859). The perverter of the simplicity
of childhood is told that he had better have been
drowned with a millstone about his neck (Mt 18°).
But the white heat of fiereeness in the utterance
of Christ comes when He meets with Pharisees,
scribes, and teachers of the Law, who are unworthy
of their high professions. They are ‘false prophets
«ον ravening wolves’ (Mt 7); ‘hypocrites’ is
hurled at them in every phrase of Mt 23, in the
close of Lk 11, and in Mk 78, where Isaiah’s
bitterest words against lip-service are quoted
against them. They are ‘whited sepulchres,’
‘blind guides,’ ‘sons of them that slew the pro-
phets,’ ‘serpents.’ They ‘say, and do not,’ so
that ‘the publicans and the harlots £0 into the
kingdom’ before them (Mt 9131),
lhus to His Divine tenderness did Jesus add a
strange flerceness, as though to teach that in
faith’s war with darkness lightning has its place.
See art. ANGER.
LITERA TURE,
ΒΑ Seeley, Eece Homo, ch. xxi.; Butler, Serm.
Vill. Ὁ ale,
Atonement?, p. 338 ff. E. DAPLYN.
FIG-TREE (in NT συκῆ. in OT myn ¢’endh: the
Ficus Carica, L..).—4, The fig is the principal shade-
and fruit-tree of Palestine, growing in all parts, in
many places spontaneously. It seldom surpasses
“Ὁ It. [Post, in Hastings’ ‘DB, 5.υ. « Figs,’ says 15
ft.] in heieht. but has a spread of from 25 to 30 ft.
its welcome ade and refreshing fruit make it the
em em of peace and prosperity (Dt, 88, Je 910. me
1K 4°, Mie 44. Zee 310. 1 Mac 1413. Besides this
general symbolism, two characteristies of the tree,
FIG-TREE
appealing respectively to the eye and to the palate,
have led to further comparisons.
(a) The fig-tree is conspicuous in early spring by
the expanding of the tips of its twigs into little
reen knobs called 035 paggim (Gr. ὄλυνθοι, Ca 2”
Υ ‘green figs’) which are the flower-fruit buds,
and together with the leaf-bud, which expands
shortly after and soon overshadows the pag, cr
fruit rudiment, serve as the herald of the coming
summer (Mt 24 and ||). This phenomenon of ‘all
the trees’ (Lk 21*%) is particularly noticeable in
the fig-tree because of its early and conspicuous
verdure. ‘The ripening of the pag follows the ‘ ap-
pearance of the flowers on the earth,’ and accom-
panies the ‘blossoming of the vine’ as the feature
of the advancing season and the time of mating
(Ca 215). In the same connexion may be mentioned
tle phenomenon of the dropping of great quantities
of the immature fruit in consequence of imperfect
fertilization, so that the scattered paggim covering
the ground under the fig-trees become to the author
of Rev 6 a symbol of the stars fallen to earth
from the firmament, ‘as a fig-tree casteth her un-
ripe figs when she is shaken of a great wind.’
(>) The fig-tree has ¢wo (not three) successive crops
of fruiteach year. The first-ripe tig (Heb. a22 bik-
kurah, Is 28, Jer 245, Hos 91}, Mic 7!) is produced
upon the old wood of the preceding year, the buds
which remained undeveloped through the winter
swelling into the little green paggim already de-
scribed, towards the end of the season of spring
rains (March-April), and coming to maturity in
June. The πονῇ ἐδ σαν, or autumn fig, is the fie
of commerce, and is produced on the new wood οἱ
the same year. The leaf-bud, which expanded
shortly after the pag and soon distanced it in
growth, puts out in its turn a flower-fruit bud
which matures in August, or later, according to
the variety, the fruit hanging on the boughs until
winter, when the branches are again left naked,
grey, and strageling. j τ:
This phenomenon of successive fruitage in the
fig-tree is doubtless the source of the description
of the fruit-trees of the New Jerusalem (Ezk 47”,
Rev 22° ‘the tree of life’) as ‘bearing fruit every
month.’ In the Talmud it is a symbol for the
acquisition of learning, which, to be permanent,
must come by little and little (Hamburger, RE i. 3,
s.v. ‘Feige, p. 360 with references). Hence the
saying, ‘Whoso sees a fig-tree in his dreams, his
learning shall be safe from forgetfulness’ (Bera-
khoth, 57). The capacity of the tree for prolonga-
tion of its bearing season leads in fact to certain
representations which .easily pass over into ex-
aggerations and misunderstandings important to
avoid.
Edersheim (Life and Times, bk. iv. ch. xvi. p.
246) refers to ‘a species (the Benoth Shuach) men-
tioned in Shebh, v. 1, of which the fruit required
three years for ripening,’ but which may more
reasonably be understood as simply a late-bearing
variety whose fruit reached maturity only in ex-
ceptionally favourable seasons, not oftener than
once in three years. So with the rhetorical passage
of Josephus (1.7 111. x. 8) celebrating the delightful
climate of the plain of Gennesaret. His statement
that ‘it supplies the principal fruits, as grapes and
figs, uninterruptedly during ten months of the
year,’ cannot reasonably be made to prove more
than the fact that in that semi-tropical depression,
600 ft. below sea-level, fresh fruit, including figs,
could be obtained almost to the end of winter.
To explain the narrative of Mk 11% two other
facts have been advanced of doubtful value and
trust-worthiness. It is asserted that neglected
relics of the autumn crop sometimes cling to the
branches of the fig-tree throughout the winter ;
but Post (1.6. p. 6) was unable during a residence
FIG-TREE
of 33 years in Syria to find, or hear of, such. The
statement of Edersheim (/.c. Vv. ii. p. 374) that
such left-over fruit about April 1 ‘would of course
be edible” becomes admissible only by inserting
a ‘not’ after ‘of course.’ It is also asserted that
the pag, or green fruit, was eaten, even Benzinger
(PRE® s.v. ‘Fruchtbiume,’ p. 304) declaring that
‘Jesus might expect to find such winter figs (the
paggim) on a tree already in leaf at the season of
Passover, that is before the time of the ripening
of figs.’ In the sense that the rudimentary fruit-
buds would be discoverable under the leaves, upon
examination (unless the tree had become sterile by
reversion to the wild type, as sometimes occurs),
this statement is true ; the present writer has found
such dry tasteless ‘figs’ at ‘Aim Fara near Jeru-
salem, on March 1, the size of an olive, though the
tree was leafless. Boys sometimes nibble these
buds, but to speak of the paggim at this season as
‘winter figs’ is misleading. The evidence for the
edible quality of the pag, drawn by Edersheim
from the Talmud (Bk. v. il. p. 375, referring to
Shebh. iv. 7 and Jerus. Shebh. 356, last lines) sug-
gests only that at a later season the unripe fruit
was sometimes used as a condiment ‘ with bread.’
This, however, was after the paggim ‘began to
assume a red colour,’ and not when the foliage
had only just begun to cover the setting fruit-bud.
Apart from the question whether a tree could be
properly rebuked for the absence of a quite excep-
tional product, the alleged phenomena, whether of
neglected relics of the autumn harvest, or use of the
unripe fruit, have neither of them any real bearing
on the difficulty that Jesus should approach a way-
side fig-tree, with the intention of staying His
hunger, when, as so frankly stated in the record
itself, ‘it was not the season of figs.’
2. The Gospel references to the fig-tree include
both parables and incidents, and make allusion to
phenomena both of its leafage and its fruitage.
As questions arise to how great an extent the in-
cidents may not be symbolic, parables becoming
concrete in process of repetition, or even pure
symbols, it is best to consider first the two in-
stances in which the fig-tree is made the subject of
undoubted parable by our Lord.
(a) The parable of the Fig-Tree (Mk 13°: 9- ΜῈ
9435. 33, paraphrased and interpreted Lk 21°!) is
based on the early verdure of the tree. Its general
sense is clear from Lk 1274 (= Mt 1673 8 text), a
passage which leads to the insertion in Lk 21° of
βλέποντες ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν (ef. 1257. The meaning is:
As you judge by the softening, burgeoning twigs
of the fig-tree that the harvest season is approach-
ing, so read the signs of the times. These (ταῦτα ;
Mk 13% treats the preceding context as if only
premonitions of the Day had been spoken of, over-
looking νυν. Ὁ; but cf. Lk 1251-53. 56 with Mk 13!
13.29. πάντα ταῦτα, Mt 24* is more specific but less
correct) signs prove that the judgment, the glean-
ing of God (ef. Mk 4”, not ‘the kingdom of God,’
Lk 21°!) is close at hand. As regards closer exe-
gesis and criticism, we must say, with E. Schwartz
(‘ Der verfluchte Feigenbaum’ in ZNTW i. p. 51):
‘Whoever would interpret with exactitude will
meet with more than one difficulty.’ Besides
Schwartz, the reader may consult Gould, Swete,
and Wellhausen, ad ἴσο. The paraphrase of Lk. is
the earliest attempt to interpret, but smooths
over difticulties (note, e.g., the additions ‘and
all the trees,’ ‘the kingdom of God,’ and other
changes). ;
(b) The parable of the Barren Fig-Tree (Lk 1555)
stands in the same eschatological context as the
warning to read the signs of the times (Lk 12
13° paralleled by Mk 13%%° 12-78), and forms its |
clinax. One is tempted to conjecture that the |
problematic ‘parable’ referred to in Mk 1378, Mt
VOL. 1.—38
FIG-TREE 593
24°? (ἀπὸ δὲ THs συκῆς μάθετε τὴν παραβολήν, cf. Mk 7”
as against Lk 2159 καὶ εἶπεν παραβολήν) was once no
other than this. At all events it simply applies,
in fuller form, the figure credited in Mt 3!=Lk 3%
to the Baptist.
This is the common prophetic doctrine of the
Divine ἀνοχή, the present a time of suspension of
the Divine sentence to leave opportunity for re-
pentance.
The once favourite allegorizing method of interpretation (e.g.
the gardener=the Messiah, the three years=the three (2) Pass-
overs of Christ’s public ministry) is now fortunately discredited.
Yet it is incorrect, with Wellhausen (Ev. Luce, ad loc.) to say
that the fig-tree stands for the individual. Not merely is the
girdled fig-tree an OT emblem of the punishment of Israel (J1 17,
cf. Lk 2331), but the parable concludes a context wherein the men
of Jerusalem, overwhelmed hy the fall of the tower in Siloam,
and the Galileans, cut down by the sword of Pilate, are brought
forward as ‘signs of the times.’ The warning, accordingly, is
certainly against ‘the overthrow of the Jewish people’ (T. K.
Cheyne, Encyec. Bibl. s.v. ‘ Fig-tree,’ col. 1521). ‘Except ye
repent ye shall all likewise perish’ is not spoken of the fate of
individuals, but of the common overthrow, however this may
be avoided by individual repentance ; cf. Mt 1238-49 =Lk 1129-82,
9. The cursing of the fig-tree (Mk 11}?-4- 20-5 — Mt
2118-*2),_ Parabolic symbolism is so slightly con-
cealed under the narrative features of this story
that the majority of critics are disposed to regard
it asa mere endowment of the Lukan parable of
the Barren Fig-tree with concrete form, just as
the parable of the Good Samaritan, and others,
were long treated as instances of historical fact.
In favour of this explanation are several features
of the narrative and its setting.
(a) The generally admitted incorporation of Mk.
by Lk. implies that the omission of Mk 11}5:13. 20+
was deliberate. The most natural explanation of
it is that St. Luke regarded the story as a double
of his parable, Lk 13°°. Conversely the parable
does not appear in Mt. or Mark.
(6) The withering of the tree (Mk 11°°-**), asequel
of the next day after the cursing (111*"4), occupies
a different position in Mt 21%, taking place ‘on
the spot.’ In both Gospels this appended sequel
proves itself a secondary attachment, both by its
material and its language. The contents of Mk
112° consist in the main of two logia, torn from
their proper context (cf. Mt 17°°, Lk 178, and Mt
61-15) and characterized by non-Markan expressions
(cf. ‘your Father in heaven,’ Mk 11”). Such loose
agglomerations of stray /ogia are frequent in our
Second Gospel (Mk 322-380 411. 12. 21.25 815. 34-36 42-50
10-12 ete.). In Mt 21°"? the language is alien
(παραχρῆμα, ‘on the spot,’ vv.!*"-*°, occurs 17 times
in Lk. and Acts, whereas Mt. and Mk. have invari-
ably elsewhere εὐθύς or εὐθέως), and the ldegia taken
from Mk. produce duplication of Mt 17° and
almost of 6. By transposing the sequel into
immediate juxtaposition with the cursing, and
abridging Mk 115, Mt. avoids one of the two
interruptions of the principal narrative of the
purging of the temple and its consequences (Mk
111-10. 15-18. 378.) and heightens the marvel, but fails
to remove the evidence of his own depencence
afforded by the duplication of 17-°, and only brings
into stronger relief the supplementary and super-
erogatory character of the sequel.
This superfluousness of Mk 1129 25 is most apparent in the light
of such attempted explanations as that of B. Weiss, who says:
The cursing of the fig-tree was ‘of course’ meant by Jesus
symbolically, the concrete fulfilment given it by God being with-
out intention on Jesus’ part. On this statement Wellhausen
(ad loc.) comments sarcastically : ‘ Weiss understands him. God
misunderstood him.’ Nevertheless Weiss is clearly right in
maintaining that the purpose of Jesus would be just as com-
pletely met if the story stopped with 11142,
But even more fatal than the superfluousness of
the sequel is its perversion of the real symbolism
of the incident. Nothing is said of that which
analoey (Mt 3! 7119, Lk 13°) proves to be the real
moral lesson; but the appended sayings are adapted
to find in it mere evidence of the wonder-working
594 FIG-TREE
FIG-TREK
τὺ ῆ:.-΄“-------ρ΄-ςς-ς---------
power of belief. The disciples are to learn that
the prayer, or even the fiat, of faith—here taken
as equivalent to undoubting assurance—can set at
Ξ Bea Se
defiance the order of nature. This, the writer
understands, was the purpose of the cursing. As
part of the rebuke of the disciples’ half-heartedness
(διψυχία) in the case of the epileptic boy (Mt 17% ;
ef. Lk 17° 6, 1 Co 132), the hyperbolic saying on
mountain-moving faith is justified. Adapted along
with Mt 64% to give the moral lesson of the
withering of the fig-tree, both fall to a lower plane,
scarcely above that of mere thaumaturgy. The
symbolism of the cursing is lost in the mere wonder
of withering a tree, a needless miracle of display.
(c) Even after recognition of the unhistorical
character of the addition Mk 112’, the incident of
the cursing is still encumbered with inherent im-
probabilities, of which the most formidable is the
imputation of hunger as the motive of Jesus’ ap-
proach to the tree. It is not enough to admit that
the curse must be explained, if at all, by the dis-
covery, made upon close inspection, that the tree
was empty, not only of those supposititious edible
products which could not be reasonably expected,
bat of even the rudiments of a cropin the season,
and to suggest that when Jesus arrived ‘immedi-
ately the disappointment of unsatisfied hunger
was lost in the moral lesson which flashed across
His mind’ (Post, /.c.). Change of motive is in-
conceivable, because hunger cannot have caused the
approach. Relics of the last season’s crop, if
sought at all, would be sought on a tree whose
still leafless branches left them in plain sight, not
where they would be concealed by the foliage, if
not thrust off by the new growth. So, too, of
paggim ; but the degree of starvation necessary to
suggest appeasing the stomach by paggtm at the
season in question is improbable.
There remains as a historical basis for the story
only the possibility that Jesus’ footsteps might be
attracted by the suggestion of a possible moral
lesson in the precocious leafage of a wayside tree,
the discovery that it covered no promise of fruit
leading Him thereupon to an utterance in the vein
of prophetic symbolism. Gould (Internat. Crit.
Com. ‘Mark,’ 212) finds evidence in Hos 113, Jn
4°" Mt 13!" that ‘such acted parables were not
without precedent among the Jews.’ More apposite
might be the reference of Acd. xi. 10 to prophets in
the early Church who might ‘do something as an
outward mystery typical of the Church (Eph 5*)
because in like manner did the prophets of old
time’ ; cf. Ac 21. But the only real parallel in
the story of Jesus is the parable (unaccompanied
by any narrative of fact) of the Stater in the Fish’s
Mouth, Mt 17*+*7,. The propensity of the reader,
if not of the Evangelist himself, to take this sym-
bolic direction to Peter as implying the real execu-
tion of a miracle, shows how easily a symbolic
sentence of death, directed against the fig-tree as
the representative of unrepentant Israel, might be
taken to imply its literal withering away.
Due consideration for all three objections leaves
the question still open whether the story of Mk
Ns records a specific utterance of this symbolic
kind directed against a particular tree, on a par-
ticular occasion; or whether tradition and the
Evangelist together have not simply localized be-
teen Bethphage (‘ Fig-town’) and Jerusalem, on
- occasion of the supreme visitation of the latter, a
visualized version of the parable Lk 13%,
In favour of the former view may be cited critics no less
Tosa ul than Η. J, Holtzmann (Hdkom. ad loc.) and J. Weiss
(Das a ἱ me E vang lium, p. 268). Still more pronounced is
Schy zi our of connecting the fig-tree of Mk 1112-14, and
even that of Mk 13°83 as well, with some sun-bleached skeleton
from the ¢ rchards of Be thphage, a lone relic of the sieve of
Titus, pointed to by Jerusalem Christians as the memorial of
Jesus’ warning ond promise ; but Schwartz would not admit a
basis of fact for this early identification by tradition of ‘the’
tig-tree, but rather such as Cheyne instances in ‘the inn’ of the
Good Samaritan.
The phenomena of the text indicate, however,
that the process must at least precede our text of
Mark. For our Evangelist the symbolic sense has
already disappeared, leaving only the work of
power. Before this stage ot the process could be
reached the parable of the Barren Fig-tree must
already have been transformed by local tradition
into symbolic cursing of some given tree, and the
moral lesson have been subsequently eclipsed by
the purely thaumaturgic interest.
More conservative criticism, while recognizing
the secondary character of Mk 1150 5. and perhaps
admitting the fundamental identity of the sym-
bolic cursing with the parable whose lesson is so
obviously the same, may still demand more evi-
dence before it surrenders the possibility that our
Second Evangelist retains a substantially trust-
worthy tradition of the actual site and occasion of
the utterance.
4. The fig-tree of Nathanael (Jn 1%). Symbolism
admittedly enters to so large a degree into the
narrative of the Fourth Gospel (cf. e.g. Jn 97 12%),
that it is not surprising if the more radical school of
interpreters, looking upon it as the uniform pro-
duct of an allegorizing fancy, should find in the
unexplained reference of Jn 115 the suggestion of
an allegorical sense, the fig-tree having the sym-
bolic meaning of religious instruction applied in
the Talmud, or even playing the part of the
sacred Bo-tree (icus religiosa) in Buddhist legend.
The fact that commentators from Schoettgen and
Lightfoot (Hor. Heb. ad loc.) downwards have
inferred that Nathanael was ‘ aut orans, ant legens,
aut meditans, aut aliquid religiosum praestans’ is
proof that this mental association is natural ; but
it cannot be truly said that the Evangelist alle-
gorizes. The words ‘when thou wast under the
fig-tree’ are obscure, not because we fail to apply
the key, but because the Evangelist has left some-
thing lacking. He utters an enigma, but gives no
other clue than the recognition by Nathanael of
Jesus’ supernatural knowledge. He wishes the
reader to guess that Jesus had here proved Him-
self the καρδιογνώστης λόγος (cf. Wis 108), as in the
case of the Samaritan Woman later (417-9: °°) ; but
he either does not trouble himself, or was unable, to
relate the facts.
Cheyne indeed (Encyc. Bibl. 8.0. ‘Nathanael’) considers
the usual explanation ‘hardly adequate. If it simply means,
““when thou hadst retired under the shade of the fig-tree for
meditation or prayer,” we ask why the Evangelist did not
express the Master’s meaning more distinctly (contrast Jn 418).
His answer is a conjectural emendation of the Hebrew (')
in a supposititious source of the Gospel, Pon AN) ‘when
thou wast making supplication,’ for 7]NAT non AMY) ‘when
thou wast under the fig-tree.’ But conjecture of this sort
discredits itself. To every reader it is manifest that an element
of the narrative is intentionally or unintentionally suppressed.
If it be granted that ‘the Fourth Gospel is a composite work,’
it is not unreasonable to suppose its compiler to have left
untranscribed that portion of his source which would have ex-
plained the allusion to the fig-tree, just as he has omitted in his
story of the feeding of the multitude (61f-) Jesus’ motive for the
miracle [logical Jacuwne of this character form indeed a distince-
tive feature of this Gospel].
If the traditional view be maintained, the Evan-
gelist’s reserve will be accounted for as reflecting
the enigmatic nature of the actual dialogue, which,
so far as bystanders were able to perceive, had no
further explanation.
LITERATURE.—Besides the works referred to in the art. the
following may be consulted: Thomson, LB, pt. ii. ch. xxiv. ;
Tristram, Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 352; Trench, Parables 12, p.
346 ff. ; Bruce, Parabol. Teaching, p. 427 ff. ; Trench, Miracles 10,
p. 466 ff.; W. M. Taylor, Mir. of Our Saviour, p. 413 ff. ; Liddon,
Sermons on Some Words of Christ, p. 100; Godet and Westcott,
Comin. in loc. ; cf. Augustine, Conf. vii. xii. 28.
B. W. BACON.
FIRE
FIRST AND LAST 595
FIRE (πῦρ except in Mk 14%=Lk 225° where
φῶς occurs) is referred to in the Gospels much more
frequently in a figurative than in a literal sense.
1. The allusions to Jiteral tire are the following.
(a) Those concerned with the domestic use of fire
for heating and cooking. In the better houses in
Palestine the rooms were warmed by charcoal fires
in portable braziers ; in poorer houses the wood or
other fuel was burned in a hollow in the earthen
floor. The fire into which the epileptic boy fell
(Mt 17°=Mk 9”) would be of the latter deserip-
tion. The fire of coals kindled for warmth in the
middle of the court of the high priest’s house (Mk
1454=Lk 2255. 56. Jn 1818),* and that employed for
cooking on the shore of the Lake of Galilee (Jn 21°),
would be charcoal fires on the ground. (0) Fire
from heaven (lightning, or something of the same
kind, natural or miraculous) was a frequent form
of Divine judgment in OT. One instance of this
(the destruction of Sodom) is recalled in Lk 17°,
and another (in the life of Elijah) prompted the
feeling and suggested the question of James and
John in Lk 9%.
2. The figurative references to fire are of various
kinds. Sinee wood which was worthless for any
other purpose was used as fuel, fire became an
emblem of the judgment awaiting spiritual un-
fruitfulness (Mt 3!=Lk 3°, Mt 7%, Jn 15%), A
similar idea was suggested by the burning of other
worthless things, such as chaff (Mt 3°=Lk 3”) and
tares (Mt 133° 42-44), The ‘furnace of fire.’ which
is part of the natural imagery of the parable of the
Tares, becomes, in the parable of the Drag-net, a
standing expression for the destiny of the wicked
(Mt 13°). Similarly we have ‘eternal’ (RV) or
‘everlasting’ (AV) fire (Mt 188 25%), ‘unquench-
able’ fire (Mt 32=Lk 3”, Mk 9*- 48), and (RVm)
‘the Gehenna of fire’ (RV ‘the hell of fire,’ AV
“hell fire’) in Mt 5“, Mt 189 (=Mk 9*- *- 47). The
last of these expressions is found in the same con-
text as the other two, and gives the key to their
meaning. From the OT associations of the valley
of Hinnom the name Gehenne had in Christ’s time
been appropriated in Jewish thought for the place
of the final punishment of the wicked—a place of
burning and corruption, in which body as well as
spirit would be tortured. In the passages above
mentioned our Lord must be understood to use the
popular religious language of His time, though it
may have been in a less literal and more parabolic
sense than usual. To the group of sayings in Mk
943-48 is attached another (Mk 9%), in which fire is
the emblem of the self-discipline in this world, by
which the destruction of Gehenna in the next
world is to be avoided. The destructiveness of
fire made the phrase ‘I will send fire’ a common
form of prophetic Divine threatening in OT, and
this phrase is taken up by Christ (Lk 12”) as ex-
pressing, in one aspect, the result of His earthly
mission. Fire is used by John the Baptist as an
emblem of the purity and intensity of the influence
accompanying the baptism of the Holy Spirit which
he foretold that Christ should bestow (Mt 3!!=
᾿ ΘῈ
The eyes of the glorified Christ, as seen in the
vision of the Apocalypse, are compared to a flame
of fire (Rev 14 238 19”).
Origen (Hom. in Jer. xx. 3) has preserved the following
agraphon of Jesus: ‘He who is near me is near the fire ; he who
is far from me is far from the kingdom.’
JAMES PATRICK.
* In Mk 1454—Lk 2256 φῶς is used instead of τῦρ (cf. Lk 2255),
In classical Gr. a similar use of the word is found in cases
where a fire is thought of as the source of light as well as heat
(so also 1 Mac 1229, ef. v.28 where tip is employed). Its appro-
priateness in both the Synoptic passages 15 due to the fact that
it was night, and, in the Lk. passage, to the further fact that |
it was the blaze of the fire which revealed Peter to the maid.
In both cases RV brings out the meaning by rendering zpos τὸ
gas ‘in the light of the fire.’
FIRKIN (μετρητής, Jn 2° only).—An Attie liquid
measure, which is generally regarded as the equi-
valent of the Hebrew bath (ef. LXX 2 Ch 4°), and
is therefore ‘able to contain seventy-two sextaries’
(Jos. Ant. VII. ii. 9), accurately 71:28 pints, or
approximately 9 English gallons. ‘ Firkin’ (AV
and RV)—the fourth part of a barrel containing
from 32 to 36 gallons—as a translation is sufficiently
exact for ordinary purposes.
Previously emptied for the ablutions of the
guests, the water-pots are filled afresh. Their char-
acter and contents prove the reality of the miracle.
Very etlective is the touch added by the expres-
sion ἕως ἄνω, ‘up to the brim,’ if only in presenting
a sure basis for calculating the quantity of this
wedding gift. The lowest estimate of the quantity
of wine must be over 12 firkins or 108 gallons ;
yet, had the vessels been larger they had been
filled ; had there been more vessels, more wine. ΤῸ
such lavishness there need not be imputed in-
discretion. Our Lord did not give simply to meet
a pressing need, or even for future use, but rather
to exemplify the illimitable power of the Giver.
‘It is His first miraculous sign . . . it must become
the type of the fulness of grace and joy and strength
which the only-begotten Son brings to the earth’
(Godet on Jn 2°).
LITERATURE.—Art. ‘ Weights and Measures’ in Hastings’ DB,
iv. 911-913; Hneye. Bibl. iv. col. 5294 ἢ.
ALEX. A. DUNCAN.
FIRST AND LAST (ὁ πρῶτος καὶ ὁ écxaros).—This
title occurs three times in Rev. (117 28 9919), In the
first two passages it is clearly Christ who claims
the title for Himself, as appears from the references
to the Resurrection in the immediate contexts.
In all probability the same is the case in the third
passage (2213), else there is an abrupt change of
the speaker three verses later (v.16 ‘I, Jesus, have
sent mine angel,’ etc.). However, Alford and some
others hold that God the Father is the speaker in
22)
‘The First and the Last’ is claimed by Jehovah
as a description of Himself, with slight variations
in the form, in Is 414 44° 4815 (cf. also 431°). The
Greek form of the title in Rev. is not identical with
that given by the LXX in any of these passages,
in all of which the LXX has differences represent-
ing differences in the Hebrew (41* ἐγὼ θεὸς πρῶτος,
καὶ els τὰ ἐπερχόμενα ἐγώ εἰμι ; 44° ἐγὼ πρῶτος καὶ ἔγὼ
μετὰ ταῦτα ; 48)" ἐγώ εἰμι πρῶτος, καὶ ἐγώ εἰμι εἰς τὸν
αἰῶνα). It is plain, however, that a supreme de-
scription of Jehovah in the OT is applied in Rev.
to Christ, and the significance of the transference
as regards the Christology of the book is unmistak-
able. Besides this, in 22!°, where, as has been
said, it is natural to regard Christ as the speaker,
the title ‘the First and the Last’ stands between
two others, ‘the Alpha and the Omega,’ ‘the
Beginning and the End,’ the first of which is found
also in 18 and 21°, and the second in 21°, in which
passages the speaker may be either Christ or, as is
maintained by some (Hastings’ DB, vol. iv. p. 263+),
God the Father, or ‘God in the Undivided Unity
of His Being.’ It may be, therefore, that in Rev.
itself we have the same supreme titles given to
God the Father and to Christ. But whether this
be so or not, once it is admitted that 2215 is spoken
by Christ, the accumulation in that verse of de-
scriptions which could only belong to the infinite
being of God emphatically marks the belief of the
author of Rev. as to the nature of Christ (see
Hastings’ DB, vol. ii. pp. 690”, 691°, vol. iv, p. 263+),
Of the ‘Thirteen Principles of the Faith,’ formulated by Moses
Maimonides (12th cent, A.v.), the fourth is: ‘I believe with
perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be His name, is the first
and the last’ (Authorized Daily Prayer-Book of the United
Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire, p. 89). Schoettgen
says that the title was also given by the ancient Jews to the
Messiah (Hor, Heb, tom, ii, lib, i, [‘Nominum Messie, qua
596 FIRST AND LAST
divinam illius naturam indigitant’] : ἡ PURI Primus. Ipse Deus-
Jesa. xliv. 6. Ego, inquit, primus, et ego novissimus ; quibus
verbis wternitatem designatam voluit. Judzi vero antiqui
etiam Messiam sic vocant’).
The nature of God necessarily transcends defini-
tion, but ‘the First and the Last’ and the parallel
titles are endeavours to suggest such conceptions
of God as men can comprehend. It would not be
enough to say that ‘the First and the Last’ is the
equivalent of ‘ the Eternal.’ The title recalls the
old covenant name of God, Jehovah (Jahweh), and
its interpretation in Ex 3". It seems plainly to be
an expansion of that name, of which ‘ the Eternal’
is not a satisfactory rendering. Ex 3% (‘I am
what I am,’ or, more accurately, ‘I will be what I
will be’) does not give to 77 an abstract meaning.
mais γίγνομαι, not εἰμί. It does not mean to bz
essentially, but phenomenally. The idea of m7 is
not of abstract existence, but of active being ;
manifestation in history. Jehovah is not a God who
barely exists, but One who asserts His being, and
enters into an historical relation with humanity.
Not being determined by anything external to
(before or after) Himself, He is consistent with
Himself, true to His promises, and unchangeable
in His purposes. He will not fail or disappoint
His servants. He will approve Himself. What
He will be is left undefined, or defined only in
terms of Himself, for the very reason that His
providential dealings with His people in their ever-
varying needs are inexhaustible—are more than
can be numbered or expressed (see Driver on ‘ The
Tetragrammaton,’ Studia Biblica, Oxf. 1885; and
A. B. Davidson in Hastings’ DB, vol. ii. pp. 199,
845%).
This interpretation of the Divine name is amplified in the
prophets. Delitzsch on Is 414 says: ‘It is the meaning of the
Jehovah which is thus unfolded (‘I the Lord, the
Is 2648 414, Hos 125-6, Mal 36),
It may be said, then, that the title ‘the First
and the Last,’ as applied to Christ in Rev., recalls,
and attaches to Him, all that the OT writers had
realized of the nature of God. How much more it
contains for a writer who uses it in the light of the
Incarnation may be gathered from Col 115-30, a pas-
sage related as resting upon the same Christological
basis of faith, and which is indeed the ὁ πρῶτος καὶ
ὁ ἔσχατος of Rey. written out at full length. Both
authors alike claim for Christ absolute supremacy
in relation to the Universe, the natural Creation,
and in relation to the Church, the new Moral
Creation, wa γένηται ἐν πᾶσιν αὐτὸς πρωτεύων. For
both Christ is πρωτότοκος πάσης xrioews,—prior to
all creation and sovereign over all creation. He
is the source of life to the Universe, the centre
of all its developments, the mainspring of all
105. motions—ép αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα (cf. Aft ΤῈ
ὃ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ jv). And as all things had
their origin in Him (the First), so all things return
to Him as their goal and consummation (the Last)
τὰ πάντα δὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται (cf. Ro 1158,
ae 910. where the reference is to God). All things
Hin a Ὡς ἢ Spiaeee WE hin ine sphere of the life of
1e First and the Last.’ In Him they
originate and ; 8 3 : :
original and in Him they cohere—airés ἐστι πρὸ
πάντων, καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν (cf. Ac 1778
in reference to God). :
verse. And such also is His position in relation to
He is the δεσμός of the Uni- |
FIRSTBORN
the Church, the new spiritual creation—He is
absolutely prior and sovereign, because there too
He is the source of life. His Resurrection is the
ground of His headship of the Church (Rey eee
Lightfoot and Meyer on Col 1°; ef. Eph 1”, Ph
9. 10. 11),
It is interesting to trace the same underlying
thought about the nature of God in Rey. and in
the Fourth Gospel. A connexion has been pointed
out between ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ πρῶτος Kai ὁ ἔσχατος of Rev.
and the similar phrases of Is 414 48” and the
explanation of the Divine name Jehovah in Ex 3%.
There seems to be a correspondence between the
ἐγώ εἰμι of the LXX in these and other passages
(Is 4318, Dt 32%) and the ἐγώ εἰμι of Jn (Sy PAB OS
(ef. also 1319). In all these passages the words
havea pregnant meaning. In Jn 8, Christ presents
Himself to the Jews not simply as the Messiah,
but as One who has ‘life in Himself’ as being the
spring of life. He is infinitely, as God is. He shares
the being of God. Therefore He claims supreme
control not only of the seen and the finite, but of
the unseen and the infinite (see Westcott, ad loc.).
Cheyne (on Is 415) thinks that the ἐγώ εἰμι of
Jn 18° is intended in the same sense, and finds this
view confirmed by the supernatural etfect of the
sounds described in v.°.
All existence is necessarily relative to Him who
is ‘the First and the Last.’ Nothing can enter
into the final summing up of all things, or partake
of eternity, which does not receive life from Him
and is not conformed to His purpose. When
Christ claims this title for Himself, it is plainly
announced that the revelation of God in Christ, in
what He was and what He did, is the key to the
issues of human life. Christianity is final. Sce
also art. ALPHA AND OMEGA. A. E. Ross.
FIRSTBORN.—
One of the fundamental ideas with regard to Jehovah in carly
Israel was that of His being owner of the land, and consequently
lord also of all that the land brought forth and of all that lived
upon it (Lv 2523, Ps 5010-12), Closely connected with this idea
was a further one to the effect that the land was held in tenure ;
Jehovah was the landowner, His people the tenants; but their
tenancy depended solely on the will of Jehovah (Dt 3020 etc.).*
‘As lord of the land and giver of all that it produced, tribute
was due to Him; this tribute took the form of the ofiering of
first-fruits.t Not only, however, was the land Jehovah's posses-
sion, but the people who lived upon it, and upon its produce, were
likewise His ; this would follow naturally by virtue of Jehovah’s
overlordship. Therefore, just as Jehovah, being owner of the
land, received the first-fruits of its produce as tribute due
to Him, so, being also owner of the people, did He receive the
firstborn as, in the same way, a tribute due to Him. This is
not definitely stated in the Bible, but the notices of child-
sacrifice lead us to infer that at some early period the rite of
the sacrifice of the firstborn was performed, and the analogy of
the offering up of the firstlings of the flock points toa similar
usage with regard to man (Ex 18? 2929 3420); moreover, the
prevalence of the practice among ethnologically allied races ἢ
makes it in a high degree probable that originally the descend-
ants of Abram sacrificed their firstborn as a tribute to the
Deity (see below, ‘ Redemption of the firstborn’). As the first-
born are spoken of as being particularly the possession of
Jehovah, one would expect to find them occupying the position
of His special ministers ; it is possible that this was the case
originally (ef. Hannah’s vow, 18 111),§ especially as in Nu 312 it
is said: ‘ Behold, I have taken the Levites from among the
children of Israel instead of all the firstborn that openeth the
womb among the children of Israel; and the Levites shall be
mine’ (cf. 34°); as a matter of fact, however, the earliest Code
* This OT conception is illustrated in the Gospels by the par-
able of the Wicked Husbandmen, Mt 21%: and parallel pas-
sages ; cf. also Mk 1354.
+ It will, of course, be understood that this was adapted to
agricultural life from the earlier nomadic life with its flocks
and herds(cf. Nowack, Heb. Arch. ii. p. 147 ff.).
t e.g. the Moabites, 2K 327; the early Arabs (Wellhausen,
Reste2, pp. 115, 116); the Canaanites (PEF St, 1903, passim) 5
the Phoenicians (Rawlinson, Hist. of Phoenicia, ch. xi.); ef. the
story of the attempted sacrifice of Isaac ; see PSBA xxiv. p.
253 ff.
§ There is a Talmudic tradition (Zeb. 112b), according to
which the firstborn acted as officiating priests in the wilder-
ness until the erection of the tabernacle, when the office was
given to the tribe of Levi (Jewish Encyc. v. 396).
r
FIRSTBORN
commands the redemption of the firstborn: £ All the firstborn
ot ao among thy sons shalt thou redeem’ (Ex 131%, cf. 1315
94:0).
From the foregoing one can understand that the term ‘ first-
born,’ πρωτοτοπος (that which, as the most precious, belonged,
in the first instance, to Jehovah), came to be one of particular
honour (cf. Ex 422, Jer 319), and it is used as such in reference
to Christ (Ro 829, Co] 115. 15),
_ The only occurrence of the term in the Gospels
is in Lk 2? καὶ ἔτεκεν τὸν υἱὸν τὸν πρωτότοκον, and
apart from its significance to the Jewish mind as
outlined above, its importance lies in its bearing
upon the question of the perpetual virginity of the
mother of Christ. The term does not necessarily
suggest the subsequent birth of other children; for,
in the first place, as a title of honour it would natur-
ally be mentioned in connexion with Christ by the
Evangelist ; and secondly, to Jews the significance of
‘firstborn’ lay in the special sanctity which attached
to such;+ this is clear from what has been said in
the previous section ; indeed, St. Luke directly im-
plies as much when he quotes, in substance, from
Ex 13%" ‘Every male that openeth the womb
shall be called holy to the Lord’ (Lk 2:5).
Redemption of the firstborn.—In the passage Lk
2°2f- two distinct ceremonies are referred to: the
presentation to the Lord, and the redemption ; the
tormer of these implies the actual dedication of
the child to God (ef. 1S 1°); from what has been
said above, this ceremony must be regarded as the
fulfilling in spirit of the primitive act of literally
devoting (sacrificing) the firstborn son to the Deity.
The distinction between the two ceremonies may
be illustrated by the practice of modern orthodox
Jews. The father of the child first presents his
firstborn to the cohen, and makes a declaration
ending with the words: ‘It is said, Sanctify unto
me all the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the
womb among the children of Israel, both of man
and of beast; it is mine.’ This is a definite act of
presentation to God, of renunciation on the part of
the father,—the child is no longer his. This part
of the ceremony corresponds to Lk 255 55. 2-28,
Then the father places fifteen shillings (five selacm
or shekels) before the cohen, who thereupon asks:
‘Which wouldst thou rather, give me thy first-
born son, the firstborn of his mother, ¢ or redeem
him for five sedaim, which thou art bound to give
according to the Law?’ The father replies: ‘I
desire rather to redeem my son, and here thou hast
the value of his redemption, which I am bound to
give according to the Law.’§ This ceremony
corresponds to Lk 25... This redemption of the
firstborn] (j27 jis) took place thirty days after
birth (Lk 2”; οἵ, Lv 124, Nu 18'6),** and the price
of redemption was, according to Nu 3*7 1810, five
shekels; in Ex 13! the command to redeem the
firstborn is given, though the price of redemption
is not mentioned, while in Lv 12 there is no
mention at all regarding the redemption of the
firstborn, reference being made only to an atone-
*In Mt 125 τὸν rpwrérexev is read by DC and the OL version
only ; it must therefore be rejected in this passage.
+ Ci. He 16, where τὸν σρωτοτοκον means ‘ only-begotten.’
+ The law of the redemption of the firstborn ‘applies to the
firstborn of the mother and not of the father. Hence the
husband of several wives would have to redeem the firstborn
of each one of them, while the husband of a woman who had
had children by a previous marriage need not redeem her child
although it was his firstborn’ (Jewish Encye. v. 396). More-
ovér, the first male child of a woman need not be redeemed if a
female child has been born before him. j re
§ The money is sometimes returned, but the Jewish authorities
do not look upon this with favour. i
| See The Authorized Daily Prayer-Book® (ed. S. Singer),
pp- 308, 309. τ
“| According to Ex 1313-15 the redemption of the firstborn was
instituted as an abiding act of thanksgiving to Jehovah for
having spared the firstborn males of the children of Israel in
Egypt. Concerning the connexion between the offering of the
firstborn and the Passover, see Nowack, op. cit. § 99. ᾿
Ἐκ The same custom is kept up by modern orthodox Jews ; if
the day falls on a Sabbath or a Holy Day, the ceremony is per-
formed on the following day.
FIRST-FRUITS 597
ment which has to be made for the purification of
the mother; it may be owing to Ly 12 that in Lk
2” ‘their’ purification is spoken of, 1.6. of the
child as well as of the mother; at any rate v.74
seems to point to an amalgamation of the offerings
due from the mother for purification, and on
behalf of the child for redemption ;* in the
modern service of prayer of thanksgiving for
women after recovery trom childbirth no provi-
sion is made for any offering.
LiTERATURE.—See the authorities referred to in the foot-
notes. W. O. E. OESTERLEY.
FIRST-FRUITS.—On the offering of first-fruits
as a au institution see Hastings’ DB, vol. ii.
p- 10f.
The word rendered first-fruits (ἀπαρχή) occurs
8 times in the NT, and only in 1 Co 1559. 39 is it
applied directly to our Lord: ‘Now hath Christ
been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of them
that are asleep’; ‘Christ the first-fruits; then
they that are Chirist’s.’ It is possible, as some
have suggested, that there is a reference in ν. "Ὁ to
the speciiic oficring of the sheaf of the first ripe
corn on the second day of the Passover feast (Ly
2310-11), The coincidence of our Lord’s resurrection
on the 16th Nisan—the day on which the sheat
was offered before the Lord—would no doubt
suggest the idea of the first-fruits to the Apostle’s
mind. But, even apart from this specific reference,
the figure of the risen Christ as the first-fruits
from the dead is perfectly natural. And there is
more here than might be at first supposed. Christ’s
resurrection is the pledge of His people’s resurrec-
tion, just as the first-fruits were the pledge of the
harvest to come. Christ is the first to be raised
from the dead, and so stands in the front rank
alone, as the first-fruits were plucked before the
rest of the produce was ripe ; but, just as certainly
as the harvest in due time followed the first-fruits,
so shall these who sleep in Christ be raised up in
due time, and stand in the second rank after Him.
But, further, it is clearly implied here, and ex-
plicitly taught in other passages, that as is Christ
the first-fruits, so shall be the rest of the harvest.
There is implied here a community of nature and
character between Christ, the first-fruits, and His
people. It is only the ¢ime of their manifestation
that is different. The portion gathered as first-
fruits is of the same nature as the rest, and the rest
is of the same nature and character and standing
as the first-fruits. This is indicated specially in v.”,
where it is said that, as death came by man, so it
is only by man that the resurrection can come, 7.2.
resurrection and triumph over death can be man’s
possession only when given him by one who is
man like himself. Man, therefore, must be of the
same nature and character and standing as Christ,
the first-fruits. What is suggested here is plainly
taught elsewhere (Col 85, Ro 8%, 1 Jn 3°). Christ,
according to these passages, is the first-fruits, the
firstborn among many brethren, not only as the
ledge that, as He rose, so His people shall rise
from the dead, but also that as He is, in nature
and character, so shall His people be. That is,
perhaps, the most glorious promise of the resurrec-
tion first-fruits.
In Ro 8” the first-fruits of the Spirit received by
Christ’s people are referred to. That they have
received the Spirit in some measure and have been
sanctified inwardly, is the pledge that they shall
receive it in yet greater abundance, that there
shall be a final outpouring of the Spirit by which
the body of man shall be redeemed even as the
spirit has been sanctified—the psychical body being
* Among modern orthodox Jews, priests and Levites are
exempt from the law of redeeming their firstborn ; this applies
also to those whose wives are daughters of priests or Levites.
598 FISH, FISHER, FISHING
changed into a spiritual. In Ro 1116 16°, 1 Co 16”,
Ja 13, Rev 144 the reference is to the future
redemption of mankind, of which those already
gathered in are the first-fruits and pledge. ‘Those
already redeemed and presented to God as holy
are the first-fruits, the pledge of the coming har-
vest of a holy redeemed humanity.
Lirerature.—Schiirer, WJ P αι. i. 237 ; Edersheim, The Temple :
its Ministry, etc., xix.; Stapfer, Palestine in Tiime of Christ,
bk. ii. ch. 13; Josephs, Judaism as Creed and Life, bk. ii. ch.
5; art. ‘ First-Fruits’ in Jew. Encye. vol. v. i
J. SOUTAR.
FISH, FISHER, FISHING.—The present article
is not concerned with the fish of the Mediterranean,
nor with those which inhabit various watercourses
in the Holy Land, nor even with those that belong
to the lower course of the Jordan or of its southern
tributaries, or of the other streams that flow into
the Dead Sea. ‘The only fish mentioned in the
Gospels, the only ones, consequently, which come
within the scope of this Dictionary, are those of
the Lake of Gennesaret, to which we naturally
add those that are found in the upper course of
the Jordan or in the springs in the neighbourhood
of the Lake.
Fish (OT 35, 733) are designated in the NT only
by the general term ἐχθύς, alternating occasionally
with its diminutive ἰχθύδιον, without the employ-
ment of the latter term necessarily marking any
intended distinction ; cf. for an instance in point,
Mt 15** with v.*®. Nowhere in the whole Bible do
we find a special name for a definite species of fish.
Fish formed a large part of the food of the Lake-
side population. This may be inferred from the
threefold question of Jesus (Lk 11", οἵ. Mt 7”), in
which the commonest foods are enumerated :
bread, fish, eggs. The same conclusion is implied
in what is related with reference to the two multi-
plications of the loaves. On the occasion of the
first (Mt 14% "!, Mk 6-44, Lk 91917, Jn 61-15) it is
said that there was present a lad with five loaves
and two fishes; in the account of the second (Mt
15, Mk 8!!") it is mentioned that, in addition
to the seven loaves, there were also ‘a few small
fishes.” We may cite, further, Lk 24%.
It is interesting to note that for the ‘small fishes’ of the other
narratives the Fourth Gospel employs the term ὁ γάριον, which
properly signifies simply ‘ nourishment,’ ‘ food.’ Bochart (Hieroz.
1. p. 41) has already shown that this word was employed in the
same way by the best Greek writers, e.g. Plato, Menander, etc.,
and that ἐψοφά γοι is met with as synonymous with ‘fish-eaters.’
It is legitimate to suppose that a trade in fish
was carried on between the Lake of Tiberias and
the rest of the country. The name of the town of
laricheze (Ταριχεῖαι), situated on the shore of the
Lake, implies a business connected with salted
provisions (τάριχοι). It may be that this traffic ex-
tended as far as Jerusalem; some have supposed
that it was in this way that one of Jesus’ disciples
the companion of Simon Peter, was known to the
high priest (Jn 18%); but this is nothine more
than an ingenious conjecture. ms
_ ‘Fisher’* or ‘fisherman’ (Heb, +2) is expressed
in the NT by ἁλεεύς or ἁλιεύς - the verb ‘to
fish” by ἁλιεύειν. Several of the first and prinei-
pal disciples followed the calling of fishermen.
(he Synopties deseribe the scene when Jesus
called them to follow Him (Mt 41822. Mk 7 16:90.
Lk 5'), three narratives contain the
promise, ‘T will make you fishers of men.’ Lk.
connects the story with the miraculous draught ;
cf. in this respect ale Ω18-
pu } f tl so ulso Jn 9161|: In one of the
WTADLeS ἢ ep k
the latter to a
fishermen make
These
net; and the separation which the
| ame, 10 their catch, between what is
good and what is bad, is used. to symbolize the
Mt 418% and Mk 1168,
bi. 1
“So AV and RVin
, but ‘ fishermen’ j c
2, See Hastings’ D i‘ fishermen’ in Lk
ingdom (Mt 1347-) Jesus compares |
FISH, FISHER, FISHING
separation of the righteous from the wicked at
the Final Judgment. ‘The criterion by which good
and bad fish are distinguished is not expressly
indicated. ‘The point in view might be the difter-
ence between clean and unclean foods as defined
by the Law (cf. Dt 14%, Ly 11%); but there might
be other motives, such as those which Lortet
indicates in the case of modern fishermen, who
reject certain fish on account of their inferior size
(Poissons et Iteptiles du lac de Vibériade, p. 52),
their disagreeable aspect (ib. pp. 32, 82), or their
unpleasant muddy flavour (76. pp. 35, 58, 64).
‘I'he fishermen sometimes carried on their trade
in partnership, as is still the case at the present
day, when the fishermen of Tiberias form a kind of
corporation with fixed rules. The number of fish-
ing vessels on the Lake at the beginning of the
Christian era must have been very considerable.
Josephus (BJ 11. xxi. 8) speaks of 330 (w.d. 280) ;
see also Mk 455, Jn 67%. Forty years ago Furrer
found only a single boat ; Lortet saw three in 1875
and six in 1880; Frei counted nine in 1886, and
the present writer saw the same number in 1894,
while in 1899 he noted fourteen ; and no doubt the
number has increased since then.
The fishermen made use of nets. One of the
Greek terms employed (Mt 13%) is σαγήνη, seine,
‘drag-net,’ a large net which two or more boats
arrange in a circle in the lake, in such a way as to
enclose a vast space with a kind of vertical wall.
It is kept stretched by means of weights and floats.
Then the two extremities are brought together,
and the whole with its contents is dragged ashore.
The other species of net mentioned in the Gospels
(Mt 4:8) is the casting net (ἀμφίβληστρον), which a
single man throws with a skilful turn of the hand,
and which is of cireular form, like an umbrella.
Once it has been plunged in the water it is drawn
out with the captured fish. Thisis still the method
most frequently pursued in our own time. ‘The
other passages where nets are spoken of (Mt 4°,
Mk 1, Lk 57% Jn 21%!) use the general term
δίκτυον, Which might be applied to any kind of net.
Some texts speak of washing and of mending nets
(Lk δ᾽, Mt 451, Mk 119). See also NETS.
The Gospels only once mention line - fishing,
namely in Mt 1757, where we read of Peter casting
the hook (ἄγκιστρον), which was certainly placed
at the end of a cord or line, but we cannot say
whether the latter was attached to a rod or long
reed or was simply held in the hand. In the NT
there is no mention of harpooning fish (contrast
Job 417 (He 4091). At the present day we still
meet with examples of this practice.
The waters of the Lake of Tiberias are exception-
ally rich in fish, especially by the shore of el-Batiha
(to the east of the mouth of the Jordan), and in the
bay of et-Tabigha. These were in former times
the favourite grounds of fishermen, and these spois
are still preferred by them in our own day. There,
on the shore of el-Batiha lay Bethsaida-Julias; and,
if there were two Bethsaidas (a much controverted
question ; see artt. BETHSAIDA and CAPERNAUM),
the second was at et-Tabigha or in its vicinity.
Now Bethsaida means ‘house of fish,’ ‘fishery.’
It was the native town of Peter and Andrew, of
James and John,—all four fishermen,—as well
as of Philip, whose occupation is unknown to us.
According to Jn 212 Thomas and Nathanael (of
Cana) appear also to have been fishermen, at least
occasionally. The dress of the fishermen was more
than simple ; according to Jn 217 Peter was γυμνός,
‘naked’; it is not quite easy to see why so many
| exegetes maintain that this term does not imply
complete nudity. It is certainly most natural to
suppose that Peter had discarded all his clothes ;
the fact that he afterwards hastily girds on his
ἐπενδύτης, lit. his ‘upper garment,’ does not
FLAX
necessarily prove that he was wearing another
under it.
The fish of the Lake of Tiberias have been
minutely studied and described by two experts,
Dr. Lortet, dean of the Faculty of Medicine at
Lyons, and Dr. Tristram. Out of 39 (Lortet) or
45 (Tristram) species known in Palestine, from 22
to 24 are found in the Lake of Tiberias and its
immediate vicinity. They belong to a number of
different genera. The genus Chromis has the
richest representation of species: Niloticus, Tiberi-
adis, Andree, Simonis, Microstomus, Flavii Josephi,
Magdalene ; belonging to a genus near of kin is
Hemichronis Sacra. These fish are the most
abundant and make the best eating. The genus
Barbus is also extremely prolific ; three species be-
longing to it are found: Canis, which swarms, but
is little appreciated ; Longiceps, esteemed; and Bed-
domi, rare. Then, in the family of the Cyprinides
come Discognathus Lamta; four species of Capeta:
Syriaca, Damascina, Socialis, Sauvaget ; Leuciscus
(or Phoxinellus) Zeregi; Alburnus Sellal; Acan-
thobrama Centisqwama ; three species of Nema-
chilus: Tigris, Galileus, Leontine. In the family
of the Blennides: Blennius Varus and Blennius
Lupulus. Finally, in the family of the Silurides
we have the strange Clarias Macracanthus, already
noted by Josephus (LJ Π|. x. 8) under the name
κορακῖνος, Which, in spite of its forbidding aspect,
supplies an article of food not to be disdained.
This fish has the strange peculiarity that, when it
is withdrawn from its natural element, it utters
cries like the mewings of a cat, and that it can
live for several days out of the water.
A considerable number of the above species
belong properly to Palestine, but the fauna of
Palestinian fish shows, nevertheless, a close con-
nexion with that of Africa and not with that of
the Mediterranean basin. The ancients, e.g. Jose-
phus, had already noted this fact, and they raised
the question of the possibility of a subterranean
communication between the waters of Egypt and
those of Palestine. See also ANIMALS, p. 66*.
Literature. — Bochart, Hierozoicon, i. pp. 36-44; Lortet,
Poissons et Reptiles du lae de Tibériade, 1883, and the same
author’s La Syrie @aujourd'hui, 1884, pp. 506-510; Tristram,
‘Fauna and Flora’(PEF, SWP), 1888, pp. 162-177, also Natural
History of the Bible8, 1889, pp. 282-294; J. G. Wood, Bible
Animals, 1869, pp. 561-582; Ad. Frei in ZDPV, 1886, pp. 101—
103 ; Libbey and Hoskins, Jordan Valley and Petra, 1905, vol. i.
p. 1380f.; G. R. Lees, Village Life in Palestine, 1905, p. 5
{with photograph of two fishermen of the Lake of Tiberias cast-
ing their nets]. LUCIEN GAUTIER.
FLAX.—See SMOKING FLAX.
FLESH (cdp:).—In every instance where this
word is used by the Evangelists we observe that it
is confined in its reference to the human race. The
same remark, it may be noticed, holds good of the
NT writers as a whole (ef., however, 1 Co 1559, and
the plural σάρκας of Rev 1918). The particular con-
ception attaching to it varies in different contexts
to a slight extent, though in almost every case a
distinction or contrast is either stated or implied
which has its roots in OT thought. It is interest-
ing to remark that this is a word employed very
rarely by St. Luke in either of his writings ; and
even when he does use it, we find that, for the
inost part, he is quoting from the OT (see Lk 3°=
Ts 40° [LX X], where in conjunction with πᾶσα it is
simply a synonym for all mankind ; cf. Mt 24:5, Mk
13%, Jn 1732, and Ac 2"). The reference, of course,
is to the human race in its present condition of
weakness and need of help, as contrasted with the
power and the active love of God (ef. Dt ΠΡ RS
50: (55° LX X)). d
In the only other place where the word is found
in St. Luke’s Gospel (9459) we have it used simply
to denote the substance flesh considered as a con-
FLESH 599
stituent of the human body. The risen Jesus is
represented as inviting His disciples to assure them-
selves by touching Him that He had risen not
merely in a spiritual, but in a corporeal sense. The
antithesis is that of ‘spirit’ and ‘ body’ (πνεῦμα
and σῶμα), the latter consisting of ‘flesh’ and
‘bones’ (gdp and ὀστέα). See art. Bony.
A still more emphatic expression signifying the
distinction between man and God is found in St.
Matthew's Gospel (1017), where σάρξ is joined with
aiua to denote man in his present condition of
spiritual limitation and of defective knowledge. A
somewhat similar antithesis is incidentally, albeit
elaborately, pointed out by St. John (113), who, in
his reference to the new life communicated through
Christ to believers, lays stress on the fact that this
higher life is not the result of human birth, whether
the latter be considered as the outcome of a long
line of descent (ἐξ αἱμάτων), or as springing from
natural instinct inherent in the flesh (ἐκ θελήματος
σαρκός), or even as the resultant of the will power
resident in the entire man (ἐκ θελήματος ἀνδρός).
Their infused life has its roots in Him who is the
source of all life (. . . ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ θεοῦ ἐγεννήθησαν), and
is conditioned in every instance by their reception
of the Word made flesh (ὅσοι δὲ ἔλαβον αὐτόν, see
Westcott, Gospel of St. John, ad loc., who notices a
very early variant reading which would make ‘the
Word’ the subject of the whole verse).
Another form of this antithetic relationship
occurs in the same writing. In His conversation
with Nicodemus Jesus draws attention to the
limitations which surround the functions of man’s
nature considered on its sensuous side (ἐκ τῆς
σαρκός), and those of the Spirit which finds scope
for activity within another sphere of human life
(ἐκ Tod πνεύματος). Itis not the antithesis of evil
and good that is here referred to. It is simply that
within the realm of man’s being there are two
principles of energy which take their origin from
two orders of existence. The law of nature which
compels like to produce like holds good in man’s
complex life, and so ‘What is born of the flesh is
flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit’ (Jn
3°). With this we may compare another passage
in the same Gospel where this idea is expressed in
language more explicit still and as emphatic (Jn
6). The contrast here between spirit, which not
only has life in itself but can communicate that
life as it wills (τὸ ξωοποιοῦν), and flesh, which ‘is of
no avail’ above its own sphere (ἡ σὰρξ οὐκ ὠφελεῖ
οὐδέν), is categorically asserted.
So, too, on another occasion when engaged in con-
troversy with the Pharisees, Jesus contrasts their
method of judging with His own patience in that
respect, and in so doing implies a further contrast
—their imperfect and therefore incorrect judgment
(κατὰ τὴν σάρκα) which is based on a superficial
knowledge, and His just judgment which comes
from His ‘ knowledge of all the circumstances, and
aspects, and issues of life’ (ἡ κρίσις ἡ ἐμὴ ἀληθινή
ἐστιν, Jn 8; see Westcott, Gospel of St. John,
ad loc.).
Arising out of this conception we have the word
employed to mark a psychological distinction be-
tween man’s flesh and spirit. So real was this dis-
tinction to the mind of Jesus that we can almest
hear in His words (Mt 264!=Mk 1458) the echo of
personal experience (. γρηγορῆσαι μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ. . .
τὸ μὲν πνεῦμα πρόθυμον ἡ δὲ σὰρξ ἀσθενής). In this
place we may also notice that there was something
present in the struggle engaged in by the disciples
which was absent in the case of Jesus. They were
unsuccessful in their efforts to ‘watch,’ because
not only was their flesh ‘weak,’ but it had also
to contend with an element of discord which further
distracted their power for unremitting watchful-
ness. With Him was also present the fiesh of
600 FLESH
FLIGHT
weakness (see 2 Co 134 ἐξ ἀσθενείας), but the rela-
tionship between His σάρξ and mvevua was not
perverted by the indwelling presence of sin, or by
the downward tendency inherited as the result of
sin.
On one occasion Jesus quotes with approval the
translation of the LXX (Gn 239 where the word
σάρξ occurs meaning the entire man (Mt 19° =Mk
103), and that without any qualifying word. [Ὁ
would be a colourless interpretation of Jesus’ words
which would limit His teaching on the marriage
relationship to a physical oneness following on and
produced by the sexual union. ‘The Hebraistic
ἔσονται εἰς (Heb. 53m) implies a gradual movement
from a physical union to a higher and more com-
plex unity, so that where two separate beings
formerly existed there is now but one (ὥστε οὐκέτι
εἰσὶν δύο, ἀλλὰ σὰρξ μία, Which is Jesus’ inference
from the Heb. 15% 5735 ; see art. EUNUCH). It is
because of the ultimately complete and spiritual
character of this union that the sin which dis-
solves it and the human legislation which seeks
to render it nugatory assume their dark propor-
tions (ef. Gould, ‘St. Mark’ in Internat. Crit. Com.
on Mk 10%),
Passing from the Synoptic to the Johannine use
of this word, we find it clothing conceptions which
are fuller and richer. In the simple but majestic
sentence in which he announces the profound
mystery of the Incarnation, St. John employs the
word ‘flesh’ to express the totality of human
nature, looked at on the side of its manifold
limitations, that is to say, as it touches and is
connected with the world of matter and of time
(ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, Jn 11“, with which we may
compare the positive references to ‘the soul’ and
‘the spirit’ of Jesus in the same writing, e.g. 1277
ἡ ψυχή μου, 1371 τῷ πνεύματι, etc.). The phrase ‘the
Word became flesh’ implies the existence of an
antithesis which has been reduced in its elements
to a final and permanent synthesis. The Johannine
conception leaves no room for doubt as to the per-
fection of the human nature of Jesus, which is
universal both as regards time and race.
Keeping in mind this usage, we shall be enabled
to apprehend more fully the thought underlying
the language of Jesus about His power of impart-
ing Himself in His perfect humanity (cf. Jn 601-56),
His ‘ flesh,’ by virtue of its union with His Divine
Personality, is ‘living’ (ὁ ¢2v) food, and therefore
possesses the power of communicating its life to all
who will eat thereof (ἐὰν μὴ φάγητε τὴν σάρκα, κ.τ.λ...
Without this participation and consequent assimi-
lation on the part of His followers, there can be no
such thing as ‘life’ within them, for they deliber-
ately reject what contains for them the germinal
principle of that ‘life’ (οὐκ ἔχετε ζωὴν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς).
rhe question may be asked whether it is possible
to trace any likeness or fundamental connexion
between the Gospel and the Pauline uses of σάρξ.
In St. Paul’s writings very marked emphasis is
laid upon this word, and for him it clothes a con-
ception rich with ethical significance. The ¢ flesh’
is the present abode of sin, which requires an obedi-
in δα λαοὶ oy excent ite bess" Bo closely dvs
Ι power of sin with the existing weak-
SU ees
Seah deere erience ‘7 know that, in ye Beas
ar ne He eee good thing” (Re .71*), At the
ee ciuee santana to point out that this is not
fixion’ τ ths flesh ie poe Pd God. he ‘ cruci-
wills to walk τοῦ τον πόσο ἀμ ἢ
‘according te {πὸ rit roe τς the flesh but
σαν, κιτιλ. ( ral 5 ἷ, i R die. Σ py gs ET ροΝ
» Leal on™, ΟἹ. Ho 855), and those who have
the indwelling presence of the Spirit. are ne longer
in the flesh (ἐν σαρκί) but in the a
Spirit (ἐν πνεύματι
Ro δ᾽), W ith these yw ‘
Θ᾽ may compare such expres
sions.as ‘the mind of the flesh’ (φρόνημα τῆς σαρκός)
and ‘the mind of the Spirit’ (φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος,
ἰο 88; ὑπὸ τοῦ vods τῆς σαρκός, Col 238), from which we
can gather how present to St. Paul’s mind was the
connexion between sin and the flesh, and at the
same time how strong within him was the glorious
hope that such connexion in the ultimate result
was abnormal and destined for destruction. There
is no sign in the Pauline terminology that he was
influenced in his theological conceptions by the
spirit of that Greek dualism which wormed its way
into subsequent Christian thought with lasting and
for the most part evil consequences (see Miller,
Christian Doct. of Sin, i. 320 ff.).
The redemption and the quickening of the
body (. . . τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν τοῦ σώματος, Ro 8%; .. .
ζωοποιήσει τὰ θνητὰ σώματα, Ro 8}; ef. 61", 2 Co 4")
are features essential to the scheme of salvation as
outlined and systematized by St. Paul. The con-
demnation of sin ‘in the flesh’ by God, who for
this purpose sent His Son ‘in the likeness of the
flesh of sin’ (Ro 88), is evidence that there is, for
him, no naturally essential connexion between the
flesh and evil.
We are not without signs that this is just the
point of view from which the Evangelists looked at
this question (cf. Jn 115 1173, Lk 3°114= Mt 6”), and
that neither they nor the Apostle of the Gentiles
were touched by that false belief which identified
sin with matter, and, therefore, with ‘the body of
the flesh’ (οἴ. Col 1% 2"). The anthropology of
the Gospels, as well as the psychological concep-
tions which emerge but rarely and incidentally
from their pages, are essentially Hebrew, and are
never stained by the potential immoralities which
characterized the later Alexandrian and Hellenistic
theology.
LITERATURE.—Stevens, The Theology of the NT, pp. 189f.,
338 ff ; Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, i. 53-224, iii. 183, 255 ff., etc.;
H. H. Wendt, Die Begriffe Fleisch und Geist; Laidlaw, The
Bible Doctrine of Man, and his artt. ‘Psychology’ and ‘ Flesh’
in Hastings’ DB; Weiss, Biblical Theology of the NT, § 27;
Cremer, Bibl.-Theol. Lex. of NT Greek, 8.0. σάρξ.
J. R. WILLIS.
FLIGHT.—The story of the flight of the Holy
Family into Egypt is peculiar to the First Gospel
(Mt 2/7), The omission of it, and also of the
manifestation to the Gentiles (Mt 91:13), from the
Third Gospel is surprising, since there rather than
in Mt. we should have expected to find any story
that brought Jesus into contact with the Gentile
world. The surprise would deepen into suspicion
were it not that the records of the Evangelists are
so fragmentary ; but that fact instantly relieves the
strain.
O. Holtzmann, who cites the well-known omission in Ac 919-26
of any reference to St. Paul’s journey to Arabia (Gal 117),
frankly states that ‘the author who left out this journey of
Paul to Arabia might well pass over, in his other account, the
journey of the Holy Family into Egypt,’ and that ‘if we had in
Matthew an account absolutely above criticism, it would not be
difficult to get over the gap in the narrative of Luke’ (Life of
Jesus, p. 85).
The silence of St. Luke does not, then, discredit
the narrative of St. Matthew. But their records
might prove to be mutually exclusive, so that
acceptance of the one would involve rejection of
the other. How stand the facts? According to
the Third Gospel, Nazareth was, prior to their
marriage, the home both of Joseph and of Mary
(Lk 2! 1°86), whereas St. Matthew (27) first associ-
ates them with Nazareth after their return from
Egypt, and gives no hint of any previous residence
there. Further, St. Matthew, having told the
story of the Nativity (118-25). goes on to record the
visit of the Magi (21:13), the hurried flight from
sethlehem and the sojourn in Egypt (2), whereas
St. Luke records merely the circumcision of the
child (951) and His presentation to the Lord (2°),
and then adds that ‘when they had performed all
FLIGHT
FLIGHT 601
things according to the law of the Lord, they re-
turned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth’
(2%). From those words one would naturally infer
that the return took place immediately after the
events thus recorded, and that no room was left
for the episodes of the First Gospel. [5 that infer-
ence necessary, or even well founded? If the nar-
rative of Acts must be so adjusted as to take in
the sojourn of St. Paul in Arabia, he would be a
bold critic who would maintain that the terms of
the other narrative inevitably exclude the sojourn
in Egypt. It is to be noted also that the time-
table of the First Gospel is sutticiently elastic to
embrace easily the events recorded in the Third.
For we find there that, ‘according to the time
which he had carefully learned of the wise men,’
Herod’s inhuman edict included all the children in
Bethlehem ‘fram two years old and under’ (Mt
O16
The difficulty, therefore, is not one of chron-
ology. Even if it were, such an objection would
lose both point and edge in the hands of those who
used it, except on the theory that Jesus was, after
all, born in Bethlehem. For, even granting that
the immediate return to Nazareth is the natural
inference from St. Luke’s account, yet the force of
any argument based upon it fails the very moment
that Nazareth and not Bethlehem is made the
scene of the Nativity. On that showing, St. Luke’s
story is itself untrustworthy, and so cannot be used
to discredit another story which is inconsistent
with it.
The real difficulty is of quite a different sort: it
is that we have not in St: Matthew ‘an account
absolutely above criticism.’ It might very perti-
nently be asked if we have any right to expect
such an account. Stories of the childhood of a
great man are never written while he is still a
child, but only after he has achieved greatness ;
and even then they are written, not necessarily
because of their own intrinsic importance, but be-
cause they have caught some of the glory of the
aftergiow. Now, it was not until Jesus had
already won His place in the hearts of men that
our Gospels were written. In the circumstances
of the case, therefore, these records could not be
other than fragmentary, and a fragmentary ac-
count can never be ‘absolutely above criticism.’
But presumably the special criticism to which
these incidents of the Infancy lie open, is that
they are no more entitled to belief than, say, those
recorded in the Apocryphal Gospels. The Gospel
of the Infancy, ¢.g., weaves around the Flight into
Egypt a fantastic garland of miracle and wonder.
This wreath of fairy tales is by common consent
stripped off and laid aside as unhistorical embel-
lishment. Should not the Flight itself be laid with
them as equally unworthy of credence? The ques-
tion opens up a subject much too large to be dis-
cussed here. But one may at least ask if it is not
too drastic a measure to destroy the ship because
one has had to remove the barnacles, or to remove
the peg because a worthless coat has been hung on
it. Are these narratives so much of a piece that,
if we reject some of them, we must reject all?
Surely the fact is not without significance that the
Evangelist preserves the story of the Flight, but
records none of the marvels that have clustered
round it. For if these other stories were extant
when he wrote, he must have been cognizant of
them, and his rejection of them must have been
deliberate. On the other hand, if they were of a
later growth, his tradition is thereby marked as
older and, to that extent, more trustworthy.
But, says Keim (Life of Jesus, ii. 94), ‘it bears
all the marks of a poetic picture.’ Is there, then,
no poetry in real life? If a story is poetic, is it
thereby ‘branded as unhistorical? ‘ Intertwined
with the narrative is a no less than threefold
revelation by an angel, almost too much for the
thrift of heaven.’ ‘lhe objection would be valid
in the case of a story written in modern times by
a man of the West, but is shorn of its force when
one remembers that this story was written by an
Oriental some eighteen centuries ago.
Much more apposite is the contention that ‘the
enormous toil ot such a journey with a little child,
was such as only legend, aided or not by miracles,
could easily get over.’ The tcilsomeness of the
journey is not denied ; no one imagines that it was
‘easily got over.’ May not our Lord’s own words
(Mt 24, Mk 13!8) be an echo of the hardships
Joseph and Mary had to endure in bearing Him to
a place of refuge’? But the cogency of Keim’s argu-
ment vanishes when we remember that this was a
flight for life (see INNOCENTS). In such circum-
stances, hardships are little accounted. But ‘ they
might have found a nearer refuge among the Arabs
of the south or west.’ Surely this criticism is
singularly inept. A temporary and brief refuge
might thus have been found, but no one knew how
long it would be ere the wanderers could safely
return to their own land. What was needed was
an asylum in which they could quietly abide till
all danger was past, and where Joseph could find
employment which would enable him to provide
for his household.
Equally beside the mark is the attempt to ex-
plain the story as in some way parallel to the
sojourn of Moses in Egypt. The two stories are
rich, not in resemblance, but in contrast: they
have absolutely nothing in common save the word
‘Egypt.’ The attempt to derive the one from the
other, is a triumph of misdirected ingenuity.
Quite as little avails the expedient of deducing
the narrative from the prophecy of Hosea (11), as
QO. Holtzmann would evidently do. ‘ For the story
about the Lord’s childhood the Gospel of Matthew
seems to have drawn principally upon certain
indications in the Old Testament’ (Life of Jesus,
p- 86). One can readily enough understand how a
Jewish Christian might see in the narrative of the
Flight a richer fulfilment of the prophet’s words,
but it is almost incredible that the incident should
be invented as a commentary on the words, and
all the more so when the words in question are not
a prophecy, but a historical reference. Still less
credible does the suggestion become when we find
that we should require to believe not merely that
the Flight was invented to explain the prophecy,
but further that the Massacre of the Innocents had
next to be invented to explain the Flight, and the
visit of the Magi to explain the Massacre. Accept-
ance of such a theory involves a much larger draft
on one’s credulity than does acceptance of the
incident itself as historical.
The question may still arise, What motive led
the Evangelist to record this event? Need we
seek for any motive? He wanted to tell about
Jesus: would it not be enough for him that this
was a story of the childhood of the loved Master,
and that he believed it to be authentic ὃ
‘Egypt has, in all ages, been the natural place
of refuge for all who were driven from Palestine
by distress, persecution, or discontent’ (larrar,
Life of Christ, ch. iv.). It need create no surprise,
therefore, that it was towards Egypt the fugitives
bent their steps. There they would be without
Herod’s jurisdiction and beyond the reach of his
vengeance ; the road was a well-known one, and
some three days would suffice to bring them to the
frontier. Of the incidents of the journey we have
no reliable information, nov are we told in what
part of Egypt the wanderers at length found rest
and refuge. Tradition has assigned this distine-
tion to Matarieh (the ancient Heliopolis), which
FLOCK, FOLD
lies a few miles north-east from Cairo ; and there is
no good reason why the tradition may not be cor-
rect. It is known that in that neighbourhood there
was a considerable Jewish population. That fact
would have undoubted weight with Joseph, as it
held out to him the prospect of obtaining suitable
employment. The duration of the sojourn in Egypt
has been very variously stated, some reckoning it
as having extended over one, two, three, or even
seven years. But we may take it as certain that
it was in reality very brief, seeing the death of
Herod occurred very shortly after the period at
which the Flight must have taken place. See also
art. EGYPT.
Lirerature.—W. G. Elmslie in Expositor, τ. vi. [1877] 401-
411; Farrar, Christ in Art, 263-273. For a vivid conception of
the circumstances of the Flight into Egypt, no less than of the
relations between the Child Jesus and the slain infants of
Bethlehem, see Holman Hunt’s ‘Triumph of the Innocents.’
HuGu DUNCAN,
FLOCK, FOLD.—For a general treatment of
these words see SHEEP, SHEPHERD. But it may
be noted here that, whereas in Jn 10]: 1 we find in
AV ‘fold’ three times (‘he that entereth not by
the door into the sheep-fold’; and ‘other sheep 1
have which are not of this fold; them also I must
bring, and... there shall be one fold and one
shepherd’), there is in the original a marked dis-
tinction. ‘Two words, absolutely unconnected with
each other, are employed. In y.!, and in the first
clause of v.18, the Greek word is αὐλή Ξε " enclosure,’
‘court,’ ‘fold,’ in the strict sense. It is the word
used of the enclosed court of the high priest’s palace
(Mt 265, Mk 14%, Lk 22%, Jn 1815), of the strong
man’s palace (Lk 113}, and of the outer court of
the Temple (Rev 117). In using this word our Lord
seems to refer to those ‘walls of partition’ (cf.
Eph 24) which separated the Jews from the Gen-
tiles and made them a nation by themselves.
Within this Jewish fold (αὐλή), our Lord tells us
that, at the time when He spoke, He had a number
of sheep who were His own; and also that, outside
of it, among the Gentiles, dark and miserable as
their condition was, He had other sheep, who were
His already, and were known to Him, even if they
knew it not themselves. These, too, He an-
nounces, He must bring, and put them along with
His Jewish-born sheep; ‘and,’ He adds, ‘there shall
be one flock (He uses here the other word ποίμνη),
one shepherd.’ He does not say there will be
‘one fold’ (αὐλή), or, indeed, any fold at all. He
has unity in view for His sheep—union; but not
such as is to be secured by the erection round His
flock of such outwardly-enclosing, or constraining
‘walls of partition’— geographical or racial—as
had hitherto divided nation from nation and Jew
from Gentile. The union whereof He speaks is to
be the union of a flock, which is kept together on
the one hand by its own instinct of gregariousness,
or the mutual affection of the members, and on the
other hand by its common subjection to its ‘one
Shepherd,’ who loves it, died for it, and whom
through all its members it knows. It does not,
however, follow that this unity is not a visible
unity. The unity of the flock, as it moves along
the road under its shepherd’s guidance, is just as
visible to the beholder as the unity of the fold
Whose white walls gleam from the hillside. “The
difference
effect
1s not in regard to the visibility of the
. , but the nature of the unifying bond. The
distinction is brought out in ΒΕ.
ee JAMES COOPER.
FLOOD. -The Flood is referred LO only in Mt
245) and its parallel Tk 1727.
of the concealment
coming of the Son
as an illustration
His hearers.
Jesus is speaking
ef the day and hour of the
of Man, and He uses the Flood
which would be well-known to
is clearly alluded to by Jeremiah (485) ;
| where.
Men and women were eating and |
FLUTE-PLAYERS
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until
the day that Noah entered the ark; and did not
know until the Flood came and took them all
away. So it would be at the time of the coming
of the Son of Man. Jesus was, at the time ot
speaking, warning men of His coming, and the
warning was intended, doubtless, to be sufficient
to turn them, if they would be turned, from their
evil. The emphasis in the use of the illustration
is upon the indifference and wickedness of the ante-
diluvians, as paralleled by that of men in the future
who would not receive and act upon the warnings
now given. The Gospel use, then, of the Flood is,
like the meaning of the word used (κατακλυσμός),
neutral as to the important questions raised by
the OT story of the Deluge. See art. ‘Flood’ in
Hastings’ DB, vol. 11. O. H. GATES.
FLOWERS.—Palestine has a flora of wonderful
wealth and variety. The known species exceed
three thousand, and even this large list is pro-
bably far from complete. But numbers alone
convey no adequate idea of its varied nature.
This little land contains within its narrow limits
the most remarkable diversities of soil, surface,
and climate. As is the land so is its flora, which
at the one extreme, amid the heights of Lebanon,
is Alpine in its character, and at the other ex-
treme, in the gorge of the Dead Sea, tropical.
In the NT there are very few references to
flowers, and these are of the most general char-
acter (Ja 1! "1, 1 1. In the Gospels the only
mention of them isin the words of our Lord, ‘ Con-
sider the lilies of the field’ (Mt 658, Lk 12°”). It is
noteworthy that it is to their beauty that Christ
appeals; elsewhere in the NT flowers are the
emblem of frailty and evanescence. But in spite of
the comparative infrequency of Scripture allusions
to them or praise of their beauty, the Jews were
lovers of flowers. This is attested by the floral
ornamentation on the woodwork of the oracle
(1 K 6015), the folding-doors (6055), and the pillars of
the temple (723), the brim of the molten sea (7°),
and the golden candlestick (Ex 25°18), From the
Mishna we learn that at the Feast of Harvest
(Ex 9316) the first crop of fruit offered at the altar
was decked with flowers (Bikkurim, ii. 3).
Among the beautiful flowers of Palestine may
be mentioned anemones, crocuses, cyclamens,
gladioli, hyacinths, irises, poppies, roses, and
tulips. HuGH DUNCAN.
FLUTE - PLAYERS.—Flute-playing is referred
to twice in the Gospels: once in the narrative as
an expression of sorrow (Mt 9” αὐλητάς, AV § min-
strels,’ RV ‘ flute-players’) ; and once in the Lord’s
teaching as an expression of gladness (ηὐλήσαμεν
Mt 1117 with the parallel passage Lk 7°? ‘ we [have]
piped’). The latter use, which is referred to several
times in the OT and the Apocrypha (1 Καὶ 1*, Is 5”
30, Sir 4021, 1 Mac 3%), is attested for the later
Jews by the mention in the Mishna of ‘flutes for
a bride’ (Baba Mezia vi. 1). The other use, the
employment of flutes for mourning, seems to have
been widely diffused and of great antiquity, for it
3 and can
be traced over a large part of the Gentile world—
Pheenieians, Carians, Greeks, Romans, and_pro-
bably Assyrians. In Greek society (or at least
some sections of it) the custom was so general that
the flute-player at funerals was described by a
special term (τυμβαύλης Hlian. Var. Hist. xii. 43).
For the Jewish life of the Ist and 2nd cents. A.D.
there is ample evidence in the Mishna and else-
‘Flutes for a corpse’ are mentioned in
Baba Mezia vi. 1, and in Kethuhboth iv. 4 is the
| often cited rule that a man who had lost his wife
Inust engage, no matter how poor he might be,
FOAMING
FOLLOWING 603
not fewer than two flute-players and one wailing
woman. A remarkable historical illustration is
supplied by Josephus (BJ In. ix. 5). When the
news of the capture of Jotapata by the Romans in
the summer ot 67 A.D. reached Jerusalem, ‘ most
people engaged flute-players to lead their lamenta-
tions.’ Another illustration comes from Roman
history. At the funeral of the Emperor Claudius
in 54 A.D. there were flute-players in the proces-
sion. ‘These funeral musicians seem to have been
generally, if not always, professionals, and to have
been held in very low esteem. ‘The class seems to
be unknown to modern Syrian society. The wail-
ing woman remains, but the funeral flautist has
gone (Bauer, Volksleben im Lande der Bibel, 1903,
p. 213).
LITERATURE.—Note of Wetstein on Mt 928; Wiinsche, Neue
Beitrage zur Erlauterung der Evanaelien aus Talmud und
Midrasch, p. 125; Levy, Chalddisches Worterbuch, 201a ; art.
‘Music’ in Hastings’ DB iii. 461. W,. 'TAYLOR SMITH.
FOAMING.—See EPILEPSY.
FOLD.—See FLOCK.
FOLLOWING.—‘ Follow’ represents several Gr.
words which it is desirable to distinguish as far as
possible.
1. Most frequently, ἀπκολουθέω with dative (but ue? ἡμῶν, Lk
949; ὀπίσω μου, Mt 1098), in nearly every instance used of follow-
ing Christ, except Mt 919, Mk 998 1413 1617 (Tr. WH), Jn 104 1121,
2. ἐπακολουθέω, to follow close wpon (Mk 1629, 1 P 221). 3. κατα-
κολουθέω to follow after (Lk 235°). 4, παρακολουθέω, to follow so
as to be always beside, accompany (metaphor. in Mk 1617 where
Tr. WH give ἀκολ.; but ‘there is a meaning of closeness of
attendance which makes σπταρακολουβέω more individual and
probable,’ Gould). The same word in Lk 1% is tr. in AV
‘having had understanding οἵ, and RV ‘having traced the
course of,’ where Eusebius and Epiphanius curiously took veo
as masc. ‘having followed the eye-witnesses and ministers of
the word’ (see Blass, Philology of the Gospels, p. 17). 5. συν-
ακολουθέω, to follow with, so RV (Mk 537 1491, Lk 2349 with var.
lect. ἀπολ. in the two former, probably a correction to the more
usual form). 6. διώκο,, follow after (Lk 1723), often in LXX in a
good sense of those in search of one. 1. καταδιώκω (Mk 126), to
pursue closely, ‘the κατα gives the idea of hard persistent
search, as in our ‘hunt down’ (Gould). 8. δεῦτε ὀπίσω mov,
“come ye after me,’ Mt 419 (AV ‘ follow’) ; cf. Mk 117,
That great multitudes followed Jesus during
. . . . ΟΣ ζ om
His ministry is repeatedly noted ; ef. Mt 4” 81 20”
21°, Mk 5%, Lk 2557 (see CRowD, MULTITUDE) ;
publicans and sinners also (ἠκολούθουν, NB, Vulg.
Mk 215, οἵ. Lk 151). ‘Follow me’ (ἀκολούθει μοι)
was His call to discipleship, Mt 9° || Lk 9°, Jn 13;
δεῦρο ἀκολούθει μοι (Lk 1833) and δεῦτε ὀπίσω μου (Mt
419 |) also occur. The command would be at once
understood in this sense, for ‘it was not only the
practice of the Rabbis, but regarded as one of the
most sacred duties for a Master to gather around
him a circle of disciples’ (Edersheim, Life and
Times, i. 474). Hence ‘following’ was a mark
of belonging to the band of disciples (Mk 955 |)).
At first it might seem to imply only ‘come with
me on this journey’ (ef. Jn 1° 4), but gradually
they learned that it meant abandonment of pre-
vious occupations (Mt 459 9°) and duties (Mt 8”),
and possibly the dearest ties (Lk 1456), as well as a
participation in dangers and even death (Mt 10°
88. Jn 162). Such an intensified meaning of fol-
lowing is seen in the case of Peter (Jn 1°, Mt
419. Jn 9119), The call of Jesus differed from that
of other teachers in that He did not simply invite,
but commanded obedience as One who had the
right, and as if they literally belonged to Himself ;
the most peremptory claims to rule over the affec-
tions and wills of men are found in Mt. and Lk.
rather than in Jn., and can be explained only by
His being the supreme Lord of life (Liddon).
Further, the disciples followed Him not merely
to learn more doctrine, but to be prepared | for
future work (Mt 42°; and of the Apostles, Mk 3”).
Mk 10% is especially noteworthy, describing vividly
the manner of following on the last journey to
Jerusalem,
The literal meaning tends to merge partly or
wholly into the metaphorical sense of conforming
to the example of Jesus in living, and also, if need
be, in dying; cf. Mt 10% || 1644, Jn 815 1255 1336,
1 P 2 (‘follow his steps’), Rev 144. The two
meanings seem combined in Jn 21) 2°, V2 im-
plies that Jesus moved away, invitine Peter to
follow along the rough shore perhaps for private
conversation ; and John though uninvited also fol-
lowed. But there is probably a reference also to
Jn 13% ; and the action of Peter was symbolical of
that obedient following in the rugged path of
Christian duty, in the work of the Apostolic
ministry (Chrys.), in the way of martyrdom
(Meyer), which would lead to participation in His
Master’s glory (see Godet’s note). This command
dittered from the similar command given before the
Resurrection, says Westcott, because ‘it now re-
quired further the perception of His course ; the
spiritual discernment by which His movements
can still be discovered ; and yet, further, the readi-
ness to accept martyrdom as the end.’
Lk 9°f-=Mt 8% is important. All three
aspirants for admission into the inner circle seem
to have been already disciples, cf. Mt 831, the use
of ‘Master’ and ‘ Lord,’ and the work contem-
plated (Lk 9%: ©). Probably the appointment of
the Seventy was in view (Lk 10), or less likely, of
the Twelve (so Trench, comparing Mt 10!, which,
however, does not apply to the choosing, but to
the sending out of the Apostles). These were
(1) a scribe (εἷς γραμματεύς, Mt.), who came saying,
‘Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou
goest.’ He meant, perhaps, ‘to the end of the
journey, wherever it might be, not aware of the
continual wandering life led by Jesus’ (Wendt,
Teaching of Jesus, i. 69); but he was warned
of the utter homelessness of the Son of Man,
and was shown the necessity of counting the cost
(ef. Lk 14°). (2) Another was called to follow,
and professed readiness to obey but alleged a
hindrance: ‘ Lord, sutfer me first to go and bury
my father.’ The words ‘go and bury’ (ἀπελθόντι
θάψαι), and ‘leave the dead,’ RV (ἄφες τοὺς
vexpovs), naturally imply, and are usually taken
to mean, that his father was then lying dead
(so early Fathers, Alford, Trench, Godet, Eder-
sheim, ete.). It was a son’s most sacred duty to
perform the last offices, but this was one of the
cases where the Call must take precedence of all
else. His going might involve a delay of seven
days (the period of pollution, Nu 19"), during
which good impressions might be dulled; and
Jesus would have left the district whither, taking
Lk.’s order, He was not to return. This man, too,
was being called to active work for God ; ct. regu-
lations in Ly 21", Nu 67. But some later com-
mentators, as Theophylact, suppose that the father
was still alive though weak and frail, and that the
son wished to remain with him until his death.
Thus the seeming harshness of Christ’ s reply
would be mitigated; and it is pointed out that
as the burial usually took place on the day of
death, it was unlikely that the man would leave
his home during the interval between these two
events. Wendt (op. cit. p. 70) quotes a striking
illustration in support. A young Turk was ad-
vised by a missionary in Syria to make a tour
of Europe, and answered, ‘I must first of all
bury my father.’ The missionary expressed sur-
prise at the news of his death, as he had
hitherto been in good health; but the young
man explained that he only meant that one
must before all things devote himself to the
duties owed to relatives. Jesus did not recognizc
such duties as sufficient to justify delay in preach-
604 FOOD FOOLISHNESS
ing the gospel. Clem. Alex. adopted a tradition
that this man was Philip (rod Κυρίου λέγοντος τῷ
Φιλίππῳ, ἄφες τοὺς νεκροὺς, k.T.d., Strom. ii. 4. 50, 51,
Migne) ; if true, it may be taken as an admoni-
tion occasioned by some slackness or symptom of
decadence on the part of the Apostle (Alf.). (3) A
third offered to follow, but wished first to say
farewell to his relatives: he showed a divided
affection ; apparently, therefore, his request in-
volved special danger. A saying of farewell (ἀπο-
τάσσεσθα!) in quite a different sense was necessary
(Lk 14%). Augustine says of these three: ‘obtulit
se unus ut eum sequeretur et reprobatus est, alius
non audebat et excitatus est, tertius differebat et
culpatus est.’ Edersheim sums up the three vital
conditions of following as here illustrated : (a) ab-
solute self-denial and homelessness in the world ;
(6) immediate and entire self-surrender to Christ
and His work; (c) a heart and affections simple,
undivided, and set on Christ and His work, to
which there is no other trial of parting like that
which would involve parting from Him, no other
or higher joy than that of following Him (Life and
Times, ii. 134).
For the result and rewards of following see Jn
82 Mt 193.
LITERATURE.—Cremer, Bib.-Theol. Lex. 8.0. ἀκολουθέω; art.
‘Follow’ in Hastings’ DB; Trench, Studies in the Gospels
(No. 6); Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus, ii. p. 70; Liddon, The
Divinity of our Lord, Lect. 1v.; Edersheim, Life and Times
of Jesus the Messiah ; Commentaries of Godet, Westcott, etc.;
Bruce, Kingdom of God, p. 222f.; Expositor, 1v. iv. [1891]
286 ff. W. H. DunpDas.
FOOD.—While this word does not occur in AV
in the Gospels, the Greek words βρῶμα (Mt 14”,
Mk 7, Lk 3" 95, and Jn 44) and βρῶσις (Jn 4 and
6°": °°), rendered ‘ meat,’ would be in each case better
rendered ‘food.’ The first word, βρῶμα, means any-
thing eaten ; while the second, βρῶσις, is used else-
where in NT for ‘the act of eating’; but in the
Gospels three times (in John) for that which is
eaten ; twice as a general term for food (Jn 4” 677),
and once as contrasted with drink (055). In these
passages in John’s Gospel, Jesus uses the term
figuratively, of spiritual nourishment, which He
Himself could give, describing His own body as
‘food indeed.’
The ordinary food in Christ’s day consisted chiefly
of flesh, cereals, fruits, and herbs. Of flesh, that of
sheep, oxen, kids, birds (Mt 12” 25, Lk 134, Mt
1053), as well as fish (Mt 7°, Lk 24%, Jn 69 9113) was
in common use. Of cereals, wheat and barley were
favourite food-stuffs (Mt 3, Mk 27°25) Lk 3. ἢ
6” 21°) ; of herbs there is mention of mint, anise,
and cummin (Mt 23%, Lk 1142); of fruits, we hear of
figs (Lk 137, Mt 21'*-9) and grapes (Mt 716, Mk 122).
he cereals were prepared by grinding in erude
mills, and the flour was made into loaves or cakes
baked in ovens. Food was seasoned with salt (Mk
%"); mustard leaves and cummin were used as
condiments. See art. MEALS.
John the Baptist, like some others of his day,
lived nearer to nature, as a rebuke of prevalent
luxury, and chose the native food of the wilder- |
ness, ‘locusts and wild-honey* (Mt 34, Mk 14).
Jesus came ‘eating and drinking’ the ordinary
food of His time, rebuking the artificial abstem}-
ou ness of the Pharisees (Mt 1118: Lk 733), as well
‘s the too great anxiety of many as to what they
should eat or drink (Mt 67%, Lk 1222-28), ἵ
FOOL, E. B. POLLARD.
This word occurs 6 times in the AV of
the pre a the translation of ἀνόητος (Lk 2455)
αῴρῤων { τ . ἢ AT | ᾿ ς + ΓΩ2 9917. ἣν
RV it occurs: » and μωρός (Mt 572 2317. 19),
’ omitted
maining
Further,
>
ι In the
only twice (Mt 52 23"), being in Mt
: from the text, and in the three re-
p aces
So)
pa
3-8 and in these
F , ἢ ee
the rendering given is ‘foolish.’ |
μωρὸς occurs in Mt 7:8 252:
Sere eee
places, both in AV and RY, it is translated
‘ foolish.’
These three Greek words, confused more or less
by the principal versions,—the Harklean Syriac
and Coptic are exceptions,—are not synonyms.
᾿Ανόητος implies a lack of comprehension or under-
standing, and so is very fittingly used in Lk 24”.
᾿Αῴρων, signifying ‘mindless’ or ‘senseless,’ fre-
quently carries with it, in Biblical usage (ef. its
constant employment in the LXX of Proverbs), an
underlying meaning of moral defect, impiety, or
unbelief ; while in μωρός (ef. μωραίνεσθαι, Mt 5 ‘to
become insipid ’) the predominant meaning is ‘ dull,’
‘witless,’ ‘stupid.’
The meaning of μωρέ in Mt 5” has been much
discussed. Altord mentions three interpretations :
(1) that it is to be understood as the ordinary
Greek word for ‘fool’; (2) that it is a translitera-
tion of the Heb. 75 (méreh), meaning ‘rebel’ or
‘perverse’ (cf. Nu 2010), a word which is put in
RVm as an alternative to ‘fool’; (3) that it bears
the sense of ἄθεος according to the Heb. usage of
533 (na@bal, and οἵ. 1S 25”). However, there
seems to be no real reason for supposing the word
to be other than the Greek μωρός used in its ordin-
ary Biblical sense.
Our Lord wished to emphasize the enormity of
murder. He said, ‘Ye have heard that it was
said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill, and
Whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the
judgment. But I say unto you that whosoever is
angry [the inward feeling] with his brother, is in
danger of the judgment ; and whosoever shall say
to his brother, Raca [a contemptuous utterance
arising from the inward anger, and probably no
definite word; see RACA], shall be liable to ἃ
more solemn judgment; but whosoever shall say,
Thou fool [the angry feeling formulated in a
definite word of contemptuous depreciation], shall
be worthy of a more dreadful doom.’ This is, in
the main, Augustine’s explanation (de Serm. Dom.
in Mont. τ. ix.); and thus our Lord leaves it to be
inferred how heinous actual murder is in His eyes.
Every use of the word ‘fool’ is not, of course,
condemned. Our Lord Himself (see above) and
St. Paul (Gal 31) employed it in needful rebuke ;
but that use of it is condemned which springs
from angry feelings, and which is one step on the
way to violence or even to murder.
LITERATURE.—Grimm-Thayer, Lex., under the Greek terms ;
Expos. Times, iv. [1893] 495, 514, xi. [1900] 381; Law, Serious
Call, ch. xxi. ; Dykes, Manifesto of the King, 232.
ALBERT BONUS.
FOOLISHNESS.—In the Sermon on the Mount,
Jesus points out the grave sin of saying to our
brother, ‘Thou fool’ (μωρέ, Mt 5”). When He
likened His critics to children in the market-place
who would play at neither a sad nor a merry game
(Mt 11°"), was He not saying in His heart, ‘ Ye
fools’? But anger and contempt are the sources
of the former; wonder and pity, mingled with
indignation, shape the latter.* He who knew
what was in man had occasion to marvel at the
foolishness of men. That foolishness is a ruinous
self-deception in spiritual things. He points out
this folly in these classes :
1. The foolishness of worldly men.—God said to
the rich man, ‘Thou fool’ (ἄφρων, Lk 12"). The
parable (νν. 16:31) was inspired by a request which
showed to Christ a heart so absorbed in thought of
material good that it could not listen to His mes-
sage. That fact gives us the point of view from
which to consider the parable. The good of life
cannot be in earth’s riches which pass from owner
to owner, and whose possession is at the mercy of
death, which is only an accident to the immortal
* Cf. Lk 2425 3 ἀνόντοι, ‘O foolish men’ [AV ‘O fools’ is too
harsh}. See preceding article.
FOOT
ee ee ee eee ee
soul (ν. 9). Covetousness, a man’s absorption in
heaping up and enjoying things, is folly in so far as
it hinders him from attaining to the true riches,
treasure of the soul laid up with God (vv. 2!),
2. The foolishness of the formalist, who shuts his
eyes (μωροὶ καὶ τυφλοί) to the spiritual side, the
inward consecration which gives meaning and
value to conduct or to things (Lk 114°, Mt 237).
3. The foolishness of the religious.—This thought
occurs more frequently. It is a mark of our Lord’s
teaching that it is concerned rather with the
subtler forms of evil which beset the religious class.
He assumes that those sins of sense and temper
which all the world condemns, need no condemna-
tionfrom Him. This foolishness consists generally
in a lack of seriousness, a lack of whole-hearted-
ness and simplicity in faith and conduct. There
are those who hear His words and do them not
(Mt 7°57). These are believers whose whole
spirit is a contradiction, children of faith in
mind, children of unfaith in conduct. This fool-
ishness of believers is the formative thought of
the parables of the Unjust Steward (Lk 16°) and
of the Ten Virgins (Mt 251-18. The meaning of
the former parable is said by Jesus to be, that the
children of this world are wiser in their generation
than the children of light. That wisdom consists
in greater singleness of vision both as regards ends
and means. The steward sees his end clearly : he
apportions his means to that end, uses as best he may
what resources he has. The inference is left as to
the wavering vision, both of end and of means, on
the part of the children of light. Thesame thought
is in the subsidiary and ineidental lesson as to
making friends by means of the mammon of un-
righteousness. Selfishness, not brotherliness, rules
this fraudulent steward, but he sees clearly those
facts of our human life, gratitude and kindliness,
which make brotherhood possible, and he turns
them to his ends. On the other hand, brother-
hood is the faith of the children of Heht, and yet
they greatly neglect this rich field. The parable
of the Ten Virgins completes this teaching of the
foolishness of a half-hearted faith. It hints the
irrevocable loss believers bring upon themselves
thereby. Life’s opportunities come unexpectedly
“calls to service, possibilities of honour ~ and
spiritual enriching—and the half-hearted miss
these. Their heart-culture, their spirits’ disci-
pline have been sleeping; and the chances of life
pass them by.
The seat of all these follies is the heart (Mk
72). It is net any mere action of the intellect
which here comes into condemnation. All these
forms of foolishness are a ruining self-deception.
The mind is there the servant of the heart whose
desires have confused and led it astray.
LICHARD GLAISTER.
FOOT.—The references in this connexion arise
chiefly from the fact that the foot in relationship
to the head is the inferior part of the body.
1. Humility and defilement.—A still lower level
was reached by the shoes or sandals, which were
in direct contact with the common earth. John
the Baptist indicated his inferiority to Christ_by
saying that he was unworthy to unfasten His
shoelatchet (Mk 1’). To walk barefoot was the
sign of a captive prisoner (Is 204), and as a voluntary
act of self-infliction often forms part of a personal
vow. To be trodden under foot was the symbol of
utter degradation (Mt 515, Lk 2133, He 10”). At
the entrance to an Oriental house the shoes are re-
moved, not merely for the sake of cleanliness as a
preliminary to sitting down with the feet drawn
under the dress, but also out of regard to the
sanctity of family life, so that no defilement may
touch the rugs and mats that have been hallowed
by prayer and the Divine presence. He who stood
FOOTSTOOL 605
on holy ground had to put off his shoes (Ex 3°,
Jos 5”).
Orientals are not accustomed to wear stockings
with their open shoes, and it was an act not only
of ceremonial duty, but of personal comfort, to
bathe the feet after a journey over the hot and
dusty ground. It was a courtesy due to a guest
to see that this ministry was not omitted. Christ
drew attention to the fact that in the house of one
who prided himself upon his precise fulfilment of
the Law this service had been more than rendered
to Him by a woman whom the Pharisce despised
as a sinner (Lk 7:4). The charge to His disciples
to shake the dust from their teet wherever the
message of the Kingdom was not received (Mt 1013,
Mk 6", Lk 9° 10"), was a demonstration to both
parties of the unfitness of such people for its
membership. When Christ washed the disciples’
feet, the cleansing meant not only that the feet
under which His sacred hands had been placed
could never turn aside to paths of evil, but that
they could never be set down with harsh and proud
authority over the lives and rights of others. His
service could never lay upon those disciples any
greater humiliation than had been rendered to
them. It became a law of the Kingdom to ‘wash
one another’s feet’ (Jn 135: 14),
2. Authority and subjection.—To approach the
feet of the great was the conceded right of
the weak in seeking the presence and help of the
powerful. To kneel down and clasp the teet and
even to kiss them is still the Oriental preliminary
to an important request. When inferiors salute
those of higher rank, the first act of gesture is to
lower the hand towards the ground as if to imply
that the whole body should be there. Sometimes
the word is allowed to do service for the deed, as
when the supplicant says, ‘ Allow me to kiss your
feet.’ The impression meant to be produced is
that the party addressed has the power to do what
is asked, and that the only unsettled point is the
question of his willingness (Mt 1859 205, Mk 1"
1917),
The foot on the neck as a symbol of conquest
seems to have been borrowed trom the primitive
pastoral life. When an Oriental shepherd. wishes
to punish a straying and inattentive sheep, he
casts 1t on its side, and with all his weight presses
and rubs the iron-studded sole of his shoe against
its neck (1 Co 15”: *7). In killing a serpent, the
Syrian peasant, even with a stick in his hand,
usually, after a blow or two, jumps upon the
serpent, and by a quick succession of stamps
bruises it to death (Ps 911°, Ro 1059). To sit at tne
feet of his teacher was the attitude of the disciple
(Mt 1074, Lk 1039. Ac 22°). The Pharisees thus sat
in Moses’ seat (Mt 237).
The risen Lord was recognized by the marks in
His hands and His feet (Lk 24); see PRINT.
On Mt 188 || see ASCETICISM, p. 129.
G. M. MACKIE.
FOOTSTOOL (ὑποπόδιον).--- With the single ex-
ception of Ja 2° the word is used figuratively in
the NT, to express the idea of ‘subjection’ or
‘complete control.’ In this sense it occurs fre-
quently in the Gospels: e.g. Mt 22", Mk 12°, Lk
20°, where the Synoptists record Christ’s quotation
from Ps 110—a psalm always regarded by the Jews
as distinctly Messianic. In Mt 224 RV, on the
authority of some of the most ancient MSS and
versions, accepts ὑποκάτω instead of ὑποπόδιον, and
translates, ‘till I put thine enemies under thy
feet.’ Similarly in Mk 12°° ὑποκάτω is read b
many ancient authorities, and js adopted by WH.
Here, however, RV retains ὑποπόδιον (with marg.
note); but (as also in Lk 20% and Mt 535) trans-
lates more correctly ‘ footstool of thy (or his) feet’
instead of AV ‘thy (or his) footstool.’
FORCE
In its application to Christ the word shows Him
in His Kingly office triumphing over His enemies,
and bringing all men into captivity to His obedi-
ence ; cf. 1 Co 15% ‘ For he must reign till he hath
put all enemies under his feet.’
DuUGALD CLARK.
FORCE.—1. Force, as defined by modern science,
is inherent in matter and inseparable from it. It is
defined also as the power of doing work. The modes
and the effects of its activities are mechanical.
It can neither exist nor act, therefore, within the
moral sphere of the universe. And from this fact
it follows that force and its activities are entirely
foreign to the essential facts and truths of Chris-
tianity. This truth is recognized by the four
Gospels, for in their records of Christ’s life and
mission, the entire import of which was moral, no
word is employed capable of being construed into
the meaning of force as just explained. The word
‘force’ occurs only twice in these records (Mt 11”,
Jn 6 EV); and in both eases it is used as the
translation of ἁρπάζω, which signifies to seize or
carry off (an object by physical force or compul-
sion). It is the use of physical force or compulsion
that is denoted by St. John’s statement that the
people wanted to take Jesus by force to make Him
a king; and it is probable that our Lord had the
employment of force of the same kind in His mind
when He said, as St. Matthew reports: ‘From the
days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of
heaven suffereth violence (βιάζεται Ξε “15. carried by
force or assault’), and the violent (or assailants)
take it by force’ (ἁρπάζουσιν). The order of ideas
here expressed is exactly in terms of the principle
of domination by force, which was universal in
antiquity ; a principle which was entirely antago-
nistic to His essential ideas as to the moral nature
of the kingdom of heaven, and the moral conditions
by means of which alone entrance to it could be
gained. And as He fully realized that the prin-
ciple alluded to was hostile to the nature, interests,
and laws of the heavenly kingdom, and warned His
disciples against it (Mk 10+), it may be con-
cluded that He did not express Himself in the
language of the force which the dominating powers
of the ancient world employed, meaning thereby
that places in the kingdom of heaven, as He under-
stood and wished His hearers to understand the
latter, were in great demand, and that men were
eagerly doing their utmost to secure them. His
real meaning is not quite apparent. He Himself
represented the kingdom of God. He had come to
found it. In His life and activities its principles
came to perfect realization. Tosubject Him in any
way to the abusive treatment of the force of domi-
nating powers or authorities, was to do ‘ violence’
in His Person to the kingdom of heaven; and it
was also ‘to take’ the kingdom, in the sense of
making it in His Person an object of violent abuse.
When He spoke the words in question His ministry
in Galilee was closing in disappointing cireum-
stances. John the Baptist had been already made
a victim of violent abuse; and He knew that His
‘hour,’ a more terrible destiny than John’s, would
not be long delayed. Might it not be His cross,
then, that was in His mind when He spoke the
words in question ? [For the more usual view that
the violence which takes the kingdom by force is
thi iniendly violence of those who seek to enter it,
Ex εἰ males _Expositor’s Gr. Lest. am loc.,
9 Racal: [1877] p. 197 Ht], 5 .
ἀν AE ee: ΟΝ ΟΥ ΘΙ is a term which is not
= hah eager ae da S¢ πρὸ τ eee In ordi-
‘Power’ is a word q ip So Wa SPCR gap Owen.
Grosyx ls and Ἢ : ΐ ἐπὶ rhs coh apa eat pe Be the
“ἢ 1 y many Instances where it is em-
value. Tie wort' power’ a tne Berne
1e EV of the Gospels
eee
FORCE
is represented by two Greek terms in the original,
viz. ἐξουσία and δύναμις, the former of which is
sometimes translated by the word ‘ authority.’
᾿Ἐξουσία may be taken first. Power in the sense
of this word is not always spoken of as Christ’s
power; but it is as His power that it has its chief
interest here. The power (ἐξουσία) that Christ
possessed was a power in which might was com-
bined with right; and this is why it is sometimes
called authority in the Gospels and sometimes
power. He was able to do things because He had
the right to do them; and no one had any right
to hinder Him or to call Him in question. And
the things that He had the right and the power
to do were all of a nature purely moral; and
things, moreover, which He alone could do, and
which were of transcendent importance. What
were they? (1) He, as the Son of man, had
power on earth to forgive sins (Mt 9°, Mk 2").
(2) He has power to give eternal life to those
whom the Father has given to Him (Jn 173). (3)
He has power, or authority, also to execute judg-
ment, because He is the Son of man (Jn δ“). (4)
He is invested with all power in heaven and in
earth (Mt 2818). (δ) Lastly, He had power to lay
down His life on earth, and power to take it again
(Jn 1018). The explanation of the various forms
of power (ἐξουσία) possessed by Christ, and of the
grounds on which His claim to the possession of
them rests, lies in a domain of essential Christian
truth.
It needs to be strongly emphasized that all the
forms of the power in question are moral. The
power to forgive sins, to judge men as moral beings,
to give eternal life to men as moral beings, to lay
down one’s life in perfect self-sacrificing love and
service for others’ good, to exercise the moral
government of heaven and earth,—to do all these
things, to have the right and the power to do them,
manifestly means the possession and the exercise
of moral power of the highest possible order,
Again, it is evident that this power in its nature
and in all its forms of manifestation belongs to
the supernatural order of things. But ἴῃ the
sphere of things into which the order of ideas
considered here introduces one, the supernatural
and the natural are one. It is within the sphere
of the moral order of things that Christ, in His
moral position as Mediator between God and
men, exercised, or exercises, the forms of His
power alluded to. And within this moral sphere
there is no absolute distinction between the natu-
ral and the supernatural. Here all that is in
harmony with God’s will and purpose is in Him,
and He is in it. This is the real truth; and
whether it be called natural or supernatural is only
a difference in name.
Once more, all the forms of power that Christ
claimed for Himself were His by delegation from
God. But this does not mean that He had the
right and the power to exercise them in a merely
official capacity, without their having any relation
to and dependence on what He was as a moral
Being. He was invested with them by God, as all
but one of the passages referred to above indicate.
But one of the passages tells us that He had power
on earth to forgive sins as the Son of man; and
another, that God had given Him authority to
execute Judgement because He was the Son of man.
He was both the Son of God and the Son of man
in all that He was as a moral Being when on the
earth, exercising the high moral powers that He
claimed to possess. And it is as the same moral
3eing, now glorified, that He exercises every moral
power that He claimed as His own by Divine gift
and prerogative. In other words, the power to do
all the things that have been specified is His be-
cause of what He zs as a moral Being. To forgive
FORCE
FORCE 607
sins, to judge men, etc., are all acts of moral power
which belong to the administration of the moral
order of the world as it now is with Christ in it as
the one only Mediator between God and men.
And the reason why the administration of all
things belonging to the moral relations between
God and men is in His hands, is—that in His life
and death on earth He earned the moral right to
occupy this momentous position of mediation and
power. For He fills this position and administers
its powers as one who has proved Himself all that
God can be to men, and all that every man ought
to become and be to God. He is thus, because of
what He is, the Divinely human and the humanly
Divine, true way of forgiveness, of judgment, of
life, and of moral government for men. From His
Father’s own commandment He had the power to
lay down His life, in living and in dying to qualify
Himself for this destiny of absolute pre-eminence
in the moral universe. And as the Father com-
manded Him, so He did. Therefore His name is
now above every name (Ph 2°), Jn 17°°-*),
Δύναμις is the other word which is translated
‘power’ in the EV of the Gospels. It is note-
worthy that none of the Evangelists includes the
word ‘energy’ (ἐνέργεια) in his terminology; a
word which St. Paul employed to denote the
effectual working of God's redeeming power as
manifested in (1) the raising of Christ from the
dead, and in the setting of Him at God’s right
hand in the heavenly places, ἐν. in the moral order
of things (Eph 1-*); (2) the Divine grace that
was bestowed on St. Paul himself by the werking
in him of Divine power (Eph 3‘); (3) the working
of the same Divine power in the creation or evolu-
tion of an order of moral unity in the relations of
all men to one another in Christ ; (4) the work-
ing of the same power as in Christ as destined to
fashion the resurrection body of believers into the
glorious likeness of His own, ‘according to the
working whereby he is able even to subject all
things unto himself’ (Ph 371). But the absence
from the Gospels of the term ‘energy,’ which occu-
pies a place of such extensive and high importance
in St. Paul’s general conception of essential Christi-
anity, does not imply the absence from them of that
order of Divine working for which the word stands
in the Apostle’s writings. The entire body of
moral phenomena, reproduced by the Evangelists
in their several records, and in which the power
of God in Christ was manifested, was a revelation
of the Divine energy in St. Paul’s sense of the
word. But, further, the meaning of the word
ἐνέργεια is included in that of the word δύναμις as
the latter is used in the Gospels; for in them it
signifies, on the one hand, the possession of power
capable of action ; and, on the other, power mani-
festing itself in a state of activity, in which case
it appears in the form of energy. Power, then, as
δύναμις, holds a fundamental place in the Gospels
as records of how Christ conceived it and mani-
fested it in His activities.
(1) Christ regarded the power with which He
associated Himself and His activities and their
effects as moral, and as having its ultimate source
in God. He conceived God as a moral Being, and
to Him as such He ascribed the power alluded to
(Mt 22” 268, Mk 9! 14%, Lk 22%°),—(2) But, again,
such being Christ’s view, He never conceived
of Himself as possessing and exercising power
independently of God. His feeling of absolute
dependence on God for power had a deep and
controlling place in His consciousness. It was the
feeling He gave unreserved and clear expression
to when He said, for instance, ‘The Son can do
nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father
do’; ‘I can of mine own self do nothing’ ; and, |
again, ‘The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth |
the works’ (Jn 5! *° 71410),. (8) It was, therefore,
through His dependence on God that our Lord
obtained the power by means of which He was
enabled to attain to His perfect moral self-realiza-
tion, and by means of which He was enabled to
finish the work His Father had given Him to do.
And the question thus arises as to how He was
kept in possession of a continuous supply of power
for the great moral task and service of His life.
The answer to this question is to be found in the
Gospels. The secret of His strength lay in His
inner life of perfect, never- broken union an
fellowship with His Father in all things. But
this life of union and fellowship with His Father
needed itself to be continually maintained ; and
the Gospels also show how this was done by Him.
He did it by paying perfect loyalty to His depend-
ence on His Father ; by striving in every situation
of His life freely and perfectly to identify Himself
with His Father’s will and purpose for His life and
His mission ; by means of habits of self-discipline
and _prayer (Lk 33:1. 22 41-14 6)? (28-85 ΟΣ ΟΝ Jn 344
8,38. 2 ).
(4) Christ, moreover, believed that His disciples
needed the same Divine power that was His
strength, in order to be able to fulfil the moral
task in life to which He called them; and He be-
lieved that this power would be available fer them
as it had been for Himself during His life on earth.
His Spirit in them would be the very power (δύνα μις)
that had been 1115 own. And in their task of
overcoming temptation, of moral self-realization,
of achieving good in service for the kingdom of
God, they would find His Spirit’s power all-sufti-
cient for them. But they would need to remember
that the servant was not greater than his Lord.
They would need to depend on Him as He de-
pended on God. They would need to abide in
union and fellowship with Him. They must keep
His words as being the Father’s words. And they
must also follow Him in-the path of humility, seli-
discipline, prayer, and self-denial (Mt 1058. 171%!
OG Lk 119-13 9931. 32 24%, dim 1224-26 1318-17 1410-18 154
poe) Ae 12215) 3
(5) It was, finally, in the exercise of the Divine
power here referred to that our Lord performed
those extraordinary works of His to which the
name ‘miracle’ has been given. In some of the
Gospels they are called ‘mighty works’ (ὁ... Mt
11°, Mk 6, Lk 19%). These works of power
(duvduecs) were only special forms in which was
manifested the same power that was revealed in
so many other ways in the moral activities of
Christ’s life. He wrought His miracles by the
same power that enabled Him perfectly to over-
come all the temptations of His life, and to accom-
plish all those other things in which He fulfilled
His Father’s will and purpose.
Again, it never occurred to Him that in the
doing of His mighty works He contravened or
suspended any of those uniformities of nature to
which the term ‘law’ is applied by modern science ;
though with many of those uniformities He was
quite familiar, and, besides, attached to them
great importance. The question raised for science
by His mighty works is in reality not a question
of natural /aw ; it is a question of natural force or
energy. Are the forces inherent and operative in
the physical or moral order of the world of such a
nature as to render it impossible for the miracles
ascribed to Christ’s power to have happened ?
That is the real point at issue as between the testi-
mony of the Gospels and Science. And the man
of science who has the most extensive and the
deepest knowledge of the energy or forces of the
Universe, and who has therefore entered furthest
into the presence of the marvels and the mysteri s
of these forces and their modes of manifestation,
an
608 FORERUNNER
FORESIGHT
would be the last person to answer the question in
the affirmative. :
Once more, the mighty works ascribed to Christ
in the Gospels are not the most wonderful of His
achievements. It is often pointed out in defence
of these mighty works, and rightly, that they were
wrought to serve beneficent ends, that they were
manifestations of power and love ministering in
various ways to human well-being ; and that as so
viewed, they were originally and homogeneously
related to all the other beneticent activities of our
Lord’s ministry. It is also argued in favour of the
possibility and the historical truth of the miracles
in question, that His perfect personal sinlessness
and holiness was a moral miracle as great as, if not
ereater than, any of the mighty works reported by
the Evangelists as performed by Him. There 15
justice in this argument. It was by the power of
God immanent and operative in Him, and by His
own free co-operation therewith, that He achieved
His perfect moral self-realization in which He was
morally as perfect as God. That was a miracle
indeed ; and, to say the least, there is no mightier
work on record in the Gospels and represented there
as wroucht by Him in the exercise of the Divine
power of which He was a personal organ. See,
further, MIRACLE.
3ut that was only the beginning of the mightiest
work of all with which the power of God in Christ
is associated, and which is only coming slowly to
manifestation in the moral progress of humanity.
Christ in the power of His Spirit is in the moral
life of mankind. He is morally re-creating the
life of the human race. The moral order of the
world is being evolved by means of His moral
power as the Mediator between God and men. By
means of His moral power in man’s life and his-
tory, He is conducting humanity onwards in the
path that will bring it to a perfect moral destiny
in the kingdom of God. This is the greatest,
mightiest of all His miracles; and whosoever
understands the momentousness of the moral task
it implies will not stumble at any of the mighty
works on record in the Gospels.
_ LITERATURE.—On ἐξουσία and δύναμις see- the Lexicons of
Cremer and Grimm-Thayer, s.vv. On Christ’s miraculous power
see art. ‘ Miracles’ in Hastings’ DB; Mozley, Bampton Lectures,
esp. Lect. VI. W. D. THOMSON.
FORERUNNER.
FORESIGHT.—The interest of the student of
the Gospels, and of the life of Jesus which forms
their substance, in the topic of this article, is two-
fold. Jesus is represented in the Gospels as at
once the object and the subject of the most de-
tailed foresight. The work which He came to do
was a work ordained in the counsels of eternity,
and in all its items prepared for beforehand with
the most perfect prevision. In addressing Himself
to the accomplishment of this work Jesus pro-
ceeded from the beginning in the fullest know-
edge of the end, and with the most absolute
adjustment of every step to its attainment. It is
from this double view- point that each of the
Evangelists depicts the course of our Lord’s life
on earth. They consentiently represent Him as
See JOHN THE BAPTIST.
having come to perform a specific task, all the
elements of which were not only determined be-
forehand in the plan of God, but adumbrated, if
somewhat sporadically, yet with sufficient ful-
hess tor the end in view, in the prophecies of
the OT. (nd they represent Him as comine to
perform this task with a clear consciousness of
its nature and a competent control of. all the
means for its discharge, so that His whole life
was ἃ conscientious fulfilment of 4
programme,
ard moved straight to its mark. The conception
of foresight thus dominates the whole Evangelical
narrative.
It is not necessary to dwell at length upon
the Evangelists’ conception of our Lord’s life and
work as the fulfilment of a plan Divinely pre-
determined for Him. It lies on the face of their
narratives that the authors of the Gospels had no
reservation with respect to the all-embracing pre-
destination of God (cf. Hastings’ DB iv. 54-56) ;
and least of all could they exclude from it this
life and work which was to them the hinge upon
which all history turns. ‘To them accordingly our
Lord is by way of eminence ‘the man of destiny,’
and His whole life (Lk 2” 4%) was governed by
‘the δεῖ of the Divine counsel.’ Every step of His
pathway was a ‘necessity’ to Him, in the fulfil-
ment of the mission for which He had ‘come
forth’ (Mk 1°, οἵ. Swete), or as St. Luke (44%) in
quite Johannine: wise (52% 2+ 30> 26. 28 620-)58-)49. 405 οὗ
passim) expresses it, ‘was sent’ (cf. Mt 10°, Mk
977, Lk 98 ΠΟ Mitel a4 Ὁ ΜΠ ΡΟΣ 10} ΘΟ ete
Swete on Mk 95. Especially was all that con-
cerned His departure, the accomplishment of which
(Lk 951, cf. v.°!) was His particular task, under the
government of this ‘ Divine necessity ’ (Mt 167! 26%,
ΜΠ 8} Ike GR ye? Been ere ch lin Sys OLE at, JA
923 318 458. and Westcott on Jn 20%). His final
journey to Jerusalem (Mt 16?!), His rejection by
the rulers (Mk 8", Lk 053 17%), His betrayal (Lk
247), arrest (Mt 26%), sufferings (Mt 26°, Mk
831, Lk 9” 17%), and death (Mt 162; Mk 8*,Lk
9°") by crucifixion (Lk 24’, Jn 344), His rising again
(Jn 20°) on the third day.(Mt 1671, Mk 851, Lk 97
247. 44)_each item alike is declared to have been
‘amatter of necessity in pursuance of the Divine
purpose ’ (Meyer, Mt 24°), ‘a necessary part of the
destiny assigned our Lord’ (Meyer, Mt 2056), ‘The
death of our Lord’ thus appears ‘not as the acci-
dental work of hostile caprice, but (ef. Ac 255 518)
the necessary result of the Divine predestination
(Lk 22”), to which Divine δεῖ (Lk 2456) the per-
sonal free action of man had to serve as an instru-
ment’ (Meyer, Ac 4°).
How far the several events which entered into
this life had been prophetically announced is obvi-
ously, in this view of it, a mere matter of detail.
All of them lay open before the eyes of God ; and
the only limit to pre-announcement was the extent
to which God had chosen to reveal what was to
come to pass, through His servants the prophets.
In some instances, however, the prophetic an-
nouncement is particularly adduced as the ground
on which recognition of the necessity of occurrence
rests. The fulfilment of Scripture thus becomes
regulative for the life of Jesus. Whatever stood
written of Him in the Law or the Prophets or the
Psalms (Lk 2444) must needs (δεῖ) be accomplished
(Mt 26%4, Lk 2237 9476 Jn 20%). Or, in another
form of statement, particularly frequent in Mt.
( 22 15. 23 414 917 1911 1335 214 26°%) and ame (1288 1318
1555 1713 1055- 9860) but found also in the other Evan-
gelists (Mk 144°, Lk 42), the several occurrences of
His life fell out as they did, ‘in order that what
was spoken by the Lord’ through the prophets or
in Scripture, ‘might be fulfilled’ (ef. Mt 2!7 26%
279, Lk 24"; in Jn 189 , Lk 24 declarations of
Jesus are treated precisely similarly). That is to
say, ‘what was done stood . . . in the connexion
of the Divine necessity, as an actual fact, by which
prophecy was destined to be fulfilled. The Divine
decree expressed in the latter mast be accom-
plished, and to that end this... came to pass,
and that, according to the whole of its contents’
(Meyer, Mt 1°). The meaning is, not that there
lies in the OT Scriptures a complete predictive
account of all the details of the life of Jesus, which
those skilled in the interpretation of Scripture
This pro-
might read off from its pages at will.
FORESIGHT
gramme in its detailed completeness lies only in
the Divine purpose ; and in Scripture only so far
forth as God has chosen to place it there for the
guidance or the assurance of His people. ‘The
meaning is rather that all that stands written of
Jesus in the OT Scriptures has its certain fulfil-
ment in Him; and that enough stands written of
Him there to assure His followers that in the course
of His life, and in its, to them, strange and unex-
pected ending, He was not the prey of chance or
the victim of the hatred of men, to the marring of
His work or perhaps even the defeat of His mis-
sion, but was following step by step, straight to its
goal, the predestined pathway marked out for Him
in the counsels of eternity, and sufficiently revealed
from of old in the Scriptures to enable all who
were not ‘foolish and slow of heart to believe in all
that the prophets have spoken,’ to perceive that
the Christ must needs have lived just this life and
fulfilled just this destiny.
That the whole course of the life of Jesus, and
especially its culmination in the death which He
died, was foreseen and afore-prepared by God,
enters, thus, into the very substance of the Evan-
gelical narrative. It enters equally into its very
substance that this life was from the beginning
lived out by Jesus Himself in full view of its drift
and its issue.
not of His own choosing, to an unanticipated end,
as they are from representing Him as thwarted in
His purposes, or limited in His achievement, or
determined or modified in His aims or methods, by
the conditions which from time to time emerged
in His way. The very essence of their representa-
tion is that Jesus came into the world with a
definite mission to execute, of the nature of which
He was perfectly aware, and according to which
He ordered the whole course of His life as it
advanced under His competent control unswerv-
ingly to its preconceived mark. In their view His
life was lived out, not in ignorance of its issues,
or in the form of a series of trials and corrections,
least of all in a more or less unavailing effort to
wring success out of failure; but in complete know-
ledge of the counsels of God for Him, in perfect
acquiescence in them, and in careful and volun-
tary fulfilment of them. The ‘Divine det’ which
governed His life is represented as fully recog-
nized by Himself (Mt 167, Mk 8", 1.154.5.025 W247
Jn 3" 12%), and the fulfilment of the intimations
of prophecy in His life as accepted by Him as a
rule for His voluntary action (Mt 26%, 11 pan
2426.44 Jn 209, Mk 1429, Lk 41, Jn 1318 15% 17”; ch
Mt 13% 157 2415 2655, Mk 75). Determining all
things, determined by none, the life He actually
lived, leading up to the death He actually died, 1s
in their view precisely the life which from the
beginning He intended to live, ending in precisely
the death in which, from the beginning, He in-
tended this life to issue, undeflected by so much
as a hair’s-breadth from the straight path He had
from the start marked out for Himself in the
fullest prevision and provision of all the so-called
chances and changes which might befall Him.
Not only were there no surprises in life for Jesus
(ef. art. AMAZEMENT, p. 48), and no compulsions ;
there were not even ‘influences,’ as we speak of
‘influences’ in a merely human career. The mark
of this life, as the Evangelists depict it, is its calm
and quiet superiority to all circumstance, and con-
dition, and to all the varied forces which sway
other lives; its prime characteristics are volun-
tariness and independence. Neither His mother,
nor His brethren, nor His disciples, nor the people
He came to serve, nor His enemies bent upon His
destruction, nor Satan himself with his tempta-
VOL. I.—-39
The Evangelists are as far from |
representing Jesus as driven blindly onwards by a |
Divine destiny unknown to Himself, along courses |
FORESIGHT 609
tions, could move Him one step from His chosen
path. When men seemed to prevail over Him
they were but working His ΙΝ; the great ‘No
one has taken my life away from me; I have
power to lay it down, and I have power to take it
again’ (Jn 1018), is but the enunciation for the
supreme act, of the principle that governs all His
movements. His own chosen pathway ever lay
fully displayed before His feet ; on it His feet fell
quietly, but they found the way always unblocked.
What He did, He came to do; and He carried
out His programme with unwavering purpose and
indefectible certitude. So at least the Evangelists
represent Him. (Cf. the first half of a striking
article on ‘ Die Selbstiindigkeit Jesu,’ by Trott, in
Luthardt’s ZK WL, 1883, iv. 233-241 ; in its latter
half the art. falls away from its idea, and ends by
making Jesus absolutely dependent on Scripture
for His knowledge of God and Divine things:
‘We have no right whatever to maintain that
Jesus received revelations from the Father other-
wise than through the medium of the sacred Scrip-
tures; that is a part of His complete humanity’
(p. 238)).
The signature of this supernatural life which
the Evangelists depict Jesus as living, lies thus
in the perfection of the foresight by which it was
governed. Of the reality of this foresight they
leave their readers in no doubt, nor yet of its com-
pleteness. They suggest it by the general picture
they draw of the self-directed life which Jesus
lived in view of His mission. They record repeated
instances in which He mentions beforehand events
yet to occur, or foreshadows the end from the
beginning. They connect these manifestations of
foresight with the possession by Him of knowledge
in general, in comprehension and penetration alike
far beyond what is native to man. It may per-
haps be natural to surmise in the first instance
that they intend to convey merely the conviction
that in Jesus was manifested a prophet of supreme
greatness, in whom, as the culminating example of
prophecy (ef. Ac 3**%), resided beyond precedent
the gifts proper to prophets. There can be no
question that to the writers of the Gospels Jesus
was ‘the incarnate ideal of the prophet, who, as
such, forms a class by Himself, and is more than a
prophet’ (this is what Schwartzkopff thinks Him,
The Prophecies of Jesus Christ, p. 7). They record
with evident sympathy the impression made by
Him at the outset of His ministry, that God had at
last in Him visited His people (Mk 6", Lk 716, Jn
419 917) ; they trace the ripening of this impression
into a well-settled belief in His prophetic char-
acter (Mt 9111 Τῆς 2419 Mit 9150: 1ς ε755. aie eo)
and they remark upon the widespread suspicion
which accompanied this belief, that He was some-
thing more than @ prophet—possibly one of the
old prophets returned, certainly a very special
prophet charged with a very special mission for
the introduction of the Messianic times (Mt 16%,
Mk 6:5) 828) ks 05:19} JG) ΠΣ ebheyennepne-
sent Jesus as not only calling out and accepting
this estimate of Him, but frankly assuming a
prophet’s place and title (Mt 1357, Mk 64, Lk 444,
Jn 44, Lk 13%), exercising a prophet’s functions,
and delivering prophetic discourses, in which He
unveils the future (Mt 2451, Mk 133, Jn 145; cf.
Mt 28°, Lk 244, and such passages as Mt 26% *4,
Mk 167). Nevertheless it is very clear that in
their allusions to the supernatural knowledge of
Jesus, the Evangelists suppose themselves to be
illustrating something very much greater than
merely prophetic inspiration. The specific differ-
ence between Jesus and a prophet, in their view,
was that while a prophet’s human knowledge is
increased by many things revealed to him by God
(Am 37), Jesus participated in all the fulness of
FORESIGHT
FORESIGHT
the Divine knowledge (Mt 117’, Lk 10”, Jn 1615 18:
16 2117), so that all that is knowable lay open |
The Evangelists, in a word,
obviously intend to attribute Divine omniscience
to Jesus, and in their adduction of instances of
His supernatural knowledge, whether with respect
to hidden things or to those yet buried in the
future, are illustrating His possession of this
Divine omniscience (cf. Muirhead, The Eschatology
of Jesus, p. 119, where, in partial correction of the
more inadequate statement of p. 48, there is recog-
nized in the Evangelists at least a
attribute to our Lord ‘ Divine dignity ’ and ‘literal
omniscience ’).
That this is the case with St. John’s Gospel is
very commonly recognized (for a plain statement
before Him (Jn 177”).
of the evidence see Karl Miiller, Gottliches Wissen | Ὁ het
lips predictions He never uttered and never could
|
und gottliche Macht des johann. Christus, 1882, ὃ 4,
pp. 29-47: ‘ Zeugnisse des vierten Evangeliums fiir
Jesu gottliches Wissen’). It is not too much to
say, indeed, that one of the chief objects which
the author of that Gospel set before himself was to
make clear to its readers the superhuman know-
ledge of Jesus, with especial reference, of course,
to His own career. It therefore records direct
ascriptions of omniscience to Jesus, and represents
them as favourably received by Him (Jn 16% 2177 ;
cf. Liddon, Bampton- Lectures, ed. 4, 1869, p. 466).
It makes it almost the business of its opening
chapters to exhibit this omniscience at work in
the especially Divine form (Lk 16, Ac 153, He 4”,
Ps 138 (139), Jer 1716 20!" ; cf. Swete on Mk 28) of
immediate, universal, and complete knowledge of
the thoughts and intents of the human heart (cf.
Westcott on Jn 2”), laying down the general
thesis in 2%” (cf. 664: τὸ 21'7), and illustrating it in
detail in the eases of all with whom Jesus came |
into contact in the opening days of His ministry
(cf. Westcott on Jn 1%), Peter (1%), Philip (1%),
Nathanael (147), Mary (24), Nicodemus (3), the
woman of Samaria (4). In the especially striking
case of the choice of Judas Iscariot as one of the
Apostles, it expressly explains that this was due to
no ignorance of Judas’ character or of his future
action (65-7 131), but was done as part of our
Lord’s voluntary execution of His own well-laid
plans. It pictures Jesus with great explicitness as
prosecuting His whole work in full knowledge of
all the things that were coming upon Him (Jn 183,
cf. Westcott), and with a view to subjecting them
all to His governing hand, so that His life from the
beginning should run steadily onward on the lines
of a thoroughly wrought-out plan (Jn 147 919. 24 314 |
651. 64. τὸ 76 8.8 Ἴρ)5.18 “197. 23 131. 1. 21.38 1439. 1 G5. 32
18?- 9).
It is difficult to see, however, why St. John’s
Gospel should be separated from its companions in
this matter (Schenkel says frankly that it is only
because there is no such passage in St. John’s Gos-
pel as Mk 13%, on which see below. Whatever
else must be said of W. Wrede’s Das Messiasqe-
h imnis, etc., 1901, it must be admitted that it has
broken down this artificial distinction between the
Gospel of John and the Synoptiecs). If they do
not, like St. John (16° 21'7), record direct ascrip-
tions of precise omniscience to Jesus by His
followers, they do, like St. John, represent Him
as Himself claiming to be the depository and dis-
tributer of the Father’s knowledge (Mt 1121-8, Lk
lu). Nor do they lag behind St. John in
attributing to Jesus ‘the Divine prerogative of
reading the heart (Mt 94, Meyer : Mk 95. 8 817 1915. 44
ee: Ixxxviii ; a
in other forms. of Cod-like we1enre 72
217, Mk 11°14 ᾿ SR i Bg sel τς νεῖ
War Jesus Ekstatiler ite
of all do they fall behind St. John in insisting
upon the perfection of the foresight of Jesus in all
——————
‘tendency ’ to |
re ae ἐδ : |
Lx 555 79) or the manifestation,
; ef. O. Holtzmann, |
? p. l4and p. 15, note). Least |
matters connected with His own life and death
(Mt gle 124 167! 9() 8 22. 28 262+ 21. 34. zu Mk 919 91 gel
1023: 39. 45 ] 12 148. 13. 18, 3D ΤῊΝ 834 933. 44. 51 1050 1390 1735
1851. 1930 9910. 21.34.37 944), Nothing could exceed
the detailed precision of these announcements, —a
characteristic which has been turned, of course, to
their discredit as genuine utterances of Jesus by
writers who find ditticulty with detailed prediction.
‘The form and contents of these texts,’ remarks
Wrede (Messiasgeheimnis, etc. p. 88), ‘speak a
language which cannot be misunderstood. They
are nothing but a short summary of the Passion
history—‘‘ cast, of course, in the future tense.” ’
‘«The Passion-history,”’ he proceeds, quoting
Eichhorn, ‘‘‘ could certainly not be more exactly
related in few words.”’ In very fact, it is perfectly
clear—whether they did it by placing upon His
have uttered, is another question—that the Evan-
gelists designed to represent Jesus as endowed
with the absolute and unlimited foresight conso-
nant with His Divine nature (see Liddon, Lampton
Lectures, ed. 4, p. 464 ff. ; and cf. A. J. Mason;
The Conditions of our Lord’s Life on Earth, pp.
155-194).
The force of this representation cannot be broken,
of course, by raising the question afresh whether
the supernatural knowledge attributed by the Evan-
gelists to our Lord may not, in many of its items at
least, if not in its whole extent, find its analogues,
after all, in human powers, or be explained as not
different in kind from that of the prophets (cf. e.g.
Westcott, ‘Additional Note on Jn 24; A. J. Mason,
Conditions, ete. pp. 162-163). The question more
immediately before us does not concern our own
view of the nature and origin of this knowledge,
but that of the Evangelists. If we will keep
these two questions separate we shall scarcely be
able to doubt that the Evangelists mean to present
this knowledge as one of the marks of our Lord’s
Divine dignity. In interpreting them we are not
entitled to parcel out the mass of the illustra-
tions of His supernormal knowledge which they
record to differing sources, as may fall in with our
own conceptions of the inherent possibilities of
each case; finding indications in some instances
merely of His fine human instinct, in others of His
prophetic inspiration, while reserving others—if
such others are left to us in our analysis—as
products of His Divine intuition. The Evangelists
| suggest no such lines of cleavage in the mass ; and
they must be interpreted from their own stand-
point. This finds its centre in their expressed
conviction that in Jesus Christ dwelt the fulness
of the knowledge of God (Mt 1127, Lk 10”, Jn 8:8
165 17°). To them His knowledge of God and of
Divine things, of Himself in His Person and
mission, of the course of His life and the events
which would befall Him in the prosecution of the
work whereunto He had been sent, of the men
around Him,—His followers and friends, the people
and their rulers,—down to the most hidden depths
of their natures and the most intimate processes of
their secret thoughts, and of all the things forming
the environment in which the drama He was
enacting was cast, however widely that environ-
ment be conceived, or however minutely it be
contemplated,—was but the manifestation, in the
ever-widening circles of our human modes of con-
ception, of the perfect apprehension and under-
standing that dwelt changelessly in His Divine
intelligence. He who knew God perfectly,—it were
little that He should know man and the world
perfectly too; all that affected His own work and
career, of course, and with it, equally of course,
all that lay outside of this (ef. Mason, Conditions,
ete. p. 168); in a word, unlimitedly, all things.
Even if nothing but the Law of Parsimony stood
-
FORESIGHT
FORESIGHT 611
in the way, it might well be understood that the
Evangelists would be deterred from seeking, in the
case of such a Being, other sources of information
‘besides His Divine intelligence to account for all
His far-reaching and varied knowledge. At all
events, it is clearly their conviction that all He
knew—the scope of which was unbounded and its
depth unfathomed, though their record suggests
rather than fully illustrates it—found its explana-
tion in the dignity of His person as God manifest
in the flesh.
Nor can the effect of their representation of
Jesus as the subject of this all-embracing Divine
knowledge be destroyed by the discovery in their
narratives of another line of representation in
which our Lord is set forth as living His life out
under the conditions which belong naturally to
the humanity He had assumed. These representa-
tions are certainly to be neglected as little as those
others in which His Divine omniscience is sug-
gested. They bring to our observation another
side of the complex personality that is depicted,
which, if it cannot be said to be as emphatically
insisted upon by the Evangelists, is nevertheless,
perhaps, equally pervasively illustrated. This is
the true humanity of our Lord, within the scope of
which He willed to live out His life upon earth, that
He might accomplish the mission for which He
had been sent. The suggestion that He might
break: over the bounds of His mission, in order that
He might escape from the ruggedness of His chosen
path, by the exercise whether of His almighty
power (Mt 4°, Lk 458) or of His unerring foresight
(Mt 16*||), He treated first and last as a tempta-
tion of the Evil One—for ‘how then should the
Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be’ (Mt
26°*||)? It is very easy, to be sure, to exaggerate
the indications in the Evangelists of the confine-
ment of our Lord’s activities within the limits of
human powers. It is an exaggeration, for example,
to speak as if the Evangelists represent Him as
frequently surprised by the events which befell
Him : they never predicate surprise of Him, and it
is only by a very precarious inference from the
events recorded that they can ever be supposed
even to suggest or allow place for such an emotion
in our Lord (cf. art. AMAZEMENT, p. 48). It is an
exaggeration again to adduce our Lord’s questions
as attempts to elicit information for His own guid-
ance: His questions are often plainly dialectical
or rhetorical, or, like some of His actions, solely
for the benefit of those ‘that stood around.’ It is
once more an exaggeration to adduce the employ-
ment in many cases of the term γινώσκω, when the
Evangelists speak of our Lord’s knowledge, as if it
were thereby implied that this knowledge was
freshly born in His mind: the assumed distinction,
but faintly marked in Greek literature, cannot be
traced in the usage of the terms γνῶναι and εἰδέναι
in their application to our Lord’s knowledge ; these
terms even replace one another in parallel accounts
of the same instance (Mt 9918} Mk 12% ; [Mt 94]|! Mk
28 Lk 5%; cf. Mt 12%, Lk 68 977 112", Jn 6%) ; γνῶναι
is used of the undoubted Divine knowledge of our
Lord ({Mt 1135] Lk 10%, Jn 10% 17%, Mt 7%; οἵ. Jn
94. 35. 542 104-27); and indeed of the knowledge of
God Himself (Lk 103 16%, Jn 10% [Mt 11°7]): and,
in any event, there is a distinction which in such
nice inquiries should not be neglected, between
saying that the occurrence of an event, being per-
ceived, was the occasion of an action, and saying
that knowledge of the event, perceived as occur-
ring, waited on its occurrence. Gravely vitiated by
such exaggerations as most discussions of the sub-
ject are, enough remz‘us, however, after all ex-
aggeration is pruned away, to assure us, not indeed
that our Lord’s life on earth was, in the view of |
the Evancelists, an exclusively human one ; or that,
apart from the constant exercise of His will to
make it such, it was controlled by the fimitations of
humanity ; but certainly that it was, in their view,
lived out, so far as was consistent with the fulfil-
ment of the mission for which He came—and as an
indispensable condition of the fulfilment of that
mission—under the limitations belonging to a
purely human life. The classical passages in this
reference are those striking statements in the
second chapter of Luke (2%: 52) in which is summed
up our Lord’s growth from infancy to manhood,
including, of course, His intellectual development
(cf. art. CHILDREN, p. 302), and His own remark-
able declaration recorded in Mt 24%, Mk 13%, in
which He affirms His ignorance of the day and
hour of His return to earth. Supplemented by
their general dramatization of His life within the
range of the purely human, these passages are
enough to assure us that in the view of the Evan-
gelists there was in our Lord a purely human soul,
which bore its own proper part in His life, and
which, as human souls do, grew in knowledge as it
grew in wisdom and grace, and remained to the
end, as human souls must, ignorant of many
things, —nay, which, because human souls are
finite, must ever be ignorant of much embraced in
the universal vision of the Divine Spirit. We may
wonder why the ‘ day and hour’ of His own return
should remain among the things of which our
Lord’s human soul continued ignorant throughout
His earthly life. But this is a matter about
which surely we need not much concern ourselves.
We can never do more than vaguely guess at the
law which governs the inclusions and exclusions
which characterize the knowledge-contents of any
human mind, limited as human minds are not only
qualitatively but quantitatively ; and least of all
could we hope to penetrate the principle of selec-
tion in the case of the perfect human intelligence
of our Lord ; nor have the Evangelists hinted their
view of the matter. We must just be content to
recognize that we are face to face here with the
mystery of the Two Natures, which, although
they do not, of course, formally enunciate the
doctrine in so many words, the Evangelists yet
effectively teach, since by it alone can consistency
be induced between the two classes of facts which
they present unhesitatingly in their narratives.
Only, if we would do justice to their presentation,
we must take clear note of two of its character-
istics. They do not simply, in separated portions
of their narratives, adduce the facts which mani-
fest our Lord’s Divine powers and His human
characteristics, but interlace them inextricably
in the same sections of the narratives. And
they do not subject the Divine that is in Christ
to the limitations of the human, but quite deci-
sively present the Divine as dominating all, and
as giving play to the human only by a constant,
voluntary withholding of its full manifestation in
the interests of the task undertaken. Observe the
story, for example, in Jn 11, which Dr. Mason
(Conditions, ete. p. 143) justly speaks of as ‘indeed
a marvellous weaving together of that which is
natural and that which is above nature.’ ‘Jesus
learns from others that Lazarus is sick, but knows
without any further message that Lazarus is dead ;
He weeps and groans at the sight of the sorrow
which surrounds Him, yet calmly gives thanks for
the accomplishment of the miracle before it has
been accomplished.’ This conjunction of the two
elements is typical of the whole Evangelical narra-
tive. As portrayed in it our Lord’s life is distinctly
duplex ; and can be consistently construed only by
the help of the conception of the Two Natures.
And just as distinetly is this life portrayed in
these narratives as receiving its determination not
from the human, but from the Divine side. If what
Synoptics essay is to present the Gospel (as Mark
puts it) of Jesus Christ the Son of God. It is
distinctly a supernatural life that He is repre-
sented by them all as living ; and the human aspect
of it is treated by each alike as an incident in
something more exalted, by which it is permitted,
rather than on which it imposes itself. Though
passed as far as was befitting within the limits of
humanity, this life remains at all times the life of
God manifest in the flesh, and, as depicted by the
Evangelists, never escapes beyond the boundaries
set by what was suitable to it as such.
The actual instances of our Lord’s foresight
which are recorded by the Evangelists are not very
numerous outside of those which concern the estab-
lishment of the Kingdom of God, with which alone,
of course, their narratives are particularly en-
gaged. Even the few instances of specific exhibi-
tions of foreknowledge of what we may call trivial
events owe their record to some connexion with
this great work. Examples are afforded by the
foresight that the casting of the nets at the exact
time and place indicated by our Lord would secure
a draught of fishes (Lk 5+, οἵ. Jn 21°); that the
first fish that Peter would take when he threw his
hook into the sea would be one which had swallowed
a stater (Mt 1777); that on entering a given village
the disciples should find an ass tied, and a colt with
it, whose owners would be obedient to our Lord’s
request (Mt 21? ||); and that on entering Jeru-
salem to make ready for the final passover-feast
they should meet a man bearing a pitcher, pre-
pared to serve the Master’s needs (Mk 14:3). In in-
stances like these the interlacing of prevision and
provision is very intimate, and doubt arises whether
they illustrate most distinctly our Lord’s Divine fore-
sight or His control of events. In other instances
the element of foresight comes, perhaps, more
purely forward: such are possibly the predictions
of the offence of the disciples (Mt 26*1||), the denial
of Peter (26%*||), and the treachery of Judas (267! ||).
There may be added the whole series of utterances
in which our Lord shows a comprehensive foresight
of the career of those whom He called to His ser-
vice (Mt 439 1011. 21 2022 249 Jn 1615) ; and also that
other series in which He exhibits a like full fore-
knowledge of the entire history of the Kingdom of
God in the world (cf. esp. the parables of the
Kingdom, and such passages as Mt 1018 245-24 ΟἹ
2414 264, Lk 1911, Jn 148. 1)... It is, however, par-
| ticularly with reference to His own work in estab-
lishing the Kingdom, and in regard to the nature
of that work, that stress is particularly laid upon
the completeness of His foreknowledge. His entire
career, as we have seen, is represented by all the
Evangelists as lying plainly before Him from the
beginning, with every detail clearly marked and
provided for. It is especially, however, with refer-
ence to the three great events in which His work
in establishing His Kingdom is summed up—His
death, His resurrection, His return—that the pre-
dictions become numerous, if we may not even say
constant. Each of the Evangelists represents Him,
for example, as foreseeing His death from the start
(Jn 2! 8311. Mt 12” 9, Mk 2, Lk 125%; ef. Meyer
on Mt 915 1051; Weiss on Mk 851, Denney, Death of
Christ, p. 15. W rede. Messiasgeheimnis, P. 19. ete.),
612 FORESIGHT
John undertakes to depict is what was said and
done by the incarnated Word, no less what the
ee UEUUUEE Sa EE SIE EIENEEEESSSESEE EEE
and as so ordering His life as to march steadfastly
forward to it as its chosen climax (ef, e.g. Wrede,
p. 84: ‘It is accordingly the meaning of Mark that
Jesus journeys to Jerusalem because it is His will to
die there He is represented, therefore, as avoid-
ing all that could lead up to it fora time, and then,
when He Wis ready for it, as setting Himself stead-
fastly to bring it about as He would: as speaking of
it only gnardedly at first, and afterwards, when the
FORESIGHT
time was ripe for it, as setting about assiduously to
prepare His disciples for it. Similarly with respect
to His resurrection, He is reported as having it in
mind, indeed, from the earliest days of His ministry
(Jn 219, Mt 12% 1671, Mk 851, Lk 9), but adverting
to it with pedagogical care, so as to prepare rather
than confuse the minds of His disciples. The
same in substance may be said with reference to
His return (Mt 10” 163), Mk 833 91, Lk 9520. 27),
A survey in chronological order of the passages
in which He is reported as speaking of these three
great events of the future, cannot fail to leave a
distinct impression on the mind not only of the
large space they occupy in the Evangelical narra-
tive, but of the great place they take as foreseen,
according to that narrative, in the life and work of
our Lord. In the following list the passages in
which He adverts to His death stand in the order
given them in Robinson’s Harmony of the Gospels :
Jn 219 314, Mt 1249 (cf. 164, Lk 1182), Lk 1249-50, Mt 915 (Mk 219,
Lk 534), Jn 651 76-8, Mt 1621 (Mk 831, Lk 922), Lk 931, Mt 1717 (Mk
912), Mt 1722. 23 (Mk 991. Lk 944), Lk 9951, Jn 7.93 821. 25 95 1011]. Lb,
Lk 1382 1725, Mt 2018.19 (Mk 1033, Lk 1831), Jn 1228, Mt 2025 (Mk
1038), Mt 2023 (Mk 104), Mt 2139 (Mk 123, Lk 2014), Jn 1223, Mt
262, Jn 131 1333, Mt 2628 (Mk 14%4, Lk 2220), Mt 2631 (Mk 1427, Jn
1425), Jn 1513 165 1616 1811, Mt 2694 (Jn 1811), Lk 2426. 46,
The following allusions to His resurrection are
in the same order :
Jn 219, Mt 1249 (Lk 1130), Mt 1621 (Mk 831, Lk 922), Mk 179 (Mk
99), Mt 1723 (Mk 981), Jn 1018 [1616], Mt 2017 (Mk 1034, Lk 1834),
Mt 2632 (Mk 1428) (Mt 286 | Lk 248], Lk 2446,
The following are, in like order, the allusions to
His return :
Mt 1025 1627 (Mk 838 91, Lk 926.27), Lk 1040 1722, Mt. 1923 2339
243 (Mk 134, Lie 216), 242437 (Mk 1350, Lk 2152), Mt 2444 2531 2664
(Mk 1482, Lk 2269),
The most cursory examination of these series of
passages in their setting, and especially in their
Θ᾿
distribution through the Evangelical narrative, will
evince the cardinal place which the eschatological
element takes in the life of the Lord as depicted
in the Gospels. In particular, it will be impossible
to eseape the conviction that it is distinctly the
teaching of the Evangelists that Jesus came into
the world specifically to die, and ordered His whole
life wittingly to that end. As Dr. Denney puts it
(expounding Jn 10", on which see also Westcott’s
note), ‘Christ’s death is not an incident of His
life, it is the aim of it. The laying down of His
life is not an accident in His career, it is His voea-
tion; it is that in which the Divine purpose of
His life is revealed.’ ‘If there was a period in
His life during which He had other thoughts, it is
antecedent to that at which we have any know-
ledge of Him’ (Death of Christ, pp. 259 and 18).
Nothing could therefore be more at odds with
the consentient and constant representations of the
Evangelists than to speak of the ‘shadow of the
cross’ as only somewhat late in His history begin-
ning to fall athwart our Lord’s pathway ; of the
idea that His earthly career should close in gloom
as ‘distinctly emerging in the teaching of Jesus
only at a comparatively late period,’ and as there-
fore presumably not earlier ‘clear in His mind’:
unless, indeed, it be the accompanying more general
judgment that ‘there was nothing extraordinary
or supernatural in Jesus’ foreknowledge of His
death,’ and that ‘His prophecy was but the expres-
sion of a mind which knew that it could not cease to
be obedient while His enemies would not cease to
be hostile’ (A. M. Fairbairn, The Expositor, 1897, 1.;
V. iv. [1896] 283, 285). It is not less unwarranted
to speak of Him as bowing to His fate only ‘as the
will of God, to which He yielded Himself up to
the very end only with difficulty, and at best against
His will’ (Wernle, Synopt. Frage, 200).
Such expressions as these, however, advise us
that avery different conception from that presented
‘by the Evangelists has found widespread accept-
t
ἢ
}
FORESIGHT
ance among a class of modern scholars, whose
etforts have been devoted to giving to our Lord’s
life on earth a character more normally human
than it seems to possess as it lies on the pages of
the Evangelists. The negative principle ot the
new constructions offered of the course and
springs of our Lord’s career being rejection of the
account given by the Evangelists, these scholars
are thrown back for guidance very much upon
their own subjective estimate of probabilities. The
Gospels are, however, the sole sources of information
for the events of our Lord’s life, and it is impossible
to decline their aid altogether. Few, accordingly,
have been able to discard entirely the general
framework of the life of Christ they present (for
those who are inclined to represent Jesus as making
no claim even to be the Messiah, see H. Holtzmann,
NT Theol. i. 280, note ; Meinhold as there referred
to; and Wrede, Das Messiasgeheimnis, especially
Appendix vii.). Most have derived enough from
the Gospels to assume that a crisis of some sort
occurred at Caesarea Philippi, where the Evangelists
represent our Lord as beginning formally and
frankly to prepare His disciples for His death (Mt
162! ||).
Great differences arise at once, however, over what this crisis
was. Schenkel supposes that it was only at this point in His
ministry that Jesus began to think Himself the Messiah ; Strauss
is willing to believe He suspected Himself to be the Messiah
earlier, and supposes that He now first began to proclaim Him-
self such; P. W. Schmidt and Lobstein imagine that on this
day He both put the Messianic crown upon His head and faced
death looming in His path; Weizsacker and Keim allow that
He thought and proclaimed Himself the Messiah from the be-
ginning, and suppose that what is new here is that only now
did He come to see with clearness that His ministry would end
in His death,—and as death for the Messiah means return, they
add that here He begins His proclamation of His return in glory.
To this Schenkel and Hase find difficulty in assenting, feeling
it impossible that the Founder of a spiritual kingdom should
look forward to its consummation in a physical one, and in-
sisting, therefore, that though Jesus may well have predicted
the destruction of His enemies, He can scarcely have foretold
His own coming in glory. On the other hand, Strauss and Baur
judge that a prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem too
closely resembles what actually occurred not to be post eventum,
but see no reason why Jesus should not have dreamed of coming
back on the clouds of heaven. As to His death, Strauss thinks
He began to anticipate it only shortly before His last journey to
Jerusalem ; while Holsten cannot believe that He realized what
was before Him until He actually arrived at Jerusalem, and
even then did not acquiesce in it (so Spitta). That He went to
Jerusalem for the purpose of dying, neither Weizsacker, nor
Brandt, nor H. Holtzmann, nor Schultzen will admit, though
the two last named allow that He foresaw that the journey
would end in His death; or at least that it possibly would, adds
Piinjer, since, of course, a possibility of success lay open to
Him (cf. H. Holtzmann, NT’ Theol. i. 285-286, note). As many
men, so many opinions. As the positive principle of construc-
tion in all these schemes of life for Jesus is desupernaturaliza-
tion, they differ, so far as the prophetic element in His teaching
as reported by the Evangelists is concerned, chiefly in the
measure in which they explain it as due more or less entirely
to the Evangelists carrying their own ideas, or the ideas of the
community in which they lived, back into Jesus’ mouth; or
allow it more or less fully to Jesus, indeed, but only in a form
which can be thought of as not rising above the natural prog-
nostications of a man in His position. A few deny to Jesus the
entire series of predictions reported in the Gospels, and assign
them in mass to the thought of the later community (e.g.
Eichhorn, Wrede). A few, on the other hand, allow the whole,
or nearly the whole, series to Jesus, and explain them all
naturalistically. Most take an intermediate position, deter-
mined by the principle that all which seems to each critic
incapable of naturalistic explanation as utterances of Jesus
shall be assigned to later origin. Accordingly, the concrete
details in the alleged predictions are quite generally denied to
Jesus, and represented as easily explicable modifications, in
accordance with the actual course of events, of what Jesus really
said. The prediction of resurrection on the third day, for ex-
ample, is held by many (6.5. Schwartzkopff) to be too precise 8
determination, and is therefore excluded from the prophecy,
or explained as only a periphrasis for an indefinite short time,
after the analogy of Hos 62 (so even B. Weiss). Τὸ others a
prediction of a resurrection at all seems incredible (Strauss,
Schenkel, Weizsicker, Keim, Brandt), and it is transmuted into,
at most, a premonition of future victory. By yet others (as
Holsten) even the anticipation of death is doubted, and nothing
of forecast is left to Jesus except, possibly, a vague anticipation
of difficulty and suffering ; while with others even this gives
way, and Jesus is represented as passing either the greater
part of His life (Fairbairn), or the whole of it, in joyful expecta-
tion of more or less unbroken success, or at least, however
FORESIGHT 613
thickly the clouds gathered over His head, in inextinguishable
hope in God and His interposition in His behalf (cf. the brief
general sketch of opinions in Wrede, Messias jeheimnis, p. 85).
Thus, over-against the ‘dogmatic’ view of the
life of Christ, set forth in the Evangelists, aecord-
ing to which Jesus came into the world to die, and
which is dominated, therefore, by foresight, is set,
in polar opposition to it, a new view, calling itself
‘historical,’ the principle of which is the denial to
Jesus of any foresight whatever beyond the most
limited human forecast. No pretence is ordinarily
made that this new view is given support by
the Evangelical records; it is put forward on a
priori or general grounds—as, for example, the
only psychologically possible view (e.g. Schwartz-
koptt, Prophecies of Christ, p. 28; ef. Denney,
Death of Christ, p. 11, and especially the just
strictures of Wrede, Messiasgeheimnis, pp. 2, 3).
It professes to find it incredible that Jesus entered
upon His ministry with any other expectation than
success. Contact with men, however, it allows,
brought gradually the discovery of the hopeless-
ness of drawing them to His spiritual ideals ; the
erowing enmity of the rulers opened before Him
the prospect ot disaster; and thus there came to
Him the slow recognition, first of the possibility,
and then of the certainty, of failure; or, at least,
since failure was impossible for the mission He
had come to perform, of the necessity of passing
through suffering to the ultimate success. So
slowly was the readjustment to this new point of
view made, that even at the end——as the prayer at
Gethsemane shows—there remained a lingering
hope that the extremity of death might be avoided.
So far asa general sketch can be made of a view
presented by its several adherents with great variety
of detail, this is the essential fabric of the new
view (cf. the general statements of Kahler, Zur
Lehre von der Verséhnung, 159; Denney, Death of
Christ, 11; Wrede, Messiasgeheimnis, 86). Only
such parts of the predictive element of the teach-
ing attributed to Jesus in the Gospels as are
thought capable of naturalistic interpretation are
incorporated into this new construction. By these
who wish to bring in as much as possible, it 1s said,
for example, that our Lord was too firmly per-
suaded of His Messianic appointment and function,
and was too clear that this function centred in the
establishment of the Kingdom, to accept death itself
as failure. When He perceived death impending,
that meant to Him, therefore, return; and return
to bring in the Messianic glory meant resurrection.
When He thought and spoke of death, therefore,
He necessarily thought and spoke also of resurrec-
tion and return; the three went inevitably to-
eether ; and if He anticipated the one, He must
have anticipated the others also. Under this general
scheme all sorts of opinions are held as to when,
how, and under what impulses Jesus formed and
taught this eschatological programme. As notable
a construction as any holds that He first became
certain of His Messiahship in an ecstatic vision
which accompanied His beptism ; that the Messiah
must sufier was already borne in upon His convic-
tion in the course of His temptation ; but it was
not until the scene at Czesarea Philippi that He
attained the happy assurance that the Messianic
glory lay behind the dreadful death impending over
Him. ‘This great conviction, attained in principle
in the ecstasy of that moment, was, nevertheless,
only gradually assimilated. When Jesus was
labouring with His disciples, He was labouring
also with Himself. In this particular construction
(it is O. Holtzmann’s) an element of ‘ecstasy’ is
introduced ; more commonly the advances Jesus is
supposed to make in His anticipations are thought
to rest on processes of formal reasoning. In either
case, He is pictured as only slowly, under the stress
FORESIGHT
614
)
—— --- -- -.:
of compelling circumstances, reaching convictions
of what awaited Him in the future; and thus He
is conceived distinctly as the victim rather than as
the Lord of His destiny. _So far from entering
the world to die, and by His death to save the
world, and in His own good time and way accom-
lishing this great mission, He enters life set upon
iving, and only yields step by step reluctantly to
the hard fate which inexorably closes upon Him.
That He clings through all to His conviction of
His Messiahship, and adjusts His hope of accom.
plishing His Messianic mission to the overmastering
pressure of cireumstances,—is that not a pathetic
trait of human nature? Do not all enthusiasts
the like? Is it not precisely the mark of their
fanaticism? The plain fact is, if we may express
it in the brutal frankness of common speech, in
this view of Jesus’ career He miscalculated and
failed ; and then naturally sought (or His followers
sought for Him) to save the failure (or the appear-
ance of failure) by inventing a new dénowement for
the career He had hoped for in vain, a new de-
nouement which—has it failed too? Most of our
modern theorizers are impelled to recognize that it
too has failed. When Jesus so painfully adjusted
Himself to the hard destiny which more and more
obtruded itself upon His recognition, He taught
that death was but an incident in His career, and
after death would come the victory. Can we be-
lieve that He foresaw that thousands of years |
would intervene between what He represented as
but an apparent catastrophe and the glorious
reversal to which He directed His own and His
followers’ eyes? On the contrary, He expected and
He taught that He would come back soon—cer-
tainly before the generation which had witnessed
His apparent defeat had passed away; and that
He would then establish that Messianic Kingdom
which from the beginning of His ministry He had
unvaryingly taught was at hand. He did not
do so. Is there any reason to believe that He
ever will return? Can the ‘foresight’ which has
repeatedly failed so miserably be trusted still, —
for what we choose to separate out from the
mass of His expectations as the core of the
matter? On what grounds shall we adjust
the discredited ‘foresight’ to the course of events,
obviously unforeseen by Him, since His death?
Where is the end of these ‘adjustments’? Have
we not already with ‘adjustment’ after ‘adjust-
ment’ transformed beyond recognition the expecta-
tions of Jesus, even the latest and fullest to which
He attained, and transmuted them into something
fundamentally different,—passed, in a word, so far
beyond Him, that we retain only an artificial
connexion with Him and His real teaching, a con-
nexion mediated by little more than a word ?
That in this modern construction we have the
precise contradictory of the conception of Jesus
and of the course of His life on earth given us by
the Evangelists, it needs no argument to establish.
In the Gospel presentation, foresight is made the
principle of our Lord’s career. In the modern
view He is credited with no foresight whatever.
\t best, He Was possessed by a fixed conviction of
His Messianic mission, whether gained in ecstatic
vision (as, ὁ... O. Holtzmann) or acquired in deep
religions experiences (as, ¢€.q., Schwartzkopff) ; and
He felt an assurance, based on this ineradicable
conviction, that in His own good time and way
Gat wont work that misan Ove for Tiny and δὲ
he eal nner = fu y onward fulfilling
srr rama naga igling meanwhile egregiously
aati l ne eo. te te ΟἹ destiny which was
exaggerate dly human Christ, eee tes ἽΝ
πο He ents ree i iich iS here offered
contrast with the frank] y Divin ἫΝ ee ἘΥΤΩΘΕΙ͂ΘΕΣ
i ankly Divine Christ which. the
|
|
|
FORESIGHT
Gospels present tous. On what grounds can we
be expected to substitute this for that? Certainly
not on grounds of historical record. We have no
historical record of the self-consciousness of Jesus
except that embodied in the Gospel dramatization
of His life and the Gospel report of His teaching ;
and that record expressly contradicts at every step
this modern reconstruction of its contents and
development. The very principle of the modern
construction is reversal of the Gospel delineation.
Its peculiarity is that, though it calls itself the
‘historical’ view, it has behind it no single scrap
of historical testimony ; the entirety of historical
evidence contradicts it flatly. Are we to accept it,
then, on the general grounds of inherent pro-
bability and rational construction ? It is historie-
ally impossible that the great religious movement
which we call Christianity could have taken its
origin and derived its inspiration—an inspiration
far from spent after two thousand years—from
such a figure as this Jesus. The plain fact is that
in these modern reconstructions we have nothing
but a sustained attempt to construct a naturalistic
Jesus: and their chief interest is that they bring
before us with unwonted clearness the kind of
being the man must have been who at that time
and in those circumstances could have come for-
ward making the claims which Jesus made without
supernatural nature, endowment, or aid to sustain
Him. The value of the speculation is that it
makes superabundantly clear that no such being
could have occupied the place which the historical
Jesus oceupied ; could have made the impression
on His followers which the historical Jesus made ;
could have become the source of the stream of re-
ligious influence which we call Christianity, as the
historical Jesus became. The clear formulation
of the naturalistic hypothesis, in the construction
of a naturalistic Jesus, in other words, throws us
violently back upon the Divine Jesus of the Evan-
gelists as the only Jesus that is historically pos-
sible. From this point of view, the labours of the
scholars who have with infinite pains built up this
construction of Jesus’ life and development have
not been in vain.
What, then, is to be said of the predictions of
Jesus, and especially of the three great series of
prophecies of His death, resurrection, and return,
with respect to their contents and fulfilment ὃ
This is not the place to discuss the eschatology of
Jesus. But a few general remarks seem not un-
called for. The topic has received of late much
renewed attention with very varied results, the
number and variety of constructions proposed
having been greatly increased above what the in-
herent difficulty of the subject will account for, by
the freedom with which the Scripture data have
been modified or set aside on so-called critical
grounds by the several investigators. Nevertheless,
most of the new interpretations also may be classi-
fied under the old categories of futuristic, preter-
istic, and spiritualistic.
The spiritualistic interpretation—whose method of dealing
with our Lord’s predictions readily falls in with a widespread
theory that it is ‘contrary to the spirit and manner of genuine
prophecy to predict actual circumstances like a soothsayer’
(Muirhead, Eschatology of Jesus, Ὁ. 10; Schwartzkopff, Pro-
phecies of Jesus Christ, 78, 250, 258, 275, 312, etc.)—has received
a new impulse through its attractive presentation by Erich
Haupt (Hschatolog. Aussagen Jesu, etc., 1895). Christ’s eschat-
ology, says Haupt, is infinitely simple, and all that He predicts
is to be accomplished in a heavenly way which passes our com-
prehension ; there is no soothsaying in His utterances—‘ no-
where any predictions of external occurrences, everywhere only
great moral religious laws which must operate everywhere and
always, while nothing is said of the form in which they must
act’ (p. 157). A considerable stir has been created also by the
revival (Schleiermacher, Weisse) by Weiffenbach (Der Wieder-
kunftsgedanke Jesu, 1873, Die Frage der Wiederkunft Jesu,
1901) of the identification of the return of Christ with His
resurrection, although this view has retained few adherents
since its refutation by Schwartzkopff (The Propheetes of Jesus
FORESIGHT
FORGIVENESS 615
Christ, 1895), whose own view is its exact contradictory, viz.
that by His resurrection Jesus meant just His return. The
general conception, however, that ‘ for Jesus the hope of resur- |
rection and the thought of return fell together,’ so that ‘when
Jesus spoke of His resurrection He was thinking of His return,
and vice versa’ (O. Holtzmann, War Jesus Ekstatiker ? 67, note),
is very widely held. The subsidiary hypothesis (first suggested
by Colani) of the inclusion in the great eschatological discourse
attributed by the Evangelists to our Lord of a ‘little Apoca-
lypse’ of Jewish or Jewish Christian origin, by which Weiffen-
bach eased his task, has in more or less modified form received
the widest acceptance (cf. H. Holtzmann, ΝΊ" Theol. i. 327,
note), but rests on no solid grounds (cf. Weiss, Beyschlag,
Haupt, Clemen). Most adherents of the modern school are
clear that Jesus expected and asserted that He would return in
Messianic glory for the consummation of the Kingdom; and
most of them are equally clear that in this expectation and
assertion, Jesus was mistaken (cf. H. Holtzmann, NZ’ Theol.
j. 312f.). ‘In the expectation that the kingdom was soon to
come,’ says Oscar Holtzmann in a passage typical enough of |
this whole school of exposition (War Jesus Ekstatiker ? p. 133),
‘ Jesus erred in a human way’; and in such passages as Mk 9!
1339, Mt 1028 he considers that the error is obvious. He adds,
‘That such an error on the part of Jesus concerning not a side-
issue but a fundamental point of His faith,—His first proclama-
tion began, according to Mk 11%, with the πτετλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς καὶ
ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ Yeov,—does not facilitate faith in Jesus is
self-evident ; but this error of Jesus is for His Church a highly
instructive and therefore highly valuable warning to distin-
guish between the temporary and the permanent in the work
of Jesus.’ Not every one even of this school can go, however,
quite this length. Even Schwartzkopff, while allowing that
Jesus erred in this matter, wishes on that very account to think
of the mere definition of times and seasons as belonging to the
form rather than to the essence of His teaching (Lhe Prophecies |
of Jesus Christ, 1895, Eng. tr. 1897, p. 319; Konnte Jesus
irren ? 1896, p. 3); and in that Baldensperger is in substantial
agreement with him (Sedbstbewusstsein Jesu, p. 148, 2 p. 205).
From the other side, E. Haupt (Eschatolog. Aussagen Jesu, 1895,
p- 188 f.) urges that Jesus must be supposed to have been able
to avoid all errors, at least in the religious sphere, even if they
concern nothing but the form; while Weiffenbach (Die Frage, |
etc. p. 9) thinks we should hesitate to suppose Jesus could
have erred in too close a definition of the time of His advent,
when He expressly confesses that He was ignorant of its time
(cf. Muirhead, Eschat. of Jesus, 48-50, and esp. 117). Probably
Fritz Barth (Die Hauptprobleme des Lebens Jesu, 1899, pp. 167—
170) stands alone in cutting the knot by appealing to the con-
ditionality of all prophecy. According to him, Jesus did, indeed,
predict His return as coincident with the destruction of Jeru-
salem ; but all genuine prophecy is conditioned upon the con-
duct of the human agents involved—‘ between prediction and
fulfilment the conduct of man intrudes as a codetermining
factor on which the fulfilment depends.’ Thus this prediction
has not failed, but its fulfilment has only been postponed—in |
accordance, it must be confessed, not with the will of God, but
with that of man. It is difficult to see how Jesus is thus
shielded from the imputation of defective foresight ; but at
least Barth is able on this view still to look for a return of the
Lord.
The difficulty which the passages in our Saviour’s
teaching under discussion present to the reverent
expositor is, of course, not to be denied or mini-
mized. But surely this difficulty would need to be
much more hopeless than it is before it could compel
or justify the assumption of error ‘in One who has
never been convicted of error in anything else’
(Sanday in Hastings’ DB ii. 635—the whole passage
should be read). The problem that faces us in this
matter, it is apparent, in the meantime, is not one |
which can find its solution as a corollary to a specu-
lative general view of our Lord’s self-consciousness,
its contents, and development.
we know fully and precisely all that our Lord has
declared about His return—its what and how and
when—before we venture to suggest, even to our
most intimate thought, that He has committed so
eross an error as to its what and how and when as
is so often assumed ; especially as He has in the
most solemn manner declared concerning precisely
the words under consideration that heaven and
earth shall pass away, but not His words. It would
be sad if the passage of time has shown this de-
claration also to be mistaken. Meanwhile, the
perfect foresight of our Lord, asserted and. illus-
trated by all the Evangelists, certainly cannot be
set aside by the facile assumption of an error on
His part in a matter in which it is so difficult to
demonstrate an error, and in which assumptions of
all sorts are so little justified. For the detailed
It is distinctly a |
problem of exegesis. We should be very sure that |
| of Zacharias (Lk 1”).
discussion of our Lord’s eschatology, including the
determination of His meaning in these utterances,
reference must, however, be made to works treat-
| ing expressly of this subject.
BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD.
FORGIVENESS.
Three words are used in the Gospels which are rendered in
English by the word ‘ forgive’ :- --ὠ τολίειν, to set free, once only,
in Lk 637 ; χαρίζεσθαι, to show oneself gracious, or forgive frankly,
in Lk 742-43; and ἀφιέναι, to remit, or let of, 37 times in the
Synoptic Gospels. The noun ἄφεσις, ‘remission’ or ‘forgiveness,’
is found 8 times in the Synoptics, the words ‘of sins’ or ‘of
trespasses’ being either added or closely implied.
In the treatment of the subject in this article
three things must be borne in mind. First, that
the words employed by Christ and the ideas they
represent are not entirely new as they come from
His lips. Our Lord presupposes and then puts
His own characteristic impress upon a doctrine
of forgiveness with which His hearers were for
the most part familiar, and which for us is em-
bodied in the OT. Secondly, that no complete
study of Christ’s teaching concerning forgiveness
can be made, unless other words, such as ‘ save,’
‘justify,’ and ‘cleanse,’ are taken into account,
and the whole subject of release from the guilt
and bondage of sin, as promised by Him, is kept
in view. And, thirdly, that to stop short with the
recorded words of Christ Himself on the matter
is—speakingly reverently—not to know His whole
mind upon it. It was impossible for Him in the
course of His earthly ministry to set forth the full
significance of His work for men, before it was
accomplished. Hence for a complete account of
_ the significance of His death we turn to the teach-
ing of the Apostles, enlightened as they were by
the Holy Spirit whom He had promised. In due
course were revealed those ‘many things’ concern-
ing His cross and passion which His disciples
could not ‘ bear’ during His lifetime. Down even
to the very close of His short ministry on earth
the rudimentary spiritual intelligence of the
Apostles was unequal to carrying the full burden
of the gospel as they afterwards understood it.
The way in which that gospel was to be emphatic-
ally one of forgiveness, that ‘through this man
is proclaimed remission of sins, and by him every
one that believeth is justified from all things from
which ye could not be justified by the law οἱ
Moses,’ was only made clear afterwards. It being
therefore carefully borne in mind that the OT
prepared the way for Christ’s teaching on forgive-
ness, and that the Epistles developed and com-
pleted it, this article will deal only with that stage
in the biblical doctrine of the subject which is
represented by Christ and the Gospels. The con-
sideration of it will be divided into four sections:
(1) the Divine forgiveness of man, (2) Christ’s own
power to forgive sins, (3) the duty of men to forgive
one another, (4) the extent to which authority to
forgive is vested in the Christian community.
1. God the Father as forgiving the sins of men.—
The first reference chronologically to this subject
in the Gospels is found in the Benedictus, or Psalm
The prophecy concerning
John the Baptist announces that he is to give
‘knowledge of salvation unto his people, in the
remission of their sins, according to the tender
mercy of our God,’ etc. The whole tenor of the
canticle goes to show that God’s ancient promises
were about to be fulfilled in the coming of a Saviour
through whom the great boon of remission of sins
was to be secured in a fuller sense than had hitherto
obtained. When the time came, John the Baptist
is declared to have preached the baptism of re-
pentance ‘unto remission of sins’ (Mk 14, Lk 33).
In the same connexion may be taken the interpre-
| tation of the name Jesus in Mt 1”! ‘he shall save
his people from their sins,’ and the ‘Saviour, Christ
FORGIVENESS
616
FORGIVENESS
the Lord,’ of Lk 211, though the word ‘ forgiveness ’
does not occur. It was indeed implicit through-
out our Lord’s ministry, all His declarations con-
cerning His coming ‘not to call the righteous, but
sinners’ (Mt 919), ‘to seek and to save that which
was lost’ (Lk 1910), and His promise of ‘rest to the
souls’ of men (Mt 1139), showing that the object of
His ministry was to reclaim from sin, by bringing
men to that forgiveness and cleansing which God
had promised through repentance and faith in Him.
The explicit references to forgiveness of sin are
comparatively few, but they are clear and definite
in character, and quite sufficient to establish doc-
trine on the subject. They are: (4) the petition
in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘ Forgive us our ; debts,’
Mt 6" (‘our sins,’ Lk 115), combined with Mt
6415) Mk 11%, which assert God’s willingness to
forgive under certain conditions. With these join
Lk 67, a parallel passage with a different turn of
expression, ‘Release and ye shall be released,’ the
reference clearly being to sin. (6) The parables of
Lk 15, especially that of the Prodigal Son, and of
the Pharisee and the Publican in Lk 18°. (¢) Our
Saviour’s prayer on the cross, ‘Father, forgive
them,’ ete., Lk 234. (d) Statements concerning
God’s willingness to forgive all sins, including
those ‘against the Son of man,’ but excluding the
unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, Mt 12%,
Mk 3”, Lk 12; add also Mk 4!2, in which Isaiah’s
prophecy is represented as being fulfilled, ‘ lest they
should repent and be forgiven (healed).’
Putting these passages together, we are war-
ranted in concluding that Christ taught the readi-
ness of the Father always to hear the prayer of the
truly penitent and in His mercy to pardon their
sins, the chief questions being, What is the exact
nature of forgiveness? Is it free to all mankind,
or to those only who are in covenant relation with
Him? Is any condition besides that of repentance
laid down?
The meaning of the word ‘forgiveness,’ and the
relation between God and man implied in it, must
be gathered largely from the OT. Doubtless under
the old covenant a progressive revelation is to be
recognized, an advance in spirituality of teaching
being discernible in its later stages. Doubtless
also it is necessary to bear in mind the distinction
between the ceremonial standpoint of the Law
with its elaborate ritual and appointed sacrifices
on the one hand, and the more purely spiritual
view of the prophet and psalmist on the other.
But, broadly speaking, Christ, like the more
‘Evangelical’ OT prophets, represents forgiveness
as a pure act of grace on the part of God, who on
the repentance of the sinner receives him graciously
and pardons his transgression in the sense of re-
placing the offender in his former relation of
acceptance and favour. Forgiveness is not mere
remission of penalty, the forbearing to inflict de-
served punishment, though such release is for the
most part included. Punishment may still be
exacted, but it has lost its penal character and
becomes Divine chastisement inflicted for the im-
provement of the offender, or for the sake of others.
Neither does forgiveness imply any false or arbi-
trary dealing with the past, any condoning of sin—
Which is essentially immoral—or ignoring of the
transgression, as if it had not been committed—
Which would imply a weak and false attempt to
secure the impossible. Nor, again, can any kind
of remission of sins be predicated of God which
implies unrighteousness in any form, the solemn |
sanctions of the eternal law of righteousness being |
secured by the conditions upon which forgiveness |
is eranted.,
But
the essence of forgiveness lies in the estab- |
lishment, or restoration, of a person#] relation be-
ea ἢ : : |
ween sinful man and a grieved and righteously |
angry God. Omnipotence itself cannot erase the
event from the history of the past, and holiness
will not permit any concealment or pretence as to
the heinousness of the offence committed. But the
sin may be ‘covered,’ the guilt cancelled, in the
sense that on certain conditions it shall be as if it
had never been, so far as the relation between God
and the sinner is concerned. Hence sin when for-
given is said to be ‘cast into the depth of the sea’
(Mic 15), ‘cast behind thy back’ (Is 9817), removed
‘as far as the east is from the west’ (Ps 1031%),
‘remembered no more’ (Jer 31%) against the
sinner.
Ritschl says: ‘God, in forgiving or pardoning sins, exercises
His will in the direction of not permitting the contradiction—
expressed in guilt—in which sinners stand to Him to hinder
that fellowship of men with Him which He intends on higher
grounds.’ It does not, he adds, ‘free them altogether trom
the consciousness of guilt, but from that mistrust which, as an
affection of the consciousness of guilt, naturally separates the
injured man from the offender.’ And again, it is ‘a reconcilia-
tion of such a nature that while memory, indeed, preserves the
pain felt at the sin which has been committed, yet at the same
time the place of mistrust towards God is taken by the positive
assent of the will to God and His saving purpose.’
Forgiveness can never be adequately understood
by means of any figure of speech, commercial or
other. It represents a relation of persons, and its
essence lies in the restoration of impaired con-
fidence, affection, and favourable regard. It has to
do not only with the past, but 
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